Thursday, 19 April 2012

Tyrannosaur



  • Budget - £750, 000 with a grant from the National Lottery of £206,540
  • Remainder of the budget came from Warp X, Inflammable Films, Film4, Screen Yorkshire, EM Media and Optimum Releasing (StudioCanal). 
  • Released in October 2011
  • 37 UK Screens showed the film
  • Box Office Success - £244,563
I can conclude from this information that the film wasn't successful in making profit.

I have never watched or even heard of this film. I presume it is targeting a specific target audience. It is not a genre that would usually attract me and I haven’t seen it is advertised anywhere. I think the lack of advertising is the main reason. I think the conclusion that can be drawn from this is that there wasn’t a very high budget so the company couldn’t afford any marketing. 

It appeals to the British audience by using British actors in a British setting. There is tension in the trailer that grips the audience and I think the film seems like it will make the audience think more about the plot which may appeal to an older target group. There doesn't seem to be many effects which would be due to the lack of high budget but the focus seems be all on the story-line which will be a great positive if the plot is powerful!

I personally wouldn't like to watch this film because it seems slightly disturbing and prefer to watch films that are slightly less full on, humorous and with big stars.



From looking at the UK Box Office Information from the weekend of the 6th-8th April, I notice that most of the films originate from the USA and most of the distributing companies are American. Many of the distributing companies are part of the six major Hollywood Studios. The implications of this on the British audience is that there are often paying to watch American films. Also, the British film companies must find it difficult competing with the larger American companies with such large budgets. 

How does Battleship appeal to a British audience?

Production

  • Genre = Sci Fi Blockbuster - Appealing to a wide/mainstream audience
  • Synergy - Hasbro, the company that originally made the board game
  • Released by Universal Pictures - Media Conglomerate
  • Horizontal Integration - Controls one of all stages of the film making process = All profit goes back to the company. 
  • Vertical Integration - Owned by NBC Universal, a media entertainment company. It's made up of various different Media Companies.
  • Budget - $200 million
  • A range of high profile stars used, Taylor Kitsch, Brooklyn Decker, Rihanna, Lee Neeson.
Distribution
  • Released 11th April 2012. 
  • In the opening weekend of 13th - 15th April the film made £3.7 million in UK cinemas. 
  • $50 million marketing budget
  • The marketing campaign created a website entirely for the film which allows the audience to view the trailer, have various ‘experiences’ from the film and link to game on Facebook. As so many people all around the world use Facebook, it is very effective to have a game on there for various audiences to become involved and is a good promotion strategy!
  • The film has its own twitter page, which interacts directly with the public and contains links to various other websites to do with the promotion of the film. The twitter page also contains ‘exclusive’ information for people that are following the page, which is a great form of promotion as it gets audiences involved. Web 2.0 is used by the marketing campaign by using sites such as YouTube to show the trailer. The link to YouTube is on the twitter page along with images that have been uploaded. Audiences can also tweet to the market campaigners and this allows the filmmakers to involve audiences. 
Exhibition
  • Amazon offers to alert audiences when the DVD of Battleship becomes available to buy. This option appears when someone searches for the film on Love Film or Amazon itself and the alert is sent via email! Games for Xbox and PS3 are also available to buy on amazon. This is an example of Media Convergence. The film can then be viewed using DVD, BluRay once it has been released. 
  • Saturated Release = wide scale release all at the same time. 
  • Shown in 416 UK cinemas. 

Thursday, 29 March 2012

What area of the film industry do you think new technologies have had the biggest impact on and why?

 I think new technologies have had the biggest impact on exhibition due to the change in availability of film to audiences. Also, institutions have different ways of exhibiting their films which are now easier and cheaper. The internet and Web 2.0 are one of the main changes that have impacted the industry as websites such as YouTube and Love Film have been introduced. These websites make the channels from institutions and audiences direct. Cross Media Convergence affects the industry as new forms of Media are used to exhibit films. Smartphones are now used to download and view films, especially iTunes. The majority of the public have iTunes and if not iTunes, a computer of some kind. This makes downloading films accessible to almost everyone. There are also new changes such as 3D which keep the audience interested and entertained.