Film industry: February 2014

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