LO3, Task 4

Hello my name is Matthew Ellis and I'm back for another episode, brought to you by Education Wise.
This time we will be talking about distribution, advertising and promotion. Now what is distribution?
Distribution has two parts; the first part is how the film gets to the viewers. This can be things like DVDs, streaming websites such as Netflix and the cinema. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages, for example if it was distributed in a cinema it would reach a more mass audience and if they would like to see the film again, they would have to pay for another ticket, increasing profits. For DVDs the advantages would be that it would generally make more money than a cinema ticket on first release, also they would have to buy the hardware needed to play the DVD and DVDs are more expensive than a single cinema ticket. Distributing the film on a streaming website such as Netflix reaches a much more mass audience than DVDs do, as since it is on the internet with only paid subscription to access it. However it means that you don't get as much profit as someone watching it on the cinema. For these reason films are generally released in the cinema first, then on DVD and finally on legal streaming websites such as Netflix.
In I, robots case it was released in the cinema and then on DVD, but since the film as released in 2004 when streaming websites such as Netflix weren't popular back then. This affected I, Robot by not being as available to a more mass audience as not everyone could afford to go the cinema, but wasn't a huge problem as cinema and DVD releases still catered to the mass audience. Now because a product can be distributed across multiple platforms, technological convergence can affect the film. In I, Robot's case, there was not a lot of technological convergence as the only two platforms that were distributed on were the cinema and DVD. This doesn't create technological convergence because the cinema release generally comes out months before the DVD release, so they cannot really use the cinema release the advertise the DVD release and vice versa. Also films back then would have used a film reel rather than a digital projector, which would have made it easier to distribute.
For this reason I, Robot wouldn't be available on things like Ipads and devices without a DVD player.
The second part of distribution is how the product is advertised and promoted I, Robot was advertised through the use of mostly trailers and some posters, the trailers were placed on TV and in cinemas in pre-screening of other films. This is because back in 2003 Youtube wouldn't have been nearly as popular as it is today, so it wouldn't have been video trailers of I, Robot there. Also there weren't many posters on things like buses/bus stops or billboards as it wasn't marketed as much. Also because the internet and technological convergence didn't play a huge role in the promotion of tis film, it wouldn't have been advertised on social media websites as they simply weren't developed then. So I, robot was only marketed and promoted through he use of old media, but this didn't seem to have an affect on the films income as the budget for the film was $120 million, and the box office was $347.2 million. A gross of $227.2 million shows that even though it didn't have the advantages modern films have of been distributed digitally into cinemas, of having social media to advertise the film for them and having technological convergence with Netflix where you can watch it on pretty much any device it still did really well in the box office. This means that the traditional ways of promoting the film were successful. Also back in 2004 there wasn't cross media promotion since as the only two platforms it was released on was DVD and cinema, and as stated before they don't synergise well when promoting the other.