Avatar

Avatar is a 2009 science fiction epic film written, produced and directed by the prestigious and respected James Cameron (Titanic).

The film was originally to be released in 1999 but Cameron decided that the technology at the time wasn't advanced enough for his vision of the film.

The film was released in late 2009, in 2D and 3D. The films technology is so advanced and vivid, especially in 3D. It amazed most of the people that watched it, having never seen anything like it to date. The special effects and CGI is outstanding and so it should having a budge of £237, 000,000.

Cameron used well known actors as a way of drawing in his audience.

Technology 

"Cameron planned to create photo-realistic computer-generated characters by using motion-capture animation technology. Unlike previous motion-capture systems, where the digital environment is added after the actors' motions have been captured, Cameron's new virtual camera allows him to observe directly on a monitor how the actors' virtual counterparts interact with the movie's digital world in real time and adjust and direct the scenes just as if shooting live action." (Wikipedia)

Cameron pioneered a specially designed camera built into a 6-inch boom that allowed the facial expressions of the actors to be captured and digitally recorded for the animators to use later.

Production Issues

"“I wanted to create a familiar type of adventure in an unfamiliar environment, “ Cameron explains, “by setting the classic tale of a newcomer to a foreign land and culture on an alien planet. The story is by design classic in its broad strokes, but we have plenty of twists and turns in store for the audience. I’ve dreamed of creating a film like this, set on another world of great danger and beauty""

"With the performance capture method, none of these negatives apply.  Though the CG characters in AVATAR resemble the actors who play them, their fundamental proportions are different.  The Na’vi eyes are twice the diameter of human eyes, and they are spaced farther apart.  The Na’vi are much leaner than humans, with longer necks, and they have different bone and muscle structures, including most obviously, their three-fingered hands.  As CG characters, the Na’vi and the avatars can be made much larger than human.  Blue make-up would have made the skin opaque, but with CG the characters can be given translucent skin which behaves like real skin, in which the pigment at the surface does not mask the red glow of the blood beneath, such as when strong sunlight hits the backs of the characters’ ears.  All of these subtleties combine to allow the creation of seemingly living creatures."

"to ensure the complete reality of the characters.  To do this, they developed a new “image-based facial performance capture” system, using a head-rig camera to accurately record the smallest nuances of the actors’ facial performances. Instead of using the motion capture technique of placing reflective markers on the actors’ faces to capture their expressions, the actors wore special headgear, not unlike a football helmet, to which a tiny camera was attached."

"Most importantly, the camera recorded eye movement, which had not been the case with prior systems."

"Another innovation created especially for AVATAR was the Virtual Camera, which allowed Cameron to shoot scenes within his computer-generated world, just as if he were filming on a Hollywood soundstage.   Through this virtual camera, the director would see not Zoë Saldana, but her 10-foot tall blue-skinned character, Neytiri.  Instead of Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, he would see their giant blue avatars, complete with tails and huge golden eyes.  And instead of the austere gray space of the Volume, he would see the lush rainforest of Pandora, or perhaps the floating Hallelujah Mountains, or the human colony at Hell’s Gate."

Exchange and Exhibition

Many trailers and parody trailers were released on Youtube, causing a buzz with audiences and comments like "So worth it! Even better than anyone could of thought"

Avatar was released as a mainstream film on the 17th December 2009. It was released as a 12A and nominated for 9 Oscars, along with 33 other nominations for various awards. Avatar also has  total of 14 wins so far, including Critics Choice Award. 

Box office

Opening Weekend: £8,509,050       UK

 : $77, 025, 481   USA

Exhibition and Exchange

Slumdog Millionaire

The film was released in January 2008. The producers lost their first distributer and so had to work extremely hard in order to get the film released. Fortunately Fox Searchlight took over the project and luckily, they released it in time for the "awards window" and eventually went on to win 8 Oscars. 

A Review of Slumdog Millionaire from Peal and Dean.com

More than 25 years after Gandhi swept all before it at the Academy Awards, another British film embedded in Indian culture is poised to conquer the world.

Scripted by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty), Slumdog Millionaire is an utterly irresistible rites of passage drama that builds to an extraordinary emotional crescendo. Employing a simple flashback structure, Danny Boyle's modern day fairy-tale charts the inspiring journey of an orphan from the slums of Mumbai to the contestant's chair on his country's version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? The suspense within the television studio, where host Prem (Anil Kapoor) poses each multiple-choice question, is nothing compared to the tensions within Beaufoy's multi-layered screenplay. In the space of a single vignette, the film glides from sidesplitting comedy to gut-wrenching despair, with an honesty and subtlety that continually catches us off guard.

Indeed, there is as much darkness as light here, including scenes of torture, child abuse, exploitation and degradation that reflect the meagre lot of children born into a rat run of makeshift housing, detritus, dirty water and shattered dreams. You won't need to ask the rest of the audience or 'phone a friend: from the opening frame, it's clear that Boyle has hit the jackpot. Slumdog Millionaire may just be the best film you see all year. Eighteen-year-old Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) has been raised by older brother Salim (Madhur Mittal) since the boys lost their mother to the violence of a religious uprising.

Falling into the clutches of child slave traders and other nefarious types, the youngsters use guile to survive on the streets, encountering a pretty orphan girl called Latika (Freida Pinto) who will change their lives forever. As months and years pass, Salim becomes a lackey to a brutal gang lord who forcibly takes Latika as his wife, beating her when she dares to challenge him. Unable to rescue the woman he loves from her predicament, Jamal seizes the opportunity to appear on the famous television quiz show. Miraculously, the orphan knows the answer to each question and as he edges closer to the 20 million rupee final question, the young man stands on the precipice of a momentous leap of faith that could rescue Latika and finally drag him and Salim out of the gutter.

Set to the infectious rhythms of AR Rahman's evocative soundtrack, Slumdog Millionaire doesn't strike a single false note as it pieces together the chronologically fragmented narrative, drawing us into Jamal's heartbreaking story. Patel and the actors who play the hero's younger incarnations hold us spellbound, delivering natural performances that tug the heartstrings. The plot continually defies expectations, most obviously in the closing minutes when we're left weeping hot tears of unbridled joy, though not for a conventional happy ever after. You can't teach slumdogs new tricks.

Soundtrack

The main theme song is 'Jai Ho' by the popular Pussycat Dolls.

The fact that the film now had a popular female band supporting, meant that they helped to boost the box office and caused even more of a buzz for the new film. 

Box office

In the opening weekend alone it made nearly £2 million.

By the 5th April it had made its largest some overall of £30, 283, 374

Overall a great success for what started off as an art house film.

Slumdog Millionaire UK Trailer - Distribution and Marketing

Analysis

USP: I think one of the most poignant selling points of this film and it's trailer is it's synergy with the UK game show "Who wants to be a Millionaire", Celador Productions.

Also, Danny Boyle as director means that as an audience we will recognize him and he is also highlighted for his past UK productions such as Trainspotting. 

The music used is very emotive and this helps to create a tense atmosphere, so that an audience would see/hear the trailer and WANT to find out what happens.

Finally, the fact that the film is set in India and it's a UK production is very unique. It's not set in the typical London or American settings, it's set in an exotic, often unknown country. Not many people have seen the harsh conditions of the slums in India, and therefore seeing them featuring and playing an important part in a film is quite interesting for a contemporary British audience. 

 

Which elements in the film's genre is the distributor highlighting which sets the film aside from other films in it's genre: The fact that the film is a mixture of different genres. There's an underlying love story throughout the film between the 2 main protagonist. There's also themes of money, violence, gangs and abuse. 

Slumdog Millionaire Poster Analysis - Distribution and marketing

Movie Poster

Title: Slumdog Millionaire

Title Graphics: The font is quite bold, and has an irregular ‘broken’ effect. It seems torn and shattered perhaps reflecting the characters in the film. The colour changes from a deep red with connotations of passion, romance or on a different note violence, to a light yellow with connotations of new life, freshness and new beginnings. This could we a reflection of the narrative of the film, the film starts of violent and passionate, but ends calmly, with new beginnings, perhaps a happy ending.

Who is starring in the film: The majority of the cast are mainly unknown, Dev Patel and Freida Pinto are the protagonists and both were new to film acting. However Danny Boyle the director is well known and therefore is recognizable to a modern audience.

Where are the stars’ names placed on the poster and why: The protagonists are not actually placed at all on the poster, only their faces are displayed, this could perhaps be because there so unknown that the designers thought it was necessary to include them. However, be the title graphics it reads “ A Danny Boyle film” in a bright yellow, this time to make it stand out.

Mise - en - scene: There are two characters displayed on the poster. The main characters. Jamal’s head is displayed largely, it’s a profile of his face and the back of his head fades into the background. His love interest is superimposed on Jamal’s head, she’s running. This could perhaps signify she’s trying to get away from him as they are facing in opposite directions, however because she is superimposed, it gives them a sense of closeness, that perhaps maybe their it two different places and she’s running towards him, which if you’ve ever seen the film, is very true.
The background is blurry and only the characters are in focus. This could perhaps reflect that their backgrounds don’t matter, the confusion and disorientation of the characters and their focus on one another. Everything else to them is out of focus and unimportant except each other.

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General Distribution


"A triumphant Danny Boyle recalled yesterday how Slumdog Millionaire came within a whisker of never making it to cinemas - after the economic downturn forced his film’s original distributors out of business.

Six months ago, the director was suddenly informed that Warner Independent was being closed down and that Slumdog, to which he’d devoted a year of his life, would be condemned to the obscurity of a straight-to-DVD release.
That was before Fox Searchlight heard of Boyle's feel-good fable about contemporary Mumbai. They bought rights to the film for a song, and quietly went about turning it into a word of mouth smash hit."
(The Independent)


The film started off as art house targeting Danny Boyle fans, but after being nominated for a a number of Oscars AND winning, it become a world wide phenomenon. 
The majority of the time Danny Boyle did the TV,radio and magazine interviews. I think he was probably used because he's the most recognizable member of the cast and crew and therefore the most likely person an audience could relate with.

Slumdog Millionaire was released on the 9th January 2008 in the UK, and the 23rd of January in the USA.

I think the USP of Slumdog Millionaire would be it's recreation of 'Who wants to be a millionaire'. The film used their synergy with Celador productions as a way of creating an authentic Indian version of the show.

Target Audience

46% of the audience were age 15-25.

The other highest percentage was age 45+ with 27%.

Research also shows that 56% of the audience were female.

The film has a wide demographic. It's a 15 certificate which is quite appropriate. Some of the scenes include violence and adult issues that children under 15 wouldn't fully be able to understand and it might distress them.

Marketing

Slumdog Millionaire, though quite low budget is a mainstream film, due to Film 4 and Danny Boyle.

They used Danny Boyle in most of their interviews. This could be because he is the most widely known member of the cast and crew. He is someone that knows a lot about this film and many others and therefore was able to offer interviewers his knowledge and opinions on why Slumdog Millionaire is a good film.

The television trailer presents the film as almost being in the action genre. The music is very fast paced, and creates a sense of chaos and excitement.

The voiceover describes it as "an unforgettable story". This tells us that there is a deep, underlying story and therefore not simply an action film.

The images show both the slums and the city and help to create the scene.

They use a popular song "The sun always shines on TV" (a-ha), to get an audiences notice and to perhaps give an indication of the narrative.

Danny Boyle decided to dub his movie in Hindi and Tamil so that he could appeal to a bigger audience, the audiences in India as well as the UK.

The film also got unprecedented media coverage, as it was nominated for a number of Oscars, and this meant that the public were desperate to see it.

This is England

Recent Film 4 production
Directed by Shane Meadows
Written by: Shane Meadows

Happy Go Lucky

A recent film by Film 4
Directed by Mike Leigh
Written by: John Kaylin
Mike Leigh

Production Problems in Film 4

Production Problems

Film 4s biggest problem was competing for cinema space with multinational film companies.

In 2001, the company suffered a major box office flop, after Charlotte Gray lost them a massive £5.7 million.  In the same year Film 4 put out 14 films, yet only accounted for 0.7% of the UK box office market, they were struggling.

A complete relaunch took place in 2006. Around a quarter of all films shown were british and they were broken up by advertisements for the first time. The company left pay TV and went onto Freeview.