Hollywood Film - Avatar

My notes on Avatar;

• Directed by James Cameron
• Budgeted $237,000,000
• Grossed $2.6 billion, the highest grossing film of all time
• Won many Oscars and Golden Globes
• Cameron had the vision/idea for Avatar 20 years ago, but had to wait for the technology to catch up with his ideas.
• Cameron patented a digital camera system called 'fusion digital camera system'
• A handheld monitor was used to film Avatar 
• Footage is 70% CGI, including the female lead

Production

• Cast wore motion capture suits whilst acting out their scenes on a 'performance capture' stage, six times bigger than anything previously used in Hollywood
• Realism was improved by using a skull cap to capture facial expressions with close camera enhancement
• Motion capture makes 3D easier. This technique was more closely aligned with the way high end computer games are developed
• One major advantage was the creation of a virtual monitor. This allowed the director to see motion capture results in real time
• Cameron developed new techniques
• Innovative filming rig mimicked the retina of the human eye, which provided the illusion of depth
• 21.08.09 (my birthday) was officially designated 'Avatar Day' - giving a full 15 minuets of teaser footage at hundreds of sold out cinemas across the planet
• 21.4.09 - 20th Century fox launched the industries first rich media interactive trailer supporting the DVD. Clicking on points of interest, consumers can access extended clips from the film and in depth information about the world and inhabitants of Pandora.

Exhibition

• Exhibition in cinemas required a digitally equipped cinema, also with a pair of specialised 3D glasses
• 3d cinema tickets are more expensive
• 320 out of 3600 cinemas are digitally equipped in the UK. In the USA 2500 out of 38000 are digitally equipped
• It costs cinema's a minimum of 80,000 to get into a 3D position

Working Title and Film4 Exhibition

Lovely Bones and Love Actually Presentation

Distirbution

My notes on distribution in general;
What is distribution?
The stage between production + exhibition which involves all of the deals done to get films shown. Promotion involves paid for 'above the line' advertising - which will be funded as part of the project; trailers, posters, billboards etc. 'Below the line' advertising is unpaid for, e.g interviews, reviews, word of mouth.
Is it all fair?
Big companies control much of the industry, as they control distribution of their own productions. Films are loaned out to cinemas for a finite period.
In the UK film market an increase in the quantity of screens showing films has not lead to an increase in the number of films shown.
Release of a film;

• Marketability = identifying target audience and devising a strategy
• Appropriate budget for box office expectation
• Media partnership - decide who is best to link up with

Planning a release

• Chosing a genre, age group, director, if your audience is semi literate.

Target audience

• Focus on target audience - compared to past films
• Use an element of famble
• People over the age of 45 generally take 1 week to decide whether to watch a film or not, whereas teenagers are more spontaneous

P+A budgeting

• Word of mouth - free advertising, can make or break a film.
• Below the line advertising.
• Screening programmes
• Advertising costs, how to use the budget depending on what section it is spent on.

Competition

• Time of the year
• Weather - rain - more likely to go to the cinema than in the summer
• Winter - darker earlier
• TV adverts are more succesful in winter as people are indoors more

Word of mouth

• Critical depending on movie
• Screenings feed word of mouth - vital. Works both ways, can spread good or bad feedback.
• Effects the life expectancy of films.

Piracy

• In 2006, 20% of all the DVD sales in the UK were pirate copies

Digital distribution advantages

• Promises to transform the film industry
• Making it normality to download films via broadband
• Advantage- offers identical version of the film
• Simultaneous global distribution, puts an end to the time gap

2 different views on distribution;
Toby Miller -50% of the money goes on marketing. Hollywood anticipates.
Tony Angellotti - Films are made with audience in mind. Audience decide film choices, stars etc.

Does marketing a film really matter?
Despite bad reviews, lavish marketing ensured pirates of the carabien 2 made over £50 million in the UK box office, 1.5 million copies of the DVD were purchased 10 days after release.
The Dark Knight broke viral records by costing £185 million to make.
The Dark Knight was released on the 20.7.08 and shown in 4336 screens across the UK, contrasting with This Is England which was released on the 29.4.07 and was on just 62 screens.

5 Major distributors dominate the UK film industry;

1. United International Pictures (Universal are part of this company)
2. Warner Brothers
3. Buena Vista
4. 20th Century Fox
5. Sony

9/10 films in the UK are viewed as a result of these distributors. Most films are directly linked to Hollywood Production companies, who prioritise Hollywood films for profit. Usually blockbusters are distributed via blanket release (It is shown everywhere) comparing with other films which are considered an 'event'. One of the outcomes of the above distribution arrangement is that half of the films released in the Britain don't reach the whole company.

Film 4 Distribution

Film4 is controlled by Tessa Ross. (picture to the right)

• Ross secured an increased budget from £8-10m a year to £15m for film4, who make 6 films per year.
• Set up a low budget studio with the film council and distributors Optimum as well as WarpX (digital production house)
• Working across TV and film drama also allowes for economics and cross fertilisation
• Film4 gains a lot of money through advertising.
• Ross see's film4 as part of a wider creative community with Working Title, the BBC and BBC Films, as well as partnerships with distribution compaines.
• WarpX are a film4/UK film council joint project with the Sheffield based indie WarpX that finance three low budget films per year. 

Film 4 Production Practices

Film four is an independant British film company, owned by the Channel4 Corporation, which was launced on the 1st of November 1998. The company has recently improved their budget to £15m per year, contrasting to the £8-10m they were on previously. Film4's controller is Tessa Ross, who has an alternative way of thinking which reflects Film4's choice in films.

Film4's style is quirky and experimental. Their philosiphy is to aid directors and actors, and give them their 'big break'. By sticking to the quirky and non-mainstream style of films they cater for a seperate audience, which helps them compete with Hollywood films.

Their biggest success is Slumdog Millionaire, which wasn't expected to gross 25 times it's original budget; raking in a staggering $377910544. Again, it is not your typical film, adressing contraversial issues yet in a different style to Hollywood. 

The Film4 channel is a freeview channel in the U.K and Ireland, which now manily airs Hollywood blockbusters around 2 years after their release, it also broadcasts it's own productions. In August 2007 Channel 4 added the Film4+1 channel, which allows viewers to see the film an hour behind the original broadcasting time. They also added a Film4 on demand service, which allows viewers to watch a selection of Film4 productions anytime. 

The Film4 website (www.film4.com) has an on demand service, information on productions, video clips, reviews, interviews, behind the scenes clips, and competitions. It gives the viewer a wide variety of special features, producers, writers, directors and actors.

Channel Four Television Corporation was set up by the government. It is a publicly owned "not-for-profit" corporation and does not have any shareholders.

Working Title production practices

Working Title;

• Co-Chair people of working title are Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, who have been listed as the most powerful figures in British industry.
• They only have 42 full time staff, which is split between working title (main company) and low budget WT2.
• Secret of their success? "The working title philosophy has always been to make films for an audience- by that I mean play in a multiplex. We totally believe in this because we know it is the only hope we have of sustaining the UK film industry"
• Working Title was founded in 1984
• 85 films have grossed more than $4 billion worldwide
• They have won several awards; six academy awards, 26 BAFTA awards, 4 Oscars and prizes at Cannes and Berlin film festivals
• Impressive catalogues of films from a wide range of genres; Billy Elliott, Johnny English, Love Actually and Shaun of the dead.
• Their flops have been Wimbledon, Thunderbirds and Captain Corelli.
• Blockbuster comedies of Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson who deliver punchy period films, political dramas, litery adaptation and family affairs.
• Working Title launch fresh talent, such as directors Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice) and Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliott)
• In addition to which it has launched 'Working Title 2' a subsidiary for low budget films with an 'independant' appeal
• Their most successful genre is RomComs. The companies 'Treasure' is Hugh Grant.
• Working Title was bought by Polygram, taken over by Universal in 1999. Bevan said "We were now part of a big structure, so we spent much less time on finding the money and much more on developing the scripts"
• Universal own a 67% stake in the company, many of its recent films are co-productions with Studio Canal.
• The remaining shares are owned by the companies founders which is the BBC and private investors.
• Working title is clever and tactical about film projects. In 2004 they made Shaun of the Dead, and Bridget Jones 2, knowing they would financially be OK, because Thunderbirds was a flop the other two supported it.
• They have to make 1 big blockbuster per year that makes $200-$400m in the box office revenues.
• Is Working Titles lower budget film brand. Some of their productions are Billy Elliott (2000), Shaun of the dead (2004) and Ali G in da house. WT2 recently released Burn After Reading starring Brad Pitt and George Cloony.
• A long history between American actors playing leading roles in British films; e.g Rene Zelwegger playing Bridget Jones.
• The importance of release dates is vital, as it can make or break a films success. e.g films released in winter generally do better as the weather is colder and people spend more time indoors. Christmas films tend to do better if released in the Christmas period (Love Actually) , the same with Romantic films doing better around Valentines day.

Audience viewing habits questionnaire

The task we were given was to ask ten people in our class 15 questions on their film viewing habits.
Me and Becca worked together to come up with 15 questions and ask them to members of our class, here are our questions and answers;

Audience Viewing habits questionaire
After looking at this questionnaire I came to the conclusion that most of the people i asked ( bar one person) don't chose to watch a film based on it being made by an American or British film company. It is inevitable that some, clearly not many, people chose to watch a film whether it is American or British, that is down to taste and opinion. It seems that more people watch a film on its content rather than whether it is American or British. It obviously it is impossible to generalise that statement as I only questioned 11 people, not the whole population. It is clear from this questionaire that we watch more American than British films, possibly because there are less British films to watch and maybe people just like the style of American films better despite saying it doesn't affect which films they view. I also thought it was quite contrasting that people didn't seem too bothered about whether a film was in 3D or not, considering the amount of money that goes into 3D cinema, and that about half of the people we questioned didn't like the idea of a 3D tv.

Magazine Evaluation

After finishing the front cover and the contents page, the things I thought went well were the planning that I had done, which made the production stage smoother and easier to do, as I didn't have to think of different ideas so it wasn't a struggle.

The strengths I had throughout this project was that I knew what kind of photos I wanted, and the colour pallette I was going to use. As me and Becca were in a pair for photo taking, another strength was that we didn't mess around whilst taking photos so that gave us more time to get on photoshop and start editing. I thought that I had a basic idea on how to use photoshop as I'd used it in art, so that was better than starting from scratch.
Another strength I found that I had was after Mr Smith tought me how to use the magnetic lassoo, it was a lot easier to cut out the images of Becca and it looked really neat. I thought everything went well but one of the weaknesses was that I didn't have any immediate ideas when I was planning so that used up a lesson, but eventually I had more ideas and then my initial ideas came together.

A flaw in the making of this was that I was ill for the final lesson of doing our contents/front cover, so that is why the work is in late because I dont have photoshop at home.

Overall I reckon the whole task went quite well and nothing went drastically wrong :)

Magazine Production

For the production of my magazine I had to firstly get the photos I needed of Becca, so firstly we had to find somewhere to take the photos ( I was Becca's model) which wasn't hard because we needed a white background so we took them outside and in the new canteen, Becca was doing a maths magazine called 'geek' hence why i was in the glasses.

I took about ten shots of Becca, vice versa, which didn't take long as we took around ten shots of each other before we decided we had the variety we needed.

I then uploaded the photos onto a computer in the classroom, then decided which one I wanted for my cover and started to edit it on photoshop. The photo that I decided to use for my cover was the one below of Becca looking like she was doing a mime, you wouldn't look at it and automatically think 'drama' but if the cover gave it all away you wouldnt want to read more. I also chose it because the specifcation was that we had to have a mid shot of somebody for our front cover and this was one of the only mid shots I got, I decided to use one of the pictures of Becca jumping for my contents page.

I started by cutting around Becca using the lasso tool, which took about a billion years because the computers in there are very slow. I wasn't pleased with my final cut out of Becca because it looked a bit sketchy and a bit of her head was missing where I'd gone wrong, which I wasn't really pleased with because nobody wants to buy a magazine with the model on the front who has a bit of her head missing. Then Mr Smith showed me the magnetic lasso tool which was a lot easier because it found the outline of Becca and it made it look a lot smoother.

I then had to choose my font for the title. I chose a font that I cant remember the name of but it looks a lot like this one, because it is dramatic and that is the theme of the  magazine. The colour palette I chose of the text for the cover was the same blue of the cardigan Becca was wearing. I thought it was important to chose the same blue as it made the magazine cover have a theme, rather than me chosing three different colours as well as becca being in blue, it could have looked a bit messy and not actually thought into that much, white ( as i'd given the cover a black background ) and a bright peach colour. I achieved the same blue as Becca's cardigan by Mr Smith showing me how to use the pipette tool on photoshop. I used contrasting colours ( white on the black, blue with peach, white with peach) next to each other so it would be easier for the reader to see what I wanted to stand out. I found it easy working out how to use the layers and how to move things around so that sped things up a bit, I had some basic idea on how to use photoshop from doing art at gcse, but that was more editing photos and scanning things in so not really the same sort of area, I think i did okay for a first attempt at making a magazine cover though :)

Magazine Pre Production

The task we were given was to design our own school magazine cover and contents page, the magazine's target audience is people at our school (age 14-18). In preparation for this task we had to bring a magazine to the lesson, and look at the way the front page and contents page were set out to give us some idea on the layouts of magazines. For inspiration I went on sites such as Vogue, Elle, Grazia and NME. The covers that caught my attention the most were these ones below from Vogue. I like them because they use strong colours,  eye catching pictures on the front and I am interested in what they are wearing. My favorite one is the one of Agyness Deyn ( middle row on the left ) because of the colour palette and the word 'dazzle' caught my attention.

Obviously I wont have a model on the front of my school magazine because its a school magazine and thats not going to get the attention from all of my target audience and I don't have the money. The ideas i did get from these covers was the bright colours, especially the contrasting colours of the cover on the first row on the left because they aren't two colours you'd put together but they work. They catch people's eyes and make them want to read on, to I kept that in mind. I then had to decide if I was going to do a general magazine or focus on a specific subject, I couldn't think of a name so i decided to choose drama because its a subject I do and you can do more with it, as I reckon a drama magazine about shows and actors sounds better and would interest my target market more than an English magazine about books and writing. I decided to call my magazine 'DramaRama' because it says what subject it is and you'd know straight away if you are interested in it. It doesn't sound deadly serious but I know that at our age, as a school magazine you dont want something deadly serious and a bit heavy to read. I know that not everybody in the school reads the school magazine, I for example haven't read our school magazine so by targeting a specific subject the people that are likely to read this are people who are interested in drama. Drama isn't a subject that is entirely serious, whereas maths and science is. In my opinion you can have fun in Drama, and I wanted my magazine to portray that. This was the mock up of what I basically wanted my magazine to look like (picture above). I already knew I was going to use Becca as my model at this point so that was one less decision I had to make during the production, because the more decisions I made before I wouldn't have to make in the production which would make it smoother and easier.

Preliminary Filming Task Evaluation

I think that the preliminary task went quite well considering nobody in my group had filmed anything with loads of different camera angles before, or use the editing software on the mac.
I think the strenghts of our group was after reading the story board we knew in our heads how we wanted it to look so there wasn't any arguments or dissagreements on how we were going to film it.
One of my strengths was that I acted in the video, I filmed Megan walking down the corridor and I edited the first few clips together by cutting them to make them the right length and making sure they flowed properly.
I thought everything went well but one of our weaknesses was that we didnt double check all the clips before we put them together as we had originally done the close up of megans feet the wrong was as we hadn't thought of the 180 degree rule, so that had to be refilmed. Also when we did the conversation sitting at the table we hadn't done the filming over the same shoulder so that had to be redone.
Another flaw was the continuity. Megan changes outfits 3 times in the shot, as we filmed walking through the door on one day, we had to re-film the conversation on a different day, and walking down the corridor was on another day. This was in-evitable as we couldnt have filmed it on the same day.
Overall i reckon that we did quite well for our first task :)

Film AS Preliminary Task

The task we were given was to create a short film showing somebody walking through a door, sitting down at a table and having a few lines of dialogue with the person in the room.
We were given another groups storyboard to create our film from. I was acting in our film being the person in the room who saw a spider, hence the scream, then sat at a desk waiting for someone to come in. I filmed the scene with megan walking down the corridor, and edited the first few scenes

This is the storyboard we were given.

I found that it was important that we had a storyboard as that was basically what we had to follow and what shots to use and the story. The one we were given wasn't very easy to follow because the directions weren't very specific and the pictures weren't exactly top notch so we we didnt have a direct set of instructions on how to make the film, it also didn't make sense because realistically if you screamed when you saw a spider, you wouldn't then sit in a room n your own at a table on the off chance somebody might come in, baring that in mind we tried to stick to it as best as we could. The strengths i had whilst doing this was acting in front of the camera, and working the camera. The weaknesses were that we didn't know how to use the editing software on the mac, and we had to re film some scenes because we'd done the shot over the wrong shoulder.



This was our final production :)