Mixed Media Creative Critical Essay

Filmmaking is a very interesting creative endeavor to pursue, as the medium of film provides the opportunity for filmmakers and storytellers to create characters and worlds that are yet to be seen. From the public view the challenges of making a film is seen in the production stages. People look at the hard work that is done on set and in edit rooms when brining a film to life, however there are many steps that occur behind the scenes not many people tend to think about when getting a film made. In this essay I will be looking at two key aspects that are needed for a film to exist and viewed: cost and distribution, and seeing the difficulties that stand when trying to secure these two deals, as well as how obtaining them has changed.

 

It is common knowledge that without any funding a film does not exist. Money is a key factor in getting a film made but raising it or finding investors to provide a budget is a very difficult task.

 

Financing is a very broad topic when talking about films there are many ways to gather money from investors, whether it be approaching public people who have money and asking them, getting government funding or earning and spending your own money, there are many options to chose (Kroll2014). Traditionally what a filmmaker would attempt is taking a script to a production house with investors and try to get the funding.

 

However these corporate entities are the ones who are most reluctant due to the fact that the biggest thing they face is the fear of risk, if they invest millions they would be the ones who lose out. A studio head would be more secure investing in a script that has a structure that they know would work (Adams 2013). Chris Anderson stated in his article about the 20th century entertainment being one that was about creating hits, and that hasn’t changed, what has changed is the what films kinds of films are determined to be hits.

 

The current Hollywood culture is one that is adaptations and reboots, where studios revisit older films with a strong brand name and update it for a modern audience or they make films based on a successful pre-existing source material, the most notable example would be the current superhero franchises studios have running (Beeli 2014). One example would be the Spider Man franchise produced by Columbia Pictures, between the years 2002-2007 they produced three Spider Man films, each film almost grossing more than the other, with the first grossing 821,708,551, the second 783,766,341 and the third 890,871,626, earning the studio over two billion dollars in total (Box Office Mojo 2014). Five years later they decided to reboot the franchise, with a new story, cast and crew with a film titled The Amazing Spider Man, which grossed 757,930,663 a hundred million less but still a lot of money (Beeli 2014).

 

From this example what we can see about modern day Hollywood is that they are willing to recycle the same idea over and over just as long they know it would guarantee them a return. I feel like what this has resulted in is that studio heads now deal more in brand names instead of good material, which is why there have been many films with interesting an original concepts that have never made off the ground because the people behind couldn’t see its value beyond its lack of recognition.

 

An argument could be made with a film like Inception, directed by Christopher Nolan; a blockbuster that made 825,532,764 dollars (Box Office Mojo 2014) worldwide that had no pre-existing source material and was very successful. However I would counter argue that it did have name recognition through Christopher Nolan, as his previous film The Dark Knight earned 1,004,558,444 dollars (Box Office Mojo) worldwide and was based on the Batman character which was already a very successful franchise containing over seven decades of material from comic books, films, TV serial and films. The Dark Knight was a film that was not only financially successful it was critically successful. Professional film critic Jason Lynch from People Magazine opens his review of the film by stating, “Step aside Spider Man 2 and Superman 2: The phenomenal The Dark Knight now reigns as the greatest superhero film of all time”. There are many more reviews from critics and viewers who claim that The Dark Knight is the best of the bunch and it was nominated for two academy awards, winning the category for best supporting actor.

 

My point is that the success of this film allowed Warner Brothers to agree to produce Nolan’s film about dream thieves, and the name recognition Nolan received from The Dark Knight was what motivated people to watch Inception, which just shows that the studios always look for a name that can deliver, which is one of the reasons why many films don’t get made, the studio would look at script that doesn’t necessarily operate in the conventions of traditional story telling, and they interfere with the creative process and the vision of the filmmaker and his crew and it becomes a clash of vision in which nobody can find any agreement resulting the studio heads to pull the plug on a project.

 

However a new development has risen, that helps struggling filmmakers to produce their projects. This new method is crowd funding, which allows filmmakers to communicate with the online community of people from around the world and seek financial contributions from them to get the film made. One high-profile example would be actor/director Zach Braff who is famous for being the lead on the his sitcom Scrubs, for eight years, and who directed his first film Garden Sate in 2004, went on Kickstarter to help get the funding for his second film titled Wish I Was Here. The attempt was made after Braff spend the decade after making his directorial debut trying to get investors to put their trust in his vision for the project. The following video was his pitch for the kickstarter audience:

Trailer for the film:

The interesting aspect that I find to crowd funding is its contribution to network literacy. Network literacy essential means the ability to participate as a member in a rising development of networks (Miles 2007). Kickstarter is a network in the sense that it brings people from all over the world to help bring an idea, that they have common interest in, to life even if they don’t have an initial background or understanding of the conventions of the development of the idea. Another example would the development of the revolights, which are bike light system that light up an entire bike so you can ride in the dark (Fankovich and Pettler 2011). Now from a public view a layman, like myself, wouldn’t understand the engineering and the technicality that would be required to develop this idea, but the interaction that kickstarter allows between the creator and the investors, would provide and opportunity for the developers to explain the logistics that go into making this project and help the investors understand everything about the functions before a single one is made, therefore the investor grows in knowledge of a particular field.

Caption: A Sketch showing the basic design of the revolights was shown on the KickStarter page.
Source:http://geekdad.daddyforever.com/revolights/

After getting the cost and finishing all stages of production, the next key step would be getting a distribution deal. “…making a movie is not nearly as difficult as getting it distributed. Because of the enormous amount of cost in money and time involved in distributing a movie…”(Tyson 2000).

Caption: Steps of Distribution

Source: http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-distribution.htm

Getting a distribution deal is key as it guarantees that a film will be released for public viewing and as this quote from Jeff Tyson states it is very difficult process. The image above gives an overview of the steps; once the production is completed the film is sent back to the studio, who then makes a licensing deal with the distribution company, who then decides who many prints of film must be produced, once decided they show the product to potential buyers i.e. theatres, and once those negotiations are sorted the cinema would agree to show the film for a number of weeks (Tyson 2000).

 

A quick example of the cost of distribution would the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which had a production budget of 115 million dollars and had a distribution budget of 20 million, which covered for all the theaters and various promotions of the film (Star Wars Celebration 1999).

 

The difficulty of film distribution is that films only get distributed if the distribution or production company wants to pay for it, as they look towards the long term to figure out what movies have the potential to attract and audience and be successful at the box office (Tyson 2000). This once again this goes with Chris Anderson’s statement of entertainment being about making hits.

 

Much like the development of crowd funding, distribution itself has shifted into different mediums resulting in the online distribution model (Anderson 2004). The economy of hit making doesn’t stop with studios and distribution companies looking for what films are going to be box office smashes in the theatre, in continues on to the smaller scale of distribution with DVD sales (Anderson 2004). Retailers are only willing to make shelf space for products they know are going to sell over the long run; this means less shelf space for items that were not among the mainstream (Anderson 2004). Now in the digital age with websites such as Amazon, Netflix or iTunes, have taken away this limitation and now has an abundance of product available in every media category, music, books, films, for everyone to access despite the popularity of the product (Anderson 2004).

 

Anderson uses the example of the book Touching the Void, which gained good reviews upon its initial release but was soon forgotten by the public but remerged after a decade later as a result of Amazon’s recommendation list.

 

I wondered if this was possible for films. Can they find distribution online if they unable to gain traditional distribution? As a result it turns out the answer was yes. Jason Blum a Hollywood film producer found success in 2007 with a micro-budget business model that allowed him to make films at a low budget and distribution cost and still earn a profit (Masters 2014). Since the time of his early success the quantity and quality has wavered, he has started to take multiple projects under his belt, and the quality of his films have become questionable (Masters 2014). An example would be the most recent installment of the Paranormal Activity series titled The Marked Ones, was financially successful taking in 90,894,962 with having a budget of five million dollars (Box Office Mojo 2014), but was critically panned. Film critic Ed Gibbs stated, “This latest instalment in the found-footage, domestic-horror franchise opts for far greater supernatural silliness than its predecessors.”

 

The result of these reactions for these films have resulted several of Blum’s films having their distribution pulled and not even being released (Masters 2014). His most recent of these would be the film Stretch starring Patrick Wilson which was slated to hit theatres March 2014, was removed from its released just two weeks before the date (Masters 2014). Universal studio’s allowed the Blum and the director, Joe Carnahan, to find other distributors (Masters 2014), failing to find any other studio head who would accept the project they turned to online distribution and the film did end up getting a release on Amazon and iTunes (Orange 2014).

 

What these two developments in the areas of cost and distribution show the continuing change in traditional methods bringing forth new network literacies. Having the benefit of experiencing both the traditional and the introduction of the new in my life, with my consumption of media for example going from buying VHS tapes now to buying it off iTunes, I wonder how much further can it develop, and where will I end up creating my content. My aspirations to be a filmmaker hoped that I would one day be able to create films like the ones I was raised on, however now I think that it maybe a possibility that the creation and distribution of content could one day permanently be online.

 

 

Reference list:

 

Adams, S 2013, The Not-So-Secret Formula Behind Every Hollywood Movie, viewed 22nd October, http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/save-the-cat-hollywood-blockbuster-formula

 

Anderson, C 2004, The Long Tail

 

Beeli, J 2014, Do Movie Remakes, Reboots and Sequels Ever NOT Make Money?, viewed 23rd October 2014, http://www.equities.com/editors-desk/stocks/consumer-discretionary/do-movie-remakes-reboots-and-sequels-ever-not-make-money

 

Box Office Mojo, updated 23rd October 2014, viewed 23rd October 2014, http://www.boxofficemojo.com/

 

Fankovich, K, Pettler, A 2011, Revolights Join The Revolution, viewed 24th October, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/revolights/revolights-join-the-revolution

 

Gibbs, E 2014, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones review: Horror Made Spooky-Cutter, viewed 24th October 2014, http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/paranormal-activity-the-marked-ones-review-horror-made-by-spookycutter-20140124-31cad.html

 

Kroll, N 2014, How To Raise Money For Your Indie Film, viewed 16th October 2014, http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/how-to-raise-money-for-your-indie-film/

 

Lynch, J 2008, No Joke-Heath Ledger Makes The Dark Knight Unforgettable, viewed 23rd October 2014, http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20212604,00.html

 

Masters, K 2014, ‘Jason Blum’s Crowded Movie Morgue: Down Side of Micro Budget, viewed 24th, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jason-blums-crowded-movie-morgue-683212

 

Miles, A 2007, Network Literacy: The New Path To Knowledge, Screen Education, pp 24-30

 

Orange, B 2014, Stretch: Gag Reel with Chris Pine and Patrick Wilson, viewed 24th October 2014, http://www.movieweb.com/stretch-movie-gag-reel

 

Star Wars Celebration, viewed 23rd October 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20060103042824/http://www.starwars.com/community/event/celebration/f19990430/

 

Tyson, J 2000, How Movie Distribution Works, viewed 16th October 2014,

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-distribution3.htm

 

 

 

 

 

 

Symposium Week 12 notes

Symposium week 12- Protocol’s

Protocol- the customs and regulations dealing with diplomatic formality,precedence, and etiquette.

Law courts have protocols

RMIT has protocols

Online protocols?

For example if you retweet someone’s tweet or you take somebodies tweet and not acknowledge the source that is a breach of protocol.

In order to work in the space of blogging, instagram, facebook, emails, you have to work within the protocols.

An email address, is a protocol. You can type in anyting to create your email address as long as it uses texts, has the @ symbol and fullstops etc.

IP- Internet protocol

Policy/Protocol/Law- all different things

To get good answers you need to ask good questions

Extinction

One interesting point that came up in this weeks symposium discussions, is that some people may have expert skills that are no longer needed because their field of work is obsolete. Mediums are always developing and shifting into something better and that got me thinking what in my time will be obsolete? Where would we need to move our focus? I know the latter question is one I can’t get the answer to now, because no new technologies have made current skills obsolete, so I guess something’s are down the line. However I did think of what have other people done when their skills have become redundant. Do they just give up on everything? Or do they shift their focus on another area in their medium? The latter would be a very tough transition.

I started to think about the certain technologies that were popular ten or twenty years ago, but is hardly used nowadays, and one of method that came into mind was stop motion animation. For people who may not know stop motion is where animators build three-dimensional models of characters and physically manipulate them, to create the illusion of their movement. In Hollywood the most well known figure that provided stop motion for films would Phil Tippet. To give a brief overview of his career, in 1975 he worked on Star Wars to create a miniature moving chess set and as the films progressed he was brought in to create various puppets and stop motion creatures, and over the years he worked on many other motion pictures such as Robocop.

In the 1991 Tippet was hired to by Steven Spielberg, to work on Jurassic Park, his task was to use traditional stop motion to find away of brining the dinosaurs, that were featured in the film, to life. However they results of the technique were not bringing the depth and texture that would have been required to make the dinosaurs believable to a modern audience of that time, and the decision was made to use CGI to animate the animals. The stop-motion technique was abandoned for the project, but Tippets background in animal movement, motivated Spielberg to keep him on board to supervise the animation of the dinosaur shots. The technology developed by this film-helped open the floodgates for CG creatures in films, and stop motion ended up being obsolete or extinct I should say.

Tippet later on found him self, moving from stop motion to handling a fully CG facility. Now I don’t know the whole story of what the transition was like for him, one can only imagine what’s like when you find everything you know, trained for, and love is no longer needed, more importantly that makes you as a person not needed. The transition wouldn’t have been easy and Tippet would have taken time to develop a set of skills fit to work in digital effects, but his journey shows that its possible to gain a new set of skills in the medium of film. I suppose an individual just needs the passion to continue on and find something new in the field you love, without allowing yourself to completely fade away.

Symposium Week 11 notes

Why do databases matter?

1.Database is not just about storing information; it’s about retrieving the information too.

2.Database is not like a narrative, because narratives are a sequence of events, in which everything happens as a result of something and leads to another thing.

3.They are lists, not stories. Yes list can be turned into stories but they are not stories on their own.

Production:

4.With the mixed media essay you can only invite the audience, and not tell them what to do.

5.Your role as a media make shifts from being the boss, to someone who creates or choreographs opportunity’s and experiences for your audience. E’g when you organize itunes, and arrange your playlist to your liking, it creates an experience to how you listen

Narrative as a Database

In this weeks reading Database as Symbolic Form by Lev Manovic, he talks about databases being symbolic form of the computer age. He defines a database as a structured collection of data. This term is most commonly used and associated with computer science, and you normally think that a database is a computer term, however he makes comparisons of things in the material world to a database, such as a museum, as it stores collection of artwork and several other items, I found this interesting, as I wouldn’t have thought of it in this way. He later takes his comparisons further by comparing narrative with a database, with he make his point by bringing up the fact that narratives can be a collection of images, sound clips, video clips.

 

This was an intriguing notion, however he never explored it further in this reading. So in order to wrap my head around this idea and to expand slightly and give it a bit more meat, lets say, I began thinking of film narratives as databases, and not just in the terms of films containing sounds and footage and all that jazz. To my understanding if a database is a collection, and with the comparisons to a museum, the data within the database can only be seen once it’s accessed somehow. That idea made me see more clearly on how a film or other forms of narrative could be considered as database. Apart from the technical or physical aspects of narratives, for example a written piece can be a book that has pages, a cover and texts, or film that contains the footage, sound; music and dialogue, narratives at its core are stories. The breakdown of what stories can be will help see how narrative can be seen as database.

 

A story is a sequence of events told in a particular order from beginning to end, but what can told, is a different matter all together. The type of stories I like, to read or watch are the ones that are firstly fictional, then within that my kind of well written story is one that has strong plot, strong characters, a journey, a good mythology or world built around it. Now when a story is well written and then put on film, it resonates with an audience and connects them in ways that it feels real. I well made film, doesn’t feel like actors reading off a script, or the special effects people rigged and explosive, it all feels like reality, and its in this way we can see narrative as database.

 

For example take the film Inception. It had strong characters, the lead being Dominic Cobb played by Leonardo DiCaprio, it had a mythology, which was in that reality people can access your mind through dreams, and it had a journey that the character of Cobb had to take. Every aspect of this film to me feels real. I don’t feel like I am watching a piece that was put together, I felt like Cobb is a real person, and I’m talking about the actor, the world of the dreams where so real it even felt like a possibility. Now all these factors are something that can only be seen in the film Inception, now do not misunderstand me, I am not saying no other film can have strong characters, a mythology and a world to explore, I’m simply saying these characters and this world can only be found in this film, and can be seen no where else. So in a sense narrative, is a data base for this film, because even though you can see over ten films with Leonardo DiCaprio in them, he isn’t playing the same character, he transforms every time, and if you wish to see him play a particular character you have to watch him in a particular film. In other words, if you want to see him play a man who can access peoples dreams you have to watch Inception.

 

Database as a Symbolic Form Notes

What is a database?- a structured collection of data

Its a very common term, used in technology, mostly in I.T, which is any file or system or device that stores data.

In life there can be other objects that are databases, such as a museum. It stores collections of artwork and other valued and aged objects

He briefly describes narrative as database but doesn’t really go further with that statement.