Essay plan

Discuss the issues raised by media ownership in the production and exchange of media texts in your chosen media area.

Example of what I need to talk about -

Pros:

* Summit Entertainment is owned by Lionsgate which gives them an advantage in terms of budgets, funding for films attracting stars and distribution deals.

Cons:

* While big media companies grow and grow, they are dominating the film industry, stifling the chance of smaller companies e.g. to compete on the playing field.

* Lionsgate may insist on a particular star or style of a film - Summit Entertainment may take fewer creative risks as part of a large traditional organisation.

Producter of Breaking Dawn: Wyck Godfrey

known for producing all the Twilight Saga films, other big films such as I, Robot, Daddy Day Care, A Good Day To Die Hard

Lionsgate equired Summit Entertainment for $412.5 million

The Lionsgate brand may both help and hinder Summit Entertainment:

- Lionsgate produce a lot of horror movies such as 'The Last Exorcism' which could mean that they want to make Breaking Dawn Part 2 be more gore than the other Twilight

- Could help as Lionsgate are a very big rich company and have produced many successful films such as The Hunger Games

Homework notes

Distribution - third part of the film supply chain, often referred to as 'the invisible art'
Licensing - the process by which a distributor acquires the legal right to exploit a film. In distribution, licensing  itself can take place on two levels.
International distribution - ensures that films find their way to the 90+ market 'territories' around the world
Local distribution - involves the distributor acquiring the licence to release and exploit the film in a particular country. 
The launch of the film - in the UK, feature films are released initially theatrically. A theatrical opening is seen as the most effective way to create interest in a new film.
Marketing - in the UK, new films are released theatrically on Fridays. A distributor will look for a 'light' week. A further consideration for scheduling a release is the seasonality of the film.

Who should have the right to decide audiences should be protected - and from what?

Audiences are protected by many different people depending on their age group, for example cinemas, BBFC, parents, production companies and the writers themselves make decisions on what gets seen by who based on the contents of the film, whether it involves strong language, violence, sexual content etc. In this essay, I will be exploring who should have the right to decide audiences should be protected and from what.

I think that when it comes to children (up to the age of 12), parents should have the biggest right on what their children should be protected from. When it comes to taking your child to the cinema and for example if they are 13 and you want to take them to a 15 rated film, I think that it should be your choice as a parent its meant to be a childs guardian, so they will have more of an idea what is suitable for their child than the cinema and  BBFC. It is also a parents responsibility to ensure that their child is being looked after and they have to make sure they do this everyday as part of being a parent, so it would be common sense to allow a parent to choose. Saying this, when the film is available on dvd, the parent then has the choice on whether they allow their child to watch the film or not so protection from the BBFC is still limited as people underage can still get access to films via parents, television or internet.

I think that we, ourselves should also be able to decide what to be protected from. No one knows you as well as you know yourself therefore you yourself know whether you are suitable to watch a certain film. I don't think that institutions such as the BBFC should have full control over who should be protected and from what, because different people are suited to different things. People usually make the right decisions for themselves for example, if a person knows they do not react well to horror films, they will be unlikely to watch them as they will be unlikely to enjoy them. 

Although I think a lot of responsibility in what we choose to watch relies on ourselves, I think that the BBFC also contribute a lot towards this. Before watching any film, we are warned with what the film contains on posters etc, they tell us whether they contain unsuitable contents such as drug usuage, violence etc. I think that the BBFC are in a good position to give some protection to the general public in what they watch because if there was no protection what so ever, there could be a development in more extreme and disturbing films being distributed to anyone, which could cause many problems after such as disturbance or lead to more violent crimes being committed as people won't feel it's wrong if they constantly see it in cinemas/tv.

I think the production companies should also contribute into who should be protected and from what, as they would have contributed into producing the film so they will know what kind of things it contains and will know what kind of age groups the film would be unsuitable for. They will know before anyone what the films contain and will be able to come to a decision on roughly which age group the film will be targeted at. As I previously mentioned before, I think that we ourselves have the biggest decision in what we protect ourselves from but we can only protect ourselves from what gets produced, and before we can do any protecting the production companies will have already created the film.

In conclusion, I think that each individual should choose what they get protected from, as they are aware of what things frighten them or make them uncomfortable. Although I think this, I think that we also need institutions such as the BBFC to warn us of what films will contain so we are protected/warned before watching the film.  

BAFTAS 2013 - Research

What is BAFTA? BAFTA is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in cinema, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.

What are the awards? EE British Academy Film Awards, British Academy Games Awards, British Academy Television Craft Awards, British Academy Children's Awards, Arqiva British Academy Television Awards, British Academy Cymru Awards, British Academy Scotland Awards, BAFTA in Scotland New Talent Awards, The Britannia Awards

Who won what? Adapted Screenplay - Silver Linings Playbook (David O.Russell)
Make up and hair - Les Miserables (Lisa Westcott)
Animated film - Brave (Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman)
Original film music - Skyfall (Thomas Newman)
Cinematography - Life of Pi (Claudio Miranda)
Original screenplay - Django Unchained (Quetin Tarantino)
Costume design - Anna Karenina (Jacqueline Durran)
Outstanding British contribution to cinema - Tessa Ross
Director - Ben Affleck (Argo)
Outstanding British Film - Skyfall (Sam Mendes, Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, John Logan
Documentary - Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul, Simon Chinn)
Outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer - Bart Layton, Dimitri Doganis (The Imposter)
EE rising star - Juno Temple
Production design - Les Miserables (Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson)
Editing - Argo (William Goldenberg)
Short animation - The Making of Longbird (Will Anderson, Ainslie Henderson)
Fellowship - Sir Alan Parker
Film - Argo (Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck, George Clooney)
Short film - Swimmer (Lynne Ramsay, Peter Carlton, Diarmid Scrimshaw)
Film not in the English language - Amour (Michael Heneke, Margaret Menegoz)

How many 'British' winners were there?

British winners included Daniel Day-Lewis (for Best Actor in 'Lincoln') and Jacqueline Durran (for Best Costume Design in 'Anna Karenina'). Skyfall won Best British Film and Best Film Music, Swimmer won Best Short Film, Searching for Sugar Man won Best Documentary, Les Miserables won Best Sound, Best Costume Design. A lot of the BAFTA winners were from America or other nationality but there were still a lot of British winners.

Tessa Ross (one of BAFTA winners)
Tessa Sarah Ross (born 1961), is a BAFTA award winning UK film executive who is the Controlller of Film and Drama at Channel 4. She is also a director of the Royal National Theatre and a governor of the National Film and Television School.
She has been the executive producer of several notable British films including; Billy Elliot (2000), The Last King of Scotland (2006), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Four Lions (2010) and The Iron Lady (2011). In the 2010 New Year Honours she was awarded the CBE for services to broadcasting. At the 66th British Academy Film Awards on 10 February 2013 she received the award for 'Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema' that is presented annually in honour of Michael Balcon. The award was presented to her by the director Danny Boyle.
In February 2013 she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4.

Essay question

Who holds the most power in terms of influencing what films get made and seen?
There are varied stages in the film production cycle. Production, distribution, exhibition and marketing all have different influences on what films are made to be like with the help of audiences, consumers, studios, production companies, writers, stars, directors and all importantly the producer. It is arguable that all of these hold power in the influence of what films are made and seen and in this essay I will explore the ways in which different people influence what films are made and seen.

One arguement, which I myself think is the strongest, is that the audience holds the most power of what films get made and seen. Arguably, the people who physically make the films (producers/writers/production companies/directors) are majorly influenced in what they make by the audience. If the producers for example see that a film such as Harry Potter is doing well through box office stats, they may try to make their film similar to Harry Potter knowing that there is an interest in the fantasy series. At the end of the day, the audience will only go to see a film if they have some sort of interest in it, for example a film such as Twilight had many people interested due to the books which were written before the film was created, so when they film was created, it caused people to speculate in what the films were going to turn out to be like, which meant that they went to see them due to the interest they had in them.

On the other hand, it could also be argued that the studios also have a lot of the power as they choose where the films will be distributed. For example, if the studio decides to distribute a film to a cinema which isn't popular and easy to get to, it could put potential consumers and audience off seeing it which would decrease the amount of people going to see a film. Studios also have the power of what times a cinema shows a film so they could choose different times at different cinemas in order to get more people to see a film in whichever cinema they are closest to, for example Odeon might show a film at 15.30 but Vue might show it at 15.15 which gives the consumer more choice to go to a more convient cinema.

Another argument is that people who illegally watch films on websites such as Priate Bay also influence what films get made and seen. I think this is a strong arguement because if more and more films keep getting watched illegally, film production companies may not make enough profits meaning they might be unable to make films in the future. It could also mean that in the next film the production makes will have a smaller budget meaning the quality of films get worse and worse which might stop cinemas from showing them due to the quality worsening and people becoming disinterested in the films.

In conclusion, I think that all of these are important factors in what films get made and seen but I think that the audience has the biggest impact on what films get made and seen as they are the initially the beginning of the film production cycle as the majority of film making has to be based around what the audience/consumers want because if you make a film which has interest, it won't get seen which will mean all the money on the production will have been wasted.

Film distribution research

1. over one weekend, how many separate screenings are there? 79
2. how many films in total are being exhibited? 13
3. how many films are being screened serval times at the same cinema? 8
4. of these, how many are being screened at more than one cinema at the same time? 3
5. 
6.
7. what conclusions can you draw about film distribution in the UK? I have learned from this homework that cinemas usually tend to make sure that the cinema times of when a film is playing don't clash (and they rarely do), I didn't know this before but this is probably due to cinemas wanting as much customers as they can get at different types of the day without having much competition and different times are available at different cinemas to suit a person best. I've also learnt that the majority of films get shown more than once a day.

Notting Hill Case Study (1999)

Directed by     Roger Michell
Produced by     Duncan Kenworthy
Written by     Richard Curtis
Starring     Julia Roberts & Hugh Grant
Studio     Working Title Films
Distributed by     Universal Pictures
Release date(s) 21 May 1999
Running time     124 minutes
Country     United Kingdom
Language     English
Budget     $43 million
Box office     $363,889,700

English Cultural Representations
There is a typical British stereotype in Notting Hill. The typical British accent which most of the actors have, the scenery (London buses, red post boxes, black cabs) and also the typical stereotypical tea drinking.