SEMIOTICS of 4 Working Title posters

Posters can be a little awkward to analyse, as we'd normally imagine any character pushed to the top of the frame to denote the shot type, but these are typically cropped out shots. (Specifically, we used a mix of poster/DVD cover)

4 WT posters were picked, brief points follow two examples ...

In each example, look closely at how basic framing (rule of thirds: place the important action/subject centrally) is used to easily signify the importance of characters (literally central to the narrative!)...

There are multiple obvious anchored preferred readings, but lets focus on the binary opposition...

This is signified through the colour blocks and the light/dark contrast of the two colours and the framing of the two lead characters (same actor).

Whilst this anchors a preferred reading of the brother on the white side as protagonist, and the brother on the blue side is signified/connoted as antagonist, there is also a skilful ambiguiety, or polysemy (narrative enigma!), encoded too: the 'good' brother is partially stood on 'the dark side' and is also wielding a gun! There is also equivalence drawn as it is a medium-long two shot; their gazes are similar, looking sideways off-frame ... though the divide between the two is cleverly anchored by their looking in different directions!!!

The connoted moral ambiguiety (not quite a fully anchored Proppian archetype of the hero) is in keeping with modern values as seen through the cultural impact of shows like Dexter, Sopranos and Breaking Bad and even some of the smash hit comic book adaptations, not least the Dark Knight trilogy.



Again, multiple aspects of a preferred reading are accessible, but lets focus on the anchorage of genre hybridity within this famously triple hybrid of zom-rom-com...

The 'zom' element is simply denoted through the literal use of zombies and the title itself, though their framing signifies who our protagonists are, whilst connoting Pegg as the central protagonist, or Proppian archetype of the hero.

Its a three-shot, not a two-shot, as an over-emphasis on the 'rom' component is not desired, and the 'com' is multiply anchored, including the female holding flowers and the bizarre 'weapons' wielded by all 3 (garden spade, cricket bad and chain), the bright colouring (playing on the blood red) and of course the bubble font of the title and the graphic of the hand within the 'A'.

Anyone who somehow misses the many signifiers to anchor this can rely on the tagline!




Can you apply this to the 2 additional egs below? Look at how Theory anchors serious drama, or how Bridget Jones's Baby anchors its hybrid genre (rom-com), and the primacy of the female audience for this (the com conventionally makes rom-coms more palatable for a secondary male audience!).




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BOX OFFICE: Gant Rule in 2016

IN THIS POST:
A definition of 'the Gant Rule'; testing it out with the summer 2016 UK/US box office; why is this so profoundly significant for understanding the British cinema market; how satirical cartoon Curtisland illustrates this; why does it not always work (including Bridget Jones example).

I was surprised just now to find that 'the Gant Rule' doesn't bring up many relevant hits ... until the phrase 'box office' is added to the search.

Lets have a fresh look at this...

A SHORT DEFINITION OF 'THE GANT RULE'*
Box office analyst Charles Gant (who has a weekly Guardian column, but whose writing appears in many other publications worldwide) has long argued that a typical transatlantic hit (a success in both the UK and US markets) will make ten times as much in the US ($ figures) as in the UK (unadjusted £ figures).

In short, for a UK/US hit, UK £box office x10 roughly = US $box office

*it is highly advisable to put such terms in '' to help denote them as technical terms; the media world is so vast and complex, no single examiner will be familiar with every conceivable term

Is he right? Usually, yes!

READ MORE:
I have blogged on this a few times...
Use the Gant Rule tag to find previous posts - or simply make your own comparisons with films' UK/US box office!

TESTING THE GANT RULE: SUMMER 2016 UK v US BOX OFFICE

 Captain America: Civil War + The Secret Life of Pets examples

Using figures from his ScreenDaily column, Gant looked at the 2016 summer box office on both sides of the Atlantic. Jump straight to the number one hit and you'll see a prime example of the Gant Rule in effect: Captain America: Civil War took £37m in the UK and $407m in the US. That's precisely x11 the UK figure - pretty accurate forecasting there!

WORKING TITLE new strategy with top two in UK box office

As I've frequently said, you can learn a lot by following box office analyses such as The Guardian's regular series.

The headline story today* is the incredible achievement of Working Title in having the top two films in the UK this week - US studios may easily manage marketing multiple movies at a time, but its rare to see this from a British company (albeit a studio subsidiary).

The benefits of their vertically integrated relationship with NBC-U are apparent, with distribution either directly through Universal or another of its subsidiaries, StudioCanal - described here as an Indie, which it has long ceased to be.

*Charles Gant's weekly, must-read, column: Peak performance: Everest climbs to the top of UK box office. Below: quotes from this, followed by bullet points on what you can learn from this.

[EXCERPT1] UK production company Working Title occupies the top two slots in the chart, with Everest and Legend. There may have been some disquiet at the company over distributors Universal and StudioCanal dating the films for release just one week apart, but both are successfully coexisting in the market. Despite a diverse portfolio of titles, Working Title was for many years defined by its Richard Curtis-scripted comedy smashes, but the success of Everest and Legend – following on from The Theory of Everything in January and Rush in 2013 – should finally redefine perceptions.

KEY POINTS IN BRIEF1:

• its extremely unusual for a BRITISH company to have the top two box office films
• each with a different distributor (though SC is owned by NBC-U)
• WT's reputation has been based on rom-com hits, but a more serious, drama-centred approach is emerging (making it more like Warp, a point not made in the article). Here's a screenshot of their movies since 2012 - About Time is the only Richard Curtis rom-com:

[EXCERPT2] First place: Everest
Everest had been in development for more than a decade before cameras rolled in 2014 with Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur at the helm; in 2004, Stephen Daldry had gone to Everest to film background shots. The true story of a notorious climbing disaster in May 1996 – the subject of Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air and other published accounts – the 12A-certificate film is targeted broadly, with significant presentation in 3D and Imax. A handy £658,000 in previews boosted the opening total to £3.16m. Comparisons are tricky, since climbing disaster films are rare. Fictional feature Vertical Limit (2001) kicked off with £1.9m, or about £3m when adjusted for ticket-price inflation. Cliffhanger (1993) began with £1.35m.

KEY POINTS IN BRIEF2:

• Everest is another in a recent line of WT serious dramas
• its not a 'tentpole' but is taking the four quadrant approach, seeking male, female, young and older audiences - the 12A is key to this strategy
• releasing on IMAX and 3D formats is also driving this four quadrant strategy - these push up production costs considerably, but are also key to the wider cinema industry's fightback against the rise of high quality home cinema
• there have been comparable movies, but Everest is taking in much higher box office

[EXCERPT3] Everest is the eighth No 1 hit for Universal this year, following The Theory of Everything, Fifty Shades of Grey, Fast & Furious 7, Pitch Perfect 2, Jurassic World, Minions and Straight Outta Compton. Universal, together with Fox (six chart toppers) and Disney (five) have dominated the box office this year. Warners, Paramount and Sony have had four No 1s between them; indie StudioCanal scored last week with Legend.

KEY POINTS IN BRIEF3: 

• after mixed fortunes in recent years, Universal is 2015's leading distributor (the dominance of American, specifically 'big six', vertically integrated distributors continues in the British market and globally)
• StudioCanal is misleadingly labelled an Indie here: its a subsidiary of NBC-U, and you'll see it listed on many Warp and WT films (previously named Optimum Releasing)

Above + below: Screenshots from Amazon Prime's 'Hidden Gems' list: StudioCanal is seen as a distributor of alternative, not so mainstream films: 21/36 films on this list are distributed by SC. Several of these 'hidden gems' are Warp Films productions, a fair description as they tend to get very limited marketing and so pass under the radar. Until now, YOU probably haven't heard of most of their films! Note the typically high (for Warp) BBFC certs from this small sample: 18 (Tyr, Kill List) and 15 (Sub); a similar sample of WT films would more likely be 12/15.

[EXCERPT4] Second place: Legend
Despite pretty decent weather at the weekend, Legend fell by a relatively gentle 34% in its second frame, delivering a 12-day tally just short of £10m. Legend’s total is just ahead of Tom Hardy’s other big 2015 hit, Mad Max: Fury Road, at the same stage of its run, after two weekends of play. The success of Fury Road rested on an appetite for a high-profile franchise revival, whereas Hardy’s dual performance as Ronnie and Reggie Kray is Legend’s chief selling point.
Until a year ago, StudioCanal had scored only two £10m-plus hits – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) and Rush. In the past 12 months, that tally has risen to six, with the release of The Imitation Game, Paddington, Shaun the Sheep Movie and now Legend, which crossed £10m on Monday. As for Hardy, his biggest hits have been in supporting roles in blockbusters such as The Dark Knight Rises and Inception. Fury Road was his first lead role to pass £10m in the UK, and Legend is his second, making 2015 a significant turning point for the actor. Legend will soon be nudging the top 20 18-certificate films of all time in the UK, a list led by Fifty Shades of Grey, Gone Girl and The Wolf of Wall Street.

KEY POINTS IN BRIEF4: 

• no matter how good the marketing campaign, factors such as weather can determine a film's fortunes. Also:
• Distributors look carefully at what competition they might face in any given release window (not unlike TV schedulers)
• most major movies make the highest amount of box office in the opening weekend and 1st week of release, with the take usually sharply falling from there; the marketing spend is focussed on that opening (there are exceptions: Warp's Four Lions had its number of prints doubled (from 115 to 230) after a surprisingly successful opening week)
• typical WT production strategy: including an A-list star to help sell the movie in the US and the wider world; they don't rely on UK box office (Warp largely do)
• StudioCanal typically distribute lower budget, often Indie (eg Warp) films, but since summer 2014 have had FIVE films grossing over £10m in the UK (a figure few films hit), having had only ONE before then (WT's TTSSpy in 2011)
• 18-rated films rarely make as much as 12/15-rated films as 1 of the 4 quadrants (youth) are ruled out; Legend is a fairly rare example of a WT 18-rated film (most Warp are 15 or 18 by contrast) but will be at least one of the top 20 highest grossing 18s in UK history

[EXCERPT5] Top 10 films, 18-20 September
1. Everest, £3,160,154 from 567 sites (new)
2. Legend, £2,446,860 from 544 sites. Total: £9,972,511

KEY POINTS IN BRIEF5:

• a British production company having the top two is unheard of; US production dominates the UK market 
• a UK hit will be on 300-550 screens; a US hit 3,000-5,000 screens

DETAILS OF TASK BELOW