Working Title VS Warp Version 3

When looking at the production company, Working Title, we know that they are a company that produce most Rom-Com's, whereas a company such as Warp, focuses more on the social realist genre. We can see this in movies such as "This is England" and "Mickybo & Me". 

Another film from Warp, which is social realist genre and shows the hard life of an immigrant is the movie "She, a Chinese". The film is about a young girl, Mei, who is a Chinese immigrant, after escaping her provincial Chinese village and immigrating into Britain. 

The entire movie is in Chinese and is therefore not very appealing to a wide audience and would never be able to achieve a wide release. First of all, because there wouldn't be many people who wanted to watch a movie in Chinese and second of all because there are no famous actors in the movie. This movie came out in 2010 and didn't have a main cinema screening and it didn't make that much money. The income it made came from it's DVD and VOD release. 

In this case, the Gant Rule isn't applied, because it did not have any success in Britain and therefore didn't have any success in other countries either. The Gant Rule suggest that if a film is a success in Britain it will make 10x more money in the US and have 10x the amount of screenings if not more. A great example of a British movie that achieved this, is the one from Billy Elliot. The reason, why this movie got so much attention and was a great example of approving the Gant Rule, is because it is about the great American Dream of a young boy. This appeals to a global audience and especially  a wide American audience and therefore it had such a great success.  

Had this been a Working Title movie on the other hand, it would have been done in a completely different way. Working Title always do a more commercial approach in terms of how they distribute their film, how they produce their film and, which cast they choose. 

Due to this, "She, a Chinese", would first of all have been in English, secondly it would have contained at least one American actor or actress and lastly it would have been distributed in very big amounts everywhere, in order for it to be successful and get a lot of screenings. 

As an example, Bridget Jones' Diary was distributed all over the world. Rennee Zellweger's two co-actors, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, are both Britsh, whereas Zellweger is American. 

In terms of distribution, the movie was distributed in a different way from country to country.

In France, as an example, the movie was advertised with this poster, where Zellweger is on it without her co-stars. This was done, because she is one of the big American stars and everyone in France would know her, whereas at that time, only a few would know Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. 

However, in Britain, the movie was advertised with all three actors on it, because both Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are considered as big stars in Britain.

Exam Practice 2: Representation of sexuality and race

In terms of mise-en-scene there are a lot of cables, computers and bright lights to emphasise on the laboratory setting. This creates a sci-fi feeling, which really helps to establish the genre. The low key lighting is especially helping to create the dark and mysterious atmosphere.

When listening to the music, there is a lot of non-diegetic music. The non-diegetic sounds of water dripping in the basement and the non-diegetic dramatic music, helps to establish the genre and creates a certain tension. Throughout the whole clip the music is very ominous and then all of a sudden when they stop kissing, it becomes even more dark.

When looking into cinematography, the beginning of the clip starts with a medium close-up, which gives us a real focus on her face and characteristics. 

When denoting her appearance, the audience would pick up on her black hair. Had she been portrayed as the stereotypical western beauty, she would have been blonde and would have worn more make-up such as a red lipstick. In this scene, she wears a light blush and a very neutral lipstick.

Furthermore, the framing in the first shot focuses on the character, but it also establishes the narrative enigma, because it doesn't suggest where the location is. During the dialogue, there is a shot reverse-shot which keeps returning back to the woman with the black hair. Through this, the audience knows that she is he main character and the central protagonist is established. According to Propp's character archetype theory, she would be the "Hero".

From that shot there is a reverse-shot to the antagonist, where we see her in a medium close-up.

Her lack of make-up, messy hair and color of the hair, her innocence is portrayed.

When our central protagonist sees, how the girl is suffering, she looks like she is in pain and the audience is being positioned to empathise with the central protagonist.

When looking into representation, we are positioned to identify ourselves with the central protagonist, because the shot keeps going back to her. Due to the fact that our central protagonist is empathising and feeling sorry for the antagonist, the audience automatically does the same.
There is a stereotype created of the girl with the lighter hair as the female victim. There is also created a counter-type for the central protagonist, because she is helping the girl. In other films, helping a female would usually be done by a male actor. It has become normative in society and has become a stereotype that men are strong and are always the ones who help a female in need of help.

This medium two-shot below is very tightly framed, leaving no speace between the two character. This shot is connoting that there is a bond between the two characters.

The media language chosen of this slight high angle and the medium two-shot, signifies that they are both vulnerable and that they are both in danger.

During this small clip, there are soft and slow piano tunes. This has connotations of sadness and it really anchors the relationship between the two characters.

It can be interpreted to be romantic and it fits well with all the other signifiers that have been encoded into this text. 

This shot shows how the two characters are staring into eachothers eyes and grabbing eachother so hard around eachothers arms. This connotes that there is a romantic feeling between the two of them. 

The welsh accent used in this program, would be suited for a British or Welsh primary audience. This shows that this show could not be shown in America. Due to this, the show is not gaining a large amount of profit. Hence, it doesn't support the Gant Rule.
When the male character is observing the two girls in the basement and starts to record it as well, it could be denoted as male gaze features. The shot is cutting from the two girls to the male character.

"The male gaze is a concept coined by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey. It refers to the way visual arts are structured around a masculine viewer. It describes the tendency in visual culture to depict the world and women from a masculine point of view and in terms of men's attitudes."

When the central protagonist is seen behind the glass, there is a use of intertextuality, because it is similar to a scene in "The Silence of the Lambs" from 1991 by Jonathan Demme.

This intertextuality, is used to appeal to the secondary target audience, which is parents and older people, because they might have seen the movie. The younger audience on the other hand, might not understand the reference.  



Stuart Hall, stated that semiotics had a lot of limitations as it was assumed that all of the reading resided to the only in the text. He argued that meaning resides in the audience as well and that the different people react to different things in different ways. 

When looking into semiotics and it's syntatic level, the dominant elements on screen are the 2 girls. Since, the antagonist keeps pushing her away, the overall effects is that we begin to feel sorry for our central protagonist. 

When just focusing on the representational level, we can see that our central protagonist has an interest in women and has feelings for the antagonist, alien. She is the one that keeps wanting to kiss her, despite the fact that the antagonist keeps pushing her away. This denotes, that she has a strong interest in her, because she doesn't stop immediately. In the scene that I analysed from 1:30 to 2:00 min, the camera is nearly always creating a medium close-up or close-up, so that the audience can clearly see the emotions of both of them. 

The editing in this clip is continuity editing, which is very linear. There are no jump-cuts in the scene.

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.

Exam Practice 1: Representation of sexuality and race

When analysing the representations of a film, there is a lot of key terminology that should be used to show your understanding but also to support the examples you give.

The term normative is when something is referred or related to the standard stereotype and norm. It is something that the society considers as normal. Let me give you an example. Nearly every Working Title film uses stereotypes what is considered to be the normative. If you pay attention to it, you will notice that Working Title never uses any black actors or protagonists. They also don't have homosexual couples in their movie, because it is still considered to be abnormal in society.

Another term, that is often used is hegemony or hegemonic. This term is quite similar to normative and means that the dominant society maintains it's dominant position through the usual stereotypes.
However, if you challenge the normative representation, it is called counter hegemonic. A very good example of a show that applied counter hegemonic is this clip of the soap opera "Eastenders" from 1986, where you can clearly see how the society, in this case Dot, reacts to the fact that she knows someone who is homosexual.



Another example of a company that challenges the normative representation is Warp. Again, we can use the example of "This is England", where one of the main protagonists is Milky, who is portrayed as a very clever guy.

In society, black people are often portrayed as being stupid. With this social realist genre movie, Shane Meadows wanted to go against society and show that black people are not the way society considers them to be. Due to this, I especially enjoy Warp's movies and their concepts.

Moving to another term that is essential when analysing a movie is the word verisimilitude. This is when you making something look and seem realistic and believable. An example for this would be, if you pass someone a cup of tea and there is nothing in it, verisimilitude will not have been achieved.

British Cinema

There are 3 types of production company's:

1. Indie
2. Subsidiary 
3. Conglomerate

An independent film or indie film is a film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. It is not owned by anyone.

A subsidiary production company is a company who is more than 50% controlled and owned by another company, usually referred to as the parent company or conglomerate. This conglomerate holds a controlling interest in the subsidiary company. 

A conglomerate is a company that owns companies, which are called subsidiaries. 

Analysing:

You would think that Working Title is a conglomerate however it is a subsidiary, which again owns it own subsidiaries such as Working Title Australia and WT 2. A producer can be both subsidiary and conglomerate. 

Some production companies are on a very big scale and are known globally. These are known as the Big 6 and are all conglomerates. 

• Disney
• Columbia
• 20th Century Fox
• Paramount
• Warner Bros
• Universal Pictures

All of these 5 conglomerates dominate the worldwide film industry and a company such as Working Title is for example a subsidiary of NBC Universal. Some people think that it should be called the Big 7 and that Lionsgate should be part of it, due to the bis success that it has had lately.

Working title is for example a subsidiary of NBC Universal who are owned by Comcast. Besides Working Title, NBC Universal also owns Universal Pictures.
Studio Canal are originally a French company, who also have a subsidiary called Studio Canal UK also known as optimum releasing.   These 2 companies have worked on distribution and production for several Warp films.


There are 3 steps in a film cycle:

1. Production
2. Distribution
3. Exhibition 

When a conglomerate owns many small subsidiaries, which do different things such as distribution, production or exhibition, it is known as vertical integration.