It is a unique film and shows a different side to London and showed things people had not really seen in films before like homosexuality, especially homosexual asian characters seemed unheard of, so this could be seen as a selling point and also a reason why it was hard to sell, as many people would like to see a gritty down to earth film about London life and away from the stereotype of beautiful lavish London portrayed in so many films, this film was made for a British audience much more so than an American one and so it will have found it hard to sell in that respect.
Tuesday 23 March 2010
Marketing Film
My Beautiful Laundrette was made in 1985 by Working Title and is set in 1980's London under the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher and centered around the story of a young pakistani and a white punk.
Tim Bevan's History of Working Title
1. Tim Bevan was a production runner in New Zealand and then set up Aldabra music video production company in England in the late seventies.
Eric Fellner founded Initial Pictures with partner Scott Millaney in 1985.
2. Working Title grew out of the company Big Science Limited.
3. This is comparable to Warp X/Warp Films in the respect of one company being born of another and going on to be a similar but different type of film production company.
4. 3 Critically-acclaimed film directors that they got to work on their videos were:
Nic Roeg, Derek Jarman and Stephen Frears.
5. Stephen Frears directed My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid.
6. Two big companies dominating the UK Film industry were EMI and Goldcrest, and by the end of the 1980's they had pretty much disappeared and smaller companies started to dominate the industry.
7. Hanif Kureshi recieved funding from the new Film Four arm to develop his new script.
8.Frears and Working Title were attracted to the script as it was unique and something that people hadn't seen on film before, culturally different as it was about a young gay pakistani in England.
9. Stars that have emerged from Working Title are Daniel Day-Lewis, Hugh Grant, Cate Blanchett and Jamie Bell.
10. My Beautiful Laundrette was originally meant to be just a television film but this changed due to it's successful reception that it recieved at the Edinburgh Film festival and so they decided to make it a cinema release.
11. Los Angeles or more so Hollywood are central to the success of films because every film business in the world seemed to revolve around Hollywood and it is the world wide capital of the movie business. Major decisions are made in Hollywood and most finance comes from it and most talent agencies are there.
12. Working Title's co-founders contrast with most British producers as they do not see American businesses as enemies but friends.
13. The "Working Title way" is to work with new directors, writers, actors, known as new talent.
14. The George Pub, Wardour Street became known as the centre of the British film industry, this perhaps shows that this industry was not particulary important in the 1980's and not a main stream industry.
15. The Tall Guy led to the international success of Four Wedding's and a Funeral as Richard Curtis recieved a Royalty cheque for the film and so sent Working Title the new script as a reward for their genorosity.
16. Richard Curtis likes to be involved in every aspect of the films from start to finish, as a writer, executive producer, director and co-writer, and he has also been involved in casting, crew, marketing and editing, so he changes his role in every film but they all these films seem to gross over a billion dollars.
17. Working Title could no longer afford to be an Indie company as it had no proper infrastructure and were not fully concentrating on the content of their films and so in 1992 PolyGram invested in it and aquired it and created a better structure of Working Title and gave them a completely different type of film company. They would no longer make the same unique films that they once did.
18. The new internal infrastructure included a development department run in Los Angelese and London, a business affairs department and a physical production department.
19. Bevan describes Working Title's relationship with the Coen Brothers as a third-party creative relationship where Working Title provides finance, production structure, marketing and distribution and also offers creative opinion, it could be said that the auteur theory applies to the Coen Brothers' movies as they are made how they want them to be regardless of the companies creative opinion.
20. Four Wedding's and a Funeral was a fortuitous as the company was ten years old and that the company had been able to stay afloat to the point of the movie. As they tend to like making films for passion rather than to be hits, however this would not seem the case today.
21. Their next release was Bean: The Movie starring Rowan Atkinson.
22. The movie looked at as a template for narrative structure was The Godfather and the director chosen to direct Elizabeth was Shekhar Kapur and she was an unusual choice as she was Indian and new nothing about English history at all. The lead actress Cate Blanchett seemed a risky choice as she was unknown and Australian not British so she may well have been expensive to get to star in it. The evidence that these unorthodox choices were successful are that it got seven Oscar nominations and won one, and many BAFTA awards.
23. Working Title ended up working with Universal because Polygram was sold to Seagrams, which is part of the Universal group, and therefore took control of assets of Working Title too.
It started well due to Notting Hill being a $350 million hit.
24. Canal Plus Group is a French film and TV studio and is wholly owned by Vivendi Universal.
It has a film library of over 5,000 films.
It's headquarters are in Paris.
It is a TV channel in Holland, Spain and France (Canal+).
It was launched 4th November 1984.
25.
26. It typically takes a long time for Working Title to develop a project from idea to screen. In general it usually takes anywhere from two to five years.
27. Working Title's slate falls into three areas being:
Long-term creative partnerships- Richard Curtis' films
Material they buy as a book or screenplay- Bridget Jones's Diary
Original Ideas/Scripts- Elizabeth
28. Working Title generally have about 5o films in production at a time, this hints that most out fo the 50 will not make it to the big screen or do incredibly well.
29. Development hell is where a film seems to be stuck in development and takes a long time to get into production if ever.
30. Both books are satirical comedies about life inside the movie business and how hard it can sometimes be to get a film into production, "What Just Happened" was made into a movie starring Robert De Niro and Sean Penn and released in 2008.
Eric Fellner founded Initial Pictures with partner Scott Millaney in 1985.
2. Working Title grew out of the company Big Science Limited.
3. This is comparable to Warp X/Warp Films in the respect of one company being born of another and going on to be a similar but different type of film production company.
4. 3 Critically-acclaimed film directors that they got to work on their videos were:
Nic Roeg, Derek Jarman and Stephen Frears.
5. Stephen Frears directed My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid.
6. Two big companies dominating the UK Film industry were EMI and Goldcrest, and by the end of the 1980's they had pretty much disappeared and smaller companies started to dominate the industry.
7. Hanif Kureshi recieved funding from the new Film Four arm to develop his new script.
8.Frears and Working Title were attracted to the script as it was unique and something that people hadn't seen on film before, culturally different as it was about a young gay pakistani in England.
9. Stars that have emerged from Working Title are Daniel Day-Lewis, Hugh Grant, Cate Blanchett and Jamie Bell.
10. My Beautiful Laundrette was originally meant to be just a television film but this changed due to it's successful reception that it recieved at the Edinburgh Film festival and so they decided to make it a cinema release.
11. Los Angeles or more so Hollywood are central to the success of films because every film business in the world seemed to revolve around Hollywood and it is the world wide capital of the movie business. Major decisions are made in Hollywood and most finance comes from it and most talent agencies are there.
12. Working Title's co-founders contrast with most British producers as they do not see American businesses as enemies but friends.
13. The "Working Title way" is to work with new directors, writers, actors, known as new talent.
14. The George Pub, Wardour Street became known as the centre of the British film industry, this perhaps shows that this industry was not particulary important in the 1980's and not a main stream industry.
15. The Tall Guy led to the international success of Four Wedding's and a Funeral as Richard Curtis recieved a Royalty cheque for the film and so sent Working Title the new script as a reward for their genorosity.
16. Richard Curtis likes to be involved in every aspect of the films from start to finish, as a writer, executive producer, director and co-writer, and he has also been involved in casting, crew, marketing and editing, so he changes his role in every film but they all these films seem to gross over a billion dollars.
17. Working Title could no longer afford to be an Indie company as it had no proper infrastructure and were not fully concentrating on the content of their films and so in 1992 PolyGram invested in it and aquired it and created a better structure of Working Title and gave them a completely different type of film company. They would no longer make the same unique films that they once did.
18. The new internal infrastructure included a development department run in Los Angelese and London, a business affairs department and a physical production department.
19. Bevan describes Working Title's relationship with the Coen Brothers as a third-party creative relationship where Working Title provides finance, production structure, marketing and distribution and also offers creative opinion, it could be said that the auteur theory applies to the Coen Brothers' movies as they are made how they want them to be regardless of the companies creative opinion.
20. Four Wedding's and a Funeral was a fortuitous as the company was ten years old and that the company had been able to stay afloat to the point of the movie. As they tend to like making films for passion rather than to be hits, however this would not seem the case today.
21. Their next release was Bean: The Movie starring Rowan Atkinson.
22. The movie looked at as a template for narrative structure was The Godfather and the director chosen to direct Elizabeth was Shekhar Kapur and she was an unusual choice as she was Indian and new nothing about English history at all. The lead actress Cate Blanchett seemed a risky choice as she was unknown and Australian not British so she may well have been expensive to get to star in it. The evidence that these unorthodox choices were successful are that it got seven Oscar nominations and won one, and many BAFTA awards.
23. Working Title ended up working with Universal because Polygram was sold to Seagrams, which is part of the Universal group, and therefore took control of assets of Working Title too.
It started well due to Notting Hill being a $350 million hit.
24. Canal Plus Group is a French film and TV studio and is wholly owned by Vivendi Universal.
It has a film library of over 5,000 films.
It's headquarters are in Paris.
It is a TV channel in Holland, Spain and France (Canal+).
It was launched 4th November 1984.
25.
26. It typically takes a long time for Working Title to develop a project from idea to screen. In general it usually takes anywhere from two to five years.
27. Working Title's slate falls into three areas being:
Long-term creative partnerships- Richard Curtis' films
Material they buy as a book or screenplay- Bridget Jones's Diary
Original Ideas/Scripts- Elizabeth
28. Working Title generally have about 5o films in production at a time, this hints that most out fo the 50 will not make it to the big screen or do incredibly well.
29. Development hell is where a film seems to be stuck in development and takes a long time to get into production if ever.
30. Both books are satirical comedies about life inside the movie business and how hard it can sometimes be to get a film into production, "What Just Happened" was made into a movie starring Robert De Niro and Sean Penn and released in 2008.
The Big Six
"The Big Six" are the six main film production companies, they are:
Warner Brothers, Paramount, Columbia, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney/Touchstone.
They are all based in or around Hollywood, USA and have been active since about the 1930's in the "Golden Age" of Hollywood.
20th Century Fox is currently owned by News Corporation which is owned by Australian-American businessman Rupert Murdoch, the original company was founded in 1935 when two companies merged, Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Films.
The founder of the company was Jewish-Hungarian immigrant to the United States William Fox
Report on "Act Now"
In our workshop we were a having a look at the differences of acting in film and television in contrast to acting to on the stage, as there are many things done differently in both.
It seems that acting for television is much more subtle and also more realistic than acting for the theatre and also in film. They say it is easier when you are acting for television as you can act quite naturally, whereas when you are acting on the stage you are very much over the top and project your voice and expressions. However in television you just talk quite normally and do natural facial expressions and gestures, but in film whilst acting is more realistic than at the theatre it is still not as easy as television as the emphasis on facial expressions is greater as there are more close ups and focuses on peoples faces to show their emotions which is something that they do not really focus on as much in television and especially theatre.
The lady doing the workshop was a former Emmerdale actress who had since moved onto theatre and then teaching and has an acting agency for all ages.
In the workshop she wanted us to show our rougher side or as she said “our inner chav” and we used inspiration from programmes like Shameless and did a few improvisations in those characters.
We met some people there that had come all the way from Culcheth High School in Warrington and they were studying Theatre and Media studies. They had also been going to the screenings as they had a film entered.
Overall I really enjoyed the trip and thought it was great to see all these different films from throughout the entire nation and see how different places did them with their own styles, the entries from the Rhondda were mainly music videos whereas the ones from Edinburgh were more dramatic.
Also nice to see the wide range of age groups from 5-19 and how different each film was and they inspired me for when we make our own film.
Monday 30 November 2009
Merlin- Misenscene
The first scene takes place in a fighting arena with crowds surrounding it cheering, to me this immediately signifies to me that this is set in the medieval times due to my knowledge and background. We see knights in shining armour with swords which are the stereotype of the period. We also see old fashion tents and the outside of a castle which seems to add a bit of anchorage to the time period that it is set in.
There is a scene inside a great big hall with entirely medieval decor like the candelabras on the walls which are quite gothic almost and also signify perhaps an element of fantasy, also we see flags and rugs of the period, also a very high ceiling which was common in history and is not a modern thing at all.
We see a few different rooms in this section, the hall, then a bedroom in which the boy performs magic in we are not completely able to anchor down whether it is his room or not as it is very basic but it seems likely that it is.
Merlin- Editing
The scene starts with some long takes and some are done in slow motion to signify that there is a struggle going on and it gives in suspense too, the dramatic music emphasizes this also.
There is also good use of special effects too when the boy is in his room performing magic and there are objects floating in mid air, from this we denote that the show is a fantasy and perhaps aimed at a younger audience, the light hearted childish music helps us to anchor this meaning down.
When the knight is talking to the young attractive woman and there is the use of shot reverse shot, the angles used help us to anchor down how they are trying to portray gender in this scene.
The man talks down from a high angle signifying that he is dominant and supreme, whereas when the woman speaks she is taking up to him from a low angle which hints she is perhaps vulnerable or less dominant.
We also see the breath of the characters when they speak which signifies it is cold, this is likely to be a special effect added in to emphasize the temperature.
There is also good use of elliptical time when the boy dresses the knight up in his armour through the use of short takes showing a new piece of the outfit being put on also the fast paced music helps with the elliptical time.
In the final fight scene there is the use of match-on-action shots as the blades hit each other which adds drama to the scene and makes it quite exciting and this again signifies to us the struggle that the two warriors are going though.
Friday 27 November 2009
Merlin- Sound and Representation of Gender
The clip begins with loud heroic music during a medieval battle between knights, we can denote this from their costume, you can hear the swords clashing as they fight and the music signifies bravery and masculinity and the clip shows a courageous man fighting.
The accents in the clip are all generally quite posh English accents which we can use to denote where It is set and it would seem it was the south of England, however one of the characters has a Manchurian accent which almost seems like a juxtaposition in the setting of the clip also the language used in the clip is a juxtaposition as it seems to modern for what we can denote as a medieval set clip.
The change in music to jolly, silly music when the boy is playing with magic denotes youth and happiness.
Also the sounds of birds chirping and church bells ringing in the background shows verisimilitude and gives it a sense of realism, this is also apparent when they are all talking in the grand hall and their voices echo this certainly shows verisimilitude.
The different use of music in each scene shows very different feelings; scary music gives feelings of vulnerability whereas the happier music makes for a more light hearted scene being when the boy is helping the knight get changed. The jolly music used sounds like medieval folk and so It is in keeping with what we can denote as the time period.
When the knight comes out to battle we here loud applause and cheering which denotes that this person is a hero and adored and it adds excitement to the scene, we then here brave heroic music playing and makes the scene feel quite serious.
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