Jocelyn's Media Studies Blog: Research/Planning

Studios

A24 is an extremely popular studio that produces smaller budget and artistic coming of age films. Some notable films include Moonlight, Eight Grade, The Florida Project, American Honey, and Lady Bird. Many of their coming of age films earned Oscar nominations, like Moonlight winning Best Picture. Films such as Into the Wild, Call Me by Your Name, and Licorice Pizza manage to find small theatrical releases because of director's passion for filmmaking and theatrical release.

Distribution Practices

Many films, including those in the coming of age genre, are distributed through Video on Demand and streaming services. These services include Netflix, Prime Video, and Hulu. Netflix has distributed coming of age films such as Tall Girl, Tall Girl 2, The DUFF, All The Bright Places, Moxie, All Together Now, To All The Boys I've Loved Before, Work It, and Jessica Darling's It List. Netflix and Hulu dominate the film consumption in the modern day, so coming of age films are included in the vast majority of films they distribute.

Student films are often distributed through Prime Video, like in the case of high school senior Calen Coates and his film Wrapped. Wrapped is a coming of age comedy that is streaming on Prime Video and is now known as the first-ever student-made film that is widely distributed on a streaming service. Studios like A24 distribute their films through their own company. They did this with the films The Florida Project and Moonlight.

Film festivals are also a common tactic of distrubting coming of age films. Coming of age films such as Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996), Napoleon Dynamite (2004), Lady Bird (2017), Eighth Grade (2018), Thoroghbreds (2017), Clerks (1994), Boyhood (2014), The Squid and the Whale (2005), and Pariah (2011) were featured at the Sundance film festival.

I know that I can not distribute my film opening on a streaming service or a film festival, so I will have to distribute my film opening on a social media platform like Youtube. This was done my previous students in the AICE Media Studies class and seems to be the easiest way to distribute my film opening and it doesn't cost money and gets my media to broad audience because many people use social media/YouTube.

Sources

https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/coming-of-age-films/#:~:text=Moonlight%20via%20A24.,for%20filmmaking%20and%20theatrical%20release.

A24 picture

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/coming-of-age-movies-tall-girl-2

https://dailycollegian.com/2020/02/the-beauty-and-authenticity-of-a24s-coming-of-age-films/#:~:text=A24%20sets%20themselves%20apart%20with,the%20hardships%20endured%20throughout%20it.

https://gruvi.tv/post/film-distribution/#:~:text=Video%2Don%2DDemand%20(VOD,creating%20a%20global%20fan%20base.

https://www.biola.edu/blogs/biola-news/2021/student-directed-film-first-ever-student-film-be-w#:~:text=Alumnus%20Calen%20Coates%20('18),distributed%20on%20a%20streaming%20service.

https://www.gq.com/story/the-42-best-sundance-movies-definitively-ranked

https://www.sundance.org/blogs/what-to-watch-at-the-2024-sundance-film-festival-10-coming-of-age-stories/#:~:text=The%20Sundance%20Film%20Festival%20has,for%20one%20last%20summer%20together.

https://collider.com/big-girls-dont-cry-review-sundance-millennial-coming-of-age-movie/#:~:text=Coming%2Dof%2Dage%20films%20are,wealthy%20to%20make%20ends%20meet.

Sundance picture