VR virtual reality cinema coming

IN THIS POST: short overview of some major technogical changes from digitization, then a focus (TBC and rolling updates) on VR


The film industry, at times reluctantly, has embraced a series of new technologies over recent decades, and the disruptive forces of digitization always seem poised to transform what at heart is quite a conservative industry, locked into franchises, the star system (changing?) and dominated by a mere 'big six' companies despite all the changes.

As with cassette tapes, you may have been born after the VHS tape disappeared from the high street

DVD meant they could:

1. re-monetize back catalogue [long tail...]; just as the music industry got millions to replace their tapes/vinyl with (sonically inferior!) CDs so too did the movie industry make billions from VHS tapes being replaced
2. the monetizing went further with editionalising: usually starting with a vanilla (movie only, perhaps a trailer added) edition, and leading over time to any combination of special, collector's, ultimate (etc) edition, not to mention director's cut, with commentaries and other extras to push sales, plus footage cut for cinema release

Geek.com headline, 2014.

Avatar, Paul, Cornetto Trilogy: audience, marketing, digitisation

http://www.threeflavorsscreenplay.com/theworldsend/
https://www.instagram.com/theworldsendfilm/
https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/the-world's-end
https://www.facebook.com/TheWorldsEndMovieUK/
https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheWorldsEnd?src=hash
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/beyond-the-screen/id830552609?mt=8
Wend Intl trailer;
http://corporate.comcast.com/our-company/businesses/nbcuniversal#accordion-3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ynzqn83T1c

WorldsEnd UK site;

2016 cornetto trilogy compressed from DB3igs

Quite simply bringing together some of the material on here on these...



WT use game to market Paul - play it here.


might add more...

WARP'S £48K LE DONK
This is both a good example of how low budget Indies can compete ... and an illustration of how much more Warp could/should be doing when promoting their films, even if that is the job of the distributor!!!
In this case, Le Donk was self-distributed in the UK, with a VoD (convergence!!! digitisation!!! proliferation!!!) US release. Below is a screen recording browsing the Warp web page for this



The page did offer the opportunity to send 'an exclusive Le Donk... Christmas card' ... but the link is dead now ... AND just look at the 'latest' news (I checked again May 2015!) ... its on Tyrannosaur!!! If Chris Anderson's long tail theory is to work surely they need to try harder with the online marketing?!

US VoD link and a dead link to some smart online marketing

Self-distribution!

This sums up the issue with Warp's online marketing - too little effort!!!

...

3D Sky's not the limit for 3D after all

Launched with an Avatar exclusive, as brazen an example of both vertical and (with heavy plugs in The S*n for instance) horizontal integration, Sky has announced its shutting its 3D channel.

That's great news for the cinema industry, a strong sign that there are limits to the appeal of home cinema.The writing's been on the wall for 3D for some time now, but Sky is finally acknowledging the fact that, really, we just don't want to wear 3D glasses in our living rooms thank you very much.So Sky will pull the plug on its dedicated 3D channel this June. It will move its 3D content to its booming On Demand library section, giving it a much better home. That is, until Sky rolls out its 4K content and we forget this whole 3D thing ever happened. [http://www.techradar.com/news/television/tv/sky-just-pulled-the-plug-on-3d-tv-1292274.]

That's rather good news for the cinema industry at least, a sign that home cinema does have its limits.

Convergence + digitisation

def. of convergence: the concept of the distinctions between once distinct media platforms/institutions collapsing under the influence of new media and the ongoing processes of digitisation. For example, a typical newspaper (print) now offers web content, including podcasts (radio?), video (TV?), blogs etc

To further explore and explain this several additional terms are used; note all opportunities to utilise terminology for your exam! 'Digitisation' is explored below.

NB: I have posted on this topic many times since creating this post some years back!!! http://mediabritishcinema.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/convergence

Thats how I'd define 'convergence', an especially important concept for Media Studies and your AS exam, as so many consequences flow from this both in terms of how audiences access and consume/interact with the media and the institutions that produce, distribute and market media products.
(The exam board pick out 4 areas you need to be able to discuss with reference to your case studies - WT v Warp, + a brief comparison of both to the big 6 blockbuster Avatar - production, distribution, marketing + 'exchange' [the point at which an audience buys/consumes, perhaps co-creates, a text])

FURTHER DEFINITIONS + RESOURCES ON CONVERGENCE
Here's a vid which further explores the idea

It is a concept which has been discussed for some years now, with its consequences and whether its an entirely good thing seen as up for debate:

Perhaps we will reach a point of consolidation when the pace of technological change slows and the audience catches up, but at the moment most companies with both offline and online enterprises still see the vast majority of their revenues and costs lying with their traditional, offline businesses. Yet they are increasingly aware that this will tip in the opposite direction in the middle distance. So how should the transfer be managed?
... What we will see from media companies are assumptions about the dominant medium, be it print or TV, transferred to the newly converged online world without adequate recognition that the two are completely different entities. (Emily Bell: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jul/15/comment.media)

4 Weddings Reunion

Listen yourselves here.

Students aren't exactly a prime demographic for BBC Radio 4, so its a fairly safe bet that none of you were listening to the latest episode of The Reunion, a series which brings back together those involved in major cultural, sporting and news events to reflect. This saw the director, producer and several of the cast reunited, along with archive material of Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, the great Barry Norman on Film 94, and so forth.

At the time of writing you can still listen to it yourselves through the iPlayer.

UPDATE: GUARDIAN INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR/PRODUCER TO MARK 20TH ANNIVERSARY

SAMPLE QUOTE:
"A fabulous object, says Curtis, as Kenworthy heaves out a huge, leatherbound folder. It's the size and weight of a couple of Britannicas – a shooting schedule filled with miniature detail about the day-to-day demands on cast and crew. The volume, Kenworthy explains, is a relic of pre-computer film scheduling. "Four Weddings was on the cusp of old-style British film-making," Curtis adds. "It was the last movie I worked on that was cut on [original] film stock, not computer. I've always been grateful that it was shot by Mike in such a lively, gritty way. It's a sketch movie, and he directed it as if it were a drama."

A few interesting points from the R4 feature - though this is obviously far from a 'contemporary example' it is still useful to help to grasp how the industry operates, and to get a feel for how student productions do echo some characteristics of major feature film shoots!

• Given the role the film played in laying the foundation for the phenomenal success of Working Title as the leading UK film production company (discounting the Potter/Bond franchises), its easy to forget how very, very modest the budget was: just $4.5m (about £2.5-3m).
• Director Newell recalls how this meant even basic reshoots were generally impossible, and most shots had to be done 1st take - student filmmakers actually work under less (financially-directed) pressure than this! Unlike Newell and producer Duncan Kenworthy (his involvement predates WT picking up the film for development; he played the main role in putting together an attractive package, with name stars, tight script and distributor-friendly director attached), you're not considering the cost of overtime for salaried crew, plus catering, travel and accomodation costs and how to cover this from a budget which is already carefully calculated to see you through the entire production!

Digitisation and the piracy debate

TBC
Is the piracy debate overplayed by the film industry?
Are the ads starting every DVD which link film piracy with organised crime likely to impact on youth - or perhaps the alarmist message is aimed at politicians, not consumers? Then there is the Industry Trust for Intellectual Property Awareness £5m campaign, Moments Worth Paying For (backed up with a UKFC/National Lottery funded website, "findanyfilm.com", which locates legal DVD/download links for any film. [source]
Its also arguable that the legal moves against the likes of Kickass Torrents are tokenistic.
Look more closely at what is being pirated - its the Hollywood productions; only highly marketed British productions are likely to appear on the likes of Torrent sites (the likes of a Loach movie is unlikely to attract many 'seeds'!). [source]
Some users feel justified in pursuing piracy given the distribution strategies of the majors: only sending cinema prints to the UK after the US run has finished (the rare exceptions are films like Avatar which are given an incredibly expensive worldwide release). Plus, many British films simply won't make it to cinema screens. Then there's the pricing of cinema tickets, and the increasingly poor cinema experience, blighted by smartphone wielding youth. Cineworld's targetting of 35-44+ through
luxury food etc suggests an alternative strategy to lawsuits, as do the wave of streaming and download options becoming available.

3D declining in 2013

You can find much more on the key topic of 3D cinema in this post.
Back in 2011 there were some arguing 3D would soon decline - and now it seems it may have peaked.

3D films set for popularity slide

First drop in 3D box office projected for this year despite hotly tipped summer blockbusters, according to Fitch Ratings report

• James Arden
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 April 2013 15.23 BST
• Jump to comments (42)

Box office blues … 3D exploded into our cinemas with Avatar in 2009, but now the novelty appears to be wearing off. Photograph: Rex Features

Audiences for films in 3D are projected to decline in 2013, the first drop since 3D exploded with Avatar in 2009, according to a report compiled by Fitch Ratings.
Since the success of James Cameron's sci-fi epic, more and more movies have jumped on the latest iteration of the 3D format, which is no longer confined to animation or big-budget action films. The likes of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby and Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity will also exploit the new technology.
However, Fitch has concluded the novelty is starting to wear off. 3D box office takings in the US and Canada have remained static at $1.8bn for the past two years, and are set for a slight year-on-year decline in 2013 despite a strong lineup of 3D releases, including Star Trek Into Darkness, Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel.
"Attendance likely benefited from the initial proliferation of 3D films," says the report. "However, the initial excitement has dwindled, and consumers are focused again on the overall quality of the film and are weighing the cost of a premium ticket versus a base 2D ticket."
While overall box office takings increased in 2012 to a record-breaking $34.7bn worldwide, 3D failed to make a similar impact. "Going to the movies remains one of the lower-cost forms of entertainment," says Fitch's study. "However, increased pricing, particularly on 3D films, may erode this perception over time."

GLOBAL BOX OFFICE: continued US dominance?

Figures for the following are taken from Phil Hoad's article, Hollywood's hold over global office - 63% and falling (2.4.13), itself based on this MPAA annual report. Figures are for the full year 2012.
Worldwide box office: $34.7bn
US $10.8bn
non-US global box office = 69% of total (ie, US = a third of all global box office)
Asia-Pacific box office jumped 15% to $10.4bn, with China overtaking Japan as world's 2nd-biggest market (Hoad argues that it won't maintain the 36% rise every year + so rejects the argument that it will overtake the US by 2020)
'One thing beyond dispute is that Asia-Pacific is poised to overtake the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East and Africa), which shrank slightly last year to $10.7bn, very soon.'
'The third region used by the MPAA for global box-office purposes – Latin America – logged a small rise, from $2.6bn to $2.8bn.'

Crucially, note that these figures are for tickets in those regions - US-produced films continue to dominate worldwide, hoovering up nearly 2-thirds of global box office (60-70%) - see below for more details. That actually means a steady fall since Avatar set the recent high in 2010, although 4 of the big 6 made over $2bn from non-US box office in 2012!

A lot of figures, the point is that these provide useful, specific evidence of the context of US dominance in which UK companies must operate.

The MPAA report is still, sadly, low on detail on overseas activity, despite abroad being where Hollywood's compass points these days. It certainly doesn't broach the touchy question – loaded with the old cultural-imperialism chestnut – of exactly what level of dominance Hollywood enjoys worldwide. So, using Metacritic's figures for respective studios' takings in 2012, I've done some calculations of my own. If worldwide box office was $34.7bn, and the six majors' combined box office was $21.773bn, that means American cinema enjoyed a minimum 62.7% share of the globe (this doesn't take into account films by smaller producers, including Lions Gate, which is virtually a proper studio now). Applying the same methods for the previous three years, the percentage comes out as: 2009, 63.9%; 2010, 67.4%; 2011, 66.9%; 2012, 62.7%.
Does this four-year snapshot mean anything? It certainly reinforces that the US remains the 900lb gorilla of world cinema – gripping what, if complete stats were available, would probably be closer to 70+% of all box-office receipts. But Kim Jong-un and devotees of cultural diversity can also comfort themselves with the fact that this share seems to be dropping – from a 2010 peak when Avatar skewed the spread – at a time when overseas markets are expanding rapidly and the studios are straining to devise "global content". And the drop was a fairly dramatic one in 2012, despite a fair performance across the board from the big six (four made it over the $2bn mark in international markets), and a year that contained a No 3 entry for Disney, Avengers Assemble, on the all-time list. So this shows why the MPAA flapped so hard about the Chinese government's anti-competitive practices – forcing US blockbusters to run off against each other on the same weekend, and blackout periods for foreign releases. As new cinema markets become larger and more sophisticated Hollywood will have to fight harder to retain the status quo.

Cinema in 2013 will be...

Lengthy feature, broken down into shorter themed sections, from the Gdn Film Blog (if you don't already follow it you should!) here on what 2013 will bring for the cinema industry: read the article here or (partially reproduced) below.  

Care to add your own predictions as a comment? Will the 3D boom continue or tail off? Will home cinema 3D once again undermine cinema? Will streaming overtake DVD sales as a source of revenue? Will the window between exclusive theatrical exhibition and DVD/TV/streaming continue to shrink? Will the US audience continue to shrink as a % of Hollywood revenues for its own films - and if so, will this lead to greater multi-ethnicity in the casting of leads, or a shift away from depicting American power (surely a key tool of US political hegemony)? Will digitisation open up greater opportunities for Indie producers ... or will the tentpole strategy (closely tied to franchising sequels, prequels and remakes/reimaginings) continue to maintain big 6 global dominance? Will YOU go to see any film in the cinema in 2013 - or turn increasingly to viewing film on tablets, laptops etc?

Brits in Spandex and girl power: movie trends that will keep us talking in 2013

Last year, Hollywood was flush with international cash and films starring Matthew McConaughey. What will this year hold?

Tom Shone, 3.1.13, http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2013/jan/03/brits-spandex-movie-trends-2013 

Angelina Jolie as Maleficent represents the latest trend for Actresses of a Certain Age Who Aren't Really That Old: playing the bitch. Photograph: Disney

Time travel was popular. Prequels were hot. As were guns-for-hire, vampires and movies set on boats. Which of the year's cinematic trends, people, cultural avatars and epiphenomenon are most likely to set the agenda for 2013?

Jennifer Lawrence

In X-Men First-Class, Jennifer Lawrence wore the lightly stunned look of someone suffering from an acute case of Newcomer Bends. But then she narrowed her eyes, strung her bow and fired The Hunger Games towards $686m: Lawrence's imperturbability was revealed as the genuine article. The scene in Silver Linings Playbook where she walks into de Niro's lair and has him eating out of her hand in under five minutes may just win her an Oscar at the tender age of 22. If that weren't reason enough for New York magazine to put her at the top her their "Celebrity Brunch League" – the lost of famous people they'd most like to have pancakes with – the editors listed a few more:

She complains about her fussy premiere clothes; she crashes into cars while looking for Honey Boo Boo. There was that time that her entire family went to Sleep No More in search of orgies … Jennifer Lawrence cannot be contained by your Movie Star Rules of Decorum; Jennifer Lawrence has too much to share.

We concur. She's like Liz Taylor without the alimony.

Girls

Jennifer Lawrence wasn't the only ballsy princess of 2012. We also had the flame-haired, cinch-waisted Princess Merida in Pixar's Brave, the studio's first female protagonist; plus Kristin Stewart riding, fighting, and shooting her way through Snow White and the Huntsman, not to mention her swan song for beloved Bella, now a momma grizzly protecting her vampire cub in the last Twilight movie. They all added up to "an interesting new breed of warrior princesses," said the New York Times' AO Scott, "whose ascendance reflects the convergence of commercial calculations and cultural longings."
Much of the credit must go to Lionsgate, who released both Breaking Dawn Part 2 and The Hunger Games, thus proving conclusively that young female actresses can 'open' and power a movie move way past the $100 million mark. "Girls actually need superheroes much more than boys," said Gloria Steinem, approvingly. Boys aren't the only ones to play Han Solo.
Princess Merida – and her bow and arrow – were big hits in 2012. Photograph: Pixar

Paul/Avatar essay/guide

Watch the trailer below:

This is from the just released (13.3.2011 in UK, 20th in USA) Paul, a $40m WT production starring Nick Frost and Simon Pegg.
Here's WT's web page on Paul, packed with multimedia features - listed on http://www.workingtitlefilms.com/features/video/id/226/hd-trailer
 Paul and Avatar