Case Study -Task 2

The Film Industry

Film and animation are the sectors that my Final Major Project will fall into. They both work a long side each other, seeing as my film is an animation. Both the sectors are quite similar, bearing in mind ownership and funding, thus why I will be talking about the film sector. It’s structure, distribution, ownership and impact on the market are all things which I will be covering.

The film industry is made up of two types of film companies, the major studios and the independents. The major studios are often known as the Hollywood blockbusters too. From this name, you can automatically tell that these films are likely to be pricey to make and well known. Some of the Hollywood studio distributors which are household names are Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney, Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Universal Studios and New Line Cinema. These companies are owned by their parenting companies, for example Fox is owned by New Corp. Their parenting companies are involved with lots of different forms of revenue and other interests in media. An example of this is that all of the well known film majors are owned by major television networks too (Fox and Fox Network), apart from Sony.

 Hollywood movies cost millions of pounds, take hundreds of hours with a huge cast and crew, lots of special effects and all for a few hours of audience entertainment. They use ‘top-notch’ technology and cast to make sure they gain their money back, plus more, they spent on marketing overseas, soundtrack rights and endless amounts of other aspects. Hollywood directors and actors are hugely known and people anticipate their next appearance. Their films are long lived and successful. These are the main difference between the major film industry and independent films.

On the other hand, independent films are created on a smaller budget. My film/animation for the FMP will fall under an independent film, as it hasn’t been made by the major companies. However, independent films will pair up with other film companies to enable them to gain their funding anand other areas of expertise. Independent films are thought to be distinguishable by their artistic styles, their unpredictable story lines, their characters, locations etc. This is a complete contrast to Hollywood films, as they are thought to be predictable with their ‘fairy tale endings’ and ‘boy meets girl’ situations. Independent films are often shot locally of nationally, and rarely afford to travel overseas due to their have a considerably low budget compared to Hollywood, who can afford to travel worldwide. They are often thought to have their five minutes of fame, with actors, directors and films that may only have a short period of time where they are widely known. This, however can reflect their budget again, not being able to cover costs of marketing worldwide and gaining the audiences they otherwise may have been able to.

A successful independent film is ‘This is England’, directed by Shane Meadows. The British drama is focused on the lives of young skinheads in 1983.Seven different companies produced it, including Film Four, the UK Film Council, Warp Films, Screen Yorkshire, Big Arty Productions and EM Media. The film became popular and so three years after it’s release, This is England ’86 was a new TV series that was produced, carrying on from the film and involving the same characters and gritty atmosphere.

Film 4 is not only a free movie channel on British freeview and television (owned by Channel 4), but also a film production company. They co-finance and develop British films and work with the most innovative talent in the UK. They fund around 20 films per year, most of them being first time screenwriters or directors.

The American film industry is dominated by film studios known as ‘The Big Six’. These are Warner Brothers, Paramount, 20^th Century fox, Walt Disney, Columbia Pictures and Universal Pictures. The companies which own the Big Six are known as conglomerates. Conglomerates defines as “A number of different things or parts that are put or grouped together to form a whole but remain distinct entities” [Google Dictionary] .The companies are owned by the conglomerates as follows:

·         Walt Disney Pictures owned by The Walt Disney Company (worlds largest media conglomerate)

·         Universal Pictures owned by GE (second largest company in the world) and Comcast (Largest telecommunications company in the US)

·         Warner Brothers owned by Time Warner (Second largest Conglomerate)

·         20^th Century Fox owned by News Corp (Third largest media conglomerate)

·         Paramount owned by Viacom (Fourth largest conglomerate)

·         Coblumbia Pictures owned by Sony Corporation (Fifth largest media conglomerate)

Britains film market is dominated by America with 75% of the total UK box office being American produced. Out of the top 20 successful films in the British box office, 18 of them were produced by the Big Six. Another example of this I found was from the website ‘boxofficemojo.com’. This is a screen shot from their website showing the top ten films and their distributors in 2012 so far. 

The chart shows that seven out of the top ten films were from a few of the Big Six, these being Disney, Fox and Sony.

The consolidation of the media ownership has it’s effects, one of them being that the small amount of Western conglomerates- mostly American, are taking over the global market. I think that this will eventually have a negative effect on the industry, as it will seem close to a ‘monopoly effect’, with few companies having most power over the industry, influencing the types of films coming from Hollywood.  

Looking at the structure and jobs in the film industry, ones highly involved in the creating of a film are as follows: screenwriting, feature film production, distribution and exhibition. Screenwriters are the people that think of idea for films, develop the idea to suit their target audience (as we have had to do in our FMP) and then write scripts from the idea. There are different assignments in screen writing. “pitched assignments” which are when a film project gets started by a script already written. These are often most successful. “Open” assignments are when film studios tell the scriptwriters what they want done, and this style is more competitive. Another way is for screenwriters to be approached to complete an assignment.

Production in film is the process of making the film from an initial idea to show what’s actually on screen with the final piece. A typical Hollywood-style film has the following stages of production: Development, pre-production, production, post production and distribution. These usually take about three years with development taking the first year, the second being preproduction and production and the third being distribution.

 Distribution is the next step to the structure of the film industry. Film distributers are people responsible for making the film seen to the public eye, either through cinemas, online or DVD, Blu-ray etc. It is arguably the most important part of the film industry, enabling audiences to connect to the films by the experience of the cinema or in the comforts of their own homes. In the UK, marketing is a big part of film distribution. In the independent film sector, they do not have long-term ties with distribution companies, marketing companies or a big list of helpful and reliable contacts like Hollywood would. In this sector, distribution can be divided into three stages: licensing, marketing and logistics. The logistics of distribution is to make agreements with the cinema on their ‘play-dates’. It’s important that they meet their deadlines of distributing and supplying cinemas with their film, as the cinema spends their money advertising and publicising their play-dates. When distributing, they handle 35mm film prints, costing around £1,000 each, unless subtitled which costs double. For easier handling reasons, the prints are split into 5 or 6 reels, each lasting 18-20 minutes. A flow chart below shows the distribution method of the prints.

  

Distribution of films is becoming easier, and it’s thought that van transportation of film tapes will soon be wiped out, with a lot of help from the vast developments of the internet. Digital screening costs around one tenth of a 35mm print. The UK Film Council and the Arts Council England created the digital screen network, in the hope to give UK audiences a much greater choice of films in cinemas. To do this, they equip over 200 cinemas in the UK the digital projection needed to give their audiences this wider choice and show them non-mainstream films. Some of these films include ‘Brighton Rock’, ‘My Week With Marilyn’ and the Oscar winner ‘In a Better World’. This organisation idea gave the equipment and necessities to independent cinemas who may have struggled otherwise to keep up with the well-known chain cinemas. Another way of digital distribution, which can have both positive and negative effects, is from websites such as YouTube. Lots of Disney films are known for having appearances on YouTube, although having being taken down a number of times, they keep cropping back up. This is something that would effect Disney, as people are able to view their films online, rather than going out and buying the DVD’s, Blu Rays etc. Pirate movie websites are also a threat, with the amount of websites offering free viewings of films dramatically increasing, I believe that the attitude towards buying DVD’s will worsen, and people will download and watch their films online much like they do with illegally downloading music. This will have the most impact on independent films, as they don’t have the money, backup and contacts that Hollywood does to be able to take legal action against these problems they may overcome.

Marketing is a strategy of distribution that the UK is renowned for. The most successful way of advertising new and up-coming films is to create a movie trailer. These are mostly played in cinemas before a film starts, which is the ideal way- your film being shown to ‘movie-goers’. It’s the producers chance to give the audience a taste of what the film has to offer and what to expect. However, film trailers can be difficult to get the right balance, as if too much information is given away, viewers will feel like they don’t have to watch the film. But, on the other hand, if not enough footage is shown it can be hard for the audience to understand what the movie is about. Films are also at great competition with each other, and poor marketing can make you lose your battle to the competition. A recent example of this is from the 2012 Disney film ‘John Carter’. The film was expecting to make a lot of profit from the box-office.  The person responsible for their marketing was MT Carney, an industry outsider who used to run a marketing boutique in New York. They rejected a lot of the ideas from the studio, including the look of the poster. The images used a put together to create the poster are thought to not appeal to the right audience and to perceive the right image that the film has. A quote from Stanton [found on Wikipedia] “My joy when I saw the first trailer for Star Wars is I saw a little bit of almost everything in the movie, and I had no idea how it connected, and I had to go see the movie. So the last thing I’m going to do is ruin that little kid’s experience.” Another aspect which made their film appeal to the wrong audience, even before it was released was the song used on the trailer by Led Zeppelin, called ‘Kashmir’. AS the song was recorded in 1974, they seemed to be appealing to the completely wrong audience. After watching the trailer, and a lot of other film trailers, I agree with the fact that the John Carter marketing sector appealed to the wrong audience. In films, music creates a lot of atmosphere and can tell a lot about the film, and using music from different eras gives the impression of the film being aimed at people living in that era. Because of their marketing screw up, and the fact that the film came out on the same weekend as Madagascar 3:Europe’s Most Wanted, they didn’t gain as much viewings as they would have hoped. To me, this comes as a surprise for Disney films, as they seem to constantly appeal to their right audience and gain the viewing figures they wish for.

It’s not just bad marketing that can have an impact on the sales of a film. In the eyes of films, you can never do too much marketing. The more marketing means more people know about your film, and the more money you are likely to make- if the right image of the film is given. The Blair Witch Project (1999) is a great well known example of good marketing. A lot of films benefit from social networks and YouTube nowadays, with word of mouth able to spread easily and the films buying space for adverts. Paranormal Activity (2009) has mostly Twitter to thank for their $193 million gross profit, from their film which was made with only $15,000. They encouraged people to write 140 character reviews for their film. The Blair Witch Project didn’t have this advantage, but they still managed to spread the news about their film from word of mouth. A term known for this is ‘viral marketing’, which defines as ‘A method of product promotion that relies on getting customers to market an idea, product, or service on their own by telling their friends about it’ [Google dictionary]. The film managed to convince their audience that the film was actual ‘found footage’. After researching the methods used for marketing the Blair Witch Project, the first thing I found was that they focused their strategy on wanting to entertain their audience, rather than selling it to their audience. This is known as ‘unmarketing’, because they focused solely on the story of the film rather than promoting the directors/actors etc. They went out to find their target audience instead of waiting for their audience to hear about them. They reached out to fans on online message boards to start with, and as they started to gain money from the film, they reached out via the Sci-Fi Channel. As they had a low budget for their film, they didn’t start to advertise mainstream until they had money to do so, and especially until they thought that their target audience was excited for the film, and so they pretty much knew they would get the money back. They took common fears, of the dark and the woods, of ghosts and witches and made the audience scared, but wanting more as the whole of the story was never actually told. Even before the film, they set up a website to keep the audience attached to wanting to see it.

After producing this case study, it has fed me with information about the different film sectors, their distribution, marketing and structure. It’s clear how important marketing can be to a film, how important the jobs of screen writers are and also distributors. From what I have learnt, it will encourage me and enable me to understand the process in making my Final Major Project if it were to industry standard both in Hollywood and Independent level.