Institution information

Short films are less dominated by big Hollywood conglomerate institution than feature films as they cost less to make and distribute. However, it would not hurt getting funding or the attention of a big production/distribution company because it could get more funding for the film and get it noticed better. 

Last year at AS for the exam I learned about institutions and found out that different companies sometimes specialised in different genres/target audiences. For example, Disney mainly focuses on child friendly films which are mainly targeted at the family audiences. I also learned that the main players in the industry that dominate the global market are:

Fox

Paramount

Warner Brothers

Sony

I also found out that when it comes to short films the BBC is also a good source of funding/support. 

Fox:

Fox are a American film institution which was founded in 1935 best know for films such as Avatar which had a overall gross profit of $749,766,139, however like Disney 20^th Century Fox is a very family friendly institution as you can see most recently with the announcement of a 2^nd How to Train your Dragons film. 20th Century Fox’s also do a lot of action films such as X Men First which just come out over the last few weeks.

Paramount:

Paramount is another big American institution, which is located in Hollywood and was founded in 1912, in this time they have made hit films such as Titanic, Forest Gump, Iron Man and Star Trek which all had a total gross over $257,730,019 with Titanic making the most of $600,788,188.

Warner Brothers:

Warner Brothers is a American institution which unlike some of the other institutions is not just a film institution it also does other types of entertainment. Warner Brother do a range of products from films such as the Dark Knight to some of their TV shows like Arrow and for this reason Warner Brothers target a wider range of the public.

BBC:

Unlike the other institutions the BBC is a British film institution. similar to Warner Brothers the BBC also focus on more than just films and you could say they are better know for there TV shows instead of films however this could mainly be down to the fact that there films are normal put straight onto the TV and are very rarely shown in the cinemas.

Sony:

Sony is a well know overall brand for all types of products such as TV’s, Games and most importantly film. Sony Pictures is the film department of Sony and was founded in 1987 and since then they have made films such as Skyfall however over the last years Sony has been in the news because how they have been losing thousands of pounds each month down to there laptop and TV side of the business, they have also only just over the last month started to make money on there PlayStation4 however been estimated a 98% chance of going bankrupted over the next two years.

Looking at these five institutions, I think the best institutions to try and get involved in out group short film would be the BBC and Warner Brothers.
The reason I picked these two is because the BBC is a British company that is most likely to support up and coming British talent while Warner Brothers is a big global conglomerate that could get our film good exposure and has supported British films in the past like Harry Potter.