The Role of the Distributor

The role of a distributor is to identify and deliver the largest possible audience for every film they represent. Research shows that most people that go to the cinema know what film they want to go and see, which is thanks to the distributors that have aroused interest in that particular film. The distributor has to launch and sustain films in the highly competitive market place.
Their challenge is to:

• Identify the films audience
• Consider why they would go and see it
• Estimate the revenue potential across all the formats of the films release
• Develop plans and partnerships to build awareness of and interest in the film
• Aim to convert as much interest as possible into cinema visits
• Persuade exhibitors (cinema operators) to play the film

After the film has left the cinema, it is released in a range of formats such as DVD, Blu-ray, Pay-per-view/subscribers television and free to air television, and the distributor is vital in order to maintain the necessary value of the film in order to be successful in the film industry. The distributors key jobs in the life cycle of a film begin with the development of a release strategy:

• Consideration of a release date and taking a delivery of a master print of the finished film
• Presentation of the film to exhibitors and negotiates bilateral agreements to have it shown in the cinemas
• Developing marketing campaigns aims to create a 'want to see' buzz among the target audience and launches the film 

The distributor closely works with the film maker and producer who are likely to have nurtured the project that is their film for years.

Sigmund Freud's concept of "The Return of the Repressed"

Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression. Repression was the name given to the action that is disallowing yourself to access painful memories by burying them deep into your unconscious mind. Throughout Freud's investigation of this notion, he found that his patients all had varied levels of repression. He argued that the act of repression did not happen within a persons consciousness, therefore leading him to believe that a person was not then aware of the traumatic memories and experiences that they have repressed. However, there are signs that repression has taken place with such derivatives as not only symptoms but also fantasies, slips of the tongue, and parapraxes in general, and even certain character traits. This is why a person may be what seems irrationally traumatised, perhaps in a small way, by a certain scent, or image.
                      Reasons as to why the concept of repression may apply and thus be helpful towards the horror genre vary. It's clear that people enjoy horrors hence their popularity, even though the whole idea is that they are basically designed to be hard to watch, to scare the audience. This fact audiences go to the cinema and watch these films to be scared implies within all the people that want to watch a horror, lies a deeprouted fear that they themselves perhaps aren't immediately aware of, a repressed fear revisited. It could be that the fear we feel when watching horror films may not be necessarily all have undergone the same degree of trauma as those in the film, but they are reacting to the horrific representations of such things such as abuse, torture, abandonment, feelings of being trapped etc.
    The idea of 'returning' is useful and conventional of the horror genre as well, as not only does it open windows for the character type of the 'pyschotic killer' that returns on the anniversary of the last havoc he caused, but it also means that there is no end to the trauma, that although it's the end seems to be in sight, it's really not.
            

Analysis of 'The Hills Have Eyes'

The trailer for this horror film has many traits in it that coincide with the conventions of a horror genre. Immediately we see this as the beginning of the trailer informs the audience of nuclear tests in the deserts of New Mexico in 1945-1992. Straight away we can connote the beginning of a creepy nature to the film. The use of setting, being a desert. This is conventional as it is somewhere isolated and enables a community, if present at all, to be cut off from the rest of society. Not only does this allow an opportunity for anti-social behavior, but the fact that the the setting has a 'past' allows it to return. This can be in the form of a threat that was once removed returning, or in this case, having the past revisited by outsiders of the setting.
A main theme that is conventional in other horrors, is the idea of 'science being out of control', or 'playing God'. The use of nuclear testing has mutated lifeforms in that area, including humans, causing a hoard of demented killers, who seem to know no other way of life. This first became a theme in the horror genre through the film adaptations of Mary Shelleys' Frankenstein, the most famous being James Whales' adaptation, with Boris Karloff starring as the monster. The idea of a failed artificial life experiment that produced a monster became a major theme in the horror genre, and many films have been produced based on that idea, such as 'Flatliners' and 'Jurassic Park'.
The conventional character types are evident in this trailer include the 'monsters' with a hidden secret, or that have been made psychotic by an earlier event, in this case being the nuclear testing. Reasons for this kind of character type is that the monster seems to be completely deranged beyond repair, so much so that they almost lose any kind of identification from the audience, and are a mere representation of evil, rather than a character that can be related to. By doing this, it becomes a lot scarier, as the boundaries of their malevolence are non-existent. Also necessary and conventional of a horror genre, is the character of a 'final girl', the main protagonist thats a victim as well as a hero, made famous through the slasher films, such as Halloween.
The main theme that is presented through this trailer is 'Science out of control', the opening credits talk about the use of nuclear bomb testing and how it's essientially mutated any life form that is born. This is a key concept in horror as the reason why it's so scary is that it doesn't necessarily seem impossible, and that it's man-made.
Technical elements that make this horror trailer scary is the use of the siren sounds at the start, this is a well known sound that is scary because it meant the beginning of an air raid, a real and horrific situation. The start has footage that is old, showing that an event happened in the past (return of the repressed), and we see that in the same place, a shot it used to turn the desert from old broken film to new modern good quality film, showing that it is being revisited. The increasing pace of the film reiterates the intensity of the horror, and the final credits 'The lucky ones die first' is blunt and shows that death is a better option than enduring this horror.