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.