WT's relationship with NBC-Universal reduced to first look

UPDATE, MARCH 2015: Seems apparent that this has severely dented WT's ambitions; they'll now have to be smarter and try to create hits (it seems) with sub-$20m budgets, a long way from the tentpole level of Green Zone: About Time ($15m), Theory of Everything ($12m) - the Oscar bait strategy of the latter (with top class production values) has worked well.

I might later consolidate several past posts on this, but for now: WT has an ongoing production deal with Universal running to 2015 (the arrangement was due to end in 2013). Signed in April 2012, the new deal sees a significant change which gives WT back some of the freedom they lost when initially hooking up with Hollywood majors back in 1992 (Polygram, who sold out to Universal in 1999), but means they're not so sure of getting distribution for WT productions in future:

Universal Pictures has re-upped Working Title Films partners Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner through 2015. This comes after the studio re-upped Imagine Entertainment in January, keeping the studio’s most tenured production companies in the fold. Like Universal chairman Adam Fogelson and co-chairman Donna Langley did with Imagine, Working Title’s deal has been scaled back; instead of exclusive, it is now a first-look deal. The Working Title pact was due to expire next year. Working Title’s films at the studio have grossed $4.25 billion since they began with Universal in 1999, and Bevan and Fellner bring a British sensibility and a supply of prestige to the studio. [emphasis added]

DISTRIBUTION Director sues to enforce final cut right

Abel Ferrara threatens to sue over US cut of Welcome to New York (Ben Child, Guardian)

We'll be hearing next week from a local filmmaker who's seen his debut feature radically repackaged by an American distributor. That may end up proving commercially useful, but, like the article below (and the book on Harvey Scissorhands Weinstein that I've frequently recommended), its a good reminder that distributors can get hands on with production, albeit post-production, as much as producers, through marketing, can have a hand in distribution (self-distributing is a further relevant element here).

The maverick film-maker Abel Ferrara is threatening to sue the US distributors of his controversial film about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, Welcome to New York, to halt the release of a version made without his involvement for the American market.

EXAM: Use of Examples

What type of point should we make to pick up marks for 'Use of Examples'?
There are a wide range of facts, figures and details we can utilise...

MARKETING Do viral campaigns REALLY work?

Another Vaughn flop sparked off this article...

They can do, but often fail to boost box office, even if the campaign materials have been enormously popular, according to Ben Lee. He cites the now classic case of a vibrant, highly engaged social media campaign that failed to stimulate comparable box office...

But although studios continue to distract attention from the movies themselves with such trickery, the proof is in the rather deflated pudding. In the summer of 2006, the most talked about film by far was New Line’s high-concept thriller Snakes on a Plane. As soon as it was announced, the film became online catnip, and fake trailers, artwork and fan fiction flooded the web. The official campaign capitalised on this outpouring with reshoots to include fan-created dialogue, a competition for bands to send in music for the end credits, and prerecorded messages from star Samuel L Jackson that you could send to your friends’ phones. But the buzz failed to turn into box office, and the film opened to a disappointing $14m in the US.
While adding some colour to a mediocre film’s campaign helps to increase awareness and online conversation, it’s failed to translate into an increase in box office. A study last year by Nielsen showed that the younger, more digitally aware consumers who would be the core audience for online stunts are losing interest in the cinema, with a 15% decline in their attendance year on year. It’s also worth remembering the importance of simplicity. Google conducted a survey which found that a film’s official trailer is three times more important than any other information source when it comes to influencing moviegoing decisions.

Lots of other useful examples in the full article!

Great publicity campaign, shame about the movie.

China beats US monthly take. Birdman 125% Oscar bounce

The box office columns continue to be a rich source of context and analysis. This column in global box office highlights two industry trends - the Oscar bounce (Birdman grew by a sensational 125%, with the distributor TRIPLING the screen count), and the inexorable rise of the Chinese film market. February 2015 saw the monthly Chinese box office beat America's for the first time, with the annual take widely predicted to exceed America's $11bn by 2018, with huge implications for production (casting, settings, varied cuts as with World War Z for different markets...):

China’s hesui pian – its New Year films – have become hotly contested fixtures, as shown by the news that February was the first ever full month in which the country’s box office exceeded the US’s: $650m to $640m. This happened largely because China’s key release window coincides with a month of no great consequence in the American box-office calendar (a big July, containing Independence Day, can bring in $1.3-1.4bn). But February’s figures are still a minor watershed in the lapping of the box-office tides, a sudden toe-wetting promising the big wave to come. And that is where Chinese annual takings finally wash over the $11bn mark the US has been hovering around for much of the past half-decade; even taking the most conservative Chinese annual growth rate (30%) of the past few years, that is due to happen in 2018.

Will Smith losing freshness fast as Focus dissipates at global box office.

Theory of Everything used US products

A rather neat way of illustrating the commercial approach of WT:

Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything picked up an award for product placement achievement in an Oscar-nominated film. One pivotal scene employed the detergent Tide after it was deemed more familiar to US audiences than Daz.

ARTICLE: Milking it: Transformers 4 wins prize for movie with most product placement.

Ilkley's Coz Greenop - £30k debut Wandering Rose

****  Director Corrie Greenop will be in IGS to talk to students, and take questions, about his experiences in the film industry, from self-producing his debut feature and striking a US distribution deal after a successful pitch in Cannes, to getting offers for new productions. Lunchtime, Wednesday 25th March in K5. Feel free to bring cold food and drinks, but no hot food or drinks! ****

THE BASICS:

• Corrie was a Media student here at Ilkley Grammar, who went on to film school and is now completing a MA centred on screenplay writing
• He self-financed and self-produced his directorial debut, Wandering Rose, a horror movie
  
• It was filmed in Scotland, following an offer of assistance from Scottish agencies and failure to get such co-operation from Yorkshire agencies
• Shot in just 12 days, it was produced for a mere £30k!
• The setting may have had aesthetic appeal but also presented practical challenges: the small cast and crew alike had to help out lugging the filming equipment around, not least up a steep hill or

  

  The US distributor changed the film title!

  two!
• The film features another former IGS Media student, Theo Wightman (pictured below), whose own film-making talent can be seen in his Media productions The Cellar  and Party to Hell (a slasher film opening and trailer), as a cast and key crew member. 
• Coz took the financial gamble of attending the Cannes Film Festival, highly prestigious but equally expensive, and this, along with a specially-arranged London screening, paid off with distribution deals in the can for DVD and VoD releases
• The US distributor decided to change the film's name (see the IMDB entry); this may not be an accurate reflection of Coz's vision, but may yet pay dividends with enhanced sales...
• Coz is now in talks with production companies to take on much higher budget projects

Please note: the BBFC rating is tbc; based on the US rating, this could be 15, but may end up as 18. The trailer below contains no graphic imagery, but does reflect the theme of horror, and could be considered as fitting the BBFC 12 rating.



THE STORY IN TWEETS, HEADLINES + QUOTES...

2014 Exam: Downton Abbey/Cinema Hardware

Below is the script of an A-grade exam from an IGS student, analysing the representation of class and status in a Downton Abbey clip (it can't be embedded) and answering the British Cinema question:

The increases in hardware and content in media industries has been significant in recent years. discuss the effect this has had on institutions and audiences in the media area you have studied.

Here's the actual exam paper (click to enlarge or click here)

DIGITISATION Hinterland £8k budget 15 year-old camera...

Harry Macqueen (centre) and Ben Hecking on stage after their Ilkley Film Festival screening

HINTERLAND (Harry Macqueen, 2015)
DISTRIBUTION: Indie/arthouse/world cinema specialist Soda Pictures (digital); self-distribution deal with Curzon Pictures, linked to director/cinematographer Q+A appearances
PRODUCTION CO: Inheritance Films [Macqueen inherited £10k and decided to make a film with this!]
BUDGET: £8k
SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter;



Thanks to Martin Pilkington, organiser of the Ilkley Film Festival, I got to see Hinterland gratis, and to speak to the debut director (and co-star/writer/producer) Harry Macqueen plus cinematographer (Director of Photography) Ben Hecking afterwards.

The film is archetypal arthouse; an essay on male diffidence with French New Wave part of the aesthetic: montage sequences, dialogue over fairly abstract shots, some non-linear strands. That's simplifying rather - both said their influences were just too numerous to really pin down; "unconscious osmosis" would amount for much of this. Richard Linklater was held up as a particular influence and, indeed, inspiration to all Indie filmmakers (and Macqueen noted how Linklater had similarly gone out and produced his debut feature for a very low budget). Both professed a love for and strong influence from this unheralded 1979 British Indie road movie, re-released on DVD by the BFI (Radio On, Christopher Petit):


(Read more on this film: IMDB; Wiki; ScreenOnline)

Both describe Hinterland as a road movie. It centres on the friendship, with clear undertones of desire for more, of a late-20-something man and woman, childhood friends, the woman a free spirit, the man seemingly a more sedate character.

Past exam questions

All the past questions are written in below

The 2014 AS exam clip, plus the Examiner's Report, is here - you can see the exam paper below.

Remember, its a 2 hour exam: 1st 30 mins view Tv Drama clip 4 times in 30mins then 45mins for essay on 4 technical areas (sound, editing, camera work, mise-en-scene) + 1 area of representation (from gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity, social class and status, regional identity, physical (dis)ability); 45mins for British Cinema essay (the section is headed Institutions and Audiences).

There is only one question to answer. It will NOT mention film, as the question is intended for all Media students regardless of which industry option they have studied.
Here's how it appears, followed by a full list of past questions:

Answer the question below, making detailed reference to examples from your case study material to support points made in your answer.

Discuss the issues raised by an institution’s need to target specific audiences within a media industry which you have studied.

You must choose to focus on one of the following media areas. You may make reference to other media in your answer.

•           Film

•           Music

•           [etc – 6 media are listed]

Here's what the key pages of the exam paper look like (from the 2014 exam):

Click to enlarge, or ctrl/CMD-click here.

2008 SAMPLE PAPER: Discuss the issues raised by an institution’s need to target specific audiences within a media industry which you have studied.

JAN 2009: Discuss the ways in which media products are produced and distributed to audiences, within a media area which you have studied. 
TV DRAMA: AGE: Monarch of the Glen.

Working Title Warp 2015 Bafta success...Oscar to follow?

...Okay, the Warp 'success' is a little indirect - '71 lead Jack O'Connell (not his only film!) won a public vote for 'Rising Star', but lost out on Oustanding British Film ... won by Theory of Everything (multiple nominations - see this preview report), which WT and the NBC-Universal subsidiaries distributing it will hope may signal Academy success and that potentially lucrative Oscar bounce. Their lead, Eddie Redmayne, has won the Leading Actor Bafta, and it has also scooped up the Best Adapted Screenplay award. See full winners list here.

There are issues with the Baftas positioning themselves as a bellweather for and predictor of Oscars ... aren't these meant to celebrate and promote British success?

Many of Hollywood’s big names will be in attendance; it has become an article of faith that a paparazzi shot in London can be a key opinion-shifter for the all-important campaign to grab Oscar votes before polling finishes on 17 February.
The downside of this is that, over the past decade, critics have claimed that the Baftas have lost some of their cultural distinctiveness, and become a boiled-down version of the Oscars, with the same films and actors being nominated. This year, if awards go they way they are expected to, we are likely to have exactly the same winners in both.
“I think it’s a reflection of the ‘special relationship’,” says Leslie Felperin, film critic for the Hollywood Reporter. “There’s an inevitable overlap in zeitgeist that extends to politics and culture as well as film. It’s more than it ought to be, for sure. If you look at the Césars in France, for example, they are much more proudly French, and they fly the flag for their domestic industry in a more assertive way.” (Guardian report)

Theory got 10 Bafta nominations in total.

Bill Nighy's Working Title persona

I suspect I may have blogged this elsewhere, but a smartphone makes searching impractical. A good companion piece to the fierce animated satire of BBC3's Curtisland sketch, here it's Harry Enfield flagging up the inherent poshness of the ABC1 universe of Nighy's Working Title characters, from Love Actually through The Boat That Rocked to About Time. To be fair, notwithstanding the man's acting chops, this extends to other performances too - see his role as an upper crust businessman in TV series Auf Wiedersehen Pet for example.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kvPQJVrOhkI

Gant Rule example 2015: Into the Woods

It doesn't work absolutely precisely, but the general principle can be clearly seen...
Into the Woods (Rob Marshall, 2014)
$50m budget, global box office by end January 2015: $165m. US box office: $125m. UK box office: £7.3m.
IMDB; the-Numbers; BoxOfficeMojo; Wiki; Charles Gant's UK column late January 2015; Ben Child's US box office analysis;

There is a greater multiple than x10 when comparing US and UK box office, but the general point of the vastly larger scale can be seen. There may seem a bit of a mystery then as to why there is less than x10 the screens, but this reflects the much higher ticket prices typically charged in the US (2800 screens v 500). The film is unusual in one regard though: around 75% of the global take is from the USA alone; this has been typically around 50%, but recently has been declining to nearer 40% as China's cinema industry in particular grows in scale.

Researching and analysing budgets

This post links into a lesson looking at production practices, especially with regards to budget and digitisation, and impact on 'box office'.

You could try a quiz on film flops...

You will be tasked with researching actual budgets and box office yourselves, and perhaps looking up some further figures to help with a pitch of your own idea later...
Use 1 or more of the sites below to help with this - click on the TEXT link to go to the link, holding in the CMD key so it opens in a new tab:

IMDB.com

UK films in thrall to upper classes? Kingsman eg

In a colourful review, replete with some strong language, the central theme is:

The film gives international audiences what they expect from Britain – a nice bit of posh – while also titillating natives with convincing oik detail. 

(League of gentlemen: Kingsman and Britain’s posh-boy spies)

The film is summed up thus:

In Kingsman: The Secret Service, out next month, a tasty little herbert called Eggsy from a London sink estate is recruited by the impeccably soigné, lah-di-dah spook Harry Hart, played by Colin Firth. Hart detects that Eggsy has the right stuff, the true Brit if you will, to transcend his oikish upbringing and become One Of Us. Now if Eggsy, played by Taron Egerton, can survive the training course in which he is pitted against a bunch of stuckup, over-entitled Oxbridge ponces (plus the token bit of hottie posh whose snobby froideur melts at our hero’s bit-of-rough charms), then he can become a Kingsman.

Sounds rather like the M.O. of Working Title ... but is primarily a 20CFox produced and distributed film (with TSG and Marv).

WHY do film-makers keep insisting on this narrow, ultra-clichéd stereotypical representation of 'Britain'? Simple really: because it is so familiar, it is easier to market. Furthermore, whilst often used within US-set films as characteristics of a villain, the posh Southern English chap/dame is at the same time an aspirational (cf. the 'uses and gratifications theory', explained in this post; the aspirational point could be applied to the 'personal identity' category) figure for many ... not least many in the US audience who might condemn a class system in the USA but simultaneously perceive the same thing in a 'British' context as glamorous and appealing.

The major brands who have paid $100m+ for product placements in the most recent Bond movies clearly perceive this to be true! (See Telegraph gallery, Guardian analysis, etc!)

Male gaze and taboo of phallus on screen

Delicate issue here, but timely given we've just been exploring Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory. Legendary writer Russell T Davies (Dr Who... and actual good TV as well! Not least the groundbreaking Queer as Folk) argues we should loosen the tight regulations around screen depictions of the phallus, that this has important cultural effects:

Sex – whether we have loads of it or none of it – is a part of all of our lives. But on the screen, its depiction is often met with shock or silliness. Female actors are often objectified, the reasons for their nudity sometimes having little to do with character, and everything to do with satisfying the male gaze

We need more penises on our screens http://gu.com/p/455de

Working Title referenced as byword for bland

Spotted the WT reference in this opinion piece*, which worries that the push for global audiences will see TV sitcom producers squeeze the distinctively British characteristics out of 'our' TV, hoping to make the shows easy to sell to foreign markets, especially America:

Pulling was a classic British sitcom in that it was riven with self-loathing, and its situation – the gap between its characters’ desire to pull and their capacity to do so – inherently fraught and fruitful.In Catastrophe, Horgan plays a woman who gets pregnant after a brief fling with a visiting American, played by the standup Rob Delaney. Already, this feels Working Title-ready: a sit- that more readily begets rom than com. Then there’s the detail.In, say, the similarly plotted Knocked Up there was some tension over whether a groomed high-flier and an unemployed stoner would be able to make it to the delivery room. In Catastrophe they seem ideally suited from the get-go. He’s a successful businessman who wants to move to the UK, marry her and sit through awful suppers with her friends. They are a happy couple expecting a baby. They have hot sex and give each other justifiable compliments. This is not how I want my British sitcoms to be.I don’t want them to be like Friends – soaps in disguise, scripted by a crack squad of gag writers. I don’t want them to be Americanised; to be glossy and hopeful.

I wonder if this will catch on, WT as a byword for 'British' media productions rendered culturally void by the process of Americanising to boost export potential?

[*SOURCE: The push for a global audience could be a catastrophe for British sitcoms by Catherine Shoard, http://gu.com/p/453cc]

WT: The Theory of Everything

Working Title's latest could be taken as a 'chick flick' - the marketing heavily centres on the romantic narrative - but, even if it's hardly a four quadrant movie (youth appeal?!), the biopic format and the science sub-plot should help boost male appeal too (being stereotypical in the manner that distributors are).

THE TRAILER

You don't need to have viewed a film in full to get to grips with analysing, the trailer generally reveals a lot you can utilise: good examples of mise-en-scene and key information on characters and setting; genre/s and which are being emphasised - title font and soundtrack also contribute to possible semiotic analysis here; target audience/s; intertextuality; distinctive (or uniform) marketing for different territories. You may also spot age ratings (MPAA and BBFC); occasionally there will be a sharp contrast between the US (which tends to heavily penalise sexual content but go very lenient on violence) and UK (which tends to be more liberal on sexual content but stricter on violence - so, the BBFC passed Baise Moi with an 18 despite its unsimulated sex scenes, but sought to ban The Human Centipede; Meadows and Warp were disgusted when TisEng got hit with an 18 which sharply undermined its box office prospects).

TRAILER SCREENSHOTS

1: We open on a grand historic building in the South of England - a world away from TisEng's Shaun and the council estate he resides in

DISTRIBUTION: Tyrannosaur in France

Brief post to consider a useful example of Indie distribution abroad, other than in the USA. Warp managed to get Tyrannosaur quite widely distributed on DVD (not so much in cinema).

The IMDB distributor list above shows a theatrical distributor for France, but there is no record of any French box office returns on boxofficemojo:

TheNumbers.com lists lower figures, a useful warning that you can't always rely on any one site for accurate information.

I can't find sales figures (thenumbers.com only offers these on this film to subscribers, but does provide such info for some movies), but it seems to have enjoyed reasonable success in France:

Its French distribution included a number of subtitled 'extras'

tbc
a

DISTRIBUTION: Disney's Alice in Wonderland and release window row

Alice in Wonderland sparked off a huge row between distributors and exhibitors over an attempt to change the traditional release window between cinema and DVD release.
I'll be taking points from the following:
theguardian.com/film/movie/131099/alice-in-wonderland
cineworld-alice-in-wonderland-boycott
disney-alice-in-wonderland-burton
european-cinemas-boycott-alice-in-wonderland
...

DISTRIBUTION: Warp X's Le Donk + Scor-zay-zee

Use the tag cloud to find more on distribution

KEY POINT: Cinemas continue to insist on an exclusive release window as home cinema would otherwise eat substantially into their prospects, and they have gone as far as threatening to boycott a blockbuster Disney movie when they tried to reduce this window. Frankly, they will care little what an Indie micro-budget production does, and the 'cinema release' was really a marketing stunt by Warp to attract newspaper reviews!

Scroll to the end of the post for a short list of all key points. 

Impressively, Warp secured distribution in several foreign markets, such as Norway. Note how Meadows and his previous movies are highlighted as a key selling point.

Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee (Meadows, 2009) is an interesting counter-example of what we conventionally see. Okay, so this micro-budget Indie (just £48k, it launched Meadows' 'five day film' concept which, at the time of release, several other well-known directors expressed an interest in, though it doesn't really seem to have taken off in the way Dogme 95 - Lars von Trier etc - once did) got limited cinematic release.

All warp trailers are embedded in 1 post tagged distribution!

Lets be clear - the vast bulk of Indie productions simply fail to get any cinematic release; almost all are straight-to-DVD or, in the worst case scenario (as the DVD release window should come before the TV release window, which can itself be split between terrestrial, satellite and streaming) straight-to-TV (maybe made-for-TV).

By the way, Working Title's debut production, My Beautiful Laundrette, started out as a made-for-TV film, but when it got a screening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) and the critics raved about it, a swift decision was made to fund a cinematic release, from which it made a modest but significant profit, and WT would grow from this small success (including a US release).

There are no figures for Le Donk's box office, which usually suggests there was no cinematic release. It is not alone in Warp productions in getting a very, very limited cinema release, presumably a premiere and some limited London screenings.

2013 UK Distribution data

tbc
http://stephenfollows.com/who-dominates-uk-film-distribution/
tbc

1 in 5 homes with cinema room by 2020?

This previous post looked at NBC-Universal's $35k home rental scheme, very relevant to the theme below...

According to a recent survey, a fifth of Britons aim to have a dedicated cinema room by 2020 ... and 8% already do! The rise of home cinema has long been noted, but this is a step beyond having a large screen TV in the living room, being something closer to the setup seen in The Sopranos, the classic HBO series, where mafia don Tony brings round his cronies to sit in comfort and watch DVDs of such gangster flicks as The Public Enemy.

The rise of cinemas such as Leeds' Everyman, with its large sofa seating and tables for drinks and food (with the food menu going well beyond popcorn, and premium beer/drinks available), indicate one means by which the cinema industry is attempting to fight back against the increasing numbers staying at home for their cinema experience. Everyman's pricing strategy also quite purposefully tries to exclude many of the teens who effectively ruin the cinema experience for adults.

The site I read the home cinema stat on was pushing a new concept, the rise of corner shops and off-licenses as the replacement for dedicated video rental stores, with the demise of Blockbuster the most visible sign of their disappearance from the high street, with pressure from Netflix and other streaming services, piracy and supermarket sales all proving terminal.

The article specifically cites 'automated kiosks' - have any of you ever encountered one of these? Clearly yet another means by which digitisation is opening up further possibilities for distribution.

In 2013 70% of TV sets sold in the UK were classified as big – 26in-32in – and nearly 16% were were “jumbo” – 43in or bigger. This is up 4% from the year before, according to TV Licensing’s annual Telescope report on the nation’s viewing habits.An earlier report found that 8% of Brits expect to have a dedicated cinema room in their homes by 2020.With staying in firmly established as the new going out, and consumers abandoning FOMO, the fear of missing out, in favour of JOMO, the joy of missing out, there’s never been a better time to cash in on the sales opportunity offered by big nights in, and this year OLN is looking at how to host and sell the perfect movie night.As more and more traditional video and DVD rental shops have gone out of business in the face of competition from postal and on- demand services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix – giant Blockbuster went into administration late last year – some off-licences have stepped into the gap, offering customers DVDs for rent or sale.Automated video kiosks such as those offered by Original Video (original-video.com) have taken off in the US, where they first launched in 2002 and where there are now more than 30,000 units in operation. The model is simple, with new release movies offered for a small hire charge and, according to Original Video, they can make up to £500 a week.Even if you don’t offer DVDs yourself, this is a great time of year to inspire customers to make a big night in of their film evening with an innovative aisle-end or window display – and don’t forget to lay out the snacks, as nibbles such as popcorn, crisps and sweets are a key ingredient.To get you started, we’ve lined up some classic film choices – and suggestions to drink with them.■ Casablanca: Humphrey Bogart’s Rick is a self-confessed drunkard, and in the course of the film plenty of wine, bourbon, brandy and Cognac is consumed. But when you watch Casablanca, why not have a Champagne toast along with Rick and his lover, Ilsa, played by Ingrid Bergman. They’ll always have Paris.

Hot Fuzz distribution and marketing

Not exactly a bang up to date example, but one I've been looking at for a comparison between the three Cornetto Trilogy WT/WT2 productions (also World's End and Shaun of the Dead).
tbc

SOURCES USED:
TheNumbers.Com: Distribution detail and box office data.
'Post and Send': a (p)review focussed on the archetypal rural community setting. 'Hot Fuzz was filmed in historic Wells in Somerset—England’s teeniest metropolis, apparently—that has a heritage dating back to Roman times. With the cathedral and market square, it’s not hard to see why it was chosen as a stand-in for the kind of place that elicits warm and fuzzy nostalgia on sight.'
'FirstShowing.net' - posters' intertextual references: An impressively thorough post, this dissects the many specific reference points reflected in the poster campaign for Hot Fuzz, clearly showing where the influences came from by putting the HF and existing posters side by side.
'TheWells' - how HF has sparked a tourist boom for the village it was set in!
'DillyMilly' - student blog post: usefully draws together several posters and trailers.
Student Prezi on HF Marketing: Not the best example you'll ever see, but useful e.g. of a Prezi nonetheless, something you should use for at least one Eval response.
MarketingMagazine - agency looks for product placement brands:

Exposure has been set the task of creating awareness below and above the line. Producers Working Title and Universal Pictures are now looking for partners for the movie."The film is a British take on an American cop movie and we are looking for brands that are British and are aimed at the 16- to 24-year-old male market," said Annie Kearney, senior account manager, Exposure. "Snack foods, FMCGs and entertainment brands including Heinz and Blockbusters have the right profile that we are looking for. We want brands that embody the irreverence of the film," she added.

CommonSenseMedia - alternative film ratings for parents: a US site that carries parental and kids' reviews, and generates a specific age rating recommendation from these, and its own editorial ratings

Parents need to know that what at first seems like a British parody of American cop flicks turns into a much bloodier (and funnier) homage to blow-'em-up blockbusters. The gun play and cartoonishly graphic violence rivals that of any Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer production, but at least the bulk of the gore is confined to the last third of the film. Like Shaun of the Dead, which was made by the same director and stars, this movie is full of colorful foul language, but it doesn't have the raunchy nastiness of similar movies. Expect cinema-savvy teens to want to check it out.

MovieViral.com - releasing interactive Shaun screenplay to market World's End: There are several posts linked through here; another flags up director Wright's use of UGC: 'Wright posted a link to a video that includes scenes from all three of his films on his twitter account today. Youtuber Joel Walden mashed up the different scenes from Wright’s movies into one 2:19 minute video. Hit the jump to see it.  [Read more…]'
OfficeNews - drinks to view Cornetto flicks with...: Something a bit different, a site flagging up the growth of DVD rentals within existing shops (off-licenses, mini-markets etc) as a replacement for the gradually dying video rental store, and suggesting drinks accompaniments for a range of films:

Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End may be more associated with Cornettos than alcohol, but they’re all about beer and pubs. We recommend lager with Shaun of the Dead and bitter with The World’s End, with a cranberry juice in between for Hot Fuzz’s abstemious hero, Nick Angel.

s

GENDER: Women less successful on Kickstarter?

Some useful data here in a survey reporting on the comparative levels of success of male/female Kickstarter appeals; females feature in none/1 of top ten most successful appeals across a range of media categories, and female teams fare significantly less well than male teams. However, the report also notes that females often look for smaller amounts (<$5k) and are just as successful in this limited range; females often look specifically to friend and family circles, potentially limiting the scale/ambition of appeals.

Gender in Crowdfunding (Based on Kickstarter Data) from Crowdfund Productions

The Rom-Com Audience

I've cross-posted this on the rom-com and AS Coursework blogs, so won't post again here, but there is a lot of info and analysis very pertinent to British Cinema in there, with Warp and Working Title prominent in the analysis and examples used.

Read it here.

Working Title franchising: new Bridget Jones, About a Boy TV series...

It is abundantly clear when we compare Warp Films With Working Title that the former's typically no-star, low budget (predominately) social realist slate does not lend itself to sequels/prequels/re-imaginings, although This is England is a notable exception, with a possible second film to add to the existing film and two TV series. WT's slate is full of franchises: Elizabeth, Bean, Bridget Jones, Nanny McPhee... its a long list.

...And it is about to get longer! Adapting films for TV is nothing new - the Coen brothers' Fargo is enjoying new life as a US TV series, and as noted above This is England has enjoyed two sequel TV series so far. WTTV is an increasingly important Working Title subsidiary, with big-name directors and stars increasingly viewing TV as at least on a par with cinema, a dramatic reversal of years past. Have a look at Working Title's IMDB entry and you'll find ever more TV entries in there. Amongst these is a new series for - naturally! - NBC in America: About a Boy is now a US TV series.

Richard Dyer's star system

This is a simple but highly useful audience/narrative theory, which also reflects standard marketing thinking (question 1 a potential distributor will ask of a film production: who's the star?). Richard Dyer's (Amazon book list) landmark 1979 book Stars argued that the star system was central to how the media operate, and how we read texts. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (his 1986 follow-up) used case studies of Hollywood icons from the golden era, examining 'the ways in which audiences simultaneously construct and consume a particular star's persona' (Wiki). You might see parallels here with much later web 2.0 theorists such as Gauntlett and Gillmor and such declarations as "the former audience" (see this post for associated material on this).

The point here is that your text's narrative extends well beyond the film opening, 4 minute video, or even the wider promotional package.

I thought about this when reading a Film Guardian feature on Tom Cruise and director Christopher Nolan's insistence on diegetic as opposed to CGI stunts:

It goes deeper still though, into the weird contract we draw up with ourselves when we watch film. “Tom Cruise is doing that for real!” we exclaim to ourselves as we see Tom Cruise doing some casual rappelling. “Whoa!” We never truly watch blockbusters as pure narratives, but instead are constantly aware in their place in a wider ecosystem of celebrity, in which Cruise also has divorces and jumps on sofas and twinkles next to fans. We’re in awe of Cruise-as-Hunt rather than Hunt himself. (Tom Cruise, Christopher Nolan, and the new anti-CGI snobbery)

The excellent MediaKnowItAll site has a useful entry on this, considering not just the film angle but also how the music industry inculcates this approach to its modes of operation:

A star is an image not a real person that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music]).  

Their entry is copied in below, but is best appreciated on their site, where you can also click around and find further useful material.

WOMEN BJD Rene Zellweger - Just a pretty face?

There has been quite a commotion over Rene Zellweger's re-appearance in the media spotlight this past week, specifically surrounding her radically altered facial appearance. This is an actress, lets not forget, who piled on extra pounds to play a 'chubby' Bridget Jones (actually still well below the average size/figure of a British, never mind American, woman of her height, a quite invidious representation).

Steve Rose posts an interesting article which argues (quite briefly!) that, irrespective of gender, an actor's trade is centred on their face; it's their brand he effectively argues, with the close-up a key tool of cinema.

On the other hand ... Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy writes that this scrutiny is inherently sexist, and symptomatic of the objectification women in the media (and beyond) face:

“Where did Renee Zellweger’s face go?”

'71: Initial thoughts, review

TBC
Went to see '71 at Bradford's National Media Museum on its day of release, October 10th 2014. Alongside about a dozen others in total; a very sparsely attended screening (including one patron slowly consuming a huge tub of frozen yoghurt with a tiny spoon - knitting might be a better option there to keep the hands busy!). I'm told this is fairly common: until The Guardian review comes through, there is often limited awareness of non-mainstream films like this, an interesting reflection of the ABC1 skew of the NMM's staple audience.

As the DVD will be a while (presumably) in coming, I fervently scribbled down notes afterwards, some of which I'll sum up below. You could save yourself the bother, and just watch Mark Kermode's R5 review below ... the be-quiffed master pundit raised some very specific reference points which I'd noted myself, although I think my own take was always going to be somewhat informed by being a Northern Irish viewer of this ostensibly 'Troubles' movie.

Curtisland: animated satire of Richard Curtis' WT rom-coms

NB: whilst animated, this sketch contains some fairly adult humour and sexual references linking into a notorious incident involving Hugh grant, better known recently as a campaigner for stronger press regulation through the pressure group Hacked Off.



Is this a fair representation of Curtis' approach?