Film Industry Facts

I need some more facts and examples for my film case studies, to help me back up my points.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/14029865

http://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/1001-Spring-2010/Internet-Issues-Piracy-Statistics.aspx

Click here to see figures on monthly cinema viewings.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4051741.stm -

''The simple fact is that cinema attendance in the 1940s in the UK was almost 10 times the size it is today.

In the 1940s the average annual cinema attendance was 1,400,000,000 people, compared to a mere 167 million in 2003.''

http://www.movingimageeducation.org/explore/platforms/cinema -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2178341/Hollywood-Cinema-attendance-plummets-25-year-low.html -

''Meanwhile, the price of a ticket has been climbing steadily. In 1995, the average ticket price was $4.35. In 2011, that price nearly doubled to $7.92, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners.''

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6693/business/cinema-attendance-in-uk/ -

Practical Products Bradley Stearn

Media Studies -

Stop motion task: We played around with stop motion
Photoshop task: We photoshopped a picture of the world into a picture of an eye using photoshop

Childrens film blog: http://49childrensfilm11.blogspot.co.uk

Prelim childrens film:



Children's film opening: Spy School





Thriller blog: http://43longroadthriller12.blogspot.co.uk

Thriller prelim -



Final thriller opening: Night of the Disbeliever




Music video project -

Prelim - we made one minute of music video to practise lip syncing and editing to the song 'Cars' by Gary Numan.

Editing tasks: Editing footage of people in animal costumes dancing to the beat
Syncing up a song to student music video footage to learn how to sync audio to video

Music video blog: http://08musicvideo2012.blogspot.co.uk

Final  music video for Forget About What I Said by The Killers -




Ancillary texts music video project -

Six panel special edition digipak -

 Magazine advert to advertise the digipak -

Film Studies -

Western: We made this in our second film studies lesson in AS. It was to practice shot types and representing characters.



Post production tasks -
Editing footage from French Connection to make our own car chase scene.
Completely re-recording and designing the sound for the bar fight in Mean Streets.

Film extract blog: http://02filmextract12.blogspot.co.uk
Crime Revenge Film Extract
My role was Cinematographer in this film extract for our AS Film Studies



We are currently filming and editing our A2 short film which consists of three different genres/styles which include French New Wave romance, Black and white silent comedy and psychological horror.

Toy Story Live Action: Primary Research

I sent Jonason and Jesse a message on the Toy Story Live Action Facebook page with some questions about their film and how social networking helped it.

''Yes absolutely. When we had been working on the movie for three months or so we posted the first video on YouTube where we told people what we were doing. We made the facebook page so that there would be one place for people to go for the project (YouTube had some other things on it already). Before the movie was even released, we had more than 1,000 people "like" the FB page. 

Kind of just continuing the story: We searched out Pixar and Toy Story fan pages online and talked about our movie there. I decided to get a twitter which ended up being a great idea in the long run because we had Lee Unkrich (director of Toy Story 3) re-tweet a couple of our videos which really spread the word. It's like trying to find the people who we knew would like our movie and telling them specifically. Toy Story fans would be following him on twitter for example. Our movie had it easy in that way I think because Toy Story already has a big fan base that we could go after. If we did something totally original we would have had a little bit of a harder time. Still, I think we would have done it nearly the same way. 

Social networking sites were definitely what helped the movie go viral. Once we put the movie online (something we only decided to do a week before we did it) it really took off. Some videos go viral a long time after being uploaded, but there were people we didn't even know who had been waiting for it for almost two years.''

Overall I feel that social networking and web 2.0 are what helped Jonason and Jesse produce their film and get the audience that they needed. In the past before the internet was being used, it would have been much harder for them to produce the film, this is because doing research for finding locations and the props would have been more difficult. Also distribution of the film would have been impossible, without YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, the audience just would not have been there for the film to get viewed. Because the film is quite 'niche' as it is different to anything else out there, it is part of the long tail theory by Chris Anderson, which states there is 'unlimited shelf space' on the internet for films to be screened.

Toy Story Live Action; Use of Social Networking

An interview with Jonason Pauley, director of Toy Story Live Action, on 'The Rush' web show.
Jonason mentions how having a Facebook page (click here to see) allowed them to build a 'hype' up around the film even before they released it. He says they gained over 1000 facebook fans before the film was released, so a fairly large fan base was ensured for them. Without social networking this fan base would not have existed, and the success of their film probably wouldn't have either.

 

The video below explains the film, and would have helped get the word out about the final live action film. However another great use of social media is explained in this news video, this is because Lee Unkrich, editor of Toy Story and director of Toy Story 3, 'tweeted' the final film to his 128,000+ Twitter followers. Without social networking, Lee Unkrich probably would have not seen the film, and the popularity and viral state probably would have not been received.

Skate Reel

Skate Reel allows the consumers of EA Skate to film and edit their own skateboarding edits within the game, and to share them to other consumers on the internet. The video editor allows you to do a lot, such as trimming the start and end of a clip, adding slow motion, colour corrections such as black and white, sepia, negative and saturated colours to give the footage a 'retro' feel. The final edits can be uploaded to Skate.ea.com to Skate.Create on the Skate.Reel

Brian Lindley - Producer of Skate -
 ''Another way for you to define yourself in your own sort of personal style, the sky is your limit''

Skate Reel makes the consumers into prosumers, making them the producers of their own content.

Brian Lindley: EA Skate Producer

Producer Brian Lindley talks about sharing photos and videos from the game on the internet for other people to see.
You create a team through the internet, you create your own brand with your own skateboard designs, this brand then gets seen by people around the world.

The video below also discusses the team aspect of Skate 3, and how you can complete career mode with a team of skateboarders  either offline with a computer controlled team, or online with real friends playing in the skateboarding team. In the video Brian Lindley, producer of EA Skate 3, says how skating in teams and creating your own brand is something that professional skateboarders do in real life,so Skate 3 is a much more realistic skateboarding game, which is also more interactive.

The game allows consumers to make user created content, if this content is used by a lot of other players, then a new featured means that EA will reward you new features in your own game for making that content. This is encouraging consumers to make content for the game, this is also helping to distribute the game around the internet by using Skate.Create.

 

Film Piracy

In this video Javier Bardem talks about how consumers illegally watching pirated films on the internet are affecting the people behind the productions of the film, not just the directors.

Prezi: How has consumer behavior and audience response been transformed by the internet, in relation to the past?

Prezi: To what extent has convergence transformed the media?

Future of the Film Industry

Andrew Karpen - Focus Features - 'Films can be seen by more people in more ways' - because of different platforms and technologies. This means more people are seeing film, and smaller budget films/independent can get noticed much easier because of this.

 

New Cinema Technologies: Dolby Atmos Surround Sound

New technologies are being made to enhance the viewing experience for spectators in cinemas, this is to also try and get more people wanting to go to the cinema, instead of watching films on the internet or at home. One new technologoy is the Dolby Atmos surround sound system that is being installed in cinemas around the world. Basic 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound allows noise to sound like it is moving across the cinema, through the speakers around the room. However the Atmos system enhances this experience by having speakers placed around the room, and above the spectators. I feel that this will get people wanting to go to the cinema, to experience this new sound system, and that it might encourage people to not watch films through their laptops.



Other new technologies include 3D without the need of glasses and interactive cinema screens. Technology for production includes smaller cameras for cinematographers to be more versatile with.

New cinema technologies 

Clay Shirky: Web 2.0 and Cognitive Surplus

Web blogging - 'web blogging is a classic example of mass amaterisation, it has de-professionalised publishing'

Clay Shirky is an Advocate of Web 2.0 and the online age



He believes in Cognitive Surplus - consumers are now being more productive with activities online. For example there are now more consumers watching and making their own films, and more gamers playing and creating their own content because of Web 2.0.

'People like to create, and we want to share'

'The number of people that are going to participate in these projects is going to grow' - more people making use of participatory culture on the internet to create more media content.

Henry Jenkins: Convergence Culture

'A group as a whole can put together knowledge, in a more complex way, than any individual is capable of doing' - relating this to my videogames case study, the consumers of the EA Skate franchise are prosumers, they produce their own media content specificall for the games, and share them on Skate.Create for other consumers to use in their Skate game. This is Convergence Culture because a large group of consumers are all creating content for each other, a mass of media content that EA could not produce by themselves.
Social media allows different groups of people to get their perspectives heard by thousands of people. For example a small film production company can get their film seen by thousands, such as Triune Films 'TELL' which received over 250,000 views on YouTube, or their film 'LOSSES' which has over 400,000 views.

Jenkins also talks about Transmedia Storytelling, which is the telling of a story across multiple media platforms. Relating to my gaming case study for Angry Birds, the simple story of birds being angry because the pigs have stolen their eggs, has converged out to different platforms such as YouTube web series on RovioMobile channel, books, physical console copies of the game, themed play parks for children that are across the world and even in the future there will be a TV show and a film made to tell the story of Angry Birds.

Henry Jenkins: Participatory Culture

Young people can change the world around them, more young people are becoming participants of the society.

People use the internet to get information on different topics quickly. In the past people would use the newspaper to get this information, however newspapers aren't instant like the internet. The internet can also be used by consumers to give out their own thoughts on specific things, they participate by using the Web 2.0. For example relating this to one of my videogame case studies, consumers of EA Skate participate by sharing their own media content to Skate.Create.

Henry says in the video that people use new technology as a 'vehicle' to participate to engage in the world and make a difference. He specifically gives Super 8mm camcorder consumers as an example, and how super 8mm 'activists' used the technology to build social networks way before the internet was around.

He talks about how people can use games such as WOW to express their political concerns, in a way that wouldn't be possible in a real space.

Participatory practices can teach consumers how to be prosumers. YouTube video tutorials are a great example; Indy Mogul and Film Riot are two filmmaking shows on YouTube which give great advice to aspiring filmmakers to help them become prosumers of the film industry. Relating to one of my case studies, Indie Rights film distribution has a 'tutorial/how-to' playlist of films on their YouTube channel, which participates in the culture of contemporary media.

What happened before YouTube -

Quotes taken from Henry Jenkins book on YouTube -

''In this new network culture with its lowered costs of production and distributions  participants are not 'constrained to organize their relationship through a price system or in a traditional hierarchical model of social and economic organization' (Benkler, 2006:8)'' - Shows how anyone can make media for cheap

''Arguably many people are taking advantage of the distribution platform YouTube provides in part, because they feel the emotional support of a community eager to see their productions''

''Transforms all consumers into potential authors'' - YouTube allows prosumerism

Graph from the video