CONVERGENCE Love Actually mini-sequel for TV

What joy - a sequel to the wonderful Love Actually, the profound Richard Curtis classic that puts would-be auteurs like Welles, Hitchcock, Scorsese et al to shame.

Tragically, there will be only ten minutes of this cinematic feast, delivered through TV, as part of the Comic Relief telethon that Curtis helped create. One can only hope for a fourth Bridget Jones movie to ease the pain.

Thanks to Richard for alerting me to this televisual splendour, a nice example of convergence, with the TV/film divide fading - About a Boy being another Working Title example.

LA itself has become a meme since its release; as this article notes, comparisons have been made between the Grant character and Canadian PM Trudeau this week.

A notoriously polarising film, Love Actually’s cultural currency has grown in the 14 years since it was released. The film has been repeatedly unpicked, spoofed and deconstructed; four foreign language films – in Japanese, Hindi, Polish and Dutch – have also been inspired by the movie.

The showdown between Hugh Grant’s upstanding UK prime minister and the boorish, lecherous US president – reportedly based on a Bill Clinton/George W Bush hybrid – has been a touchstone of political discourse ever since. Even this week, Canadian premier Justin Trudeau found himself compared to Grant, following his meeting with US President Donald Trump. 

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UGC #IvorIsComing to Shaun of the Dead

'The text' extends far beyond the 'product' officially released...

[Hoping to finally find some time in a few weeks to work through months of mainly smartphone-sourced posts and properly format/illustrate these ... and here's another for that growing catalogue...]

Great example of the UGC concept which provides a rather funny demonstration of why Gauntlett, Gillmor and more are right to write of "the former audience" in the web 2.0 era (OK, so the shift to social media online dominance gives some sway to the web 3.0 label, but that's yet to gain the same currency).

Scroll to the bottom of the Unilad article linked below [NB: comments, fairly typically, contain strong language, and the article itself contains some - I've linked a Love, Actually alternative at the bottom] and you'll see a doctored SotDead still, one of many filmic responses to the viral mocking of an Irish hipster. I'll share a screenshot in due course.

Working Title, never mind their conglomerate parent NBCU or SotD's distributor, have no control over this - though surely smarter film firms will be keen to share, encourage and maybe even (albeit with risks of backlash) create such UGC?

There's convergence here too: a website accessed through a social media platform reporting on and sharing Twitter and Instagram trending content which features many film references, and which I, like most, accessed and viewed on my smartphone before further sharing on Blogger!

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

Yule be watching... Xmas movie traditions in the digital age

Any comments/suggestions (including links)? Add a comment and I'll look out for further links/clips to embed at the bottom of this post

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In this article I'll look at some of the movies we most associate with Xmas; why TV channels seem to keep the biggest turkeys for Xmas Day; and Xmas movie traditions around the world. We start with Love Actually and Elf and bad news for C4...

It's something I've become fairly oblivious to - when I do get back home for a family Xmas gathering, music shows tend to be the compromise viewing - but there are many well established Yuletide movies, screened and keenly viewed year after year. An email from Mrs Morgan alerting me to this article reminded me of this curious tradition; it has become newsworthy that Elf won't be on free-to-air terrestrial TV this year, but rather Sky Movies, who have taken up the UK TV rights from under the nose of C4.

I've blogged on Mr Curtis' questionable output on many previous occasions, eg here; however, there is no doubting the phenomenal commercial success of Curtis, regardless of the representation issues raised

My childhood memories of Xmas TV are dominated by the Bond movie reruns (and the Top of the Pops Xmas specials!) ... but also, when I was really young, of this very, very dated kids movie being shown every year (and I always insisted on watching it!): Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World (1973)

WT early days: MBL/WYWH

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Marketing 3x wt case studies from DB3igs

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Today we'll be building on our initial learning around WT's early history and subsequent development into the leading UK film producer.
Back when they started out it was all so very different...

We'll look at their 1st 2 films as WT: MBL (Stephen Frears, 1985) [IMDB] and WYWH (David Leland, 1987) [IMDB]
Chances are you've heard of neither before now, but one of them created a memorable (and slightly rude!) catchphrase: 'up yer bum'...


MBL cost just £650k, WYWH slightly more at £1m; both were acclaimed by film critics and both today are seen as classics. Lets tease out what makes these 2 early WT films so different from almost  all the subsequent releases (4Weds, NotHill, BJD etc).

Here's the trailer for MBL:

We'll look at marketing in some detail, but what expectations does this trailer create for YOU? (remember, part of this topic is the ability to think of how YOU operate as a film consumer)
Does it strike you as typically British - if so, why ... and if not, why?!

A key point to grasp for this exam is that you'll need very specific examples of actual films to write about - particular scenes/shots/elements. So, your note-taking needs to be very detailed and precise, ie your denotation of these scenes picked out as useful. These are effectively the same as quotes for an English Lit exam!

Lets now look at the film's opening - the DVD is available for you to borrow from the library (ditto WYWH and many more WT/Warp films, + some Ealing, Hammer...); I've found the opening on YouTube too:
As You watch this, consider again:
(i) what signifiers there are of Britishness, and what general representations there are
(ii) the general style or genre of cinematography, mise-en-scene etc
(iii) the readings available - do you think as a teen in 2012 you can follow the director/cast/editor's preferred reading?


The early WT was a brave, adventurous company prepared to take risks:

• the unknown Daniel Day-Lewis got his break in this movie (as Emily Lloyd would with WYWH)
• with the right-wing Thatcher government in place, supported by an almost entirely right-wing press, creating a film centring on an Asian character was unheard of and far from the commercial, money-making logic that later lead to so many Hugh Grant vehicles
• to make him gay too was guaranteed to attract 'flak' [THEORY TIP: Chomsky's propaganda model argues that five filters, including flak (criticism/attacks from media 'shoot down' radical ideas/texts), weed out radical/leftie thoughts from our media which exist to serve and reinforce the powerful, NOT to serve democracy]
• before WT hooked up with PolyGram and then NBC-Universal, it had to fight to find the financing for movies - Film4 was key to getting this film made, though it was only the success of the film at the EIFF that persuaded a distributor to fund a cinematic release and marketing campaign to go with it (it was intended to be a TV-movie only)
• with WYWH they went back to the past - but unlike the cosy heritage/costume dramas of today, they did so to present a countertypical, radical representation of the repression of women in wartime and 50s Britain

Turning now to WYWH, here's a few clips; as before -
As You watch this, consider again:
(i) what signifiers there are of Britishness, and what general representations there are
(ii) the general style or genre of cinematography, mise-en-scene etc
(iii) the readings available - do you think as a teen in 2012 you can follow the director/cast/editor's preferred reading?


Review your notes; what can you learn from these examples that might help you discuss any of the topic prompts provided by the exam board (see below)?

Candidates should be prepared to understand and discuss the processes of production, distribution, marketing and exchange as they relate to contemporary media institutions, as well as the nature of audience consumption and the relationships between audiences and institutions. In addition, candidates should be familiar with:

• the issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice;
• the importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production, distribution and marketing;
• the technologies that have been introduced in recent years at the levels of production, distribution, marketing and exchange;
• the significance of proliferation in hardware and content for institutions and audiences;
• the importance of technological convergence for institutions and audiences;
• the issues raised in the targeting of national and local audiences (specifically, British) by international or global institutions;
• the ways in which the candidates’ own experiences of media consumption illustrate wider patterns and trends of audience behaviour.

This unit should be approached through contemporary examples in the form of case studies