Ill Manors

Budget: 100,000 GBP

Genre: Drama, Crime Fiction

Target Audience: Mature audiences with the age range of 18 years old and above

Producer:  BBC Films

Distributor: BBC Films

Box office returns:UK total of $714,441

BBC Films have also  produced and distributed films such as Fish Tank and Paddington Bear.

BBC films helped  finance the film to a budget of £100,00 which is considered very low compared to a film produced in the USA.

Advantages of being independent:

1. Art and Niche based films
2. Small budget
3. More profit
4. Less editing/sound effects

Disadvantages of begin independent:

1. Restricts potential audience
2. Travel to better locations
3. Will be able to take risks when making films

Marketing:

Plan B

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8GvLKTsTuI

Ill manors is a film written and directed by singer Plan B.

He used this as an essential marketing tool alongside his album, he did this by basing his music and film around the same themes.

Plan B links the film with his music by the film focusing on eight core characters, and their circles of violence as they struggle to survive on the streets, each story links with one another and each story can be represented by one of his rap songs

The production company that worked alongside Plan B to create this was BBC Films, a large British production company who have also produced films such as 'Streetdance 3', 'An Education' and 'Fish Tank'.

BBC films helped  finance the film to a budget of £100,00 which is considered very low compared to a film produced in the USA.

TV and Radio

This film was also marketed by reaching the audiences of Tv an radio. I was payed to be mentioned on BBC Radio Extra. It was also paid to be advertised on the television channel E4 at peak times. 

Synopsis:

A unique crime thriller set on the unforgiving streets of London, iLL MANORS follows six disparate lives, all struggling to survive the circles of violence that engulf them. There is ex-dealer Kirby, who has just been released from prison, thug Ed who will stop at nothing to find his missing phone, troubled Michelle who is just looking for her next hit, young Jake who finds himself drawn to the local gang, Chris, who seeks revenge, Katya, who is desperately trying to escape this foreign land, and Aaron, our main protagonist who is just trying to do the right thing.

Distribution: 

iLL Manors got a relatively wide release from the independent distributor Revolver (which had its first big success with Kidulthood – the film which helped to begin the current „urban film‟ cycle).

The initial release was successful with over £250,000 taken during the first weekend from 191 cinemas,

But in Week 2 the number of cinemas fell to 83 and the screen average fell by 65% Skyfall’s cinemas didn’t fall; nearly as dramatically.

This is very telling and could be read in several ways. Revolver may have concluded that an initial release to capitalise on the strong profile of Plan B would need to go wide first but that most of the audience would get to see it via DVD and online later. But it also looks like word of mouth was not strong.

Target Audience:

Drew has said that his focus was the 15-25 age group.

BUT - In that sense he has done the film no favours the BBFC classified its as ‟18” certificate

This was due to the bad language, drug scenes and extreme violence.

It must have lost under 18 audiences because of this.

Ill manors was promoted through Plan Bs Ill Manors album.

Social media was important to the marketing of Ill Manors because it was promoted on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Their Facebook page raised 31, 569 likes before the release. The film also had its own hashtag on Instagram and Twitter. This also made the film gain even more recognition. 

Microwave Films:

 

Film London is the capital's screen industries agency.

We connect ideas, talent and finance to develop a pioneering creative culture in the city that delivers success in film, television, animation, games and beyond.

We work to sustain, promote and develop London as a global content production hub, support the development of the city's new and emerging filmmaking talent and invest in a diverse and rich film culture.

We aim to ensure the capital is a thriving centre for creative industries sector that enrich the city's businesses and its people.

What we do

From encouraging inward investment to training emerging filmmakers, funding film exhibitors to inspiring film-lovers - we support film in London every step of the way.

Talent development and production

Our talent development and production team support new and emerging filmmakers in London through funding, training and mentoring.

Our schemes include the prestigious London Calling and London Calling Plus short film schemes, the feature funding scheme Microwave, and training, financing and distribution schemes and events including Micro Market, Market Place Live and Build Your Audience.

Audiences and Institutions

I think that film making is both an art form and a business since it allows a writer to be creative with what they produce much like a painting or music. It is still a business since it does involve advertising and selling the finished product afterwards to the public for profits. 

Synergy - 

Conglomerate - 

Cross-media convergence - 

Vertical and horizontal integrated institute - 

Marketing - 

Distribution - 

OCR Specification

Section B: Institutions and Audiences

Candidates should be prepared to understand and discuss the processes of production, distribution, marketing and exchange as they relate to contemporary media institutions, as well as the nature of audience consumption and the relationships between audiences and institutions.

candidates should be familiar with:

the issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice;

the importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production, distribution and marketing;

the technologies that have been introduced in recent years at the levels of production, distribution, marketing and exchange;

the significance of proliferation in hardware and content for institutions and audiences;

the importance of technological convergence for institutions and audiences;

the issues raised in the targeting of national and local audiences (specifically, British) by international or global institutions;

the ways in which the candidates’ own experiences of media consumption illustrate wider patterns and trends of audience behaviour.

A study of a specific studio or production company within a contemporary film industry that targets a British audience (e.g. Hollywood, Bollywood, UK film), including its patterns of production, distribution, exhibition and consumption by audiences. This should be accompanied by study of contemporary film distribution practices (digital cinemas, DVD, HD-DVD, downloads, etc.) and their impact upon production, marketing and consumption.

Production - The making of the film; pre-production and funding; shot (format); post-production (SFX)

Distribution - The way the film gets to the screens; distribution company

Marketing: The process of raising awareness; targeting an audience; creating publicity theory various methods. The distributor is responsible for marketing a film.

Exhibition -The way we view; getting the film to a paying audience

Big 6 - multimedia companies have a dominance over the market when it comes to distribution. The following organisations are known as "the big six" they have power and recourses that the indie productions do not.

These production companies are 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Universal and Walt Disney.

A conglomerate is a large company composed of a number of smaller companies engaged in seemingly unrelated businesses. A media conglomerate is a company that owns large numbers of companies in carious mass media such as television, radio, publishing, movies and the internet.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

Budget: $306 million (gross) $245 million (net)

Box office: 2.066 billion USD (700% estimated return from gross budget)

Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Target Audience: Younger audiences 10-20 year olds as well as fans of the franchise

Producer: Lucasfilm, Bad Robot Production

Lucasfilms have also produced films such as the other Star Wars and Indiana Jones films.

Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Walt Disney pictures and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures have also distributed films such as Tarzan and The lion King .

Box office returns: 2.066 billion USD

An example of synergy that Disney have used to increase its profits was the development of the game Star Wars Battlefront 3. This game was developed by EA DICE and Criterion Software and distributed by Electronic Arts.  This brought about the increase of profit by disney because they would be receiving revenue from EA using characters from Lucasfilm which are owned by disney.

Marketing: 

The studio went all out to raise awareness for the saga’s latest installment, and the months leading up to the movie’s release was a full blitzkrieg of television spots, trailers, and of course, copious amounts of licensed merchandise – ranging from Hasbro toys to Kraft macaroni and cheese.

http://screenrant.com/star-wars-7-force-awakens-marketing-franchises-trailer/

There were many trailers that were also released prior to the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGbxmsDFVnE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOVFvcNfvE



The reas

The Street, Representation of Sexuality

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5F-cqQ1Uwk

Sexuality can be represented in this extract form The Street through editing, cinematography, mise-en-scene and sound. 

An editing technique used to represent sexuality was the slow motion camera shot and distorted musical editing after one of the gay men were mugged. This editing was used to bring about a point of view experience of the mans condition after being hit and mugged soon afterwards. This represented the gay person being mugged as weak and vulnerable since he was in a servier condition after being hit.

Cinematography was also used to represent sexuality such as the high angle shot of the two main characters near the bar. This high angle camera shot could be decoded by the audience as making the two gay characters as weak since the dangle showed them as smaller figures. However this decoding is contradicted by the low angle camera shot of the man dancing above which empowered him since he was viewed at a low angle.

The mise-en-scene used also represented the gay men as a stereo and counter stereotype. The dancing man with fake tan in the night club would be the general representation of a gay person since he is viewed as promiscuous and feminine. Branston and Staffords theory from 2001 is applied to this since this theory suggests that soaps such as this one rely on stereotype and archetypes to create their show. However the counter stereotype of both of the gay men are that they were dressed in working class clothing as demolition men. Demolition man are generally viewed upon as strong masculine males. Therefore the gay counter stereotype plays a role since demolition men are not generally viewed as gay.

Sound is also used to represent sexuality such as the dialogue used from the mugger. He called the man a "Dirty shit bastard" which represents the gay man as vulnerable since he did not retaliate after being called that. Branston and Staffords theory could be applied here since gay men are generally viewed as girly. Therefore having this girly trait could suggest vulnerability. This would then be the stereotype used for this theory. Another example of sound would be the dialogue after having "No police involved". This also represents the gay sexuality as having weak confidence since the man mugged did not want to revile his sexuality to other people.

Representation of Sexuality

Male - testosterone

Female - emotional

Gay - flamboyant 

Lesbian - butch

Sexuality - a persons sexual orientation or preference

Heterosexual male = Tough, protector and leaders. They are usually higher in society as Strauss' idea of dominant figures state the men who are around their 40's who have high paying jobs dominate in the general public.

Heterosexual woman= Weak, girly, feminine, damsel-like and emotional. Strauss' idea of binary opposites is evident as they are typically seen as subordinate figures.

Branston and Stafford (2001) - soaps rely on archetypal characters and stereotypes - ensure ready accessibility because stories have universal appeal about families and communities.

Stereotypes depend on shared cultural knowledge – some part of the stereotype must ring true.

Stereotypes are always about power: those with power stereotype those with less power (Dyer, 1979).

Archetype - a very typical example of a certain person or thing.

Soaps rely on archetypal characters to retain a certain audience. For example, The Big Bang theory has the female character, Penny, to retain the male audience since she is a typical example of an attractive woman. 

Homosexual male= Camp, girly, promiscuous, feminine looking clothes and loud.

Homosexual female= Butch, feminist, short hair and hate men.

I do not think that gay men are condemned to live a life alone without children since a gay couple are more than capable of adopting a child. One well known television show: Modern Family, a gay couple that adopted a Chinese girl. Therefore gay men are not condemned to live a life alone.

I do not agree that gay women do jobs such as PE teaching since there are many female PE teachers that do not have the same sexual preference as a gay woman. They could most likely be straight but have a passion for teaching sport.

Hotel Babylon, Representation of Ethnicity / Race

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grAgxe94bRs

During this extract of Hotel Babylon, cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing, and sound were used to represent ethnicity and race.

Cinematography was used to represent race such as low angle panning shot of the white male immigration service. This empowered and represented them as dominant in race and authority. Linking to Alvarado's race theory, the theme used to represent these people were dangerous. This means that they are feared by other races and could bring about connotations from 1950s south America. There could also be a misunderstanding with Stuart Hall's encoding and decoding theory with this representation. The producers of this extract could have encoded low angle camera shots to show authority. However this could have been decoded as "white dominance" by the audience.

Mise-en-scene was also used to represent ethnicity. For example, the workers that were speaking a foreign language in the kitchen were wearing working class clothing. This would represent their non-English ethnicity's as working class and low status within social hegemony. This brings about the theme of these people being pitied from Alvarado's race theory. In terms of Stuart Hall's theory of encoding and decoding, this could have been encoded to have sympathy from the audience. However this could have been decoded as the working class ethnicity's as poor and unhelpful since they are illegally working in the hotel and have nowhere else to go. 

Editing also played a role when representing race and ethnicity. For example, the fast paced camera shot changes during the time when they workers were going into the cupboard to hide could have highlighted the panic of the workers, representing them as vulnerable people in the hotel. This again has the theme of the people being pitied from Alvarado's theory since they are in such panic from the fast camera shot changes. This in my opinion, this is both encoded and decoded as representing the panic of the workers. However to other audiences, it could have been decoded to represent the different race and ethnicity's helpless which could bring about unhappiness from them.

Sound is also used to represent race and ethnicity such as the dialogue from the office worker towards the beginning of the extract. The immigration service enter the hotel asking to search the premises. The office worker then asks her colleague if he has performed a work task. This "work task" was a secret hint that only the hotel workers knew about to hide the illegal workers. After replying that he has not done this task, he leaves the scene to warn the others about the immigration authorities. She calls the other dark skinned colleague having a "brain like a sieve" to stall the authorities. This dialogue could have been encoded by the producers to have the office worker stall the authorities. However this could have been decoded as a racial comment about black people having a "brain like a sieve" which could have brought about a miss understanding.

Representation of Ethnicity / Race

This would be the medias representation of a person believing in Islam. The strips of paper across his face connote to terrorist acts such as 9/11 which have a relation to an extreme Islamic movement. Therefore the extreme movements represent everybody else that believe in the religion.

The stereotype of photo 1 is the representation of a Muslim belly dancer and the stereotype of photo 2 is the representation of a hispanic woman. This form of media is used to reverse psychologise the viewers of the photo to stop making stereotypes of people. 

Caricature - Over exaggeration of Stereotypes 

A stereotype is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

An archetype is a very typical example of a certain person or thing.

Hegemony is leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.

Ethnicity is a population group whose members identify with each other on the basis of common nationality or shared cultural traditions. Ethnicity connotes shared cultural traits and a shared group history.

Race refers to the concept of dividing people into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of physical characteristics.

The difference between ethnicity and race is that they separate groups in different ways. Ethnicity identifies groups through nationality or cultural traditions while race identifies groups through physical traits.

Alvarado's race theory (1978) - 4 key themes in racial representation:

1. Exotic
2. Dangerous
3. Humorous
4. Pitied

The Kumars would match to the humorous theme from Alvarado's race theory.

Tokenism is the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort1 to do a particular thing, especially by recruiting a small number of people from under-represented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce.

This would be an example of creating moral panic since it identifies the islamic religion as murderous which would generate a hatred towards the religion from the viewers of this media text. 

Stuart Hall - Encoding and Decoding is an approach of how media messages are produced, disseminated, and interpreted.

The model includes:

(Encoding) Preferred or Dominant Reading = the way the producer of a text intended the text to be understood. 

(Decoding) Oppositional Reading = where the preferred or dominant meaning is recognised but rejected for cultural or political reasons.

Negotiated Reading = where the reader agrees with elements of the text, but not all.

For example, Michael McIntyre tells a joke with the intention to create humour. However, this could

have been decoded as offensive by some audience.

This would be an example of islamophobia since the banner held states "all i need to know about

islam, I learned on 9/11". This means that the person holding the banner believes that all Muslims

commit terrorist acts. 

Eastern Europeans are represented as cheap labour through television shows such as Eastenders, 

who works at a corner shop. 

Doc Martin, Representation of Regional Identity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gfYWZzaTBI

In this extract of Doc Martin, regional identity can be identified through sound, editing, mise-en-scene and cinematography.

Sound is used to identify the characters regional identity through their accent and how they speak. For example, the well spoken doctor could be from South England since they often shown as being the center of culture, modern, classy, clever, sunny, richer, doing middle class jobs such as managers. However the poorly spoken plumber could be from North England who are often shown as being poorer, lower class, aggressive, less culture, less clever, doing working class jobs such as builders and plumbers. 

The well composed soundtrack when Doc Martin returned the dog to the police officers could also highlight his regional identity. Since the track is well composed it could relate to him being from somewhere of high quality such as South England who are richer and clever.

Editing has also been used to demonstrate Doc Martins regional identity. For example, the match on action on Doc Martin walking through the door to the police officers house to return the dog created a sense of authority over the police officer. This is because the town where this show is set is in Cornwall, who are often shown as being “backwards”, living in rural areas, working on farms. This brings about a social dominance since Doc is from South England who are a higher class group of people since they have middle class jobs rather than working class.

Mise-en-scene used also defines the regional identity of characters. For example, Doc Martin is dressed in a clean suit and has a well maintained body. This means that he is from a higher class background being from South England. However the plumber is dressed in muddy working clothes and does not look after himself in terms of weight. This means that his clothing and working class job matches up to him being from Cornwall. The mise-en-scene of the outdoors are rural and old fashioned. This means that Doc is above the rural working class because of how he looks and dresses.

Cinematography is also used to determine Docs regional identity. For example, there are two low angle panning shots of Doc Martin returning the dog to the police officer. This means that the camera angles present him as a larger figure compared to other characters in the extract, demonstrating his Southern England regional identity. In comparison, the plumber has high angle camera shots used, presenting him as a smaller figure. This means that he can be easily identified as a lower class person living in Cornwall. Therefore the camera angles used in the extract demonstrate the South English region as dominant over Cornwall since they work in higher class roles.