The lifecycle of a film starts when the distributor receives the deliverables. Once they have everything they need they will send the film and all files to a lab. This isn't the type of lab that used to exist for films that performed actual negative work, the term just carried over. This lab performs quality control on the film and deliverables to ensure that it meets the standards of the platforms. If it fails QC, it gets kicked back to the filmmaker to fix whatever issue caused it to fail.

Once the platforms approve the QC and the delivery of the film, they set it up on their services for consumers to purchase. These platforms are places like Apple Movies, Hulu, Netflix, cable providers like AT&T, DirecTV, Verizon, and other services we'll get into later.