What are some of the main factors that influence different kinds of film production today?

The main factors that influence the types of films that are made today are popular culture, the advance in technology within the production of film, target audiences and ultimately how much money producers think a film will make.

In some ways popular culture dominates what films are made. Most of the best selling films of 2015 were either bestselling books, comic book movies or true story movies that have some relevance to society today. Like The Avengers Age of Ultron for example made $191,271,109 in its opening weekend. Marvel films have proved many times over that they are capable of bringing in a lot of money so they will keep making marvel movies until they don't. Part of the reason that people like marvel films is that it is one interlocking universe within which all the films takes place. The Avengers takes place in the same universe that The Guardians of the Galaxy does. All of the Marvel films were already popular comic books before they were films and the popularity of films such as The Hunger Games was also certain due to the Book being a bestseller before it was made into a movie script. Producers will often use stories that have already proven to be popular so there will be less of a chance of the film flopping.

Case studies

Legend (UK production,financed within the UK) 

Budget: $25 million
Director: Brian Helgeland
Producer:
Stars:  Tom Hardy people would go and see it just to see his attractive face.
           Emily Browning
           Taron Egerton
           Christoper Ecclestone
           Colin Morgan
Genre: Crime thriller
Box Office: £3.70m plus £1.49m in Wednesday/Thursday previews, for a five-day total of £5.19m
Production company: Anton Capital Entertainment (ACE), Cross Creek Pictures, StudioCanal   
Certificate: 18 Can restrict the number of people going to see the film and could put people off with violence.
Marketing: In the poster they hid a 2 star review within a myriad of 5 and 4 star reviews. They made it seem like there were more stars than there really was.

Good trailer with catchy and upbeat music to make people want to go and see it. 

Tom hardy playing both characters. He is a really good actor so people wanted it go see it for his performance 

The alan carr show, something a lot of people watch so there is a lot of publicity now that they would not have had before. More people are aware of it now. 

Release Date: 9th September 2015,
Review: 2 Star review that the guardian gave it which the hid on their poster. Others were 4 and 5 stars.
60% on rotten tomatoes
Empire magazine gave it 4 stars.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron (USA blockbuster)

Budget: $279.9 million
Director: Josh Whedon, Hes's the original fanboy, Buffy the vampire slayer, Firefox
Producer: Robert Doweny JR
                Chris Evans
                Scarlett Johanssen
                Chris Hemsworth
                James Spader
               Samuel L Jackson
               Basically a lot of attractive stars with plenty of successful films.
Genre: Comic book movie, has a reputation of doing well
Box Office: $191,271,109 - opening weekend, $458,991,599 - Gross
Production company: Marvel Studios
Certificate: 12A means a wide demographic, many types of people can go and see the film.
Marketing: The fact that there were so many stars in this film was good for marketing. Also the first film was so successful already made people want to go and see the second one. Young girls are attracted to the male leads and they make scarlet johannsen attractive to young males. The fact that the marvel films are a whole collection of films that are all interlink means that to fully understand all of the films you cant really miss one. They all reference each other

The cast all appeared on various chat shows to promote the film and it was longley anticipated.
The trailer was good and showed all the best bits of the film. Funny and entertaining The trailer its self was long awaited.
San Diego Comic con Big media coverage all the stars there to promote the film Also lots of pranks and cool stuff. Robert Downey JR himself is good and he is the best casting to pay Iron man. The casting is good.
Reviews: In the was of reviews many critics thing that it didnt stand up against the first avengers and that it didnt have as good a plot as maybe The winter soldier.
The Independant - pop culture sugar rush
MORE STUFF ON XMEN, like how it was the birth of comic book genres
There's gonna be 25 comic book movies released by 2020

Another Earth (low budget film)

Budget: $100000
Director: Mike Cahill, former documentary maker
Stars: There was not really and stars in this film.
Genre: sci-f, but subtle like it could be a drama but theres another earth in the sky.

The Shining analysis

The scene that made me the most uneasy in this film was the scene with the two little girls. At the start of the scene, Danny is riding a tricycle. It is an extreme long shot so it makes Danny look very far away. It is also a tracking forward shot and it makes it seem like Danny is being followed. The shot lingers on the same corridor after Danny has left the frame for about 4 seconds. The corridor itself remain empty for those seconds, paired with the high pitched music is creates a sense of anticipation.

There is then a cut to then next corridor, It is still a tracking shot yet now it is closer to Danny as we follow him round a corner. The tracking stops as soon as he stops on his tricycle and at the end of the hallway are two twin girls. This corridor is much smaller than the last corridor and even though it is a long shot it still feels claustrophobic due to the narrowness of the corridor and the fact that there are no shots of the outside world. There is a switch between a close up of Danny's face and the corridor with the twin girls. The girls then say "Come play with us, Danny". In any other situation or genre this would not be scary but here it is effectively creepy. Children are a very widely used convention of the horror genre. For example in particularly chilling scene in the zombie movie Dawn of the Dead, it is the child that becomes the zombie and kills her father. I think children are used as they are often seen as innocent and when they are not it can be terrifying because of the contrast. Also people are a lot less likely to defend themselves against children when attacked by them.

In this particular section of the scene there is no eye line match editing which would be expected of this type of scene. We never see the hallway without Danny in the frame and it is as if the person who was following Danny then went on to watch the scene happening and you are seeing it from their point of view.

There is then a cut to the exact same hallway yet the two girls are laying there on the floor covered in their own blood with an axe next to them. The image of the girls bodies itself is shocking and with it being such a quick cut from that hallway to this version of the same frame accompanied with the sharp high music it made me jump.The axe is significant as it is what Jack later uses to break through the doors and to kill Mr Holloway. It is in a way foreshadowing to what may happen in future scenes. Blood is another convention of the horror genre. This is a big fear for some people with others feeling faint at the sight of it and as horror films play with some of the biggest fears of ordinary people it is present in most films. Like The Shining, My Bloody Valentine uses blood to show brutality and a gruesome murder. While in this film the blood is sprayed upon the walls in My Bloody Valentine the murderer of a young girl uses it to write a sinister message on a wall above her body. Blood is used a lot in this film as a sign of danger, such as in the scene where there is literally a river of blood down a corridor.

There is a switch between the shot of the young girls massacred on the floor and them holding hands. They repeat the phrase “For ever” over and each time it is said the shot of their bodies on the floor is shown and then a cut to them holding hands. The shot gets closer to their faces each time they say it. These sharp cuts between each shot are used to make the audience on edge and fearful of what is going to happen next. 

Another scene that makes me hide my eyes was when Jack was using the axe to break down the door to the bathroom where Wendy and Danny were hiding. This scene is many of the same themes as the scene with Danny in the hallway, for example the axe is the same. Weapons such as knifes, axes, chainsaws and machetes are a convention of the horror genre as they are often seen as leading to violent deaths and show the most goriest details. They also do the most damage to the human body and make the victim less likely to survive the attack. For example in Friday the thirteenth, Jason uses a machete for most of his kills.

Like the scene with the twin girls innocent and childish phrases are used to create a chilling atmosphere which leaves the audience in anticipation for what is about to happen. For example he says “come out, come out wherever you are”. This phrase is used when children play hide and seek and it is used in this context to scare both the audience and Wendy.He says some lines from the three little pig’s tale; he says “little pigs little pigs let me come in”. The way that Jack calls them the pigs and speaks from the wolf’s point of view is like they are the prey and Jack is the predator. Also with them being called pigs it’s almost like the bathroom is a pen or enclosure and they are waiting in there to be slaughtered.

Inside of the bathroom, Wendy is cowering in the corner against a white tiled wall. This is a Mid-shot to allow the axe coming through the door to be seen in the same frame as her screaming. Screaming is another convention of the horror genre and it is often the women who do it. Screaming is often used to get people attention when they are in trouble and it usually frightens us when the screams would not be heard. The tag line for the film Alien was “In space no-one can hear you scream”. In this film it is frightening because they are so isolated just like Wendy and Danny are in the Shining.

Conventions of the Spy and Comedy genre.

Spy Genre

• Temptress or femme fatal who is usually always conventional attractive. 
• Betrayal/Espionage 
• False ending, for example in Casino Royale when you think the action is over only for it to begin again after a betrayal 
• Gadgets and weaponry, 
• Evil organisations. 

Comedy Genre

• Exaggeration of situations
• idiotic people that are prone to injuring themselves e.g Dumb and dumber. 
• A witty or sarcastic character 
• Slapstick 
• usual settings such as high schools 

Possessed reflective analysis

Our intentions for our film, Possessed was for it to be a thriller for people over the age of 15. We did not want to outright scare our audiences but we did want to make them feel uneasy. We did this with the shots that we created, the music that we used and the lack of emotion shown on the main character.

In our film we used a variety of different shots. Our film starts with a forward tracking shot into the bathroom and a panning shot around the room from right to left. At the beginning of the shot there is a door whit a female sign on it clearly showing that the setting is in a girls bathroom. You see the girl standing at the mirror. This was a long shot to see the whole of the girl and the fact that she was alone. There is then a straight cut to an extreme close up on the eye of the girl. The eyes then startle open. We wanted this to make the audience jump. We then zoomed out to show the whole of her face. I feel like we could of emphasized her eyes opening with a dramatic non-diegetic sound post production to startle the audience even more.

We wanted to show the main character as emotionless and a bit detached. We did this with the facial expressions on her face and with that she didn't have any dialogue with anyone. We also made it so that she was the only one in the bathroom at the beginning to show that she was isolated. This was trying to show that she was possessed. We originally wanted her to be the only one in the corridor when she walked through it but obviously that would be difficult as we were filming in a school environment.

In this film we used both diegetic and non-diegetic sound. We used non- diegetic sound with the creepy music that we added to accompany the shots. We wanted it to be soft and very sinister to make the audience on each and anticipating what was going to happen next. The diegetic sound that we used was the banging of the stall doors that we created whilst filming.

Horror

The first horror movie I ever watched was The Amityville Horror, the 2005 remake. I remember feeling scared but I was 11 so I was probably terrified. I was sleeping round my friend’s house which was literally in the middle of nowhere with trees surrounding it. Due to the house being so old there were so many noises that were unexplained and I didn’t sleep for the whole night and was very quick to leave in the morning. When I went back and re-watched the film I didn’t really find it as scary as I had when I was younger. I think this was due to the fact that I knew what was coming. It was also down to the fact that as I had grown up I have seen much scarier films that were way more original. Even if I hadn’t of seen it when I was younger I still would have foreseen some of the things that happened in the film as it was very predictable.

I remember one scene that I found particularly frightening. The kid’s babysitter is dared to hide in the cupboard where this body of a little girl was found. Then with an extreme close up on the door handle, you see it slam shut on its own.  Extreme close ups are usually used to stress something or to show a particular detail that is important. In this circumstance it could be that no one was touching the door as it slammed shut. There is then an extreme close up on the lightbulb that is inside the cupboard where you see it flickering. In this instance the extreme close up hides what else is happening in the cupboard which makes the audience tense and leaves them not knowing what to expect. There is extreme low light in this scene as well which decreases what the audience can see leaving the audience in more suspense. Extreme close ups are used a lot in horror movies as they emphasis little details this is usually put with low light. This reduces what the audience can see. A fear that is played around with a lot in the horror genre is fear of the Unknown.

The next interesting shot is from inside the cupboard looking out from the babysitter’s perspective; there are lines going across the screen to so only small strips of the scene are shown. She can see a little girl on the bed who warned her about going into the cupboard and she seems less than interested. There are then more scenes like this where you can see the other two boys trying to get the door open. Children are used a lot in horror movies, for example the shining, the woman in black and the grudge. I think that this is because the audience sees children as innocents and if they are killed then that means the killer or bad guy is horrifically evil and when the children are the evil ones it is disconcerting as they are the exact opposite to what we picture them as being. 

Jurassic World

A films success can be measured in a number of different ways. Money is always taken into account as opening weekend figures usually determine whether or not a film gets a sequel. The amount of films made in a franchise often gives an indication as to how popular a film is, for example the star wars franchise is comprised of 6 films with more to come within the next few years and is seen as to be one of the most successful franchises in the world with a massive fan following. The size of a films fan base can also be seen as a measure of success.

Jurassic world earned over $200 million on its opening weekend and then went on to gross at over $600 million. It also has been reviled that there will be a sequel to this film. There are many reasons why this film was as successful as it was. One reason would be the cast. Chris Pratt had just been in the Marvel film Guardians of the galaxy as well as the popular sitcom parks and recreation so his name was well quite well known. He also has a large fan following that would go and see the movie solely because he stars in it.

Trailers for films are a great way of advertising the best the film has to offer but with the Jurassic world trailer they kept a lot back. They showed us a general premise for the movie and what we are to expect. However they did not show us the actual dinosaur. They gave us just enough to be aware of what it could do so that we would go and see the movie.

Another reason why this film gained so much success could be that it was already a well-loved franchise before this film. Many people would of gone to see it because they were drawn in by the trailer but others may of gone just to see if it would of lived up to the films that came before.  Other people may of spent money on this franchise because of the nostalgia they felt for the original movies. For example my mother grew up watching the first movies and was very excited to go and see Jurassic world when it came out.

The advertising is a big part of why the film became successful as the campaign itself was massive. The whole of waterloo station was plastered in Jurassic park poster and the trailer played on a screen at the main entrance there was also raptor statues which people took photos of and with which went online to further advertise for the film. 

For me the biggest reason why this film was as successful as it was is that even though it is a different film with a different cast the film had the same premise as the original series.  And many people would go and see it because it was a remake of the original. 

Mad Max:Fury Road

My Favourite Film of the summer is Mad Max: Fury Road. It is set in an apocalyptic world it and tells the story of a woman named Furiosa and the five wives of a War lord called Immortan Joe who keeps those wives as possessions rather than human beings and force them to bear his children. It was directed by George Miller and he had a budget of $150 million.

Part of the reason I loved this film was because of the character Furiosa. I like the fact that who I perceived as the strongest character of the film was a woman and that she is the one who ultimately kills Immortan joe. I think that the way she was written is how all women should be written in big blockbuster movies. We see her being strong when she’s fighting but we can also see her being weak for example when she finds out that where she comes from has been destroyed and there is a very powerful scene where she screams and falls to her knees. We also see her being a mother like protector figure to the five wives. There is almost desperation to her character which made her really human and flawed yet still powerful. She was more than one thing at any one time.  Charlize Theron was definitely the best person to portray her and she was very dedicated to the role as she shaved her head in order to play her.

I initially went to see this movie because I love Tom Hardy as an actor. I think he is a very versatile and he has such a talent for communicating without words. He can show many emotions on his face without uttering a single word which is what he does as the character Max. Max had lost both his wife and daughter and throughout the film he sees the ghost of his daughter. There was a backstory to Max but that wasn’t what the film was solely about. It told a different story which allowed much more action.

The film is looks incredible cinematically. George miller has the ability to make the dystopian world look terrible and terrifying. There was a very limited amount of CGI in this film so the explosions you were achieved by practical means and the cars you see get flipped are actually flipped. This makes the stunts look more authentic. The film doesn’t overdo it on the explosions either. Every stunt that takes place furthers the story.

The music in the film is very fast paced and unrelenting to match the action that takes place in the film. It keeps the audience on the edge of their seat and into the film. It gives of very dystopian vibes which adds to the whole look and feel of the film.

Overall Mad Max: Fury Road is my favourite film of the summer of 2015 because it was fun to watch and I felt like I was involved in the story.