Evaluation Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

My groups film introduction would be best suited for the multiplex cinema market. Firstly, it would not suit an art house audience, which are renowned for screening gritty films which provide a sense of realism, due to the plot. Our film is about a female (played by Izzi Harrison) who has been abused and killed by a psychologically damaged antagonist. This topic has been covered many a time in mainstream films and programmes and therefore in that sense wouldn’t match the target audience of an art house film who are looking for something that is alternative and outside the box. Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 1999) a very successful American New Line production, focuses around people who have been psychologically disturbed. Our plot conforms to the mainstream stereotypes that the victim is an attractive and vulnerable female and the antagonist is someone that seems ordinary but does the extraordinary. This can be seen in the BBC production ‘The Fall’ which follows the story of a family man who has two children, with the audiences being led to believe that he follows a normal life, but it soon becomes apparent that this character also kills multiple woman throughout the series. This expands my point that psychological thriller is not the uncommon therefore justifying why it belongs in the multiplex cinema bracket.

Our budget suits that of the medium budget range and therefore we would allow a budget of $35 million. Whilst some low budget productions can appear to be unprofessional and rushed, we on the other hand managed to secure two settings. One of which was access to a house beneath a school which immediately promotes spinster connotations and the other being a warehouse which enabled us access to an office for our detective scene. In addition, we used a spotlight to focus the viewers’ attention fully onto the detective and how the antagonists react and therefore our production feels slick and smooth. In addition, the victim of the murder was wearing a ball gown and the detective was wearing jewellery around their neck and hands. The use of these props therefore made this film feel well organised and something that would match the medium bracket. As I touched upon earlier the plot is much like that of the Fall and Sixth Sense, featuring a female victim and a psychological character. The antagonist has sections where he is trying to be clever and win over the support of the audience and in that respect we also see this in Se7en, with Kevin Spacey providing that persona. This is much like the Silence of the Lambs where despite the antagonist being someone with serious psychological issues we see the build of a relationship between the antagonist and protagonist. Se7en had a budget of 30 million US dollars and Silence of the Lambs had a budget of 19 million US dollars. This is promising for our film introduction as it shows that we can produce it in the way we want to whilst staying inside the medium budget range with a budget of $35 million.

David Fincher

For our film we would employ David Fincher to be the director. He has never written or produced a film he has directed as he wants to focus fully on the job at hand. Whilst David Fincher has a wide range of work he is most renowned for his thrillers which match our brief. The American budget for a film is split into three brackets. The top bracket is worth around $4.5bn, middle is $140m and the bottom bracket is worth $795,000. David Fincher, much like our film, is consistently hitting the lower end of the middle bracket. He directed Fight Club, Se7en, Gone Girl, Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, Zodiac all were worth less than $100m with Se7en, most like our film, only costing $33m. David Fincher doesn’t shy away from the repulsive side of human nature 9the infamous office scene from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is one of the glaring example). He has also stated that he tries to get out the scrips way and show the movie from POV of the characters. This is the underlying principle of his Michael Douglas starrer the game.

20th Century Fox

Taking inspiration from David Fincher’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2011 (produced by Columbia Picture and MGM and distributed by Columbia Pictures) we would do something very similar. For us hitting the American audience and to spread the word of our film is so important to make it stand out from the crowd to make a profit. Therefore, we would look to collaborate with 20^th Century Fox. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is an American film studio currently owned by 21st Century Fox. It is one of the Big Six Major American film studios and is located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, just west of Beverly Hills. The studio was formerly owned by News Corporation. Whilst they have produced high bracket films such as Avatar which cost $230 million they have also ventured into the lower end of the middle bracket and this can be seen with Chronicle a 2012 film. So they provide us with the platform to put our product out there with sufficient funding and a range of connections. In addition, we would also get Spyglass Entertainment to partner with 20^th Century Fox to produce this film. Spyglass Entertainment was an American production company, co-founded by Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum in 1998. It is owned by Cerberus Capital Management. They have produced films like The Sixth Sense, a 1999 American supernatural horror-thriller film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. This combination has been used before with 20^th Century Fox and Spyglass Entertainment partnering up on the production side of the film to create ’27 Dresses’. Whilst 20^th Century Fox have slowly ventured into the middle bracket in terms of budget, Spyglass are renowned for producing lower budget films with Sixth Sense being a strong example. I believe with this partnership the two companies can work in unison to fund and create a solid foundation for our medium budget film.

Spyglass Entertainment

Not only are 20^th Century Fox stung producers of film with the funding they hold but they are also fantastic distributors. In recent decades they have distributed films like Avatar, Titanic and The Revenant. They have access to a wide range of platforms and people who can promote their product and with the money that they have they can produce plenty of billboards and pt. advertisements for our film. Since January 2000, this company has been the international distributor for MGM/UA releases. In the 1980s, Fox—through a joint venture with CBS, called CBS/Fox Video—had distributed certain UA films on video, thus UA has come full circle by switching to Fox for video distribution. Fox also makes money distributing films for small independent film companies. In August 2012, 20th Century Fox signed a five-year deal with DreamWorks Animation to distribute in domestic and international markets. This shows that they have the capabilities to spread this film globally and they will be more than capable to fund our $27 million film.

In late 2005, when YouTube was just a few months old, one of its co-founders announced that the site’s users were consuming the equivalent of an entire Blockbuster store each month. Today, 300 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute. cording to just-released June 2011 data from Google, Facebook is still the world’s most popular website, with 870 million unique visitors and a whopping 1 trillion page views per month. Right behind Facebook–in terms of unique visitors, at least–is YouTube, with 790 million visitors per month and 100 billion page views. it is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.  On July 23, 2007 and November 28, 2007, CNN and YouTube produced televised presidential debates in which Democratic and Republican US presidential hopefuls fielded questions submitted through YouTube. In November 2008, YouTube reached an agreement with MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment, and CBS, allowing the companies to post full-length films and television episodes on the site, accompanied by advertisements in a section for US viewers called "Shows". The move was intended to create competition with websites such as Hulu, which features material from NBC, Fox, and Disney. YouTube was awarded a 2008 Peabody Award and cited as being "a 'Speakers' Corner' that both embodies and promotes democracy". So with this amount of people and attention centred around YouTube one marketing technique which should be used is to advertise across. As our film has such wide audience range with the cast and the genre pushing it on to the most used services will increase profit as people will know more about the film and feel more inclined to watch it. To increase revenue advertisements on prime time television, in the evenings, on the most well known channels (ITV for UK) and (CBS for the US) would gain a lot more recognition and venturing possibly into advertisements on Facebook which now has more than 950m people using the social networking service is another method of boosting recognition. 

In addition to YouTube and advertisements I think it would be important to also focus on the issue of the media and psychological issues. Our film covers the topic of a psycologically disturbed man who is acting uncontrollably. Despite some assuming we are mocking those with mental health issues it would be important to connect with another type of audience. Connecting with those who are concerned about these sorts of issues through an interview, preferably for the guardian as they get over 100 million online viewers every month, talking about the issues and challenged covering this topic caused for us would be beneficial. This was seen with the film The World's End, 2013 (Edgar Wright), which was solely a comedy-action film designed for those under the age of 15 or those who are into gore and unrealistic alien action films. However to the suprise of many Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the comedy duo in the Cornetto Trilogy featured alongside Edgar Wright in an interview for the guardian, providing a deeper meaning to the film rather than just another alien action film.

The full interview can be accessed here.... https://www.theguardian.com/film/video/2013/jul/17/worlds-end-simon-pegg-nick-frost-video

In terms of our cast

Viola Davis would be perfect for the role of the detective. In roles such in Suicide Squad and Luke Cage she has played characters who are not afraid to take no for an answer. She is being extremely powerful woman who holds the floor in any situation she goes into. When facing a psychologically deterred character we need someone who is cold and calm in unnerving situation and Viola can bring that to this film. In addition, would help distribute our film to a wider target audience. She has featured on many different platform during her career. In recent years she has ventured into Netflix Original programmes such as Luke Cage and A Series of Unfortunate Events as well as working with Marvel or some more realistic lower budget films such as Fences (released in 2017). Therefore, she is a face that so extremely well known with a wide range of audiences. By using her at the forefront of our posters it enables us to a promote the product global and to a large amount of people, increasing revenue. In addition Viola Davis won the oscar for best supporting actress this year for her role in Fences and so including her in our film would boost recognition. 

Cillian Murphy would be a great candidate for the role of the antagonist. This role is not something that would be unusual to him. He has played many antagonists in his career most notably Scarecrow in Batman. His supposed handsomeness and range of character profiles provides our film for a character the audience should be curious about. Despite playing roles in mainstream high budget films such as Batman he has ventured into medium budget productions, most notably with Peacock in 2010. His face is extremely recognizable and along with Viola Davis he would be a good marketing point to focus the poster around as people would recognise him, as he attracts a wide range of audiences due to variety in roles, subsequently increasing profit.

Finally, I would use Laia Costa to play the role of the female victim. Not only does she fit the role of a stereotypical vulnerable petit woman who is prone to being abused due to her dainty looks but she is also a great marketing aspect. After her role in the German film Victoria which earned fame for being filmed in one shot in the space of 2 hours she shot to fame. She is very much now in the public eye and has landed herself a role in a much anticipated film Newness (being released in 2017). If we could manage to get her involved in our film and put her, with Davis and Murphy, then our film would gain a lot of public recognition and enhance our market.

This would all play into the USP of our film. We promote our film on the basis that it subverts gender roles. In most thrillers the female is the victim and in that respect we have stuck to that theme but in more and more thrillers, especially with the continued rise of feminism women are given more oppurtunities when it comes to roles. As seen with Viola Davis in Suicide Squad, 50 years ago that would have been unheard of. Therefore using Candice Feddis as a strong female black detective would gain a lot of recognition in a white dominated film world.