Brit VS Hollywood Practice

"Media production is dominated by global institutions, which promote their products and services to national audiences”. To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Discuss the issues raised by media ownership in the production and exchange of media texts in your chosen area of study.

I partly agree with this statement, because Hollywood have dominated the film industry for decades due to their increasingly successful financial budget, allowing them easier access to A-list celebrities and the most successful screenwriters and directors, However, there has been some recent highs for the British Film industry that hints at a more level playing field, such as the USA writers strike, James Bond and Harry Potter. Additionally, a recent online article, written by Elisa Roche for The Daily Express, shows that the British film industry is currently booming, as US bosses fight for space in the latest Warner Bros. film studios. Digital convergence has also ensured a more level playing field for the British film industry. I am going to explore the question in further detail by discussing my two chosen case studies, The Inbetweeners Movie (2011) and The Hangover (2009).

The production companies for The Hangover Movie were Legendary Pictures, Green Hat Films and Benderspink. The production companies for The Inbetweeners Movie were Bwark Productions, Film4 Productions and Young Films. The distribution company for The Hangover is Warner Bros. Pictures, and the distribution company for The Inbetweeners Movie is Entertainment Films Distributors. This shows that The Inbetweeners is a unique exception for having an independent distributor, because many British films have to rely on an American distribution company because they do not have a large enough budget to distribute their own film. One example of this is Harry Potter, which had an entirely British cast but an American distribution company. This, according to theorist McDougall (2008) makes Harry Potter a Category D film, according to the five categories defined by the BFI/British Film Institute. This shows that it had as much money as Hollywood which makes it a more level playing field, but it also shows that it needs to rely on Hollywood money as part of the films funding. Both of these films are comedies so they belong in the same genre, which makes them a good comparison. Also, they were released at a similar time.

Hollywood typically produces a wide variety of films with different genres, which ensures that they are appealing to a large mass of audiences. Whereas stereotypically, Britain makes arty or niche films that do not attract many viewers. However, this has recently changed with films such as The Kings Speech and Skyfall, but these films still require some sort of American financial input, due to their low budgets. This shows that the playing field isn’t quite level yet, but certain factors such as digital convergence and independent British distribution companies are beginning to work towards this. The Hollywood writers strike and people becoming bored of the continuous narrative formula also contributes to a more level playing field.

The Inbetweeners film script had a lot more appeal than The Hangover film script, possibly because The Inbetweeners already had a massive fan base due to the hugely popular TV series.  However, other factors have affected The Hangover scripts popularity. For example, famous actress Lindsay Lohan rejected the role of Jade, saying the script had “no potential”. Also, New Line Pictures rejected the script after difficulty with the film title ‘What Happens In Vegas’ after too many people has claimed to come up with it. After this the writers demanded a raise, which was rejected by many film studios. Eventually Warner Bros. bought the script for $2 million when director Todd Phillips was attached to the project. Another factor in ensuring success for The Inbetweeners movie is the statistic that proves 15-24 year olds are the most frequent cinemagoers (McIntyre, 2015), which fits in with their audience demographic.

The age rating for both films is 15, mainly due to the amount of swearing and violence occurring throughout the films. The same age rating for both films ensures that one film doesn’t have an advantage over the other. The hyperdermic needle theory was constructed by a group of social scientists, who believed the mass audience could be ‘injected’ with messages created by media producers (Buckingham, 1993). It is possible there is an element of truth to this model, hence why certain products are banned and age restrictions occur. Hollywood usually lowers their age rating on films to make it accessible to a wider audience. Britain usually gives their films a higher age rating than necessary, which reduces their audience demographic, therefore automatically ensuring they will make less of a profit (Neale, 1995). However, The Inbetweeners Movie is a slight exception to this with it being a 15, which broadens its demographic and increases their profit. It also suggests that they have maybe enforced market research and understood that 15-24 year-olds attend the cinema more frequently than any other age group (McIntyre, 2015).

The most popular and profitable film genres are action, fantasy and comedy. Comedy films, like my case study films The Hangover and The Inbetweeners, are easily made by both Hollywood and Britain, but action films are impossible for Britain to make without some sort of financial involvement from America, because the British film industry’s budget is too low to afford cast, crew, equipment, sets, and the script (as well as many other essentials) with their own funding. Hollywood can easily make action films because of their higher budget and prestige. They also have their own equipment to hand, whereas Britain would either have to purchase their own or pay to borrow Hollywood’s equipment. This makes the playing field unequal in terms of any film genre but especially the action genre. Also, as British humour is not always as widely well received as ‘classic Hollywood’ comedy it is not really that surprising that The Hangover grossed more internationally than The Inbetweeners because USA audiences simply struggled to get the awkward British humour. However, the fact that The Inbetweeners grossed £13.2 million in box offices showed that the British film industry can successfully make a comedy film that audiences, especially home audiences, want to see and be entertained by (Blumer and Katz, 1973) which is an improvement on the 1990s when British film makers kept making niche market films that failed to compete properly with Hollywood as mass audiences simply did not want to consumer the genre, themes and narratives British film makers were putting out there.  

Making films that appeal more to a mass audience is not the only reason why the British film industry is starting to compete on a more equal footing to Hollywood; changes in technology and audience consumption of media products has also had a massive impact on the industry.

As Gauntlett said in 2007; ‘New Media erodes the boundaries between producers and consumers,’ (Gauntlett, 2007). This means that for British film makers is that because of advances in digital cameras, it is now possible to shoot a film on something that costs less that £10,000 to purchase and edit digitally on affordable programs before distributing digitally online or to cinemas – this is a process The Inbetweeners film took advantage of because they made the film on a relatively small budget of £3.5 million. Something that would have not have been possible 10 years ago before the advances in digital camera technology (that means expensive 35mm or 64mm film cameras and films no longer have to be used that pushed production costs up by millions) or before cinemas, thanks to Avatar being launched in 3D, going digital as prior to this film companies had to exhibit their products in costly 35mm film reels that cost £1500 a reel which was simply too much for some British film makers. The film and image quality of The Inbetweeners movie, that was shot on Ari Alexa, Cooke S4 and using Angenieux Optimo lenses, does not look too different from The Hangover – that had the higher production budget of $35 million, which was shot on the slightly more expensive A Panasonic Panaflex Millennium Xl and Panavision Primo Lens which shows changes in technology can go a long way to level the playing field as audiences prefer being entertained and escaping reality (Blumer & Katz, 1973) with films that have high production quality.

However, Hollywood still has an advantage when higher budgets are available as they can be spend on; star vehicles, locations, crew etc. that can ultimately make their film more marketable and popular as was the case with The Hangover over The Inbetweeners. The principle cast for The Hangover film was Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha and Zach Galifianakis. The principle cast for The Inbetweeners film was Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison and Joe Thomas. This shows that Hollywood had the financial advantage over Britain because they could easily afford A list celebrities, whom most people will be familiar with from previous films they had been in. Whereas The Inbetweeners cast featured actors nobody had heard of. For The 'Hangover', the director was Todd Phillips, the producers were Daniel Goldberg and Todd Phillips, the cinematographer was Lawrence Sher and the music provider was Christophe Beck. For 'The Inbetweeners Movie' the director was Ben Palmer, the producer was Christopher Young, the cinematographer was Ben Wheeler and the music providers were David Arnold, Michael Price and Mike Skinner. Like with casting, Hollywood has the advantage with crew because of their significantly larger amount of money in comparison to Britain. Location wise, both films were able to afford locations that would attract audiences, ‘The Hangover’ was filmed in California and Nevada, and ‘The Inbetweeners Movie’ was filmed in Britain, Spain and Greece, which shows that Britain is starting to figure out how to increase international audience appeal by filming outside the UK.

Technological advances, digital convergence and synergy all play a part in distribution, marketing and exhibition and even though technological advances could potentially level the playing field the market is not yet level because as McDougal said in 2008 regarding five major distribution companies dominated the British film market distributed 9/10 British films is still very much the case because The Hangover was distributed by Warner Brothers. However, The Inbetweeners was distributed by a British distribution company, Entertainment Film Distributors which is rare even for a British film but given the films success in the box office shows it is possible for British distribution companies and British production companies to compete successfully against Hollywood. The Hangover had a higher marketing/distribution budge of $10 million while The Inbetweeners only had a marketing budget of $5 million, this gave The Hangover the advantage because more marketing material including; a website, free press, social media, six posters and four trailers, were used to represent and attract audiences while The Inbetweeners only had; a website, free press, two posters, social media and two trailers and this, combined with the fact the marketing could not feature A List celebrities like The Hangover (because of the higher production budget) could created slightly less buzz and hype for the film. What this shows is that even though films like Fast 5 have proved you could, thanks to changes in technology, market a film cheaply across social media doing so without a massive star vehicle with a big fan base would be hard which leaves Hollywood with the advantage as their higher budgets can secure top stars making marketing easier.

Regarding exhibition, audience and technology, as Tapscot and Williams summarised in 2006; “As people individually and collectively progress the web they are increasingly in command…this is the new consumer power. It is the ability to swap suppliers at the click of a mouse…It is the power to become the supplier – in an effect an economic power themselves,” (Tapscot & Williams, 2006). What this meant for my case study films, and the film industry in general, is that the way people want to view films is changing and even though cinema profits were high for The Inbetweeners and higher still for The Hangover we are entering a time of change when companies like Netflix and Amazon are often how people are choosing to consume films as opposed to traditional cinema, DVD and Blu-ray options that Hollywood had more control over. This means that audience consumer power could continue to shift power away from Hollywood, as online viewing becomes one of the most popular ways to consume film products. Regarding my case studies, both my films are available on both these platforms showing Britain and Hollywood are competing on an equal playing field online.

In conclusion, as my case study films illustrate Hollywood continues to dominate the film industry because The Hangover grossed $467.5 billion while The Inbetweeners only grossed £88 million. However, the fact that The Inbetweeners made such a large profit considering it was made by a British production company and distributed by a British distribution company shows that Hollywood could be starting to lose some of its grip on the market as this shows British films can gross a profit. Also, if British films keep making this sort of money there will, in theory be more money to invest back into the British film industry which could further level the playfield between Britain and Hollywood. Also, technological changes and a shift in audience preference for online viewing could also see Britain in a better position to compete against Hollywood in the future.

OUT TAKES

Blumler and Katz (1974 Gratification theory) suggested there are 4 possible reasons why an audience might consume a media text: for entertainment, for information, for socialisation or for personal relationships. In terms of my two case studies, the purpose of these films is to entertain. Both films have about the same appeal, but it is possible that The Hangover is slightly less appealing because you didn’t know what to expect from the film. Whereas The Inbetweeners already had an existing fan base, which made fans familiar with the characters and their personalities before they had even seen the film. The Hangover Films primary target audience is heterosexual and homosexual black and white males aged 18-34. The Inbetweeners Movie had a primary target audience of heterosexual and homosexual white males aged 15-25. This gives The Hangover more potential of grossing a bigger profit because it appeals to more ethnicities and has a slightly wider age demographic. The Hangover has a bigger inclusion of black characters than The Inbetweeners Movie does, which makes it a more diverse film. The Inbetweeners Movie only appeals to males as opposed to both genders, because of the strong misogyny present throughout the film. There are 4 main female characters, but they are ridiculed for being too ‘fat’ or too ‘frigid’. This disregards Laura Mulvey’s theory (1975) on females being sexualised and presented as ‘objects of desire’ for the male audience. Although The Hangover consists of just males, there is very little sexism in the film, and their female partners do get a small amount of screen time. This makes the playing field unequal because The Hangover appeals to a wider audience demographic, therefore making it easier to gross a larger profit.

Impact of Technology

1827 - 1900:

During this period, inventors in the USA and Europe were making similar discoveries and developing recording and exhibition technology. 

1889-1892:

Edison and his employees developed the Kinetograph - a motion picture camera capable of shooting rapid stop-and-go film movement.

1894: 

The first commercial exhibition took place in New York City. Films were shot in black and white but Edison's appeared in colour because he hand painted each frame. He also produced a short film of a man sneezing, which became the first copyrighted US film.

1900-1927 (The Silent Era):

British and American cinema were progressing at the same time until the war in 1914 disrupted British film production.

The Nickelodeon in Pittsburgh opened in 1904. At this point there were enough 7 minute films to fill an hour, and the same film would play for a week until changed. Within a few years there were thousands of Nickelodeons exhibiting films across America.

1906:

Edward R. Turner and George Albert Smith invented the first colour system 'Kinemacolour'.
It required more light during the exhibition stage, therefore creating images that were duller than the black and white alternatives. It went out of fashion around the time of WW2.

Films were silent in this period as the technology had yet to be invented, but they were often accompanied by live musicians and sometimes sound effects/commentary made by the showman or projectionist.

1926:

Invention of the television. Broadcasts did not begin until 1935, and were not present in homes until the 1950s/60s. In the 1960s colour sets were released but people could not afford these until the mid 1980s.
Despite peoples concerns, television had no impact on the film industry - adverts interrupted films, TV sets were small and the image quality was not as good as the cinema.

1927 - 1979:

Constant experimentation with sound was proving hard to overcome. In 1926, Warner Bros. introduced the vita phone system, and were credited by releasing the first movie with synchronised dialogue in 1927 with 'The Jazz Singer'

By 1929 technology improved at  a rapid rate, and most films had sound.

This period marked the start of a recovery for the British film industry and the country was starting to climb out of the war recession.

Parliament brought in a legislation, The Cinema Trades Bill, to protect the British film industry. It stated that 5% of films shown in cinemas had to be British. By 1936, 20% of films shown in the UK were British.

1939:

The post-production process began to change from linear editing (manually cutting up and splicing together the reels) to non-linear editing (video editing using computers).


However, technology did not alter much for the next 40 years and the British film industry went from strength to strength. Unlike WW1 the Second World War actually helped the British film industry because UK audiences wanted the ideology of films to meet the mood of the country, so British patriotic films dominated the British film industry.

1970-1990:

Computer technology began to be used for non-linear editing during the 1970s. At this point, technology was expensive and massive. This gave Hollywood the advantage over the British film industry, because they had more sense and money to experiment with computer technology. The development of computer games inspired CGI editing in films. CGI can also be used to restore old films, which might lead to more revenue for Hollywood.

1982:

Time Magazine altered its tradition of 'Man of the Year' to 'Machine of the Year'


The use of computer-generated graphics in movies took a step forward with Disney's 'Tron'


The 1980s saw the rise of the blockbuster, as Hollywood dominated the market with sci-fi, action and horror films. Star Wars and E.T changed the face of film and audience expectations.

During the 1980s home media technology changed, most households had both a coloured TV and a VCR. Initially, film studios tried to ban VCRs as they feared home videos and piracy would damage the film industry. However, they were unsuccessful with this and so had to adapt.

Cameras were developed that could film straight onto tape, which was a significant development for the British film industry and it cut the costs of low budget films - it also allowed amature film makers to make home movies that could be shown on their TVs. However, the quality of films shot on these types of cameras was no match for Hollywood and it would be another 30 years before studios shot on anything apart from 35mm film. Also, cinemas were still exhibiting films on reels and reels would still have to be produced if the film were to go into cinemas - this didn't happen very often as the quality was terrible.

The development in VCR was an important development for the British film industry because it meant British film makers could make films that could go straight to video more cheaply enabling them to sell their films to the public without having to pay for reels to exhibit in cinemas.

Although this did not really start to  happen in the 1980s (due to the poor quality of videos and a lack of affordable quality editing software) this was an important development for the British film industry because the industry has, for the last 30 years, survived mainly through home media sales unless films have been made in conjunction with Hollywood companies and made it into cinemas. 

The development of VCR caused E.T to be the first victim of video piracy. Seeing that the public were bored of waiting for the film to hit their area, a group of criminals filmed it then ran off copies illegally. Since this point, piracy has continued to be a major problem for both the British and Hollywood film industry (advancing technology has made it easier to copy films). It is arguably the case that the British industry has been impacted more by piracy as it relies more on home media sales.

1990 - 2010:

 In the early 1990s, developed editing software made it possible for British film makers to use non-linear editing methods to create films that could gross a profit through VCR sales. The leading system that went on to revolutionise video and film editing was AVID, a program that is still used today. 

Production equipment was also improved in this decade. Many British films were shot on DV-Pro cameras, edited using programs like Avid then released on TV, in cinemas (if they were converted to reels) and sold on VHS. Some of Hollywood also went digital around this time, and they had the advantage in being able to use top of the range models. The image quality used was noticeably different, making Hollywood films look more professional, giving them the advantage.

From the mid-1990s, many British films that did not have America production/distribution companies grossed more from home media sales than in the box office e.g. Trainspotting (1997).

From 1995 onwards, VHS was replaced by DVDs, which were still an important revenue for British and American films. The majority of people felt that DVDS were superior because the image quality is better. they are digital/interactive, they don't wear out as easily as tapes and they take up less space. 

The Internet:


By the mid to late 90s, more and more people in the UK and USA had home internet access, which meant distributors could target their audiences via the Internet.

As the technology developed it became more and more useful,

Marketing essay practice question

"Successful media products depend as much upon marketing and distribution to a specific audience as they do upon good production practices." To what extent do you agree with this statement within the media area you have studied?

I fully agree with this statement, because marketing is a necessary requirement needed to ensure that the audience knows everything they need to about the film. Without marketing, good production practices are worthless because the audience will not have heard of the film, let alone know when it is coming out to go watch it. This means that the film will make nothing and become a box office flop. The purpose of a marketing campaign is to create a 'hype' amongst the target audience, which will excite them and make them want to watch the film. Marketing campaigns come in a variety of shapes and forms, such as posters, trailers, premieres, social media and merchandise. Hollywood have the advantage when it comes to marketing as most of their production companies can use vertical integration to promote their film. Vertical integration is where a company has a range of different multi media platforms that the company owns, and therefore can promote the film as much as they want e.g. Disney owns a film studio, TV channel and magazine, which means that they can promote it across printed media and on screen.

The two films I studied - The Hangover and The Inbetweeners Movie - had significantly different marketing budgets, with The Hangover having a rather large marketing budget of around $50 million and The Inbetweeners Movie having a much lower budget of roughly £1 million. This gives Hollywood the advantage because they are financially advanced, so they can afford to market their film in a wider, more expensive variety of ways.  Both of these films were marketed to their correct audiences, which links in with Halls and Holmes theory (1998): "Any media text is created for a particular audience and will usually appeal most to this particular audience" because both films are appealing the most to their correct target audiences. For The Hangover film, they are mainly focusing on straight, white males aged 18-34, and The Inbetweeners Movie is targeting 15-25 year olds, preferably those who have seen the TV series but this is not a necessary requirement. Their target audience aims at a wider variety of people, both black and white, because of the vast multi-cultured society existing in Britain. Their targeted gender is predominately male because all of the protagonists are male, and females are represented in a fairly sexist, mockingly kind of way. On the other hand, there are 4 main female characters in the film, but they are mocked by the protagonists for being 'chubby' or too 'whiny'.

Both of these films had two trailers (a teaser and an official trailer) with the teaser trailer being released a few months before the official one to create 'hype' amongst the primary audience. The Internet has been proven to be a cheap and easy way to promote films - Social networking sites were also involved for marketing in both films, and The Inbetweeners Movie had Twitter accounts created for the film characters, which collectively reached over 100,000 followers. The Hangover launched a social media campaign across platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which yielded an estimated 2.5 million impressions over social media. While there is proof that spending millions on marketing is mostly successful, it is interesting when you consider how The Hangover dedicated a much bigger budget to marketing and it wasn't as successful as The Inbetweeners marketing campaign. This is maybe because The Inbetweeners Movie used a wider range of marketing techniques, as it also advertised the film on the side of Pot Noodle packaging. This ensures that those who maybe don't frequent social media or don't have access to it will still see the film advertised either by seeing posters or seeing advertised on Pot Noodles at the supermarket.  

In terms of marketing strategies, The Inbetweeners Movie consistently uses the same fonts and colours throughout their promotional products, such as posters and trailers, to present repetition to their audience and make a bigger impression on them. This style repetition will ensure familiarity within the audience, which might lead them to consciously recognise any new/different Inbetweeners film poster without seeing the title first. These posters were distributed amongst bus stops and billboards which ensured that they grabbed the attention of passing pedestrians. The Hangover had a much smaller widespread approach (despite the bigger budget) by only using posters, the internet and trailers as advertisement. Arguably The Hangovers marketing attempt was not as effective as The Inbetweeners marketing campaign because The Inbetweeners Movie already had a  massive fan base created from the very popular TV series. This series consisted of 3 seasons containing 3 episodes each and lasted from 2008 to 2010. This gave Hollywood less of an advantage because the majority of British teenagers had watched The Inbetweeners TV show and therefore knew what comedy and characters to expect, whereas nobody had any familiarity with The Hangover film. However, Hollywood had the advantage with money, because they could hire well known actors such as Bradley Cooper and the best director and producer etc. as well as being able to market the film in whatever form they desired.

The marketing budget for both films was similar to the production budget, with the relatively low budget of £4.5 million in total for The Inbetweeners movie being an accurate representation of the British film industry, and how it struggles to compete against the total sum of $85 million  Hollywood has funded towards The Hangover Movie. The similarity in marketing budgets for both films also shows evidence for how marketing is just as important as production. The Hangover film made a worldwide gross of over $467 million and became the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2009 in the world. The Inbetweeners Movie grossed $88 million at the box office and it retained the number one position in the UK film charts for four weeks before being overtaken by 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' on 20th September 2011. The Inbetweeners Movie was confirmed as having the biggest opening weekend for an independent British film.

Viral marketing (any marketing done via the internet) is a clear example on how the playing field could be levelled for the British film industry. Viral marketing is quick and easy, and it allows anyone to market their films cheaply and successfully. For example, to promote 'Fast and Furious 5' the trailer was uploaded on Vin Diesel's Facebook page and many of his 20 million followers reposted the trailer on other social media platforms, such as YouTube and Twitter. Many other cast members did the same to ensure that the majority of the films target audience somehow saw the trailer. The internet gives upcoming film makers the opportunity to make it big, by showing their film publicly without having to spend millions on marketing via a distribution company. Another example of a film successfully using viral marketing as the main form of promotion is 'The Blair Witch Project', which had an extremely small budget of $20,000 and made over $248 million at the box office. Their marketing campaign was named 'Mischief Marketing' and it was designed to make the audience believe the footage was real and the actors were dead. This fooled a lot of people, especially because the actors were told to stay out of the public eye, thus creating 'hype' amongst the audience. It is interesting to consider that, without the internet, this marketing campaign may not have been possible, therefore making the film less successful by creating less 'hype' amongst fans.

In conclusion, marketing is just as important as production, as various marketing strategies have ensured that the film becomes a financial success. High marketing budgets don't always ensure that the film will be a box office success, as a low marketing budget can be just as successful depending on the marketing strategies used. Viral marketing is an example of this, which gives the Britain a more level playing field to compete with Hollywood. However, Hollywood continues to hold the advantage over the British film industry by having more money to spend on marketing, cast, screen writers, film sets etc.