British Cinema

This is England is a British drama film written and directed by Shane Meadows. The film won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the 2007 British Academy Film Awards. It also won the Best Film category at the 2006 British Independent Film Awards. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 93% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 89 reviews.

Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 86/100, based on 23 reviews".

This made it the tenth best reviewed film of the year.
In the opening Weekend, it grossed:

$18k (USA) (29 July 2007)
£207,k (UK) (29 April 2007)

There was an estimated budget of £1.5m

The production companies involved were: Warp Films, Big Arty Productions, EM Media

A low budget (1.5m) was used in this film, which gives an indication about the film; it’s almost certainly an Indie film (not owned by a bigger company). Working title is a subsidiary of a bigger company. Means you can’t have stars as there is not enough money to pay them.

He did not want a higher budget as the higher the budget, the lower the creative control. More than half the budget came from the UK film council (government organisation). However it can go lower, Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee, also by Shane Meadows, had a budget of £48k.

The gant rule: If you have a film that’s a hit in the UK and one that’s a hit in the US, It will be shown on 10 times more screens in the US, and make 10 times more money than in the UK.

Working title use famous actors in almost all their movies, as this makes it viewable in more countries. American actors are often used because of this. Warp have not used any famous actors in their films.

5 months in America and gained £300k, however, its peak was only 14 screens at a time. For America, This is England was not at all a mainstream film. It was treated like an Arthouse film.

Working title reinforce the impression that English films must include areas such as London and middle class characters, unlike This is England.

This is England is a social realist film. They typical do not have stars or special effects, they are almost documentary like in style. This makes them a difficult sell.

UK distributers used Optimum Releasing (now studio canal, and not indie anymore) In the Us, it was distributed by IFC.

Box office: £2.1m for UK, $330k for US, and Worldwide £5.1m. 

What Is Distribution?

There are 3 different stages in the film cycle:

Production: When the movie is being made, filming etc. (pre-production, production, post-production)

Distribution: Letting people know about the film, advertising, DVD retailers
Exhibition: Showing the film.

In more detail, distribution is when a company are responsible for the marketing of a film and sell it to companies such as DVD retailers or streaming sites. They also decide the release date of the film. If the distributor is given an imported or foreign film, they could also be responsible for dubbing or subtitling the film. They might have to secure censorship or other legal or organizational "approval" for the exhibition of the film in the country or place where it does business, before approaching the exhibitors for booking. The distribution company is usually different from the production company. Distribution deals are an important part of financing a film.

I used this Wikipedia page for some of the information.

This image sums up distribution, I took it from SlideShare

 

As an example, the film Everest (Baltasar Kormakur, 2015) was distributed by UIP (Universal International Pictures) The film was distributed in 65 different countries in cinemas: Theatrical Distribution. A reason why this film was so popular was because of the famous actors starring in it.

It had a budget of $55m which is not exactly a tentpole film, but it is a reasonably high budget so would have a high chance.

Box Office Mojo

 

In Horror films it is not so important to have famous actors as the market is already very large, also the fact that most of the main characters die means that there isn't such a high demand for A-list actors in this genre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SR: The semiotic analysis of our idea

 Audiences:

Below you can see a link to an article from box office, that shows which audience went to watch the premier of "The Purge" and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". You will see that the audience was mainly young adults under 25. And there were around 50%-60% of women and 40-50% males.

http://www.thewrap.com/box-office-how-horror-films-conjuring-win-scaring-young-women-104901/

When reading this article you quickly ask yourself: Why are so many women going to watch a horror movie? You would mainly consider a horror movie to be addressed to a male audience. A very simple explanation for this is that the main protagonist in most horror movies is a woman.

Our film opening will also be with a female main protagonist. Moreover, we looked at bbfc and looked at the rating system. Our film opening would be most likely to be rated at 15. If clicking the link below, you will see that the age rate of 15+ is allowed to include any of the following:

• Strong violence
• Frequent strong language
• Portrays of sexual activity
• Strong verbal references to sex
• Nudity 
• Scenes of violence
• Discriminatory language or behaviour 
• Drug taking 

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/15

Due to this age rate our primary audience would be young adults aged between 15 and 25.
Our secondary audience would be the people interested in the horror genre.


Genres:

When watching a movie there is always a main genre e.g. horror in the movie "Scary Movie".
However, there are also other genres that are or can be linked to it. One genre that could for example be linked to "Scary Movie" and also our film opening, is the slasher genre. In this genre, there is a main killer who is nearly always trying to rape or kill young women. One important signifier for the slasher genre, is that the killer will kill the victim with a knife. The knife is phallic, which means that it is a symbol for a sexual assault towards the victim. The term phallic, comes from Freud's psychosexual analysis of the 5 psychosexual stages. (phallic stage is the 3rd stage). It can therefore also be applied to media.

Representation:

For our stereotypes in our film opening, we have Olivia (played by Bronwen), who is portrayed as a very girly girl, who only cares about her friends, make-up and hair. Whereas our killer (played by Jonathan), is a stereotypical killer, where you don't see the face, he is wearing a mask and wants to kill Olivia with a knife.
We chose not to do any counter stereotypes, because horror is a very common genre and these two character's are stereotypes, which are considered to be the normative in society.

SR: Call Sheet 2

Call Sheet

After having changed our idea, and deciding on all the final details, we were able to create a call sheet with the individual shots, basic scene and shot summary, dialogue and props, costume etc. This call sheet was a useful guideline to when we had to film, and after we filmed we added some more detail in there about the different shots. So this is the final version of our call sheet.

Call Sheet

Scene/basic Shot Summary	DIALOGUE	CAMERA (shot type, movement, framing)	MISE EN SCENE (location, props, costume, make-up etc.	CAST (note any directions)
Scene 1: A dark screen, where all you can hear are footsteps and then a door opening and closing. Adding sound effects to signify that it opens and closes. The basement then comes to sight, when a red bulb light turns on and flickers. We first see a bulletin board, where a lot of different things are attached such as pictures, locks of hair, calendar, newspaper articles etc.  The killer then all of a sudden comes into the shot and focuses on the different things by lighting at them with the flashlight.  The killer will come by a picture of the house, where we will frame in on the picture of the house and after that cut into the next scene that is an establishing shot of the house from the outside. Signifying that the killer is now outside of her house.	\	Long shot of the room, where the bulletin board is attached on the wall Medium shot when he walks closer to the bulletin board. We are framing the killer so that the audience can’t see his face until right at the end. Point-of-view shot when the killer walks towards the board. Pan from the left to the right to show the entire board. Showing each of the individual props on there by using extreme close-ups.	Location: A basement at one Jonathan’s house. His basement will be covered in plastic and will light in a very dim flickering light. Props: Bulletin board Locks of hair Small bags to put hair in Calendar Map over the house Pictures of the girl Picture of her FB profile Picture of her house Newspaper articles Red Pins Red light bulb Flashlight Plastic Costume: Black hoodie Black gloves Black jeans Black combat boots Mask Make-up: No make-up at all. Only the killer wearing his mask, but his face is not yet shown.	Killer is breathing heavily
Scene 2: The killer is outside of the house. There are point-of-view shots, taken with hand-held footage from behind a tree of bush to signify that he is observing from his perspective. There is then a light that turns on in one of the rooms. Then cutting to the girl in the bathroom, signifying that light turning on was from the bathroom Once in the bathroom, the girl is brushing her hair She is then putting on red nail polish on her nails and some of the nail polish drips onto the table.  There will be a flash forward, created with the use of a match cut. Blood is dripping on the floor running down her legs and landing on the floor in the basement. Signifying that blood will be spilt and showing what will happen to her.  It then cuts back to the bathroom scene, where she is now fixing her hair and tying it up in a ponytail. The second she ties it tighter, there is another flash forward to when her hands are tied with rope down in the basement. Her hands are covered with blood and wounds and are tied really tightly.	\	Establishing shot from the outside of the house. Point-of-view shot from the killer’s perspective, from behind a tree. A master shot of the house. Panning upwards to show how the light in the bathroom turns on. Cut to inside of the house, girl coming into the bathroom and turning on the light. There is then a shot seeing the girl walk into the bathroom from the back and standing in front of the mirror. Creating a close-up, from inside the closet, where the girl is taking the nail polish out from Mid-shot of her closing the closet and walking back towards the table next to the sink to put on the nail polish. Low angle shot that shows how she is observing her finger nails. Close-up on how she puts on some on each nail and then all of a sudden the nail polish drops onto the table. Creating a deep focus on the red nail polish that is signifying blood in our flash forward. Mid-shot from the side, showing how she is brushing her hair. Low angle, looking up on the girl to see how she is putting her hair up. A close-up from the back, the focus on her hair to see how she is pulling it tighter and creating the flash forward where rope is tied around her hands.	Location: Jonathan’s bathroom. Costume: The killer’s costume consisting of the black clothes and the mask. The girl’s costume is a pair of blue jeans and a plain white T-Shirt. We decided to make her clothing very simple, because we are counter typing and a final girl never dresses that girly, but has a very simple and nerdy style. Props: Fake blood Red Nail Polish Rope Wooden chair Brush Hair band Make-up: No make-up at all, except fro the nail polish. Signifying that she is the nerdy clever final girl, who prefers to spend her time on books rather than make-up and clothes.	Girl sighing when she looks at her hair in the mirror.
Scene 3: She walks into her bedroom and grabs her bible to go to church. When holding it up, there is a close-up of it and the shot cross fades to when she is in church praying with her bible in her hands. After a while she gets up and leaves the church and say amen. Outside she gets a false scare, when someone puts a hand on her shoulder. It is however just the pastor who wants to give her back her bible because she forgot it in the church. She immediately calls a friend right after to tell her what just happened. While she does that, the killer comes up behind her and puts a bag over her head. It immediately cuts to black, and we create an audio bridge where the friend is still on the phone, yelling for Casey, the girl.	“Amen” “Haha it’s just me, I just wanted to hand you your bible, you left it inside”. “Thank you” “Hey Claire! Omg I just had the weirdest feeling that I was being watched and then the pastor just scared me because I forgot my bible in church haha”. “Omg that must have been so weird”. “I know, I felt really…” (ahhhhh scream) Audio Bridge  “Casey! Casey are you there? Casey!”	Extreme-close-up on her bible and cross fading into the same extreme close-up when she is in church. Creating an establishing shot of the church to show the calm environment she is in. Focusing on her lips and her silent prayers. Mid-shot when she get’s up to walk out of church. Going back to the establishing shot of the church as she leaves it. Point-of-view shot with hand-held footage from the killer’s perspective to show that he is observing her wherever she goes. Over-the-shoulder shot, when the pastor puts his hand on her shoulder. An extreme close-up on her face to show how scared she got, when someone put his hand on her shoulder. Shot, reverse shot between her and the pastor while they exchange the small dialogue. Mid-shot when she takes her phone out and looks relieved. Dials a number. Extreme close-up on her phone. While she talks into it, there is a focus pull, putting her into shallow focus and the killer sneaking up behind her into deep focus. Bag is pulled over her head and cuts to black.	Location: The church at Limpertsberg in Luxembourg Props: Bible Pastor Phone Bag Costume: Killer’s costume with all the black clothes and his mask, which is finally revealed.	Girl jumping when the pastor puts his hand on her shoulder. Screaming when a bag is put over her head.