This blog explores US influence (financial + cultural), Anglocentric (ie, primarily English) representations, digitisation, ownership, industry developments, audience, media theories, tracking key news + events, with Film/Media A-Level/undergrad students + educators in mind. Examples often include Sheffield's Warp (Indie) and London/LA-based Working Title (NBC-Universal subsidiary), ie This is England/Four Lions v Bridget Jones/Green Zone! Please acknowledge the source/blog author: Mr D Burrowes
Postmodern, comparable in some ways to sweding, an interesting reflection on the limitations of copyright and the importance of UGC for generating revenue for major film companies ... check out this story (with embedded clips): http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/aug/24/this-is-england-film-4
The iPad isn't great for blogging, so at another time I'll develop a links list on this - a topic you need to be able to say something on for your exam, and to be able to claim to truly understand the business of British Cinema and how it interacts with the audience. Whilst the warehouse style and scale multiplexes have now long dominated UK cinemas, there are 1500 Indie cinemas, with 500 supported by the BFFS ('the British Federation of Film Societies (BFFS) which represents more than 500 community cinemas and film societies across the UK').
This article seems to be advertorial (it's not made entirely clear, but looks like it to me), but is useful to get a broader understanding of the diversity of exhibition beyond the multiplexes ... and the role, once more, of digitisation in fostering this change and enabling Indie exhibitors (as digital projection is less skilled and cheaper, and crucially financially supported by a UK Film Council fund - at least until that body was scrapped by the coalition government, a questionable decision on economic or cultural grounds): https://socialenterprise.guardian.co.uk/en/articles/social-enterprise-network/2012/jul/24/co-operative-cinema-opportunity
As I'm sure many of you did I went to see TDKRises on the NMMs IMAX screen, and enjoyed the visceral experience that the screen size and sound quality offers.
3D has been widely pointed to as the saviour of a cinema business under threat from two results of digitisation: cheap digital home cinema and piracy. Whether the public will continue to pay huge premiums for the questionable benefit of 3D is debatable. We've seen 3D rise before as a fad, back in the 1950s.
IMAX nails one of the threats of digitisation though, offering a scale beyond he reach of home cinema.
Director Nolan insisted on shooting over 70mins of TDKRises in IMAX, an incredibly slow, thus expensive, production method, but several recent IMAX releases haven't been shot for IMAX, leading to a similar debate to that raging about digitally rendered 3D conversions of movies shot in 2D.
There is even a LIEMAX campaign opposing inferior, potentially misleading IMAX screens.
Have a read through the article below, and some of the comments that follow, to get a grasp of this topic, a very useful case study to show your grasp of industry and consumption trends today.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/jul/23/dark-knight-rises-imax
The Dark Knight Rises, and takes Imax with him
Christopher Nolan is singlehandedly transforming the prospects of the biggest picture show of all
Truly immersive? ... an Imax screening of The Dark Knight Rises. Photograph: Julio Cortez/AP
It may be that the awful events at the Century 16 multiplex in
Aurora, Colorado, will forever cast a shadow over cinema-going. Yet The Dark Knight Rises
could also point the way to a brighter future for an increasingly
troubled industry. It could help reshape the way we watch movies. The film includes 72 minutes of footage shot on the Imax system, the most ever for a studio narrative feature. For director Christopher Nolan, that meant working with cumbersome, jitter-sensitive and noisy cameras
capable of only three-minute takes and requiring 20 minutes to reload.
Still, he's in no doubt that the extra effort was worth it. He believes
he has secured in return "the best quality image that has ever been invented". In an Imax ("image maximum") camera or projector, 70mm film runs sideways,
taking up 15 sprocket holes per frame instead of 35mm's four. The
resulting picture is 10 times larger with 10 times the resolution.
Ideally, it's displayed at up to twice the usual brightness, on a curved
screen that can be as tall as an eight-storey building. Together with
360-degree surround sound and stadium seating, it's supposed to provide
the "most immersive motion picture entertainment" available.
How cinema audiences have become movie-makers
The film industry used to have all the power over filmgoers. But home video and the internet have changed that relationship
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jul/05/how-cinema-audiences-became-movie-makers
I've blogged on this before, back in 2010, but a major studio head has once more raised the prospect of whats currently a 17-week gap between (US) cinema release and DVD release narrowing significantly to combat piracy. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes says the current system simply "create[s] a gap for piracy".
There's another growing trend just now: the widening of the key 'summer' blockbuster season (recognised terminology), with Alice in Wonderland released in March 2011, and Hunger Games in March 2011, a full two months before the traditional May starting point.
Time Warner CEO predicts release date shift to combat piracy
Jeff Bewkes says making films available on all platforms early in their runs will reduce piracy, despite cinemas' objections
Tim Burton's 2010 Alice in Wonderland
provoked a battle between Disney and UK cinemas over its release window.
Photograph: Disney /Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
A powerful media mogul who oversees one of the most successful studios in Hollywood, Warner Bros, has predicted the demise of the longstanding "window" between cinema and home video releases in order to combat internet piracy.
Interviewed
on the US PBS network's Charlie Rose show, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes
said the entire film industry, "including theatre owners" had "an
interest" in ensuring that new movies were available early in their runs
for consumers to view on any platform, whether at the cinema, on DVD or
view-on-demand (VOD). His comments will cause consternation among the
owners of cinema chains, who have fought a running battle with studios
to retain the traditional 17-week window before new films shift from
the big screen to home video.
Bewkes accepted that the
issue was a "dangerous" one, and said studios would "be as thoughtful as
we can to do it in a way that doesn't undermine the theatre
experience". But he nevertheless appeared to indicate that the window's
demise was a done deal because the alternative was to "create a gap for
piracy". He also predicted that the price of DVDs would come down
further in future. Cinema chains in the UK and abroad fear relaxation of the window
in case film lovers decide to save their pennies and see new releases
at home rather than travelling to their nearest multiplex. At the moment
it is impossible to see new films in high quality anywhere else but the
cinema, a monopoly which has arguably helped maintain box office yields
since the arrival of VHS in the 1980s.
In 2010 Warner's
rival studio Disney fought a battle with UK cinemas over the release
window for Tim Burton's blockbuster Alice in Wonderland. In the end the
film was released in cinemas according to the usual schedule and went on
to gross more than $1bn at the global box office. The total worldwide
box office stood at $36.6bn last year, up 3% on 2010, but only because
markets such as China and Russia are growing rapidly and 3D films
continue to yield a higher premium. Given that experts suggest that piracy costs the US economy alone more than $20bn annually,
Bewkes's prediction begins to look more than reasonable. Nevertheless,
further battles with cinema chains no doubt await if Hollywood decides
to move forward with its current plans.
To mark the nationwide release of box office hit Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,
Impact was commissioned by film distribution company Studio Canal to
create a guerrilla marketing campaign to support the movie launch and
boost online word-of-mouth. This took place in the week prior to the
movie’s release date on 16th September 2011.
The campaign saw Tom, Stephen, Paul and Dave from the Impact Promotions team
disguised as 1970′s spies, surreptitiously disseminating leaked
dossiers on tube carriages, public benches, window sills, pub tables and
other unexpected locations around town.
Our Secret Agents targeted London’s main transport hubs and railway stations, mingling with commuters and tourists at departure boards inside Liverpool Street,Waterloo and Charing Cross stations.
Following client brief, the team focused their efforts on mature and affluent ABC1 audiences,
especially commuters and city professionals. All demographic groups
targeted responded very positively to the promotion, seeming genuinely
intrigued by the leaked dossiers and elaborate spy costumes. In their
role as spies, the team actively engaged with the public, asking questions such as: ‘Did you drop this?’ and ‘What is the code word?’ or ‘Have you seen the Mole?’. The campaign was linked to an online Facebook competition which allowed users to post photos of the found secret dossiers on the movie’s fan page for a chance to win film memorabilia. The activity contributed to generate 7000 subscribers within its first week of opening, with dozens of positive comments and candid photos of the leaked dossiers at various locations in London.
I'm copying these straight in: there's much more over at http://petesmediablog.blogspot.co.uk/ (thats a blog run by ther Chief Examiner of our exam board, OCR - its very helpful)
Whichever media area you are covering for this question, it is important
that you show understanding of the key concepts and refer to specific
examples in your answer. In this post, we will consider some of the ways
in which you can help yourself do well with five 'top tips'.
1. Read the question carefully
You have no choice of questions, so you have to have a go at what is
there on the paper; sometimes students panic and think that they don't
understand the question- maybe because of one particular word- but so
long as you have prepared on all the concepts there will be something in
the question that you recognise. Words like 'technology',
'convergence', 'distribution', 'marketing', 'digital' come up and you
should see them as your 'hook' into the question. Even if the overall
wording seems to be baffling, look for the terms that are there in the
question and see them as the springboard for your answer.
2. Don't spend ages on an introduction
You only have 45 minutes to answer the question, so there isn't time to
waffle! A quick sentence which sets out what you are going to do and
which media area or industry you are going to use will suffice. You can
prepare a lot of this in your head in advance, so something like: In
this essay, I shall write about (concept) in relation to the (film,
music, radio, etc) industry, drawing on (examples) as my case studies.
3. Know your examples
Whichever industry you are writing about, you will need examples to
support your points. I would always advocate having some contrasting
examples so that you can look at all angles; for example, you might have
a mainstream high budget film from the USA to contrast with a low
budget independent Uk film, or a major record label to contrast with a
little UK indie label. That way, you can talk about the different ways
in which the industry might operate in different circumstances. You need
not know absolutely eveything about just two examples, however. It
could be that you know about the funding of a particular low budget
film, but don't know about its marketing; in which case find another
example of something similar where you can find out about its marketing.
The important thing is to get a good grasp of the ways in which the
concepts apply rather than every tiny detail of a specific case study
example. What you do need is to make sure you understand the general
principles well and can back up your points accurately.
4. Try to be systematic
Don't jump about between points; spend a bit of time at the start of the
exam planning the structure of your answer and working out the main
points and examples for each paragraph. this will ensure that the rest
of your time is spent fruitfully as well. Know what key point you will
make in each paragraph, what examples you will refer to and how you want
to make a case from it all. Use similarity and difference as starting
points for organising an argument; there will be differences between
mainstream and indie which you might use as your way through, for
example.
5. Make it all legible
Remember, examiners may be old and may have poor eyesight. Well at least
that applies to me! Most students do not have great handwriting, so
make it easier for the examiner to find the strengths in what you have
written. Keep your paragraphs relatively short- half a page at most.
Leave a clear line between each paragraph. There is nothing in the rules
to say that you can't use a highlighter pen to emphasise your key
examples or terms. Don't overdo this, but it does sometimes help to draw
the reader's attention to points which ought to pick you up marks.
Prepare well and you should do well. Answers to Q.2 often look shorter
than those for Q.1, but if you know your stuff and have revised
properly, they shouldn't be. Good luck!
With just three weeks to go to the exam, here are a few tips for the OCR AS G322.
1. Practice a bit of writing on TV Drama and particularly in organising
your notes. You'll find a whole presentation of tips on that part of the
exam in my presentation from an earlier post on Feb 29. There I suggest
that you go into the exam knowing how you will organise your notes, so
that you have a structure to look out for things and to ensure that you
maximise the note-taking time. After the first screening, if you draw a
grid in the answer booklet, like this:
It will give you all you need for the four categories- mise-en-scene,
camerawork, editing (continuity editing, at least) and sound. Down the
side are the three categories P- point, D-data (or example) and Q-
question (how to relate point and example to the question set). This
model was suggested by Vicky Allen at Thomas Rotherham College, who gets
good results every year, so she should know!
When revising for the exam, fill out a grid like this with the points
you are going to be looking for on the day, then regardless of the
extract, you will have things to look for. You won't be able to take one
in to the actual exam, but you will have fewer things to memorise to
cover!
So, under mise-en-scene, you might be looking for key examples of
setting, costume, props, colours, makeup, hairstyle, lighting, posture,
gesture. For camerawork you want to make points about angles, shot
distances, camera movements, framing and focus. For continuity editing
you want examples of the 180 degree rule, match on action, shot reverse
shot, eyeline match, insert shots. For sound you will want examples of
music, dialogue, sound effects, use of foley, counterpoint, sound
bridges. If you have lists like this that you can then remember, that
gives you plenty to look for.
Once you have watched the extract through, during the second screening
you can very quickly note down your grid and start to put in examples
to support your points and then as you watch it a third and fourth
time, you can start to relate the examples you find back to the
question, by asking what they contribute to the representation under
scrutiny. So, for instance, how is the setting being used, how are
camera angles being used, how are features of continuity editing used to
help establish differences between characters. You'll have 30 minutes
in total for the note-taking, so make the most of it!
Remember, the more you do in preparation for the note-taking, the better
your chances in the essay itself. A well-organised answer in the 45
minutes for writing, supporting points with examples, will go a long way
towards getting you a good mark!
The RC rom-coms contribute nearly $2bn of the $5bn (nearer $6bn by now) all-time total, BUT the last major RC hit was back in 2004 with the BJD sequel Edge of Reason. Just as with the horror movies we looked at, it seems even WT may be somewhat reliant on franchises too: a 2nd sequel is due out soon. The horrid TBTRocks was a flop, increasing the attractiveness of a return to a proven winner.
You can use this to aid your revision: IMDB, Wiki + other sites for most of the Warp Films/X releases, + distributor Optimum/StudioCanal UK + more
Links descriptions also contain a lot of info: you can learn a lot from these even without clicking into the sites!!!
At http://www.redberrydigital.com/projects you'll see a lot of familiar names: this is the company that designs and produces WTs multmedia website, including the individual sites.
Today, I'd like each of you to pick out ONE WT film listed by Redberry, take notes on what they say (especially any notes on audience!) and then visit the film's site and take notes on what promotional features you find there
Across the Media A-Level, so at both AS and A2, the ever-growing issue of digital media, and what impact the digitisation of media is having on the industry (and culture more generally), is a central issue. When we look at British Cinema in AS, for example, this raises issues around how films are produced, distributed, exhibited ... and consumed. So, Warp X is set up explicitly to foster the development of digital film-making (PRODUCTION) in the UK, which in general terms creates the prospect of more low-to-zero budget filmmakers entering the fray. Even comparatively high budget films, such as WT's Atonement, are being produced using digital film-making techniques. A quick look on Apple's web pages for Final Cutshows you just how many major productions, not just Indie efforts, are switching to digital film-making, and editing through software which once would have been a step down from industry level. Distribution of movies becomes potentially much cheaper, as film prints (costing millions for any hit movie) become obsolete; a portable hard drive can be used instead - the problem being the lack of digital projectors in cinemas as of 2009! See LaunchingFilms.com. The wiki on this notes:
Digital distribution of movies has the potential to save money for film distributors. A single film print can cost around US$1200[citation needed] (or $30,000 for a 1-time print of an 80-minute feature[8]), so making 4,000 prints for a wide-release movie might cost $5 million. In contrast, at the maximum 250 megabit-per-second data rate (as defined by DCI for digital cinema), a typical feature-length movie could fit comfortably on an off the shelf 300 GB hard drive—which sell for as little as $40 (retail price, volume prices are even lower) and can even be returned to the distributor for reuse after a movie's run. With several hundred movies distributed every year, industry savings could potentially reach $1 billion or more.
What this doesn't say, however, is that marketing costs remain, and without the clout and financial muscle of the big 6 especially, able to secure expensive advertising and favourable puff-pieces in the press and on TV in return for some access to their stars, Indie distributors continue to be at a huge disadvantage. Cinema chains are also discouraged from looking much further than the big 6, as EasyJet's Stelios found. Viral marketing is a possibility here of course...
Bringing us to the use of the web for exhibition, and consumption. This is potentially a great leveller; if the terrestrial TV channels are closed off, why not try the likes of Propellor TV? Or a MySpace page? Or YouTube? Or just straight-to-DVD using some of these as marketing platforms? Although we talk about you always thinking of yourselves as hypothetical film-makers, operating in the real media industry,for the purposes of your blogs and the marking of these, in effect you already are! The Co-Op Festival, for example, wasn't a mirage! Many of you have posted your work on Facebook, YouTube and other social networking sites, and we've even seen copies of Twis'hite changing hands for actual money!. For the big boys, though, this brave new world of cheap production, distribution and exhibition isn't viewed so brightly...they continue to dominate largely through this rather crass tentpole strategy; churning out high-budget spectacle movies which prioritise SFX over narrative, the recent Terminator Salvation and Transformers films being 'good' examples of these appalling character traits! It remains to be seen whether the much-hyped upcoming James Cameron project, Avatar, is more like Terminator 2 (technology married to a great narrative and convincing performances) or the 3rd and 4th installments of the franchise - which is now up for sale, if you have a few million burning a hole! Any democratisation of the film industry is straightforwardly a nightmare vision for them. Colin, the £45-budget (not a typo!) Brit-zombie flick (maybe you'll see a similar story about a Mr E. Clark before too long?!), is everything they fear. Blurring the lines between audience/consumers and producers is an exciting prospect (strike that; its a reality - look at the various YouTube re-workings of any hit movie; we've looked at Bridget Jones spoofed as a political thriller for instance), but not one that necessarily ensures the ongoing domination of these lumbering great conglomerate giants.
Can they even get us to pay?! BitTorrent and similar file-sharing technologies are used by most of your generation to some extent, leading folk your age to grow up with the at least partial expectation that you can access media for free. The big boys are trying to fight back through iTunes, and more specialist ventures such as Hulu, but could well be going the same way as the music business, which has seen profits plummet since Napster brought the prospect of free music to the world. The court case against The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine, seems to be an indication that the industry is determined to use the courts to combat online piracy, despite many commentators viewing this as pointless, futile and possibly even counter-productive. New laws have been proposed by the current government following high-profile lobbying by the film biz. You can see a range of articles on this here.
The reason I wrote this was simply being recommended watching a lecture... Exciting stuff I know, but you would benefit hugely from watching the lecture, described as follows:
Anthony Lilley, recently appointed by The Centre for Excellence in Media Practice as a Visiting Professor, delivers his inaugural lecture: Paying Attention: the changing value of media in the Internet age.
I haven't had time, yet, to watch, so perhaps you could comment with some observations based on your own viewing of it, and what can be learned from it!!!
-----------------------------------------------------
ADDITION, DECEMBER 6TH:
Empire magazine critic Angie Errigo makes an interesting defence of the state of modern movie-making against claims that its filled with mega-budget tat that ignores narrative in favour of sheer spectacle (Inside Empire (2009) "They do make 'em like they used to", pp. 18-19).
A voice and a vision, and a reluctance to do what is expected are what's wanted in aspiring filmmakers. A-list stars and million-dollar explosions are completely optional if there's a story to be told, an emotion to be felt, a mood to be captured. Far from being a downbeat era of pap, these are wildly exciting times for all of us, rich with possibilities. Having entered the digital age with web access for all and an array of technology that gets cheaper by the minute, it's more possible than ever for movie brats to make their own productions and make them more ambitious and sophisticated than the Super 8 kids managed in their backyards. For every Hollywood film that costs upwards of $150 million, thousands of 'home movies' can be made and hundreds that are good to go in cinemas. It isn't naive to believe that 'talent will out'. The next Shane Meadows, Steve McQueen and Duncan Jones are out there at work within and without 'the System'.
Super 8 is an old-fashioned format of video camera. If you've ever seen Son of Rambow imagine you were making your coursework with the same technology, a VHS video camera and two VHS machines linked up for editing (no digital technology at all, no computers even!).
------------------------------------------------------
ADDITION 8.3.2010
A lecture from UKFC on digitisation in film
v
The article this is taken from contains strong language; cult TV writer Karl Sutter writes, in a piece in which he bemoans the fate of his own movie project being stuck in development hell:
The world is in a media/content upheaval. Digital has changed the game. Everyone is grasping at what they thing might be the next big thing (that handful of WTF was the major reason for the WGA and SAG strike). But the truth is no one f*****g knows. TV, internet, movies -- it changes every day. The good news is that no matter what it looks like, how, when or where they get it, people want entertainment. So there will always be a need for content -- writers, directors, actors. [asterisks added by DB]
Working Title films was founded in 1984 by Sarah Radclyffe (Who would later leave the company to be replaced by Eric Fellner in 1992) and Tim Bevan. The company’s first notable success was the 1985 film My Beautiful Laundrette, a story of a young Asian man’s battle to ‘make it’ in London during the Thatcher years. The film stars Saeed Jaffrey and features a breakthrough performance by Daniel Day Lewis and was both a critical and commercial success for the fledgling studio, picking up two BAFTA nominations, and an academy award nomination for best screenplay. The success of My Beautiful Laundrette enabled Working Title to establish themselves as a serious production company and attract the attention of backers Polygram in 1992, and also the attention of the major American studios who were interested in distributing Working Title’s projects internationally.
Big star ... Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary – a third film could be on the way with a more slimline Bridget. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features
A third Bridget Jones film is on the way to cinemas after producers promised Renée Zellweger she would not have to pile on the pounds to play the hapless singleton, reports the Sun.
The website www.launchingfilms.com - run by the Film Distributors' Association - contains useful info on the process of film distribution in the UK (the stage after production, involving marketing and negotiating with exhibitors to gain theatrical (and, later, DVD, pay-TV, premium channels and free-to-air screening) release. They publish a pdf guide on this.
This doc briefly summarises some key points on distribution.
Some key points:
look closely at the issue of distribution; the doc above gives a brief summary of this, with links for further reading; I'll add to this if I get time (distribution co's pay a flat fee and/or a % of potential profits for the rights to sell a production co's film to exhibitors - cinema, TV, DVD etc. Distributors pay for the marketing of a film, not the production co - tho' WT are unusual as they insist in being involved in the marketing campaign - use BJDiary as a case study, but also ref Love Actually)
do focus your answer on the case study of WT, but put this into context with reference to Warp Film/X as a more typical Brit production co (working on much smaller budgets than even WT's 'Indie' arm, WT2; social realist films; genre films 'with a twist'; working with Optimum Releasing and Film4/C4 for distribution; tho WT was sim to Warp when it started out) AND some specific comparison too to a Hollywood producer (use Universal, obviously part of the NBC-Universal conglomerate)
how do these sometimes giant corporations go about targeting an audience? Marketing is key to this (BJD cleverly taps into a wide aud thru its soundtrack etc), but so is the use of stars (Richard Dyer's star system), setting/accent (focus on white, S.Eng, m-class?), and the trend of hybrid genres (rom-COMs reach out to males thru comedy aspect; LActually makes this explicit with its 'ironic' sexist music vid with Bill Nighy, a parody of Robert Palmer's 1980s 'Addicted to Love' music video. For a company like Warp X, use of stars generally won't be an option; they focus on working within familiar genres - eg the slasher Donkey Punch taps into the wide fanbase of horror/slasher movies, featuring a 'final girl' - a tough, resourceful female character who overcomes the typically male killer - to reach out to a female audience for this primarily male genre
British and Indie production companies will typically begin initial development then try to sign advance distribution deals that will in effect finance the production. WT used this strategy very successfully to build the company in its earliest days, before the tie-ups with first PolyGram then NBC-Universal. Slumdog Millionaire failed to win any financial backing in the US initially, British companies Celador and FilmFour stumping up most of the initial development funding, but did manage to get the last $5m of its budget by pre-selling distribution rights to to Warner (having rejected a $2m bid from Fox Searchlight - see wiki)
this route to funding a production is becoming more difficult, with distributors increasingly reluctant - or simply unable - to make payments in advance of production being completed (see Gdn article)
It will give you all you need for the four categories- mise-en-scene,
camerawork, editing (continuity editing, at least) and sound. Down the
side are the three categories P- point, D-data (or example) and Q-
question (how to relate point and example to the question set). This
model was suggested by Vicky Allen at Thomas Rotherham College, who gets
good results every year, so she should know!
So, Warp X is set up explicitly to foster the development of digital film-making (PRODUCTION) in the UK, which in general terms creates the prospect of more low-to-zero budget filmmakers entering the fray. Even comparatively high budget films, such as WT's Atonement, are being produced using digital film-making techniques. A quick look on Apple's web pages for Final Cut shows you just how many major productions, not just Indie efforts, are switching to digital film-making, and editing through software which once would have been a step down from industry level.
What this doesn't say, however, is that marketing costs remain, and without the clout and financial muscle of the big 6 especially, able to secure expensive advertising and favourable puff-pieces in the press and on TV in return for some access to their stars, Indie distributors continue to be at a huge disadvantage. Cinema chains are also discouraged from looking much further than the big 6, as EasyJet's Stelios found. Viral marketing is a possibility here of course...
For the big boys, though, this brave new world of cheap production, distribution and exhibition isn't viewed so brightly...they continue to dominate largely through this rather crass tentpole strategy; churning out high-budget spectacle movies which prioritise SFX over narrative, the recent Terminator Salvation and Transformers films being 'good' examples of these appalling character traits! It remains to be seen whether the much-hyped upcoming James Cameron project, Avatar, is more like Terminator 2 (technology married to a great narrative and convincing performances) or the 3rd and 4th installments of the franchise - which is now up for sale, if you have a few million burning a hole! Any democratisation of the film industry is straightforwardly a nightmare vision for them. Colin, the £45-budget (not a typo!) Brit-zombie flick (maybe you'll see a similar story about a Mr E. Clark before too long?!), is everything they fear. Blurring the lines between audience/consumers and producers is an exciting prospect (strike that; its a reality - look at the various YouTube re-workings of any hit movie; we've looked at Bridget Jones spoofed as a political thriller for instance), but not one that necessarily ensures the ongoing domination of these lumbering great conglomerate giants.
Can they even get us to pay?! BitTorrent and similar file-sharing technologies are used by most of your generation to some extent, leading folk your age to grow up with the at least partial expectation that you can access media for free. The big boys are trying to fight back through iTunes, and more specialist ventures such as Hulu, but could well be going the same way as the music business, which has seen profits plummet since Napster brought the prospect of free music to the world. The court case against The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine, seems to be an indication that the industry is determined to use the courts to combat online piracy, despite many commentators viewing this as pointless, futile and possibly even counter-productive. New laws have been proposed by the current government following high-profile lobbying by the film biz. You can see a range of articles on this here.Digital distribution of movies has the potential to save money for film distributors. A single film print can cost around US$1200[citation needed] (or $30,000 for a 1-time print of an 80-minute feature[8]), so making 4,000 prints for a wide-release movie might cost $5 million. In contrast, at the maximum 250 megabit-per-second data rate (as defined by DCI for digital cinema), a typical feature-length movie could fit comfortably on an off the shelf 300 GB hard drive—which sell for as little as $40 (retail price, volume prices are even lower) and can even be returned to the distributor for reuse after a movie's run. With several hundred movies distributed every year, industry savings could potentially reach $1 billion or more.
What this doesn't say, however, is that marketing costs remain, and without the clout and financial muscle of the big 6 especially, able to secure expensive advertising and favourable puff-pieces in the press and on TV in return for some access to their stars, Indie distributors continue to be at a huge disadvantage. Cinema chains are also discouraged from looking much further than the big 6, as EasyJet's Stelios found. Viral marketing is a possibility here of course...
For the big boys, though, this brave new world of cheap production, distribution and exhibition isn't viewed so brightly...they continue to dominate largely through this rather crass tentpole strategy; churning out high-budget spectacle movies which prioritise SFX over narrative, the recent Terminator Salvation and Transformers films being 'good' examples of these appalling character traits! It remains to be seen whether the much-hyped upcoming James Cameron project, Avatar, is more like Terminator 2 (technology married to a great narrative and convincing performances) or the 3rd and 4th installments of the franchise - which is now up for sale, if you have a few million burning a hole! Any democratisation of the film industry is straightforwardly a nightmare vision for them. Colin, the £45-budget (not a typo!) Brit-zombie flick (maybe you'll see a similar story about a Mr E. Clark before too long?!), is everything they fear. Blurring the lines between audience/consumers and producers is an exciting prospect (strike that; its a reality - look at the various YouTube re-workings of any hit movie; we've looked at Bridget Jones spoofed as a political thriller for instance), but not one that necessarily ensures the ongoing domination of these lumbering great conglomerate giants.
