Synergy and convergence

Revision booklets

Case study notes
Exemplar essays (3)
Exam board requirements - 7 areas
Essay plans from previous question's/digital
Mock exam
Terminology
Comparison of both case studies
Film industry pack notes
Emails for up to date news
Blogs (film and your own)
Lego highlights
Rotten tomatoes/ launchingfilms.com

Marketing and consumption question

Marketing:Websites
Viral campaigns (Devil Baby, Carrie, Minions)
YouTube trailers
Facebook/Twitter
Online ads and banners
Competitions, games and apps
Critics' reviews
Rotten tomatoes

Consumption:
Steaming
Lovefilm (Amazon)/ Netflix subscription
Curzon/ BFI/ Film 4 free login, pay to buy/rent
iTunes rent/buy
Sky store/ Virgin/ Media/ BT rent not buy

Above the line = £
Below the line = free

Exam boundaries (UMS marks):160 A
140 B
120 C
100 D
80 E

December 2013 Films

Which films are on general release?

Black Nativity, Getaway, Oldboy, The Christmas Candle and All Is Lost

What kinds of films are there?

There is a variety from action to comedy to disney musicals

How many are sequels?

Dhoom 3 and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

How many are blockbusters aimed at a younger audience?

Moon Man, Walking With Dinasaurs, Moshi Monstors: The Movie, Harry Hill: The Movie, Frozen

How many were produced by the Big Six?

How many different formats are there? Name them.

4: Digital 2D, Digital 3D, 35mm, Imax

What kinds of films seem to be missing?

There aren't many films in 3D

http://launchingfilms.com/release-schedule

Comparison between The Selfish Giant and Thor: The Dark World

Production:

Similarities

Both mainly filmed in the UK, although Thor was also filmed in Iceland
Both were shot in 2.35:1 aspect ratio

Differences

Thor had a budget of $170 million, The Selfish Giant had £1.2 million
The Selfish Giant is an English film, Thor is a Hollywood film
All the cast for TSG are English, whereas most of the Thor cast are not
Thor is solely produced and distributed by Walt Disney, TSG is a film from the BFI, Film4 and Moonspun Films

Audience and Genre:

Similarities

None

Differences

Thor is part of the Marvel Comics, an ongoing franchise of film and comic books. TSG is a one off movie
Thor will already have a massive database of fans, whereas TSG will not have a fanbase
Thor is a sci-fi action movie, TSG is an indie, british social realism film.
The target market for Thor was Marvel Comic fans of an age between 12-25. The Selfish Giant was aimed at an older audience, predominantly british
TSG is a 15 rated film, Thor is a 12A

Marketing and distribution:

Similarities

Both films got similar ratings, 7.3 for Thor and 7.4 for The Selfish Giant
Strong opening weekends in cinema

Differences

TSG made £132,000, Thor made £8,000,000.
TSG was screened on 35 screens on it's opening weekend whereas Thor was screened on 510 screens (UK)
Thor grossed approximately £8.6m in opening weekend, TSG grossed £132000
Amazon best-sellers rank: TSG - 1219 in DVD and Blu-Ray, Thor - 17 in DVD and Blu-Ray

Technology question

Production:
Imax cameras - international space station
Gravity, special effects and animation
The Hobbit, 48 frames per second
Smaller handheld digital cameras (cinema worthy)
Digital film 3D - 4D in the future?
Blue/green screens, actors no longer needed to go to location shoots

Distribution and marketing:
Twitter campaigns, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Audi charity)
Devil Baby and Carrie - pranks to advertise the film
McDonald's happy meal toys
Critic reviews from film festivals
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire teaming up with Subway
Competitions - The Lego Movie trailer
Merchandising
Lego film - Lego toys
Websites
Posters
Press release conferences
Fan made videos
Muppets and Ron Burgundy going to press releases in character
Facebook pages
Radio interviews

Exhibition and consumption:
Frozen - sing along (two times the amount of tickets sold)
Digital files
Basildon Empire - the biggest empire, 6 studio screens for indie films and critically acclaimed showings, 12 studio screens for blockbusters

Links with Exchange:
YouTube films
1D film at 02
UltraViolet app
BFI Player
Curzon Online
DVDs and Blu-Ray

Exchange:
Fan sites
Blogs
Video Games
Apps
Netflix/ Lovefilm - no wifi needed
File sharing - popcorn time

Positives:
Easier/cheaper to watch/access films
People who can't go to the cinema can still watch their favourite films
Plays, opera and sports films released in cinemas
Improve efficiency/maximise profit
Avoiding add on costs
More cinema goers

Negatives:
Piracy/ film sharing
DVDs die
Less profit overall

Question 2 of the exam

One of these things will come up!
Media ownership (the big 6, who owns what)
Synergy and cross media convergence
New media technology
Spread of technology
Technology convergence (media gadgets)
Big industries targeting British audiences
Your media consumption

Popcorn time

Popcorn Time Is Hollywood’s Worst Nightmare, And It Can’t Be Stopped

Imagine for a moment if Napster were cloned hundreds of times. If there were a NapsterStanford, a NapsterMIT, or a Napster for your high school completely independent from, yet just as powerful as, the original. Imagine what would have happened if Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker had released the source code, allowing any developer to essentially copy and build upon his software. Imagine if Napster were open source.

The RIAA would have fought a war on a thousand fronts. And lost.

Video piracy is on the verge of having its Napster moment. A piece of software appeared last week called Popcorn Time. It makes watching pirated movies as easy as firing up Netflix. Everything is free. There’s no mess or fuss — you press play.

Popcorn Time makes it as easy to watch pirated content as Napster did to download songs. It’s a nightmare for Hollywood.

The creators of the original Popcorn Time stated emphatically that it’s perfectly legal to run the app because neither you nor the app “hold” the movies – the Internet holds them. Once installed, however, the program throws a warning screen forcing the user to essentially agree that it’s a bit shady.

Yet strictly speaking, piracy is as much stealing as is taking a photograph of art with the intent to reproduce it. Is it wrong? Yes. Does the practice speak to a larger issue? Absolutely.

The current state of movie piracy is centered around archaic distribution. Consumers want content on demand for a fair price. The runaway success of Netflix, Amazon Video and Hulu proves that. Yet these legitimate services often lack top-tier content. Want to watch a sequel to a blockbuster or a knock-off Disney movie? Go to Netflix. Want to watch the blockbuster? Buy the Blu-ray or download it from The Pirate Bay. Or wait months until it shows up on HBO.The RIAA spent an untold fortune fighting the Napster generation until Apple turned the rippers into buyers with iTunes. Apple made it easy to grab the latest music, anywhere, at any time and it turned a generation of music pirates into, at the very least, a generation aware of the alternatives.

Popcorn Time is just the start and it’s not the first to provide an easy way to consume pirated content. The entire program is on GitHub, where any developer can access the code and make it their own. Besides that, the program leans on an API released by a popular pirated movie site that has so far successfully evaded the MPAA’s wrath. Popcorn Time is simply a pretty face on a community-driven project.

There isn’t a single entity here that Hollywood’s lawyers can attack. The developers can go underground and distribute their creations under multiple names. They’re not charging for the program or incorporating ads. Popcorn Time is Napster for video without a company that is trying to turn it into a business. It is the epitome of online guerrilla warfare.

And Popcorn Time isn’t alone. A site called FliXanity essentially cloned Netflix’s look and streams pirated content, albeit at a really low resolution. Another called MovieHive is an Android app that’s a far cry from the selection and ease of use of Popcorn Time. Plus it has ads. But it works. It streams pirated content for free.

Popcorn Time has already forked. After an early scare, the old developers ceded to a new team because the pressure and attention was simply too much. The program is just that good.There are others. There will always be others.

Streaming is the future of both piracy and legitimate distribution. If Popcorn Time implodes again, another program will be built on top of the rubble and stand even taller than the first. The only thing that can slow its growth is Hollywood’s full embrace of the stream and, judging by the popularity of pirate services, it had better come soon.

In Fear

Production company: Studio Canal
2013
Low budget, only two characters
British Director (of Sherlock etc): Jeremy Lovering
£47,000 on the first weekend, it made its' money back

Manchester notes

Film territory: territory in which you buy the rights to distribute the film
Windows: period of time between a film being in the cinema and a film being released on DVD
Saturated: releases films in every multiplex cinema in the world over about 36 hours
Holdover: showing a film one week to see if it is a hit, if it is a hit you show it again a week later
If a film has 'legs' it keeps on running for a long time after the first weekend
DCP: digital cinema package - how the film is shown in the cinema
Major studies in Hollywood: 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Disney, Warner Studios, Columbia, Sony
Soft money: any form of tax relief/ subsides from the government to fund a film
Soft power: Hollywood sells the American lifestyle
Cultural test in the UK: submitting your film to a British institute and they run it through a test, 16 points to be a British film out of 31. If you're British you get government funding which is why a lot of films do it!
Property: starting of the process, companies buy any property they think has the potential to be a huge blockbuster
FDA: Film Distributor Association launchingfilms.com

Representation questions to ask:
Who is in control?
Whose values and ideas are spoken in the text?
What are the values and ideas that the text 'speaks' about?
How does it engage with issues?
Are characters simply 'types' or 'rounded individuals'?
What kind of world is re-presented to the audience?
What likelihood is there that different audiences will make different readings?

Film Industry Pack: Exhibition

Film Industry Pack: Production

Thor 2 Blockbuster

Key terms

November to February: awards season
Small cinemas wish they could be spead out as they only have (for example) two screens and only get to do few screenings of big blockbuster films

DISTRIBUTION:
Essential to connect every new film with the largest possible audience
Film business is product driven, films themselves are the main reason why we buy tickets
Audience has a desire for great stories on screens
Consumers call the shots

RELEASE CHAINS:
Films are released in many formats to ensure they maximise their potential to reach a wide an audience as possible, as often as possible to achieve the greatest profits
Commerical value defined at this stage, affects release on future platforms
Theatrical launch in cinema comes first
Home entertainment release bluray, DVD, legal download
Pay per view subscription TV
Free to air TV then repeats
Distributor, producer and exhibiton will take their cut of profits

£3.50 extra a month for Sky Go to download films

SYNERGY:
Synergy is a term used to describe a situation where different entities cooperate advantageously for a final outcome. Simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
For example: Disney: HSM CD, outlets, DVD and game
Anchorman 2, Will Ferrel dressed up as Rob Burgandy and stayed in role for press conferences

SYMBIOSIS:
Different companies work together to promote a range of related products e.g. happy meals. A percentage of the profits go to the distributor
Walt Disney pioneered symbosis in 1930s

TECHNOLOGICAL CONVERGENCE
Convergence is a process by which a range of media platforms are intergrated within a single piece of media technology
For example: Xbox 360 is a games console, DVD player and internet modern
iPhone is a phone, camera, video camera, mp3 player etc.

British Film

Classifying as British:
Producer 5 points
Director 5 points
Setting/location 5 points
etc...

British Films:
Gravity: $100 million
Harry Potter
Skyfall: $150-$200 million

Working Title:Four Weddings and a Funeral
Notting Hill
About Time
$8 million
Fluffy fictions to entertain

Ill Manors:
$100,000
The Selfish Giant:£1.4 million

In the exam: similarities and differences of the blockbuster we researched and the niche

Users and Gratifications

Blumer and Katz, 1970s.

Personal Identity: "That happened to me when I was little"
Information: News, documentarys
Entertainment: Coming home after a bad day and being cheered up
Social interaction:"I got 44 on flappy bird what did you get?" "Did you watch Eastenders last night?" "Can you believe that couple got kicked out of Strictly Come Dancing last night!"

Uses and Gratifications	Thor 2	Selfish Giant
Who is the audience for your film? *Primary and secondary audience* *Niche or mass audience*	Marvel film fans, fans of superhero movies Mass audience	Film critics, realism fans Niche audience
Personal Identity · Finding reinforcement for personal values · Finding models of behaviour · Identifying with valued other (in the media) · Gaining insight into one's self	Jane Forster’s love lost with Thor waiting for him to return to Earth for her Loki and Thor’s brotherly relationship, the ups and downs	Arbor and Swiftys’ friendship Both main characters trying to help their families with their money problems Putting their safety behind anything else
Information (also known as surveillance) · Finding out about relevant events and conditions in immediate surroundings, society and the world · Seeking advice on practical matters or opinion and decision choices Satisfying curiosity and general interest · Learning; self-education Gaining a sense of security through knowledge	All of the recognition Thor 2 got from the Media and Social Network, for example: Twitter Facebook Premiers Interviews with the cast Being taught things from the film: Putting other people’s feelings before yours is love (Thor and Jane) Family is important (Thor, Loki and Odem)	The recognition from critics: Cannes Film Festival Being taught things from the film: You shouldn’t scrap for metal if you aren’t in the business professionally Your friends and family are one of the most important things to you
Entertainment · Escaping, or being diverted, from problems · Relaxing · Getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic enjoyment · Filling time · Emotional release · Sexual arousal	Thor’s superhero power and all of the action they include on screen Loki ‘dying’ and then [spoiler] surprisingly returning at the end Thor coming back to Earth to keep Jane safe	Arbor’s rebelliousness and how he always gets Swifty into trouble How Arbor and Swifty always go to places they shouldn’t e.g. the train track to get wire, the tension of will they be caught? Kitten’s violence towards them The horse race
Social Interaction and Integration · gaining insight into circumstances of others; social empathy · identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging · finding a basis for conversation and social interaction · having a substitute for real-life companionship · helping to carry out social roles · enabling one to connect with family, friends and society	After the movie: “Can you believe that Loki was still alive at the end, I thought when he died half way through it was real!” “How good was Thor? It was even better than the first! Have you been to see it?” “No” “Well you so should!”	The strong moral message it gave about putting others before you, Swifty’s sacrifice for Arbor. After the movie: “The Selfish Giant was so sad, but the critics loved it and it had a really strong moral message, it’s worth watching.”

Independent Film

The big five:
Warner Bros.
Paramount - Lionsgate
Universal
20th Century Fox - Fox Searchlight
Disney

Art/Indie cinemas:
Curzon
Genesis
Picturehouse
Ritzy
Everyman
Rio
(London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Brighton)
Taken over by:
Streaming
Lovefilm (owned by Amazon)
Netflix

British films:
Comedy (Sean of the Dead)
Not a lot of money
Competing against their own language
Gritty social (Football Factory, Ill Manors)

Warp:

Releases: Warp Films

Film Budgets:

The name Warp was synonymous with low budgets, working quickly and spontaneously, and a fierce commitment to talented and innovative artists.

EXAMPLES:

Trash Hampers: £4,987,231.80

This Is England '86: £1,472,500

Four Lions: £2.5

Bunny and the Bull: £750,000

Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee: £48,000

All Parties Tomorrow: £15,000

Hush: £1,000,000

Vertigo:

Film Budgets:

Vertigo are very innovative with comparatively small budgets

EXAMPLES:

Street Dance 3D: £3,500,000

Spring Breakers: £3,040,995

The Selfish Giant

UK release date?
25th of October 2013

Institutions behind the film’s production and distribution?
Curzon Film World

What’s the film’s production budget?
£1.4 million

Nationality of the film?
United Kingdom

What kind of production is it?
UK independent film

Any connection with other films?
It may remind you of other films about childhood under harsh circumstances, for exmaple Killer of Sheep, Sounder, Los Olvidados, Panther Pachali and Kes

Who’s the director?
Clio Barnard

Any star names in the cast?
There aren't any star names in the cast.

What’s the film about?
A contemporary fable about two scrappy 13-year-old working-class friends in the UK who seek fortune by getting involved with a local scrap dealer and criminal, leading to tragic consequences.

Who will this film appeal to?
Fans of the genre Drama. It may also appeal as a family film or for teens as a 'moral' film.

How long was it in the cinema for?
1 - 2 weeks

Print work:

Posters:

Trailer(s):

Newspaper and magazine reviews:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/may/17/the-selfish-giant-cannes-2013-review

The Guardian Film Review:

Crusading social realism may have long since ceased to be fashionable in Britain's theatre and television drama, but in the cinema the flame stubbornly continues to burn. In recent years, these films have often come visually supercharged with a new painterly grandeur – a kind of Loach 2.0.

The Selfish Giant

Directors like Amma Asante, Sally El Hosaini and Tina Gharavi have contributed to this continuing British movie tradition; Andrea Arnold has had sensational successes with her movies Red Road, Fish Tank and a brilliant and much-misunderstood version of Wuthering Heights. Now Clio Barnard has shown her own mastery of the form with an outstanding new film, a contemporary reworking of the story by Oscar Wilde. Having watched it again, the minor qualifications I had when I first saw it at Cannes earlier this year have been blowtorched away by its sheer passion – and by the two leading performances.

Conner Chapman and Shaun Thomas play Arbor and Swifty, two lads who live in the tough estates of Bradford, leading an almost bucolic existence of hand-to-mouth survival. Arbor is small, aggressive, unhappy. His mate Swifty is slower and gentler and almost beatific, a natural target for bullies. Arbor gets in a fight defending Swifty in the playground, and the resulting chaos gets both boys excluded, a development they welcome so that they can pursue their true vocation: roaming around town scavenging and nicking metal objects so they can sell them for scrap. To do this, the children must take their swag to a dodgy dealer, inappropriately nicknamed Kitten, and played by Sean Gilder.

Just as Wilde's giant lived in perennial winter in his walled garden, glowering Kitten rules over a grim scrapyard with high fences: a factory of ill-health and unsafety. He is also at the centre of an illegal and fantastically dangerous drag-racing scene on public roads with the horses and traps used for his work. A natural predator and exploiter, Kitten sees that sweet-natured Swifty has a talent for handling horses and could be a star rider for him: as for poor Arbor, his metier is the dangerous business of stealing cable from railway lines and electricity stations. Arbor and Swifty look like Laurel and Hardy. Kitten calls them Cheech and Chong.

Since this film first appeared, the director has indicated that it should not be read too closely in tandem with the literary original, and that this was effectively a starting-off point. This is true enough. And yet the film's heartstopping denouement will make less sense without a knowledge of Wilde's story and his Christian imagery of the stigmata. You have to make the connection between that and the secular, godless world of Barnard's movie, you have to trace its Christ-shaped hole – and furthermore, to wonder which of the characters is the "giant" – to appreciate the film's voltage and to understand its tragedy.

It's weird to praise something like this for its stunts and non-CGI action sequences, but Barnard's "drag race" scene is superb: a hair-raising Brit-realist Ben-Hur. Two lads piloting horse-drawn traps hurtle down a public road at dawn. Behind them is a crazy flotilla of gamblers in cars with screaming horns, leaning out to get a YouTube video of the race on their phones, aggressively sideswiping each other, and naturally trying to spook the opponent's horse so he crashes. These are the kings of deprivation, and this is their sport. Another sort of director might have made it the finale, but Barnard places it elsewhere in the story and coolly shows that in this race there are only losers.

The Selfish Giant has Ken Loach's Kes in its DNA; Chapman looks eerily like the young David Bradley in some scenes, and Sean Gilder is a grisly, ironic, unfunny reincarnation of Brian Glover's PE teacher: a father figure who can only destroy. I would also compare it to Loach's The Navigators. The Selfish Giant does not have the formally innovatory quality of Barnard's previous work The Arbor, the "verbatim cinema" experiment that made her name, but the direct humanity and sympathy here signal her maturity as a film-maker, particularly in the handling of the two young leads. There is enormous pathos in the way Thomas traces Swifty's ascent from protected to protector; as well as in Conner Chapman's scrappy, wounded defiance and in the exquisite insolence he shows to the two coppers who come round to give him a warning: he demands that they remove their shoes in the house. It is a richly allusive and moving work. And Barnard's own stature isn't in doubt.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/24/the-selfish-giant-review