INDUSTRY RESEARCH Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens Facts/ Successful from OliStr

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Here is a post highlighting why Star Wars: The Force Awakens was such a successful movie.

INDUSTRY RESEARCH '71 vs. The World's End

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Warp v wt 71 v worlds end from OliStr

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JC BBFC Age Ratings

  

The BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) are a trusted guide to media content and work as a independent, self-financing, not-for profit media content regulator, this means they aim to protect the public from content that may be harmful and to empower the public to make informed viewing choices
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BBFC Guidline for an 18 age rated movie
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BBFC Guidlines for a 15 age rated movie
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If a movie is rated an 18 it severely reduces the reach of the film, the movie is much less likely to do well in cinemas as the most common age to go to the cinema is 15-16, this is a huge loss of market potential and will not only reduce the box office but the overall success of the film. However, the majority of slasher films will be an age 18 due to the gore and swearing, also, having an age rating of 18 for a slasher film can appeal too a slasher audience as it can suggest gore and for the movie to be scary. Because of this we are aiming our film for an age 18 certificate, also, because our film is micro-budget we are not looking for a theatrical release so the negative sides of having an 18 certificate are less prominent. Here is one of our previous posts with research on age ratings in slashers

INDUSTRY RESEARCH How to get a distributor for a micro-budget horror movie

Typically to be able to make a successful movie you will need a distributor amongst many, many other factors. You would want a specialist distributor for your specific genre. For example you wouldn't chose a RomCom specialist as your distributor for a Horror movie as the marketing for those two are completely different. You would also most likely go for a distributor who actually fits within the budget of your movie. For example, you would never in a million years be able to get distribution by Buena Vista if you have a low budget horror movie without any stars.

With that being said, how do you even get a distributor in the first place?

Getting noticed:

There's many different ways to do this, you can take the digital approach and try to cut a deal with Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, iTunes or even YouTube. Most of these streaming services are not too hard to get on however it is a bit more complicated with Netflix, though not impossible. 

Netflix:

To be able to even make it onto Netflix you have to makes their

database list. Without your movie in this list it is extremely hard to

get your movie onto Netflix. Once you make it onto the database

list you have to convince them that it is worth uploading your movie to Netflix. To do this you need to get a lot of requests on the

"Queue demand." To be able to do this you must have marketed your film well and created interest towards it. This will also increase the chance of the amount of money Netflix will pay you to stream your movie.

Hulu:

This is a good service at it's a free service which earns its revenue through ads. This means that in order to be payed for your movie it just has to be good enough for viewers to be able to watch through an ad to continue watching the movie. After that you will earn a % of the revenue earned from Hulu. They will however pay you to stream your movie. Don't worry! There is a company who helps you get your movie distributed on any of these sites which I will be mentioning later

iTunes:

Usually you need a distributor to get your movie onto iTunes, however if you don't have one, you can use the same company which I will mention at the end of the post for this. Once your movie is on iTunes, you need to advertise it as you would on any streaming site.

YouTube:

Simply upload your movie to YouTube and hope for the best. You need to make sure it follows the guidelines set to not get your movie demonetized. Your only income will be the ad revenue on your movie from YouTube. You can however strike a deal with them to give you a fixed amount of money for the amount of views you gain on the movie, however you have to... market it well, like on all the other sites.

Amazon Prime:

By using the Amazon Video Direct service. After your movie has been accepted onto the service you can make a deal to earn revenue base on views, hours streamed, on ads or even the monthly subscriptions.

Now for the company...

Distribber: (link)

For a fee of 150 USD per year this aggregator service can gain you easier access to all the above streaming websites/ movie services. The content remains 100% yours and you don't have to credit the company. Assuming your movie gets picked up by Distribber they will also help cover ingestion, encoding, review and much more. It is an overall good service and will help you a lot to get onto your desired website.

Marketing:

Before even considering the above things you have to make sure your movie is marketable. Is it a movie people will want to watch? Does it appeal to the target audience? Do you get mostly preferred reading? Is it well constructed? Does it fit the genre specifications?  The list goes on and on and unless you tick nearly every single box it is going to be hard to market your movie, which is what distributors are looking for. Forget trying to hire stars as your budget is too low to be able to afford that. This among with many other factors is why it is so hard to actually market your movie. However, film festivals are a great start.

Festivalas/ Screenings in popular places:

These are almost vital if you want a good distributor and will most definitely help you find the one fit to you. A simple screening in London can get you offers from distributors already. Large film festivals like TIFF or Sundance is also possible to get into, even if you are a low budget indie producer, and it has happened before. You just need the movie and network to get in.

Picking the distributor: 

You have now completed the painful journey of getting noticed and you are now receiving offers from distributors, you have to be aware of a few things. Firstly, they can mess you over big time, so be careful you pick a distributor who specializes in distributing films of your genre. Take Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine, 2011) who got an LGBT distributor for their movie as an example. It's box- office earnings is about half of that of the budget which is a major flop. This British drama was never the success it could've been because the distributor (Strand Releasing) didn't want to take risks with marketing the movie and therefore it didn't earn what it could potentially have made. Another way distributors can take advantage of you is writing a contract based on their needs, earning them the most money and giving them the publicity for the movie. Get a lawyer or solicitor to look on the contract to try and get the best deal! It is a must, even for low budget movies as you can really mess up in this department. 

INDUSTRY RESEARCH Big 6 Power

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This shows how the big 6 are the most dominant companies. All the top 23 movies released in 2017 were made by a Big 6 company whereas other companies and subsiduries lie further down.

BoxOfficeMojo

PLANNING Practice shoot video

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Our whole media class made a practice shoot which we each had to edit. Here is my version

TITLES Film Opening Report: Four Lions

I got the template for the report here.
Four Lions  

CHRIS MORRIS (2010)

BBFC 15, MPAA R

Running time of the opening sequence: 3 mins

Budget: £2.5m 
UK/US/World Box Office: $3,7m, $300k, $4.4m.
Theatrical distribution in 19 countries 
  
Production co's:  Film4 Productions, Wild Bunch, Warp Films 
Production financing:  Wild Bunch, Optimum Releasing, Film4
UK, US theatrical distributors: StudioCanal, Magnolia Pictures

LINKS: The Numbers. Box Office Mojo, Wikipedia

TRAILER:
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TITLES                                                                     
Number of people/company names in titles: 

• 3 idents 
• 1 person (director) 
• 4 companies 

Start/end time of main titles: 2:36 - 3:01
Running time of main titles: 25 seconds
Titles in order using exact text:

FILM4 PRESENTS  (CENTERED)
FOUR LIONS (CENTERED)
IN ASSOCIATION WITH WILD BUNCH AND OPTIMUM RELEASING (CENTERED)
A WARP FILMS PRODUCTION (LEFT)        A CHRIS MORRIS FILM (RIGHT)

TITLES ANALYSIS 1: THE COMPANIES
There was credited 4 companies and 3 of these companies had an ident. The only company without an ident was the indie company "WARP FILMS". "Film4"  allowed for the film to be made and is why it is mentioned first as "presents," whereas the other companies were in association with "Film4". By seeing that it is produced by Film4 which is a free view channel we can tell that the movie is going to be a low budget/indie movie, otherwise the channel wouldn't be able to support it. "Wild Bunch" is the film distribution company and is a subsidiary of Filmo TV., it isn't a known company like "Columbia," which further ensures that this is a low budget movie. "Optimum Releasing," is a branch of "StudioCanal UK," which is another distribution company.

TITLES ANALYSIS 2: ROLES
The title only mentions one person and that is the director. This movie has a long cast list and with one A-list star, Benedict Cumberbatch. However this was made before he became popular and is therefore not mentioned in the title. See the full cast list here. It isn't usual that the title sequence has so little detail about the movie


TITLES ANALYSIS 3: GENRE/NARRATIVE CONNOTATIONS

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Here we see the font used throughout the title sequence. Its a sans serif and all capitalised font. It has a grey colour scheme and is quite bland. This connotes that the movie is serious and maybe dramatic. However this is juxtaposed by the starting scenes where there is an obvious dark comedy involved. This means that the comedy is very dark and about a serious topic. 


FIRST SHOT + THE PROTAGONIST
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This first shot instantly sets a serious tone as it is about a very serious topic, terrorism. We know this as there is a man who looks like a stereotypical Muslim with what looks like a jihadi symbol on his hat. The room is empty and there is a curtain as a backdrop with a bland colour scheme. The camera quality is bad, the lighting is bad, the angle is not straight and there is ambient noise in the background. This is how an amateur films. This is how we know it is a recording and not how the film is going to be like. A real film would never unknowingly have a camera set-up like this. It sets the scene as a stereotypical set-up for a terrorist propaganda/scare clip. We aren't sure if this is the main character as there is a voice-over happening.


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We only find out who the main protagonist is a minute later when the scene cuts to another featuring one guy (and his family) from the whole group that was in the first scene filming, looking over the videoclip they filmed. This scene goes on for about 1.5 minutes without cutting to another character, anchoring that this is the protagonist. Now we know it is "in real life" as the lighting, angle, sound and resolution is looks very professional. 



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ADDITIONAL POINTS
 I found the odd mix between the extremist jihadi culture and comedy is applied in the opening scenes as if "it's a normal everyday life." It helps set the perspective from the actual terrorists which in turn let's the audience see how all of this is from a terrorit's POV.

VODCAST 1: past coursework (Candelabra)

I have created a vodcast outlining the different shot types and shot variety there is. I go over how effective shot variety is and how it in general makes for a much more interesting movies/ clips.

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DENOTATION Shot by shot denotation of previous AS coursework

Carla, Simon and I denoted the different shot types for Candelabra (seen below)
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Shot list of Candelabra There are 77 shots (not including company idents)

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TERMONOLOGY Different shot types

Shot types from OliStr

PLANNING My thoughts on previous AS film openings

I have looked at a few AS videos and thought the following:

• They all have creative and subtle ways of introducing the different production companies, actors/actresses. Example:
• in #TBH (0:54) they showed a scene where the presumed main character is brushing her teeth and when she puts down the toothpaste it says "produced by..." 
• in School's Out (0:39) the again presumed, main female character is picking out her clothes and she tries other things on. We see her put back the clothing she chose and on it is written "An ... studios film"
• We are already introduced to the protagonist/ antagonist and all the other important characters. Example:
• in Surviving (0:12) we instantly see a medium shot of the main character but we can't see his face as it is covered. This creates narrative enigma around the character. 
• in #TBH (1:14 - 1:42) there are small boxes in the corner which show a brief description of the main characters and already by the way they act and the way they are described we can predict what will happen. These boxes along with the school setting and costumes used help anchor that this is a teen movie, which brings me to my next point.
• In a lot of these AS videos there will be multiple signifiers helping to anchor the the genre/ type of movie this is going to be. This is also seen in the title sequences. A  lot of questions are answered like "Is it a dark or happy film? Where is it set? What is the genre? etc." here are a few examples:
• Handyman  and Liar both execute the horror genre really well in their opening. With the use of shaky cam, victims tied up and a villain already showing, it doesn't become more anchored than that. They also have a red serif font which helps anchor this theme even further. 
• Surviving uses a very clever way to show that it is set during the apocalypse with sound and voice overs. It does a very good job of this by the framing getting more and more colourful. This is a very subtle way of showing that time has passed as black/white usually connotes something in the past.The voiceover litterally says "It's been two-years since the apocalypse," so even though we don't get many cluse to begin with, this sentence anchors it all.

Overall I think all of these did a good job in establishing the genre, introducing characters, showing the target audience and used creative techniques to turn the beginning of a movie into something that seems like has been going on for a long time. 

PLANNING 5 things i've learnt about coursework

1. There is going to be a lot of research and planning on different movie companies (Indie, subsidiary, big 6)

2. We will have to make call sheets and planning sheets for every scene we are going to film for our movie opening.

3. We will need to know a lot of different theories which apply to media language and will help us find a target audience.

4. We have to film a 2 minute opening which should consist of title openings, an idea of the genre the movie will be, appeal to the target audience and an introduction to characters within the movie. Especially the protagonist and antagonist.

5. We will need to document everything we have researched, changed to our movie opening, our pitch/ different ideas etc. in order to achieve a solid grade for AS Media Studies.

MISC My Favourite Film

Inception (Christopher Nolan) (2010)

3 reasons why:

1. It has a brilliant, unique and mind bending plot
2. It has really good characters and a great cast. 
3. It has a lot of scenes making you want to watch it again as you have unanswered questions.

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Websites about the movie:

Inception Website

Amazon DVD

Rottentomatoes:
 
       Audience rating:            91%
      "Tomatometer" rating:     89%

IMDB

Wiki

Box Office Figures:

Worldwide:          $832m
UK Box office:     $57m
USA Box office:   $293m

Budget:                $160m

Number of countries with a theatrical release:  62

Age ratings:

    BBFC:    12
    MPAA:   PG-13

PLANNING Coursework guide

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AS cwk guide 10 steps from DB3igs

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Welcome To My Blog

This is where all the planning and production will be when creating the AS Media Studies task; a title sequence which lasts at most two minutes. Institutional conventions of commercial cinema need to be included. Everything should be an original idea but soundtracks from acknowledged sources are allowed.

Why did you choose Media Studies?
       I did it for GCSE and enjoyed it a lot. It is also a topic which interests me a lot.

What do you look forward to in Media Studies?
       Shooting and editing of the film opening

What are you dreading most about Media Studies?
       To be able to meet all the deadlines as there is so much work.

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Taken from the CIE syllabus 

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