Warp's '71 v Working Title's World End

(tbc) Peggy + Wright will combine again, B Driver sequel: https://www.slashfilm.com/edgar-wright-and-simon-pegg/

This post will compare 2 movies to get a better insight into the different approaches taken and challenges facing a notable UK Indie producer and a prestigious UK big six studio-backed subsidiary. The film's are selected to be a mixture of typical for the companies but also contrasting in some key ways. Neither can be judged as a great commercial success - typical for one company, fairly unusual for the other...

The contenders:





...

Warp v wt 71 v worlds end from DB3igs

...

ANALOGUE film quietly thriving in quest for non-digital 'soul'

Reflecting a long established trend across other media industries, a seemingly defunct media technology has plateaued after a massive, seemingly terminal decline, and is now riding again even though it will never reach previous levels again.

Just as vinyl (and even cassettes) have seen big growth spikes, and the car underpinned radio's future as a mass medium, so too is there growth in the 35mm film market - the slow, expensive format that digitisation and the DSLR has all but wiped out. Kodak, the monopolist film supplier went bust ... but offshoots are back in business offering classic film reel formats for a growing, if niche, market.

Likewise the UK's Ilford, a brand most in the 35+ age bracket will recall as a B+W film specialist, is doing a roaring trade in photography stock.

A crowdfunded new 35mm camera has just hit the market, a big moment in underpinning this retro resurgence.

Back to the darkroom: young fans reject digital to revive classic film camera https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/28/does-reflex-slr-camera-herald-35mm-film-renaissance?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

INDIES/WT Darkest Hour and mid-budget squeeze

Arthouse films battle squeeze from Netflix and blockbusters https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/15/mid-budget-films-netflix-independent-movies-darkest-hour?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

WEB 2.0 Will vlogging boost two Smiths?

More widely seen through Facebook, but in 5 days 125k views (link)

Vlogging and other examples of web 2.0 application are more readily associated with the music industry: from Lily Allen's (quietly corporate-funded) bedroom recordings and MySpace, to Gaga's self-contained Little Monsters site and Biebers army of lunatic Beliebers on Twitter and anywhere else anyone dares to question their deity, while he pours out seemingly unfiltered nuggets on those same platforms.

Will Smith has just gone viral with one of a recent series of seemingly off-the-cuff, unfiltered videos, or vlogs (vodcasts). I've seen it through my own Facebook feed, switching it off after a few seconds of what struck me as American hokum (though I'm sympathetic to the general point of the potential power of learning from failure).

Link.

The article on this struck a particular chord (i'm even writing this post a 2nd time after a finger slip lost me an hour's worth of phone tapping on the blogger app) as 2 of his tracks popped up on a shuffle play of one of my more eclectic playlists during an hour or so at a local hostelry yesterday - deeply buried amidst 1,293 tracks with Slayer and Celtic Frost among other delights - and the clear retro-fuelled buzz (yup: namecheck for Simon Reynolds' book Retromania but also the ol' uses and gratifications theory...) it sparked.

Smith's stellar career has dulled, with the Netflix-distributed Bright not exactly setting the world alight. Haven't seen it yet, so I'll reserve my own judgement, but the LOTR-Lethal Weapon mash-up it suggests at least sounds faintly intriguing.

DISTRIBUTION horror case study

A lengthy, detailed post with lots of examples and figures, plus external links