Sunday 27 December 2009
Monday 21 December 2009
A2 Advanced Production - Guardian Article on Film Trailers
The new rebel film trailers
Movie trailers used to be pretty formulaic – just show the best bits – but, in the age of the internet viral, they're now works of art in themselves.
If you're looking for art or auteurship at the cinema, you're likely to be waiting for the main feature, not concentrating on the trailers for what were quaintly known as "coming attractions". As long as they have existed, trailers have been the tool of film marketing departments aiming solely to secure the maximum number of bums on seats. Experimentation with the form has not been a big part of the story. There have been brief flourishes of artistic advancement, such as the move towards fast-edit montages led by Kubrick in the early 1960s, and periodical oddities, like Hitchcock's personally hosted guided tour of the Bates Motel for Psycho, and the mock advertisement for the Ghostbusters' services, which led to the advertised phone number taking 1,000 calls an hour for six weeks in 1984. But the vast majority of studio-financed trailer-makers have played it safe, their audience-tested trailers following the basic three-act rule of set-up, jeopardy and emotional- or action-based blow-out.
Now, however, thanks mainly to that feral little monster, the internet, and one of its most recent and riotous offspring, the viral, there are strong signs of a creeping rebellion in trailer-making. The teams behind trailers for the likes of Cloverfield, The Dark Knight, District 9, Paranormal Activity and Inglourious Basterds have risen to the challenge of the new frontier, ushering in what might reasonably be considered a golden age of invention in the field. The future direction of film marketing is unclear, and that provides fertile ground for risk-taking – not because the studios have learned to stop worrying and take a punt, but because they're navigating unknown territory. It's not quite the wild west out there, but a comparison to the early days of rock'n'roll might stand up.
"The studios have had to learn to relax in terms of controlling film promo," says Ryan Parsons, owner of Traileraddict.com, a site that gathers and posts trailers. "The internet is wild. Things come out before they're supposed to, info is leaked, footage is leaked. The studios are just now learning how to exploit that, rather than try to curtail it. The marketing people I've talked to say that even when they're chasing down the source of a leak now, they know it doesn't really harm them – it all reminds people the film exists."
Trailers are immensely popular online. According to research by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, movie trailers rank third in popularity among the 10bn videos viewed online every year, after news and user-created video. The growth of social networking sites, and particularly the instant buzz of Twitter, in the last two years have moved the goalposts. That process has been further boosted by the development of movie virals – which count online-only videos and interactive "alternate reality" games among their techniques for sucking punters in. The street-smart trailer-makers are the ones involved in multi-platform campaigns for which the release of the trailer is either the climax or the launchpad.
JJ Abrams' Cloverfield trailer, released in July 2007, was a brilliant example of the latter. Shown in US cinemas before the blockbuster Transformers, this teaser used footage from what looked like a home movie featuring screaming, running crowds and explosions in New York. Flying in the face of the first commandment of film promo (consistently supported by market research) that the more the trailer explains and reveals, the more commercially effective it is, it was devoid of information and untitled – only a release date and the name of JJ Abrams appeared onscreen.
"In the case of Cloverfield the trailer started the viral," says Nick Butler, who runs the site movieviral.com. "People watched the trailer over and over to look for clues, because the whole thing was such a mystery. Some people thought it was about terrorism, or maybe it had something to do with Lost [Abrams's TV series]. The trailer sent people off to check out the associated website, thousands of people did exactly that and the online buzz grew like crazy. Over the next few months, we were sent all over the internet. In the end I saw the film four times, constantly looking for links between it and the trailer."
Cloverfield is a perfect example of a trailer that capitalised on the new, more demanding world in which trailers now operate. They must fight for attention online against hundreds of others, be available for viewing 24/7, and face the fact that while they might spark a rush of excitement, they can also cause a sigh of disappointment. Cloverfield also proved that for those studios willing to take the new challenges head on, the rewards could be plentiful. No surprise then that Sony moved in on the action, steering the team at LA's Create Advertising towards a similar approach for Neill Blomkamp's alien thriller District 9.
"The studio had a big online and billboard campaign planned," says David Stern, owner of Create. "They were working on the notion that maybe it was better to pose questions in the trailer than tell people everything. When we found out about their campaign, we actually ditched our first, more traditional, story-orientated, trailer for one that just implied that something is going on in District 9 but we're not telling you what. We even made two versions – one blurred the alien and didn't subtitle his words, so it really made people wonder what was going on."
The experiment paid off – District 9 took $37m on its opening weekend this August and stayed strong through the summer. Sony approached its early trailers for Roland Emmerich's 2012 in the same way, again backing them up with a wave of viral marketing.
Trailer-maker Mark Rance has been a victim of the studios' natural timidity in the past. His daring ideas for promos for The Prestige, which proposed to use the screen like a theatre stage, complete with red-curtain framing, were received with enthusiasm by director Christopher Nolan and his producer-partner Emma Thomas, but rejected by Touchstone Pictures. A mere year on however, he was involved in a campaign for The Dark Knight that saw the studios, increasingly aware of the possibilities for a film's extra-curricular online life, loosen up a little.
Rance was hired to direct a series of online trailers titled Gotham Tonight. They aired once a week for the six weeks leading up to the film's release and expanded on an ostensibly minor thread within it, prior knowledge of which was rewarded with a narrative pay-off in the movie.
The Dark Knight was accompanied by a wildly varied and imaginative viral which involved numerous websites, interactive games and a treasure hunt, climaxing with the Imax-hosted launch of a six-minute trailer showing the effervescent heist scene from the film (James Cameron went seven minutes better with the Imax-premiered Avatar trailer this August). Rance agrees that the dawn of virals and Twitter have forced the studios to experiment with trailers, but he firmly believes that their inherent conservatism will lead to a more homogenised approach once they get their heads around the territory.
"Clamping down is part of the system," he says. "They'll end up just copying other ideas that have worked. Of course a viral shouldn't be a repeat of another viral, it should be like improvised jazz, taking on its own life. But to call the studios cautious – that's a polite way of putting it."
As David Stern suggests, the most significant impact that Rance's "improv" virals have had on trailers has been to free them from a commitment to plot information. The best online trailers don't go beyond "teaser" territory, needing only to intrigue, or even confuse, to set film fans off on a detective's quest. This has allowed for some genuinely innovative and smart promo work, like the fake news report on Dr Manhattan that formed part of the alternative Watchmen universe, and the Coraline trailer in which Neil Gaiman gravely described the effects of koumpounophobia, the fear of buttons, which set the tone for his script.
Also fantastically curiosity-pricking was the trailer for the German war film Nation's Pride – "by Alois von Eichberg" – which seemed to come from nowhere when it debuted this August. Nation's Pride turned out to be the (Eli Roth-directed) film within the film of Inglourious Basterds and, apart from ramping up the Basterds-related buzz, it showed film fans that Tarantino was truly one of them, an enthusiast who had fun with the parallel online life of the movie.
Cheeringly, the incredible word of mouth around the hugely successful $11,000 budget horror Paranormal Activity – bolstered by what Hugo Grumbar, president of distribution at Icon Films, calls an "experience trailer" showing terrified audiences' reaction – proves that viral marketing is not restricted to top-end films. In fact imagination and original thinking is more crucial to the success of this kind of marketing than big bucks, as the mid-budget District 9 also showed.
Of course there are other, more subtle, ways of exploiting the opportunities that high-speed word of mouth presents and the ever-pioneering Disney Pixar is master of the "double hit". Pixar has always made pester-power-engendering trailers, full of high-speed adventure and snappy one-liners, then rewarded parents with the high quality of its finished films. Recently it has gone further, hitting unsuspecting mums and dads with mournful stories of broken-hearted widowers and a surprisingly faithful, highly literary Dickens adaptation, ensuring a whole new promotional afterlife for Up and A Christmas Carol after their release.
Grumbar admits he attempted a similar trick with Icon's Bridge to Terabithia. "I thought if we slightly missold the trailer as Narnia or something like that, people wouldn't feel cheated when they saw the film because it was satisfying for all kinds of audiences. Did it pay off? Absolutely."
Movie trailers used to be pretty formulaic – just show the best bits – but, in the age of the internet viral, they're now works of art in themselves.
If you're looking for art or auteurship at the cinema, you're likely to be waiting for the main feature, not concentrating on the trailers for what were quaintly known as "coming attractions". As long as they have existed, trailers have been the tool of film marketing departments aiming solely to secure the maximum number of bums on seats. Experimentation with the form has not been a big part of the story. There have been brief flourishes of artistic advancement, such as the move towards fast-edit montages led by Kubrick in the early 1960s, and periodical oddities, like Hitchcock's personally hosted guided tour of the Bates Motel for Psycho, and the mock advertisement for the Ghostbusters' services, which led to the advertised phone number taking 1,000 calls an hour for six weeks in 1984. But the vast majority of studio-financed trailer-makers have played it safe, their audience-tested trailers following the basic three-act rule of set-up, jeopardy and emotional- or action-based blow-out.
Now, however, thanks mainly to that feral little monster, the internet, and one of its most recent and riotous offspring, the viral, there are strong signs of a creeping rebellion in trailer-making. The teams behind trailers for the likes of Cloverfield, The Dark Knight, District 9, Paranormal Activity and Inglourious Basterds have risen to the challenge of the new frontier, ushering in what might reasonably be considered a golden age of invention in the field. The future direction of film marketing is unclear, and that provides fertile ground for risk-taking – not because the studios have learned to stop worrying and take a punt, but because they're navigating unknown territory. It's not quite the wild west out there, but a comparison to the early days of rock'n'roll might stand up.
"The studios have had to learn to relax in terms of controlling film promo," says Ryan Parsons, owner of Traileraddict.com, a site that gathers and posts trailers. "The internet is wild. Things come out before they're supposed to, info is leaked, footage is leaked. The studios are just now learning how to exploit that, rather than try to curtail it. The marketing people I've talked to say that even when they're chasing down the source of a leak now, they know it doesn't really harm them – it all reminds people the film exists."
Trailers are immensely popular online. According to research by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, movie trailers rank third in popularity among the 10bn videos viewed online every year, after news and user-created video. The growth of social networking sites, and particularly the instant buzz of Twitter, in the last two years have moved the goalposts. That process has been further boosted by the development of movie virals – which count online-only videos and interactive "alternate reality" games among their techniques for sucking punters in. The street-smart trailer-makers are the ones involved in multi-platform campaigns for which the release of the trailer is either the climax or the launchpad.
JJ Abrams' Cloverfield trailer, released in July 2007, was a brilliant example of the latter. Shown in US cinemas before the blockbuster Transformers, this teaser used footage from what looked like a home movie featuring screaming, running crowds and explosions in New York. Flying in the face of the first commandment of film promo (consistently supported by market research) that the more the trailer explains and reveals, the more commercially effective it is, it was devoid of information and untitled – only a release date and the name of JJ Abrams appeared onscreen.
"In the case of Cloverfield the trailer started the viral," says Nick Butler, who runs the site movieviral.com. "People watched the trailer over and over to look for clues, because the whole thing was such a mystery. Some people thought it was about terrorism, or maybe it had something to do with Lost [Abrams's TV series]. The trailer sent people off to check out the associated website, thousands of people did exactly that and the online buzz grew like crazy. Over the next few months, we were sent all over the internet. In the end I saw the film four times, constantly looking for links between it and the trailer."
Cloverfield is a perfect example of a trailer that capitalised on the new, more demanding world in which trailers now operate. They must fight for attention online against hundreds of others, be available for viewing 24/7, and face the fact that while they might spark a rush of excitement, they can also cause a sigh of disappointment. Cloverfield also proved that for those studios willing to take the new challenges head on, the rewards could be plentiful. No surprise then that Sony moved in on the action, steering the team at LA's Create Advertising towards a similar approach for Neill Blomkamp's alien thriller District 9.
"The studio had a big online and billboard campaign planned," says David Stern, owner of Create. "They were working on the notion that maybe it was better to pose questions in the trailer than tell people everything. When we found out about their campaign, we actually ditched our first, more traditional, story-orientated, trailer for one that just implied that something is going on in District 9 but we're not telling you what. We even made two versions – one blurred the alien and didn't subtitle his words, so it really made people wonder what was going on."
The experiment paid off – District 9 took $37m on its opening weekend this August and stayed strong through the summer. Sony approached its early trailers for Roland Emmerich's 2012 in the same way, again backing them up with a wave of viral marketing.
Trailer-maker Mark Rance has been a victim of the studios' natural timidity in the past. His daring ideas for promos for The Prestige, which proposed to use the screen like a theatre stage, complete with red-curtain framing, were received with enthusiasm by director Christopher Nolan and his producer-partner Emma Thomas, but rejected by Touchstone Pictures. A mere year on however, he was involved in a campaign for The Dark Knight that saw the studios, increasingly aware of the possibilities for a film's extra-curricular online life, loosen up a little.
Rance was hired to direct a series of online trailers titled Gotham Tonight. They aired once a week for the six weeks leading up to the film's release and expanded on an ostensibly minor thread within it, prior knowledge of which was rewarded with a narrative pay-off in the movie.
The Dark Knight was accompanied by a wildly varied and imaginative viral which involved numerous websites, interactive games and a treasure hunt, climaxing with the Imax-hosted launch of a six-minute trailer showing the effervescent heist scene from the film (James Cameron went seven minutes better with the Imax-premiered Avatar trailer this August). Rance agrees that the dawn of virals and Twitter have forced the studios to experiment with trailers, but he firmly believes that their inherent conservatism will lead to a more homogenised approach once they get their heads around the territory.
"Clamping down is part of the system," he says. "They'll end up just copying other ideas that have worked. Of course a viral shouldn't be a repeat of another viral, it should be like improvised jazz, taking on its own life. But to call the studios cautious – that's a polite way of putting it."
As David Stern suggests, the most significant impact that Rance's "improv" virals have had on trailers has been to free them from a commitment to plot information. The best online trailers don't go beyond "teaser" territory, needing only to intrigue, or even confuse, to set film fans off on a detective's quest. This has allowed for some genuinely innovative and smart promo work, like the fake news report on Dr Manhattan that formed part of the alternative Watchmen universe, and the Coraline trailer in which Neil Gaiman gravely described the effects of koumpounophobia, the fear of buttons, which set the tone for his script.
Also fantastically curiosity-pricking was the trailer for the German war film Nation's Pride – "by Alois von Eichberg" – which seemed to come from nowhere when it debuted this August. Nation's Pride turned out to be the (Eli Roth-directed) film within the film of Inglourious Basterds and, apart from ramping up the Basterds-related buzz, it showed film fans that Tarantino was truly one of them, an enthusiast who had fun with the parallel online life of the movie.
Cheeringly, the incredible word of mouth around the hugely successful $11,000 budget horror Paranormal Activity – bolstered by what Hugo Grumbar, president of distribution at Icon Films, calls an "experience trailer" showing terrified audiences' reaction – proves that viral marketing is not restricted to top-end films. In fact imagination and original thinking is more crucial to the success of this kind of marketing than big bucks, as the mid-budget District 9 also showed.
Of course there are other, more subtle, ways of exploiting the opportunities that high-speed word of mouth presents and the ever-pioneering Disney Pixar is master of the "double hit". Pixar has always made pester-power-engendering trailers, full of high-speed adventure and snappy one-liners, then rewarded parents with the high quality of its finished films. Recently it has gone further, hitting unsuspecting mums and dads with mournful stories of broken-hearted widowers and a surprisingly faithful, highly literary Dickens adaptation, ensuring a whole new promotional afterlife for Up and A Christmas Carol after their release.
Grumbar admits he attempted a similar trick with Icon's Bridge to Terabithia. "I thought if we slightly missold the trailer as Narnia or something like that, people wouldn't feel cheated when they saw the film because it was satisfying for all kinds of audiences. Did it pay off? Absolutely."
Saturday 12 December 2009
AS/A2 Productions - Presentation on Viral Marketing
Monday 30 November 2009
Tuesday 13 October 2009
A2 Media Studies - Narratives - Vladimir Propp and Tsvetan Todorov
Vladimir Propp
Propp - analysed the basic components of Russian fairy tales in ‘The Morphology of the Folk Tale’. He claimed there were only 8 broad character types in all the stories he analysed. These are:
the villain;
the donor (gives the hero some magical object);
the (magical) helper who helps the hero in the quest;
the princess (person the hero marries OR a dream or desire which is sought after in the same way);
her father;
the dispatcher (who sends the hero off);
the hero/victim;
the false hero or usurper.
How can these characters been seen, broadly, in the genre of your film? Sometimes one character can play more than one role.
There are differences in the interpretation of Propp's heroic tales in different genres.
The villain is a major character in the horror genre as this genre is based around them – Dracula?
The donor can be a key character in any genre - in the latest Batman, who’s Batman without his Batmobile (or his butler Alfred) or Bond doesn’t get far without Q’s gadgets in some of the earlier Bond films.
The helper in the horror genre is often killed off separately which contributes to a general sense of fear on behalf of the audience whereas in the Western the hero often needs some help in their mission – who is the Lone Ranger without Tonto? Or in the comic book movie, where’s Batman without Robin…
The princess is often in horror seen not as a person but a reward. If characters are threatened by evil in the film then the reward is to stay alive. However in the action/adventure genre the princess is often a central character who needs rescuing (damsel in distress)?
The father of the princess is rarely seen in the horror genre yet often a major part of the Western.
The dispatcher tends in crime/gangster films to be a higher authority figures (a police captain) but in film noir is often a criminal boss sending the hero after the princess (femme fatale).
The hero/victim - all horror films rely on at least one of these sometimes the hero can also be interpreted as the victim (they encounter disturbing events during the storyline).
The false hero or usurper – very common in film noir as the genre tends to not be straightforward and false heroes often appear in narratives with twists.
Tzvetan Todorov suggested there were five stages to a narrative:
Equilibrium
A disruption of this equilibrium by an event
A realisation that a disruption has happened
An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
A restoration of the equilibrium which may be a new or changed one
This is a very basic film theory and can be applied to almost any movie.
It does not, however, cover all complex events.
Propp - analysed the basic components of Russian fairy tales in ‘The Morphology of the Folk Tale’. He claimed there were only 8 broad character types in all the stories he analysed. These are:
the villain;
the donor (gives the hero some magical object);
the (magical) helper who helps the hero in the quest;
the princess (person the hero marries OR a dream or desire which is sought after in the same way);
her father;
the dispatcher (who sends the hero off);
the hero/victim;
the false hero or usurper.
How can these characters been seen, broadly, in the genre of your film? Sometimes one character can play more than one role.
There are differences in the interpretation of Propp's heroic tales in different genres.
The villain is a major character in the horror genre as this genre is based around them – Dracula?
The donor can be a key character in any genre - in the latest Batman, who’s Batman without his Batmobile (or his butler Alfred) or Bond doesn’t get far without Q’s gadgets in some of the earlier Bond films.
The helper in the horror genre is often killed off separately which contributes to a general sense of fear on behalf of the audience whereas in the Western the hero often needs some help in their mission – who is the Lone Ranger without Tonto? Or in the comic book movie, where’s Batman without Robin…
The princess is often in horror seen not as a person but a reward. If characters are threatened by evil in the film then the reward is to stay alive. However in the action/adventure genre the princess is often a central character who needs rescuing (damsel in distress)?
The father of the princess is rarely seen in the horror genre yet often a major part of the Western.
The dispatcher tends in crime/gangster films to be a higher authority figures (a police captain) but in film noir is often a criminal boss sending the hero after the princess (femme fatale).
The hero/victim - all horror films rely on at least one of these sometimes the hero can also be interpreted as the victim (they encounter disturbing events during the storyline).
The false hero or usurper – very common in film noir as the genre tends to not be straightforward and false heroes often appear in narratives with twists.
Tzvetan Todorov suggested there were five stages to a narrative:
Equilibrium
A disruption of this equilibrium by an event
A realisation that a disruption has happened
An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
A restoration of the equilibrium which may be a new or changed one
This is a very basic film theory and can be applied to almost any movie.
It does not, however, cover all complex events.
Friday 25 September 2009
A2 Media - Advanced Production - Trailer Analysis
These are the films you have been asked to watch over the next week for homework. Choose one to analyse in detail, answering the same questions set for the 'Control' trailer. Here are the questions again:
What is a trailer designed to do?
Generate interest in the film;
Inform the audience about the release date?
Show off the stars of the film;
Show the film to its best advantage;
Create excitement/interest;
Tell people what the film is about, e.g. the genre;
Not give too much of the plot away;
Tease the audience by setting up narrative enigmas;
Showcase some of the best bits of the film;
Give details about the production team?
Does your chosen trailer do this?
Watch your chosen trailer several times. Then write one paragraph answering the questions listed below.
Q1. Discuss the use of codes and conventions used in the construction of this film trailer.
Q2. Consider the representations of people and places in this film trailer.
Q3. What does this film trailer tell us about the institutions involved?
Q4. Explore some of the ways in which this film trailer communicates with its target audiences.
Trailer for 'Let the Right One In' (2008)
Trailer for 'La Haine' (1995)
Trailer for 'Leon' (1994)
Trailer for 'Bullet Boy' (2007)
Trailer for 'My Summer of Love (2007)
Trailer for 'Brick' (2005)
American Trailer for 'Dirty Pretty Things' (2002) - hmmm, what gives it away?
Trailer for 'Eastern Promises' (2007)
What is a trailer designed to do?
Generate interest in the film;
Inform the audience about the release date?
Show off the stars of the film;
Show the film to its best advantage;
Create excitement/interest;
Tell people what the film is about, e.g. the genre;
Not give too much of the plot away;
Tease the audience by setting up narrative enigmas;
Showcase some of the best bits of the film;
Give details about the production team?
Does your chosen trailer do this?
Watch your chosen trailer several times. Then write one paragraph answering the questions listed below.
Q1. Discuss the use of codes and conventions used in the construction of this film trailer.
Q2. Consider the representations of people and places in this film trailer.
Q3. What does this film trailer tell us about the institutions involved?
Q4. Explore some of the ways in which this film trailer communicates with its target audiences.
Trailer for 'Let the Right One In' (2008)
Trailer for 'La Haine' (1995)
Trailer for 'Leon' (1994)
Trailer for 'Bullet Boy' (2007)
Trailer for 'My Summer of Love (2007)
Trailer for 'Brick' (2005)
American Trailer for 'Dirty Pretty Things' (2002) - hmmm, what gives it away?
Trailer for 'Eastern Promises' (2007)
Saturday 12 September 2009
Film Industry - Fish Tank (UK 2009) d. Andrea Arnold
Main Poster
Synopsis
Mia (played by newcomer Katie Jarvis) lives with her mom and younger sister and doesn't have any friends, or at least none that she likes. When her mum (Kierston Wareing) brings home a new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender), everything changes for her. It's not the polished, happy-go-lucky kind of story you'd see in America, but it's a gritty look at a girl who has few passions in life and is living day-to-day just to get by. So when Connor steps into her life, it sparks a bit of joy inside of her and gives her a new sense of direction, or so we think.
Q. What genre of film are the synopsis and main trailer suggestive of? Is there a cultural tradition in the U.K. of films like this? Are there any other film directors who work in this tradition?
Main Trailer
What is a trailer designed to do?
Generate interest in the film?
Inform the audience about the release date?
Show off the stars of the film?
Show the film to its best advantage?
Create excitement/interest?
Tell people what the film is about, e.g. the genre?
Not give too much of the plot away?
Tease the audience by setting up narrative enigmas?
Showcase some of the best bits of the film?
Give details about the production team?
Watch the trailer several times. Then write one paragraph answering the questions listed below.
Q1. Discuss the use of codes and conventions used in the construction of this film trailer.
Q2. Consider the representations of people and places in this film trailer.
Q3. What does this film trailer tell us about the institutions involved?
Q4. Explore some of the ways in which this film trailer communicates with its target audiences.
Production Companies
BBC Films - http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfilms/
UK Film Council - New Cinema Fund - http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/newcinemafund
Limelight - http://www.limelightfilm.com/
Q. List the details of the New Cinema Fund. What kind of filmmaker is it aimed at? What other films have been funded this way?
Distributor (UK)
Artificial Eye
http://www.artificial-eye.com/film.php?cinema=fishtank&plugs&qt=false&wm=false
Distributor (Worldwide)
ContentFilm International -
http://www.contentfilm.com/index.php/film_tv/contentfilm_international/new_films/762.html
Q. What kind of institutions are Artificial Eye and ContentFilm International? Who are they owned by? Where are they based?
Website - http://www.fishtankmovie.com/
IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1232776/
Reviews
Overview of the film - http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/129893/fish-tank
http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2009/09/fish-tank-mia-arnold-essex
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/14/cannes-film-festival-andrea-arnold-fish-tank-review
http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=175378%C2%A7ion=review
http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/86764/fish-tank.html
Publicity
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2009/sep/10/trailerpark-drama
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/07_july/28/fishtank.shtml
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/cannes/article6288427.ece
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A56696881
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A16714631 - background information on the director’s earlier film ‘Red Road’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAhPNz9rAVQ
http://www.totalfilm.com/features/the-story-behind-fish-tank
Trailer for Andrea Arnold's First Film Red Road (2006)
Released in 2003, 'Wasp' is Andrea Arnold's Oscar winning short film that stars Nathalie Press as a struggling single mother determined not to let her four young children prove an obstacle in the pursuit of rekindling a relationship with ex-boyfriend Danny Dyer. Dartford (Arnold's hometown) is the setting for this troubling film.
Q. What kind of messages do Arnold's films appear to send? What does she appear to be interested in?
Synopsis
Mia (played by newcomer Katie Jarvis) lives with her mom and younger sister and doesn't have any friends, or at least none that she likes. When her mum (Kierston Wareing) brings home a new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender), everything changes for her. It's not the polished, happy-go-lucky kind of story you'd see in America, but it's a gritty look at a girl who has few passions in life and is living day-to-day just to get by. So when Connor steps into her life, it sparks a bit of joy inside of her and gives her a new sense of direction, or so we think.
Q. What genre of film are the synopsis and main trailer suggestive of? Is there a cultural tradition in the U.K. of films like this? Are there any other film directors who work in this tradition?
Main Trailer
What is a trailer designed to do?
Generate interest in the film?
Inform the audience about the release date?
Show off the stars of the film?
Show the film to its best advantage?
Create excitement/interest?
Tell people what the film is about, e.g. the genre?
Not give too much of the plot away?
Tease the audience by setting up narrative enigmas?
Showcase some of the best bits of the film?
Give details about the production team?
Watch the trailer several times. Then write one paragraph answering the questions listed below.
Q1. Discuss the use of codes and conventions used in the construction of this film trailer.
Q2. Consider the representations of people and places in this film trailer.
Q3. What does this film trailer tell us about the institutions involved?
Q4. Explore some of the ways in which this film trailer communicates with its target audiences.
Production Companies
BBC Films - http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfilms/
UK Film Council - New Cinema Fund - http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/newcinemafund
Limelight - http://www.limelightfilm.com/
Q. List the details of the New Cinema Fund. What kind of filmmaker is it aimed at? What other films have been funded this way?
Distributor (UK)
Artificial Eye
http://www.artificial-eye.com/film.php?cinema=fishtank&plugs&qt=false&wm=false
Distributor (Worldwide)
ContentFilm International -
http://www.contentfilm.com/index.php/film_tv/contentfilm_international/new_films/762.html
Q. What kind of institutions are Artificial Eye and ContentFilm International? Who are they owned by? Where are they based?
Website - http://www.fishtankmovie.com/
IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1232776/
Reviews
Overview of the film - http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/129893/fish-tank
http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2009/09/fish-tank-mia-arnold-essex
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/14/cannes-film-festival-andrea-arnold-fish-tank-review
http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=175378%C2%A7ion=review
http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/86764/fish-tank.html
Publicity
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2009/sep/10/trailerpark-drama
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/07_july/28/fishtank.shtml
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/cannes/article6288427.ece
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A56696881
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A16714631 - background information on the director’s earlier film ‘Red Road’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAhPNz9rAVQ
http://www.totalfilm.com/features/the-story-behind-fish-tank
Trailer for Andrea Arnold's First Film Red Road (2006)
Released in 2003, 'Wasp' is Andrea Arnold's Oscar winning short film that stars Nathalie Press as a struggling single mother determined not to let her four young children prove an obstacle in the pursuit of rekindling a relationship with ex-boyfriend Danny Dyer. Dartford (Arnold's hometown) is the setting for this troubling film.
Q. What kind of messages do Arnold's films appear to send? What does she appear to be interested in?
Wednesday 9 September 2009
The Film Industry - Case Study: Shifty (UK 2009) d. Eran Creevy
Synopsis
From the website Eye for Film. After 4 years, Chris (Danny Mays) returns to where he grew up, it seems at first to attend a party, but his real motive is to catch up with his old buddy, Shifty (Riz Ahmed), who he left behind. Whilst away, Chris has settled into responsible adult life, with a mortgage and a good job, but he is shocked to discover that Shifty has started dealing hard drugs, supplied by the double dealing Glen (Jason Flemyng).
Although happy to see him, Shifty hasn't fully forgiven Chris for leaving in the first place, and we soon learn that the circumstances under which Chris left are more complicated than they first appear. They spend the next 24 hours together, with Chris watching Shifty as he deals to a variety of increasingly desperate customers from the community. Over the course of this day they are forced to confront the ghosts from the past that drove Chris away and the desperate and dangerous present that Shifty finds himself in, whilst re-discovering their friendship. Chris is once again given an opportunity to prove his loyalty to Shifty and to save Shifty from himself.
Based on Eran Creevy's teenage experiences, and boasting convincing performances from a cast of rising stars, the film cost just £100,000 and was funded by Film London's Microwave scheme, and delivered after a shooting schedule of just 18 days.
Main Trailer
Production Companies
Between The Eyes - http://www.betweentheeyes.co.uk/
Film London - http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/
Distributors
Metrodome Distribution (2009) (UK) (all media)
http://www.metrodomegroup.com/
Websites
Home - http://www.shiftyfilm.com/
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifty_(film)
IMDB entry - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104126/
Reviews
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/dvd-reviews/6043814/Shifty-DVD-review.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/apr/24/shifty-film-review
http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/reviews.php?id=7396
Background/Publicity
On The Set Of Shifty - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A31986741
Interviews with actor Daniel Mays and director Eran Creevy http://www.pyroradio.com/index.cfm/act/news_details/id/299
Funding by Film London: http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/press_details.asp?NewsID=938
Details of the Microwave scheme
http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=779
http://microwave.filmlondon.org.uk/
Film Education site for Shifty - http://www.filmeducation.org/shifty/
DVD Trailer
From the website Eye for Film. After 4 years, Chris (Danny Mays) returns to where he grew up, it seems at first to attend a party, but his real motive is to catch up with his old buddy, Shifty (Riz Ahmed), who he left behind. Whilst away, Chris has settled into responsible adult life, with a mortgage and a good job, but he is shocked to discover that Shifty has started dealing hard drugs, supplied by the double dealing Glen (Jason Flemyng).
Although happy to see him, Shifty hasn't fully forgiven Chris for leaving in the first place, and we soon learn that the circumstances under which Chris left are more complicated than they first appear. They spend the next 24 hours together, with Chris watching Shifty as he deals to a variety of increasingly desperate customers from the community. Over the course of this day they are forced to confront the ghosts from the past that drove Chris away and the desperate and dangerous present that Shifty finds himself in, whilst re-discovering their friendship. Chris is once again given an opportunity to prove his loyalty to Shifty and to save Shifty from himself.
Based on Eran Creevy's teenage experiences, and boasting convincing performances from a cast of rising stars, the film cost just £100,000 and was funded by Film London's Microwave scheme, and delivered after a shooting schedule of just 18 days.
Main Trailer
Production Companies
Between The Eyes - http://www.betweentheeyes.co.uk/
Film London - http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/
Distributors
Metrodome Distribution (2009) (UK) (all media)
http://www.metrodomegroup.com/
Websites
Home - http://www.shiftyfilm.com/
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifty_(film)
IMDB entry - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104126/
Reviews
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/dvd-reviews/6043814/Shifty-DVD-review.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/apr/24/shifty-film-review
http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/reviews.php?id=7396
Background/Publicity
On The Set Of Shifty - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A31986741
Interviews with actor Daniel Mays and director Eran Creevy http://www.pyroradio.com/index.cfm/act/news_details/id/299
Funding by Film London: http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/press_details.asp?NewsID=938
Details of the Microwave scheme
http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=779
http://microwave.filmlondon.org.uk/
Film Education site for Shifty - http://www.filmeducation.org/shifty/
DVD Trailer
ITN Press Release and Interview with Riz Ahmed
Riz MC / Sway & Plan B - Shifty
Video from the original motion picture soundtrack for Shifty starring Danny Mays and Riz Ahmed. The track features the film's star Riz MC as well as Sway and Plan B, and is produced by Blue Bear from True Tiger.
Questions on the Production and Distribution of Shifty
Q1. Production - From your reading - what does production involve? What was the inspiration behind Shifty? What were the difficulties of working on a low budget film? How did the Film London Microwave scheme help Shifty get produced? Where does the Microwave scheme get its money from? What other films have received money from the Microwave scheme?
Q2. Distribution - How does a company like Metrodome 'distribute' a film? How did Metrodome find out about Shifty? What is one of the most important ways a low budget film can find a distributor? How did being part of the Microwave scheme help Shifty find a distributor? Where is Metrodome based? What difficulties did Metrodome come up against as they attempted to 'market' Shifty?
Now watch these extracts from interviews with Ben Pugh and Rory Aitken (Co-Producers), Eran Creevy (Writer & Director) and the Kitchen Rehearsal Scene.
What do these add to your understanding of how this film got to be made?
Tuesday 8 September 2009
A2 Media Case Study Marketing Campaign for Cloverfield (2008) d. Matt Reeves
Constructed specifically as a 'monster movie for the YouTube generation’, Cloverfield built a viral marketing campaign - and its own audience - through an enigmatic teaser-trailer, word of mouth and a widget. Its innovative uses of an alternative reality games and videocam techniques involve audiences in new and interactive ways.
With a very low production budget in Hollywood terms (£15m), Cloverfield became an instant financial success making £22 million in its opening weekend. It is a recent example of the power of viral marketing (sometimes called user-generated marketing) to create audience interest before a film's release and, most importantly, to get people into the cinema.
Whether or not Cloverfield is a good film is up to you to decide (critics are divided); but it stands as a great example of the way modern marketers are using a range of methods to attempt to reach their audience and sell a film.
The film's media language choice of an 'eye-witness' presentation of the story using a hand-held camera acts as a representation of our current technological age. Cloverfield's marketing also makes use of recent developments in technology and changes in audience activity and behaviour to create and sustain interest. The director (Matt Reeves) called the film 'a monster movie for the YouTube generation' indicating that the producers of this film were specifically aware that their target audience were Internet-literate young people. It is these people who have been the targets for the marketing campaign and have also been encouraged to be a part of it.
The Teaser Trailer
The first anyone knew of the film was a teaser trailer shown before the 2007 summer blockbuster Transformers. The trailer did not name the film and only gave a release date after showing glimpses of an apparently home-made video of New York being attacked by something, culminating in the shocking image of the head of the Statue of Liberty crashing through a New York street. By creating memorable images and using an unconventional method to present the events, the filmmakers were using a tried-and tested marketing device, the creation of enigma mystery. Creating audience curiosity is a great way to generate interest in a product. Those who saw the trailer would have been left wondering what they had just seen: What genre was the film alluding to (Sci-Fi/Disaster/Monster)? Why was the footage they had been shown more like their own home-movies rather than a slick Hollywood production?
Target audience
The trailer's placement gives an indication of the target audience, one which is a difficult market for advertisers at the moment: teens and, more specifically, young adults. These groups are becoming hard to reach for advertisers who rely on conventional methods.
Young adults tend not to watch TV on a predictable, regular basis and often have access to multi-channel cable television which fragments the audience across a range of channels. Devices like Sky+ mean they can record television programmes, watch them when they choose and fast-forward through any advertising. Alternative methods of viewing television programmes also make this audience hard to find. 'On demand'. downloads and YouTube split the audience further and this is the generation that is likely to wait to buy television programmes and films on DVD rather than watch them in traditional settings surrounded by advertising.
Alternative advertising methods were needed if Cloverfield was going to be able to attract the attention of the group of people who could be used to help make the film a success in the cinema. A specialised online and computer savvy audience was specifically targeted as their interaction with the marketing was vital in the film generating interest from another valuable audience group, the mainstream movie-goer. The story of Cloverfield's marketing shows how the online audience was used to create a buzz about the film to support a more traditional marketing campaign.
Building the campaign
The teaser trailer provided one piece of important information, the name of the producer JJ Abrams. This would have created a number of genre expectations. Abrams is the creator of Alias and Lost and so the audience could expect an element of Sci-Fi/Horror within this film and might anticipate a narrative that was complex, fragmented and laden with 'clues' rather than explanations. Web searches after the teaser trailer led the audience to a website named only as the date of the film's release (http://www.1-18-08.com/). This site slowly released photos which were time and date stamped to allow the audience to build up chronological glimpses into the narrative of the film.
Building ‘buzz’ and ‘chatter’ on the Net
The enigma and the slow release of information were both constructed to encourage discussion online in blogs, social networks and chat rooms, which was how the real marketing took place via 'word of mouth. Web-chatter was heightened on the release of a poster showing a decapitated Statue of Liberty, a devastated New York and the release of a second, more detailed trailer. Still maintaining the mystery, the trailer's exposition contained a chilling geographical marker identifying the location of events to be in the 'area formally known as Central Park'. For the first time the film's title was identified and the trailer was released online along with an official movie website (http://www.cloverfieldmovie.com/) which eventually provided links to MySpace and Facebook pages 'created' by some of the characters from the film. These regularly updated pages created a real-time story which showed the characters moving towards the eventful night and provided a back-story to the film itself. The MySpace blog was where the film's protagonist announced he was moving to Japan to take a new job at Slusho!, a Japanese soft drinks company, which explains why the film begins with a going away party.
http://www.myspace.com/cloverfield_movie
http://www.facebook.com/cloverfieldmovie
The Main Trailer
In addition a widget was available for download from the website. This piece of software could be attached to MySpace pages, blogs etc. and contained the first five minutes of the film with an introduction by JJ Abrams. To download and use the widget people needed to register their contact details.
This registration immediately entered people into a competition based on who managed to distribute the widget to the most people; a direct encouragement of more 'word of mouth' marketing.
They did the traditional stuff too…
Adverts were also sent to mobile phones, traditional posters and TV slots were also used and the culmination of all these events was an increasing public and mainstream press awareness of the film. The campaign was creating a deep curiosity as so much information had been held back and the only way for the audience to gain answers to the questions the marketing raised was to go to the cinema to see the film. As the character Hud said in the second trailer, with this much interest it was almost inevitable that people are gonna want to know how it all went down.
But that's not all...
Parallel to this campaign, a related story was being told through an Alternative Reality Game. The ARG centred around a fictional Japanese company called Tagruato and its subsidiary Slusho! and only a few direct connections were made to the Cloverfield plot. Home pages for Slusho! and Tagruato were put online. The former ran a competition for audience members to create adverts for the frozen soft drink whose USP was its addictive nature ('You can't drink just six') and the happiness it would bring its consumer. (Remember, Slusho! was the company the character Rob from the film was taking a job with.)
http://www.tagruato.jp/index2.php
http://www.slusho.jp/
Tagruato's corporate homepage looks like a conventional business website — even down to experiencing hacks by 'eco-terrorists' It appeared that Slusho's key ingredient, 'seabed nectar', might not be entirely safe. The site reported that a drilling rig in the Atlantic Ocean had been mysteriously destroyed.'TV reports' based on mobile phone footage showed huge chunks of debris being hurled from the sinking rig although there was no explanation for this phenomenon. Pictures from the scene were added to http://www.1-18-08.com/.
http://www.break.com/index/leaked-scene-from-cloverfield.html
There's more...
A Manhattan couple Jamie and Teddy set up a website to post video-blogs to stay in touch after Teddy had gone to Japan to work for Tagruato. Jamie assumed she had been dumped as she hadn't heard from Teddy for over a month when she received a package containing a Tagurato baseball cap, something wrapped in tin-foil (which she was instructed not to eat) and a recorded message indicating Teddy was in some sort of trouble. Interpreting this as a sick practical joke, she assumed he had a new skanky girlfriend and decided to eat the gooey product she received. Almost immediately she appears to become extremely intoxicated. Jamie makes a brief appearance in Cloverfield where the audience can glimpse her passed out on the sofa at Rob's leaving do in the opening scene of the film.
http://jamieandteddy.com/
Password: jllovesth
Marketing + movie = more mystery
The addition of a number of back stories to the Cloverfield tale, without giving clear ideas of 'cause and effect' encourages the audience to attempt to build a story for themselves; first of all to attempt to make sense of the promotional material and, after watching the film, to supplement the limited information provided by the film's highly restricted narration.
The marketing has created a 'Cloverfield universe' bigger than the events of the 90-minute film, but has held back on providing enough information to give resolution to all the mysteries. The film's story is told from the point of view of people who (just like the target audience) have very little information as to what is occurring around them; the characters just catch snippets of information in news reports and in conversations with the military (just like the audience).
The viral marketing, the ARG and then the video-cam style presentation all enhance audience identification with the characters and this heightens the shocking nature of the events we witness with them in the film. The desire to make sense of the events unfolding within the film has been played on for both the interactive and mainstream audience but the filmmakers are still holding back vital pieces of information: What does Slusho! have to do with all of this? Where did the monster come from? Do the military manage to destroy the monster? Do any of the characters from the film survive?
Cloverfield 2?
Could the actual film Cloverfield be just another element in a complex marketing campaign? Is the film an expensive advert for yet another product still to be made? There are online rumours already about a Cloverfield 2 with theories ranging from the sequel being told from another victim's perspective (plenty of people can be seen filming events in the film) or from a military or reporter's point of view. Maybe Cloverfield 2 will be a standard blockbuster movie with omniscient narration and a solid resolution. At this point the 'truth' is irrelevant. What is important is that people are talking about a potential second film and so the viral campaign has already begun.
Fan made trailers for Cloverfield 2...
Thanks to the English & Media Centre.
With a very low production budget in Hollywood terms (£15m), Cloverfield became an instant financial success making £22 million in its opening weekend. It is a recent example of the power of viral marketing (sometimes called user-generated marketing) to create audience interest before a film's release and, most importantly, to get people into the cinema.
Whether or not Cloverfield is a good film is up to you to decide (critics are divided); but it stands as a great example of the way modern marketers are using a range of methods to attempt to reach their audience and sell a film.
The film's media language choice of an 'eye-witness' presentation of the story using a hand-held camera acts as a representation of our current technological age. Cloverfield's marketing also makes use of recent developments in technology and changes in audience activity and behaviour to create and sustain interest. The director (Matt Reeves) called the film 'a monster movie for the YouTube generation' indicating that the producers of this film were specifically aware that their target audience were Internet-literate young people. It is these people who have been the targets for the marketing campaign and have also been encouraged to be a part of it.
The Teaser Trailer
The first anyone knew of the film was a teaser trailer shown before the 2007 summer blockbuster Transformers. The trailer did not name the film and only gave a release date after showing glimpses of an apparently home-made video of New York being attacked by something, culminating in the shocking image of the head of the Statue of Liberty crashing through a New York street. By creating memorable images and using an unconventional method to present the events, the filmmakers were using a tried-and tested marketing device, the creation of enigma mystery. Creating audience curiosity is a great way to generate interest in a product. Those who saw the trailer would have been left wondering what they had just seen: What genre was the film alluding to (Sci-Fi/Disaster/Monster)? Why was the footage they had been shown more like their own home-movies rather than a slick Hollywood production?
Target audience
The trailer's placement gives an indication of the target audience, one which is a difficult market for advertisers at the moment: teens and, more specifically, young adults. These groups are becoming hard to reach for advertisers who rely on conventional methods.
Young adults tend not to watch TV on a predictable, regular basis and often have access to multi-channel cable television which fragments the audience across a range of channels. Devices like Sky+ mean they can record television programmes, watch them when they choose and fast-forward through any advertising. Alternative methods of viewing television programmes also make this audience hard to find. 'On demand'. downloads and YouTube split the audience further and this is the generation that is likely to wait to buy television programmes and films on DVD rather than watch them in traditional settings surrounded by advertising.
Alternative advertising methods were needed if Cloverfield was going to be able to attract the attention of the group of people who could be used to help make the film a success in the cinema. A specialised online and computer savvy audience was specifically targeted as their interaction with the marketing was vital in the film generating interest from another valuable audience group, the mainstream movie-goer. The story of Cloverfield's marketing shows how the online audience was used to create a buzz about the film to support a more traditional marketing campaign.
Building the campaign
The teaser trailer provided one piece of important information, the name of the producer JJ Abrams. This would have created a number of genre expectations. Abrams is the creator of Alias and Lost and so the audience could expect an element of Sci-Fi/Horror within this film and might anticipate a narrative that was complex, fragmented and laden with 'clues' rather than explanations. Web searches after the teaser trailer led the audience to a website named only as the date of the film's release (http://www.1-18-08.com/). This site slowly released photos which were time and date stamped to allow the audience to build up chronological glimpses into the narrative of the film.
Building ‘buzz’ and ‘chatter’ on the Net
The enigma and the slow release of information were both constructed to encourage discussion online in blogs, social networks and chat rooms, which was how the real marketing took place via 'word of mouth. Web-chatter was heightened on the release of a poster showing a decapitated Statue of Liberty, a devastated New York and the release of a second, more detailed trailer. Still maintaining the mystery, the trailer's exposition contained a chilling geographical marker identifying the location of events to be in the 'area formally known as Central Park'. For the first time the film's title was identified and the trailer was released online along with an official movie website (http://www.cloverfieldmovie.com/) which eventually provided links to MySpace and Facebook pages 'created' by some of the characters from the film. These regularly updated pages created a real-time story which showed the characters moving towards the eventful night and provided a back-story to the film itself. The MySpace blog was where the film's protagonist announced he was moving to Japan to take a new job at Slusho!, a Japanese soft drinks company, which explains why the film begins with a going away party.
http://www.myspace.com/cloverfield_movie
http://www.facebook.com/cloverfieldmovie
The Main Trailer
In addition a widget was available for download from the website. This piece of software could be attached to MySpace pages, blogs etc. and contained the first five minutes of the film with an introduction by JJ Abrams. To download and use the widget people needed to register their contact details.
This registration immediately entered people into a competition based on who managed to distribute the widget to the most people; a direct encouragement of more 'word of mouth' marketing.
They did the traditional stuff too…
Adverts were also sent to mobile phones, traditional posters and TV slots were also used and the culmination of all these events was an increasing public and mainstream press awareness of the film. The campaign was creating a deep curiosity as so much information had been held back and the only way for the audience to gain answers to the questions the marketing raised was to go to the cinema to see the film. As the character Hud said in the second trailer, with this much interest it was almost inevitable that people are gonna want to know how it all went down.
But that's not all...
Parallel to this campaign, a related story was being told through an Alternative Reality Game. The ARG centred around a fictional Japanese company called Tagruato and its subsidiary Slusho! and only a few direct connections were made to the Cloverfield plot. Home pages for Slusho! and Tagruato were put online. The former ran a competition for audience members to create adverts for the frozen soft drink whose USP was its addictive nature ('You can't drink just six') and the happiness it would bring its consumer. (Remember, Slusho! was the company the character Rob from the film was taking a job with.)
http://www.tagruato.jp/index2.php
http://www.slusho.jp/
Tagruato's corporate homepage looks like a conventional business website — even down to experiencing hacks by 'eco-terrorists' It appeared that Slusho's key ingredient, 'seabed nectar', might not be entirely safe. The site reported that a drilling rig in the Atlantic Ocean had been mysteriously destroyed.'TV reports' based on mobile phone footage showed huge chunks of debris being hurled from the sinking rig although there was no explanation for this phenomenon. Pictures from the scene were added to http://www.1-18-08.com/.
http://www.break.com/index/leaked-scene-from-cloverfield.html
There's more...
A Manhattan couple Jamie and Teddy set up a website to post video-blogs to stay in touch after Teddy had gone to Japan to work for Tagruato. Jamie assumed she had been dumped as she hadn't heard from Teddy for over a month when she received a package containing a Tagurato baseball cap, something wrapped in tin-foil (which she was instructed not to eat) and a recorded message indicating Teddy was in some sort of trouble. Interpreting this as a sick practical joke, she assumed he had a new skanky girlfriend and decided to eat the gooey product she received. Almost immediately she appears to become extremely intoxicated. Jamie makes a brief appearance in Cloverfield where the audience can glimpse her passed out on the sofa at Rob's leaving do in the opening scene of the film.
http://jamieandteddy.com/
Password: jllovesth
Marketing + movie = more mystery
The addition of a number of back stories to the Cloverfield tale, without giving clear ideas of 'cause and effect' encourages the audience to attempt to build a story for themselves; first of all to attempt to make sense of the promotional material and, after watching the film, to supplement the limited information provided by the film's highly restricted narration.
The marketing has created a 'Cloverfield universe' bigger than the events of the 90-minute film, but has held back on providing enough information to give resolution to all the mysteries. The film's story is told from the point of view of people who (just like the target audience) have very little information as to what is occurring around them; the characters just catch snippets of information in news reports and in conversations with the military (just like the audience).
The viral marketing, the ARG and then the video-cam style presentation all enhance audience identification with the characters and this heightens the shocking nature of the events we witness with them in the film. The desire to make sense of the events unfolding within the film has been played on for both the interactive and mainstream audience but the filmmakers are still holding back vital pieces of information: What does Slusho! have to do with all of this? Where did the monster come from? Do the military manage to destroy the monster? Do any of the characters from the film survive?
Cloverfield 2?
Could the actual film Cloverfield be just another element in a complex marketing campaign? Is the film an expensive advert for yet another product still to be made? There are online rumours already about a Cloverfield 2 with theories ranging from the sequel being told from another victim's perspective (plenty of people can be seen filming events in the film) or from a military or reporter's point of view. Maybe Cloverfield 2 will be a standard blockbuster movie with omniscient narration and a solid resolution. At this point the 'truth' is irrelevant. What is important is that people are talking about a potential second film and so the viral campaign has already begun.
Fan made trailers for Cloverfield 2...
Thanks to the English & Media Centre.
Sunday 6 September 2009
AS MEDIA - Unit 2 Section B - Careers in the Media - Skillset
Careers in the Media
To understand the workings of media institutions we need to get an understanding of the changing nature of employment and careers in the various media industries.
Skillset is the industry body which ‘supports skills and training for people and businesses to ensure the UK creative media industries maintain their world class position.’
http://www.skillset.org/
Make a note of the instructions before clicking on the link below.
Open up the 2006 Skillset Employment Census and go to pages 4 & 5 - PART ONE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.
http://www.skillset.org/research/article_5136_1.asp
TASK – answer these questions…
1. What’s happened with employment on terrestrial TV?
2. What does this suggest about the traditional TV industry?
3. What’s happening in the interactive media sector?
4. Where is the industry predominantly based?
5. What’s the proportion of women working in the media? Where do most women work?
In Skillset’s ‘Survey of the Audio Visual Industries' Workforce 2005’ it revealed that since 1990, more women have entered the industry than men, and more black or ethnic minorities have entered the industry than whites.
In a similar survey from 2003 it revealed that just under two-thirds of people working in the media are under 35, two-thirds of all people working in the media have a degree and a quarter of those have a degree in media. Only 46% of those working in the media earn over £30,000 a year.
6. What does this suggest about the media industry?
7. What does it suggest about media representation?
To understand the workings of media institutions we need to get an understanding of the changing nature of employment and careers in the various media industries.
Skillset is the industry body which ‘supports skills and training for people and businesses to ensure the UK creative media industries maintain their world class position.’
http://www.skillset.org/
Make a note of the instructions before clicking on the link below.
Open up the 2006 Skillset Employment Census and go to pages 4 & 5 - PART ONE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.
http://www.skillset.org/research/article_5136_1.asp
TASK – answer these questions…
1. What’s happened with employment on terrestrial TV?
2. What does this suggest about the traditional TV industry?
3. What’s happening in the interactive media sector?
4. Where is the industry predominantly based?
5. What’s the proportion of women working in the media? Where do most women work?
In Skillset’s ‘Survey of the Audio Visual Industries' Workforce 2005’ it revealed that since 1990, more women have entered the industry than men, and more black or ethnic minorities have entered the industry than whites.
In a similar survey from 2003 it revealed that just under two-thirds of people working in the media are under 35, two-thirds of all people working in the media have a degree and a quarter of those have a degree in media. Only 46% of those working in the media earn over £30,000 a year.
6. What does this suggest about the media industry?
7. What does it suggest about media representation?
AS MEDIA - Unit 2 Section B - Institutions and Audiences
INTRODUCTION - Institutions and Audiences
For this part of the media studies course you will learn how the film industry operates and explore how audiences are formed and use media.
The first two keywords you need to learn definitions for are – unsurprisingly – institution & audience.
Audience - Collective group of people reading any media text.
Institution – An established organization or company, e.g. the BBC, that provides media content, whether for profit, public service or another motive. This involves you understanding how the media works as a business, the relationship between institutions and the public and media as a form of power.
Q. Think about the number of ways you can ‘read’ something produced by the BBC?
TASK - Go to the Doctor Who website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/
Q. How can you, as a member of an audience, 'engage with' or 'view' Doctor Who...? How many different forms of ‘media’ are offered?
The name we give to this coming together of different ‘media’ is your third keyword:
Convergence - Hardware and software coming together across media, and companies coming together across similar boundaries. This makes the distinction between different types of media and different media industries increasingly dubious.
Q. How would you usually watch an episode of Doctor Who? TV, perhaps? Now think of the other ways you can watch an episode...
Q. What links these formats?
A. They’re all digital, your fourth keyword...
Digital technology has led to increasing uncertainty over how we define an audience, with general agreement that the notion of a large group of people, brought together by time, responding to a single text, is outdated and that audiences now are ‘fragmented’.
Key Points to remember...
In media studies we focus on ‘the contemporary’.
Q. What does this mean if, for example, we are to study the film industry in Britain?
We are also keen to focus on convergence as a key agent of change.
Q. Why is it so important?
A. Because it’s one of the most important things that’s happening now.
Q. How does the film industry 'converge' with the internet?
Finally, we are interested in how things are changing.
Within the context of not only convergence, but also ownership, technologies and globalisation.
More key words – ownership and technologies are pretty straightforward however…
Globalisation means - The shift in media distribution from local or national to international and the whole world at once. Culturally, describes the process of ‘sameness’ over the world, typified by the availability of McDonalds in most nations.
For this part of the media studies course you will learn how the film industry operates and explore how audiences are formed and use media.
The first two keywords you need to learn definitions for are – unsurprisingly – institution & audience.
Audience - Collective group of people reading any media text.
Institution – An established organization or company, e.g. the BBC, that provides media content, whether for profit, public service or another motive. This involves you understanding how the media works as a business, the relationship between institutions and the public and media as a form of power.
Q. Think about the number of ways you can ‘read’ something produced by the BBC?
TASK - Go to the Doctor Who website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/
Q. How can you, as a member of an audience, 'engage with' or 'view' Doctor Who...? How many different forms of ‘media’ are offered?
The name we give to this coming together of different ‘media’ is your third keyword:
Convergence - Hardware and software coming together across media, and companies coming together across similar boundaries. This makes the distinction between different types of media and different media industries increasingly dubious.
Q. How would you usually watch an episode of Doctor Who? TV, perhaps? Now think of the other ways you can watch an episode...
Q. What links these formats?
A. They’re all digital, your fourth keyword...
Digital technology has led to increasing uncertainty over how we define an audience, with general agreement that the notion of a large group of people, brought together by time, responding to a single text, is outdated and that audiences now are ‘fragmented’.
Key Points to remember...
In media studies we focus on ‘the contemporary’.
Q. What does this mean if, for example, we are to study the film industry in Britain?
We are also keen to focus on convergence as a key agent of change.
Q. Why is it so important?
A. Because it’s one of the most important things that’s happening now.
Q. How does the film industry 'converge' with the internet?
Finally, we are interested in how things are changing.
Within the context of not only convergence, but also ownership, technologies and globalisation.
More key words – ownership and technologies are pretty straightforward however…
Globalisation means - The shift in media distribution from local or national to international and the whole world at once. Culturally, describes the process of ‘sameness’ over the world, typified by the availability of McDonalds in most nations.
Thursday 3 September 2009
Wednesday 2 September 2009
Monday 31 August 2009
A2 MEDIA - Case Study - Trailer for Control (2007) d. Anton Corbijn
What is a trailer designed to do?
Generate interest in the film;
Inform the audience about the release date?
Show off the stars of the film;
Show the film to its best advantage;
Create excitement/interest;
Tell people what the film is about, e.g. the genre;
Not give too much of the plot away;
Tease the audience by setting up narrative enigmas;
Showcase some of the best bits of the film;
Give details about the production team?
Identifying the precise function and objectives of a text is always a useful starting point in an analysis. You can then start to ‘measure’ the trailer against this check list and perhaps start to ask yourself questions about the ways in which the trailer does (or does not) meet these objectives and think about why, and the way in which, the trailer perhaps deliberately challenges some of these assumptions about the suggested objectives of film trailers.
Watch the trailer several times. Then write one paragraph answering the questions listed below.
Q1. Discuss the use of codes and conventions used in the construction of this film trailer.
Q2. Consider the representations of people and places in this film trailer.
Q3. What does this film trailer tell us about the institutions involved?
Q4. Explore some of the ways in which this film trailer communicates with its target audiences.
CONTEXT
Below is the music video to Joy Division's last single 'Atmosphere' released after Ian Curtis had died. It was also directed by Anton Corbjin. Many of the band's videos and artwork used black and white imagery. Watch and look at the trailers, videos and covers below. How might they have influenced the director?
Compare the tone and institutions associated with the production and distribution of the Indiana Jones release in the same year as 'Control'. How do they fare globally and financially in terms of marketing, publicity and budgets?
http://www.momentumpictures.co.uk/flash#main
http://www.paramount.com/
http://lucasfilm.com/
http://www.ilm.com/
There have already been other films about the Manchester music scene of the late 1970s and 1980s. Michael Winterbottom's 2002 film 'Twenty-Four Hour Party People' has a very different tone. How might this and the 'Joy Division' (2007) documentary have helped 'Control' at the box office?
Artwork from various Joy Division record covers
Unknown Pleasures (1979)
Closer (1980)
Love Will Tear Us Apart (1981)
Photos taken of Joy Division in the late 1970s by Anton Corbjin
Original Film Poster
Website for the film
http://momentum.control.substance001.com/
Saturday 4 July 2009
Miss Legg's Leaving Advert
Year 12 Media Students reveal what's been going on since Miss Legg left to have her baby...
Tuesday 5 May 2009
Year 13 Media Studies Work
Watch the DVD entitled ‘The Perfect Scary Movie’ and make any necessary additional notes.
There are plenty of Sci-fi and horror films on TV over the next few days - E4 has The Fantastic Four (2005) on tonight and tomorrow – has the ‘high concept’ superhero film taken over from science-fiction? Shaun of the Dead (2004) is on ITV2 tomorrow – horror comedy hybrid? A pastiche of the Romero films? ITV4 has two Hammer Horror film Scars of Dracula (1970) and Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) on tonight and tomorrow – consider the development of technical codes and look at the lovely technicolour. FilmFour has the 1954 version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on this afternoon – relate Nemo to the idea of the ‘mad scientist’. Kate and Leopold (2001) is on BBC3 tomorrow and merges science-fiction and romantic comedy with great success – consider ‘hybridisation’. Star Trek: Nemesis (2003) is on C4 on Saturday – think about films and audience – Trekkies are a good case study. ITV has Eight Legged Freaks (2002) on Thursday and Red Dragon (2002) on Saturday.
Choose any two or three of these films to watch, analyse and use as examples in the following essay:
Discuss how and why film genres change over a period of time.
[45 marks]
Write at least two sides using the films we’ve seen so far and any relevant films from your own viewing experience.
The argument you could follow is – film genres change
reflecting 1. changes in society (feminism for example) 2. changes in moral standards (more gore) 3. changes in technology (gore shown in a more scary way 4.different style of directors (more women directors for example), more independent directors.
Don’t forget to mention conventions, narrative conventions, feminist film theory if applicable, audience theory if applicable, and a small example of textual analysis to support your point.
E-mail the essay to my school address or via Miss Legg if you can’t remember mine. You can also contact me through the department blog…
There are plenty of Sci-fi and horror films on TV over the next few days - E4 has The Fantastic Four (2005) on tonight and tomorrow – has the ‘high concept’ superhero film taken over from science-fiction? Shaun of the Dead (2004) is on ITV2 tomorrow – horror comedy hybrid? A pastiche of the Romero films? ITV4 has two Hammer Horror film Scars of Dracula (1970) and Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) on tonight and tomorrow – consider the development of technical codes and look at the lovely technicolour. FilmFour has the 1954 version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on this afternoon – relate Nemo to the idea of the ‘mad scientist’. Kate and Leopold (2001) is on BBC3 tomorrow and merges science-fiction and romantic comedy with great success – consider ‘hybridisation’. Star Trek: Nemesis (2003) is on C4 on Saturday – think about films and audience – Trekkies are a good case study. ITV has Eight Legged Freaks (2002) on Thursday and Red Dragon (2002) on Saturday.
Choose any two or three of these films to watch, analyse and use as examples in the following essay:
Discuss how and why film genres change over a period of time.
[45 marks]
Write at least two sides using the films we’ve seen so far and any relevant films from your own viewing experience.
The argument you could follow is – film genres change
reflecting 1. changes in society (feminism for example) 2. changes in moral standards (more gore) 3. changes in technology (gore shown in a more scary way 4.different style of directors (more women directors for example), more independent directors.
Don’t forget to mention conventions, narrative conventions, feminist film theory if applicable, audience theory if applicable, and a small example of textual analysis to support your point.
E-mail the essay to my school address or via Miss Legg if you can’t remember mine. You can also contact me through the department blog…
Questions on The Film Industry DVD
Questions – The Film Industry – Production
What is the role of the producer? What different elements does it contain?
What are the four ‘blocks’ that Nick Powell talks about?
The IDEA
What makes a good script? What must it include?
The PACKAGE
What does the PACKAGE involve and who is it aimed at?
What is ‘script development’?
Attracting investment
Who can UK film producers go to for finance?
How many partners is typical for a film?
What is a co-production deal? Where might a UK film producer find it?
What is the negative side of having a single investor?
How does a UK film producer decide on the best deal for each film?
Planning
What’s the role of the producer in planning the shooting schedule of the film?
Who is the director’s ‘right hand’?
Budget
What is the significance of the budget?
How is the budget broken down?
What are ‘above’ and ‘below-the-line’ costs?
Audience
What question should an executive producer ask of every film?
Why is audience so important?
Marketing
Why is marketing considered a hidden cost?
What is the importance of genre in marketing?
What is the ‘need to see’ and how does it work?
What are the significant differences between Hollywood and the UK film industry?
Questions – The Film Industry – Distribution 1
What is the distributor’s job?
What different ways do distributors acquire films?
Marketing
Where do distributor’s start when marketing films?
Why is genre important?
Target Audience
Who are the most frequent cinema audience?
Release date
Why is it so important? Why are the school holidays so popular?
Film research
Why does it happen? What does it involve?
Marketing budget
How is the budget decided upon? Once the budget is estimated, what tends to be the percentage spent on marketing?
Advertising / publicity
What three sections does this involve?
Questions – The Film Industry – Distribution 2
The marketing campaign
Why do distributor’s find it so difficult to get their message to stand out?
What remains the most important marketing tool for a film?
Why is synergy important?
The poster
Why is poster art important? Why do they ‘tease’? What should a good poster reveal?
The trailer
Why is the trailer important?
What three different types of trailer do you have?
Why would the ‘perfect’ trailer not have voiceover?
How is a TV trailer different?
Digital/Multimedia
What two basic uses can distributors make of the internet?
PR/Publicity
How can you get free publicity for a film?
Tracking
When are tracking figures first released? What are they tracking?
Why is ‘word of mouth’ king?
How do distributors create ‘buzz’?
Why is the opening weekend’s ‘three day figure’ so important?
Questions – The Film Industry – Exhibition
What happened in the summer of 2007?
What do exhibitors need and what are the problems/developments facing them in the 21st century?
What has driven the rise in cinema audiences since 1984?
Cinema location
Why were the older multiplexes out of town? What did they need? What’s happened in recent years?
Curzon Cinemas/City Screen are ‘niche’ exhibitors – how do they compete against the majors?
Audience
Who are an increasing part of the changing audience of cinema goers?
How do ‘film bookers’ decide on what films go where? How far in advance are films booked? When are their decisions reviewed?
Audience again is vital! The Vue cinema chain spent millions doing research called ‘mosaic profiling’ in the last few years. What did they discover?
How do people decide which cinema to go to? Where does ‘brand’ tend to be in the top ten?
How do Curzon cinemas attempt to differentiate between themselves and the majors?
What percentage of audience leaving a cinema did not know the name or brand of that cinema?
What’s going to happen with the arrival of digital projection?
How is digital 3d likely to change things?
How will the digital screen network help niche exhibitors like Curzon reach a wider audience than their typical 25-45 age range?
How are cinemas attempting to differentiate themselves from home entertainment?
What is the role of the producer? What different elements does it contain?
What are the four ‘blocks’ that Nick Powell talks about?
The IDEA
What makes a good script? What must it include?
The PACKAGE
What does the PACKAGE involve and who is it aimed at?
What is ‘script development’?
Attracting investment
Who can UK film producers go to for finance?
How many partners is typical for a film?
What is a co-production deal? Where might a UK film producer find it?
What is the negative side of having a single investor?
How does a UK film producer decide on the best deal for each film?
Planning
What’s the role of the producer in planning the shooting schedule of the film?
Who is the director’s ‘right hand’?
Budget
What is the significance of the budget?
How is the budget broken down?
What are ‘above’ and ‘below-the-line’ costs?
Audience
What question should an executive producer ask of every film?
Why is audience so important?
Marketing
Why is marketing considered a hidden cost?
What is the importance of genre in marketing?
What is the ‘need to see’ and how does it work?
What are the significant differences between Hollywood and the UK film industry?
Questions – The Film Industry – Distribution 1
What is the distributor’s job?
What different ways do distributors acquire films?
Marketing
Where do distributor’s start when marketing films?
Why is genre important?
Target Audience
Who are the most frequent cinema audience?
Release date
Why is it so important? Why are the school holidays so popular?
Film research
Why does it happen? What does it involve?
Marketing budget
How is the budget decided upon? Once the budget is estimated, what tends to be the percentage spent on marketing?
Advertising / publicity
What three sections does this involve?
Questions – The Film Industry – Distribution 2
The marketing campaign
Why do distributor’s find it so difficult to get their message to stand out?
What remains the most important marketing tool for a film?
Why is synergy important?
The poster
Why is poster art important? Why do they ‘tease’? What should a good poster reveal?
The trailer
Why is the trailer important?
What three different types of trailer do you have?
Why would the ‘perfect’ trailer not have voiceover?
How is a TV trailer different?
Digital/Multimedia
What two basic uses can distributors make of the internet?
PR/Publicity
How can you get free publicity for a film?
Tracking
When are tracking figures first released? What are they tracking?
Why is ‘word of mouth’ king?
How do distributors create ‘buzz’?
Why is the opening weekend’s ‘three day figure’ so important?
Questions – The Film Industry – Exhibition
What happened in the summer of 2007?
What do exhibitors need and what are the problems/developments facing them in the 21st century?
What has driven the rise in cinema audiences since 1984?
Cinema location
Why were the older multiplexes out of town? What did they need? What’s happened in recent years?
Curzon Cinemas/City Screen are ‘niche’ exhibitors – how do they compete against the majors?
Audience
Who are an increasing part of the changing audience of cinema goers?
How do ‘film bookers’ decide on what films go where? How far in advance are films booked? When are their decisions reviewed?
Audience again is vital! The Vue cinema chain spent millions doing research called ‘mosaic profiling’ in the last few years. What did they discover?
How do people decide which cinema to go to? Where does ‘brand’ tend to be in the top ten?
How do Curzon cinemas attempt to differentiate between themselves and the majors?
What percentage of audience leaving a cinema did not know the name or brand of that cinema?
What’s going to happen with the arrival of digital projection?
How is digital 3d likely to change things?
How will the digital screen network help niche exhibitors like Curzon reach a wider audience than their typical 25-45 age range?
How are cinemas attempting to differentiate themselves from home entertainment?
Year 12 Media Studies Work
The most important thing I need you to do is e-mail the passwords to your e-mail accounts so I can upload your films and preliminary tasks from home into your blogs.
You can already view your films here and your preliminary tasks by searching within You Tube for “alleyn’s media” (use the speech marks to define your search) and my surname. If you can’t find anything then e-mail me and I’ll supply you with the link.
1. Finish watching The Film Industry programmes on your DVD on Production through to Piracy: the End of Cinema. Answer the questions on the sheets already given to you and e-mail to my school address by Thursday.
2. Finish reading the booklets on all different aspects of the Film Industry. E-mail me if you don’t have them at home and I can send you new copies via e-mail.
3. Once you’ve done that attempt the essay question below, remembering to provide plenty of specific examples. Complete this essay inside 60 minutes and have your notes with you. The next essay I set will be a mock where you shouldn’t have any notes and needs to be done within 45 minutes.
Essay:
Discuss the ways in which media institutions and audiences have been affected by the increase in digital proliferation, within a media area, which you have studied.
Candidates must choose to focus on one of the following media areas though you may make reference to other media where relevant to your answer.
• Film
• Music
• Newspapers
• Radio
• Magazines
• Video games
[50 marks]
You can already view your films here and your preliminary tasks by searching within You Tube for “alleyn’s media” (use the speech marks to define your search) and my surname. If you can’t find anything then e-mail me and I’ll supply you with the link.
1. Finish watching The Film Industry programmes on your DVD on Production through to Piracy: the End of Cinema. Answer the questions on the sheets already given to you and e-mail to my school address by Thursday.
2. Finish reading the booklets on all different aspects of the Film Industry. E-mail me if you don’t have them at home and I can send you new copies via e-mail.
3. Once you’ve done that attempt the essay question below, remembering to provide plenty of specific examples. Complete this essay inside 60 minutes and have your notes with you. The next essay I set will be a mock where you shouldn’t have any notes and needs to be done within 45 minutes.
Essay:
Discuss the ways in which media institutions and audiences have been affected by the increase in digital proliferation, within a media area, which you have studied.
Candidates must choose to focus on one of the following media areas though you may make reference to other media where relevant to your answer.
• Film
• Music
• Newspapers
• Radio
• Magazines
• Video games
[50 marks]
Sunday 3 May 2009
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