The Hollywood film industry dominates the international film market. There are six major studies who are owned by international mass media conglomerates; Sony own Columbia Pictures, Time Warner own Warner Bros. Pictures, The Walt Disney Company own Walt Disney Pictures, Comcast and NBCUniversal own Universal, News Corporation own 21st Century Fox, Viacom own Paramount Pictures. A conglomerate is a collection of companies owned by a single institution, they might not all be in the same industry and diversification allows protection against a single part of a failure. These can also be classed as multinational organisations as there are institutions in more than one country (they will have offices or subsidiaries abroad). This has economic advantages as well as a better audience reach and diversification. The conglomerates also feature horizontal and vertical integration. They do this by buying the smaller companies that do a lot of the work in the industry; most times the smaller companies will keep their name and logo and sometimes their staff, this is because they already have a name for themselves and the staff knows how to successfully run the company. The smaller companies become subsidiaries of the large company. This allows films, guaranteed distribution and exhibition internationally and opens doors for lots of synergy to increase profit. Disney is an example of vertical integration; this is because they own all 3 stages of a film's life - production, distribution and exhibition. The Walt Disney Company owns numerous production companies, the most well-known being The Walt Disney Studios. They own publishing, merchandising, music and theatre divisions for exhibiting the films. Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture (previously Buena Vista Film Distribution) are the distribution company Disney have used since 1953, the name changed in 2007.
British film is a small-scale industry in comparison to Hollywood. When the British film industry has tried to compete with Hollywood with high-budget productions they have often failed causing British studios to go bust. The best way for Britain to compete is to offer something different. British producers have to find independent distributors for their films because they are independent therefore cannot benefit from vertical and horizontal integration. It is a ‘localised’ industry which tends to target British audiences primarily. Therefore they focus on home-grown productions with specifically British themes. Social realism, heritage films, rom-coms and British comedies have become popular genres in the country. An example of a British film following this trend is, Pride and Prejudice and The King's Speech. Pride and Prejudice (2005) contains the classic heritage film's appeal for country houses, attractive landscapes and authentic period detail. Hollywood tends to focus on the big blockbusters they know will sell e.g. A new film in the Star Wars franchise or a dozen Marvel films.
A co-production is when two or more production companies work together to produce a film, both benefiting from the profit, the amount depending on the amount of involvement. The British film industry is production led. In 2008, the UK was the eleventh largest producer of films in the world, by number of films. A total of 111 films were made in whole or part in the UK. The British industry is heavily dependent on investment, from the US. The UK has three large film studios, all in the south east of England: Pinewood, Shepperton and Leavesden. All have world class facilities and are able to accommodate the filming of several large budget films at one time. Leavesden is currently used exclusively by Warner Brothers. There are currently seven production companies which have long-term agreements with American studios. For example, Aardman Features has a first-come deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Working Title, is now owned by Universal Studios. There are two production companies which are film-making arms of broadcasters: BBC Films and Film4 Productions.
British companies have struggled to make an impact in international film distribution. The distribution sector has always been dominated by the American multi-national film companies. This is a serious issue for the British industry, in that much of the profit earned on films goes to American companies which have part-financed and distributed them. An example of this is Working Title; their parent company is Universal, because of this Working Title benefit from the opportunity to use US and UK assets.
Like I mentioned earlier, there are lots of small companies that do the work in the industry, the majority of these that aren't subsidiaries, are private or limited independent companies. They will receive funds through crowdfunding websites, private investors and grants from the BFI and other organisations unlike those that receive funding through their parent company. An example of this is Bedlam Productions Ltd, a British independent film company based in London, proving successful with BAFTA and Academy Award wins. Their most successful work to date is, The Kings Speech, starring Colin Firth. The film made more than $400 million, to become the most successful independent British film of all time. £1 million of the production costs were from The National Lottery. The £1 million was returned to BFI's film fund after profits, to train the filmmakers of the future. As the lead organisation for film in the UK, the BFI is now responsible for distributing lottery funds for film via a Film Fund for new and emerging filmmakers. They fund film production, distribution, education audience development and market research. Every year the BFI hands out £18 million in funding. Filmmakers are asked to provide certain information: the stage of the production, the track record of writers/directors on the team, which audience demographic does it target, dates of the shoot, financial plan, distribution aspects. Film Four is Channel 4’s film production company; they invest £15 million annually in developing and financing films for theatrical release in cinemas, working alongside filmmakers and usually in partnership with funders. BBC Films aims to make strong British films with range and ambition. They find and develop new talent, as well as collaborating with some of the leading writers and directors in the industry. Applicants get in contact with BBC Films via an agent or individually, as an established producer.
The UK government offers both direct and indirect assistance to filmmaking in the UK. Direct assistance is provided in the form of film tax relief to benefit British films which are made by a British film production company, qualify as British under the Cultural test or as an official co-production, are intended for theatrical release and have a production spending of at least 10% of filmmaking spent in the UK. The film tax relief encourages future investment in the UK, benefits post-production in the UK, supports UK independent production and encourages minority co-productions where the UK spend is less than 25 %. The Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and the more recently established Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) is a way the UK government assists film indirectly. EIS and SEIS were established by the government in 1997 and 2012. SEIS is designed for small fundraising by a UK company of up to £150,000 while EIS can be used by a UK company on larger fundraising of up to £5 million. Qualifying your film as British under the cultural test for film is the way to access the UK film tax relief and is one of the criteria to apply to the BFI Film Fund. The cultural test is a points-based test; the project will need to achieve 18 of a possible 35 points to pass. It comprises of four sections: Cultural content (up to 18 points), Cultural contribution (up to 4 points), Cultural hubs (up to 5 points) and Cultural practitioners (up to 8 points). This includes whether the film is set in the UK or EEA, the film demonstrates British creativity, at least 50% of the VFX takes place in the UK, which of the crew/cast are UK citizens. This will interest overseas producers as their potential audience grows when they co-produce with a British company; they are guaranteed more viewers in a different country. This also means producers from outside of the UK don’t have to spend as much as money for the production of their film. By passing the cultural test, they can get funding and save money where possible.
Films are distributed and consumed in a variety of ways—cinema release, sales of DVDs, rental of DVDs, films on television and video on demand. The total market for filmed entertainment in the UK was worth more than £3.5 billion in 2008. In 2008, the UK was the third largest film entertainment market in the world after the United States and Japan. Distribution is dominated by the UK-based subsidiaries of the American studios. The largest UK-owned distributor is Entertainment, which in 2008 had a gross box office of £76 million. Few if any films make a profit from cinema revenues alone. Instead they rely on the remaining sources, including merchandising. This is one of the reasons why piracy, is such a major issue for the industry. The biggest source in the British film entertainment market is sales of DVDs.
IMAX film production is much more complex than normal film production, because of the screen size and incredible detail on an IMAX image, the quality of computer-generated effects must be perfect to work on an IMAX screen. The camera weighs 109 kg, so it requires special supports and rigging to move it around – a lot more work is needed than that on the typical 35mm movie camera. The size of the film means that the camera can hold only a three minute reel, and it takes 20 minutes to reload – time management is important here. The detail available with a film size this large means that everything about the shot must be perfect and each image must be stunning. The audience sees every flaw. A typical IMAX film's production costs fall in the range of $3 million to $8 million for a 2-D feature, $8 million to $15 million for 3-D, with 3-D films involving CGI running at the high end of the scale. Films can either be funded by IMAX or self-funded by studios.
The most common way to produce 3D films is a regular motion picture camera system, used to record the images as seen from two perspectives. Special projection eyewear is used to provide the illusion of depth when viewing the film. Because of the costly hardware and processes required to produce and display a 3D film, it proved unpopular for a time. 3D films became more and more successful throughout the 2000s. For shooting live-action films in 3D two cameras are mounted so that their lenses are as far apart from each other as a pair of eyes, recording two separate images for both the left eye and the right eye. Some cinematographic tricks that are simple with a 2D camera become impossible when filming in 3D. This means those cheap tricks need to be replaced by expensive CGI. 3D can also be used as an after effect during post production, however there's only so much you can do after filming in 2D... some examples of big name films that have “faked” 3D are: Captain America Civil War, Batman vs Superman, Jurassic World, Star Wars The Force Awakens.
The best known film festivals are the Venice Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival, the latter being the largest film festival worldwide, based on attendance. Many of the films that premiere at the Sundance Film Festival are hoping to attract a distributor and find a bigger audience, be it in theaters around the country or distributed through video on demand. For example, the film Frank And Lola was acquired January 29th by Universal. They made a deal for a minimum guarantee north of $2 million. Most festivals require new or relatively unknown filmmakers to pay an entry fee to have their films considered for screening, this is especially so in larger film festivals. The biggest independent film festival in the UK is Raindance Film Festival, it showcases features and shorts by filmmakers from around the world to an audience of film executives and buyers, journalists, film fans and filmmakers.
Despite several attempts, no British company has been able to match the American model of a vertically-integrated film company, which has interests in production, distribution and exhibition and can finance its own films.
The Motion Picture Association of America represents the six major Hollywood studios. The Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) issues ratings for films exhibited and distributed in the US. Films open people's eyes to new places, cultures and ideas. The majority of the time this is a wonderful thing, but when it’s children’s eyes there are a number of things deemed unsuitable. Parents need the tools to decide what movies are suitable for their children to watch. Film ratings provide parents with information in advance about the content of movies to help them determine what’s appropriate for their children. Ratings are assigned by a board of parents who consider factors such as violence, sex, language and drug use and then assign a rating they believe the majority of American parents would give a movie. Some examples are:
General Audiences - nothing that would offend parents for viewing of children.
Restricted - contains some adult material. Parents are urged to learn more about the film before taking their young children with them.
In some ways the US take on regulatory issues is more understandable than the UK. With parents making the ratings they are a lot more approachable. There isn’t a specific restricted age, parents are only guided into the decision. They know themselves if their children are young or pre-teenagers and know how mature they are.
The BBFC affect a film’s release and market significantly. When releasing a film a studio has to consider their target audience. This impacts the content they can include in their film. For example, Jurassic Park was given a PG rating upon release but to achieve this they had to cut certain scenes from their film. They also had to release it with a disclaimer that despite the rating parents should be warned about potentially disturbing content in the film. If the film would have been released with a 12 rating it would have reduced the box office intake. The marketing also has to be age appropriate and they may only allow certain trailers to be shown after the television watershed. Also they decide over what types of media (posters, postcards, etc.) can be placed where. So a horror film with a poster containing a potentially offensive image would not be allowed to be displaying in a public place where children are likely to see it.
For fully British independent production companies, finance has always been a problem and despite efforts to change this, the problem remains. There is still a long way for the British film industry to advance before it’s anywhere near as successful as the Hollywood’s biggest.
