Shane Meadows interview

Whilst watching an interview with the writer/director from Warp films, we took notes on his styles and preferences. Firstly we noticed his love for low budgets and that he doesn't mind not using famous actors and that when using farely well known actors the end result didn't matter, it was the story that made the film. Also he mentioned his technique and system in making films and that it is ususally wrong but then said that directing all his films with this system was his style and that made all the films similar. He went on to say that his style is usually to improvise with his actors and develop a relationship, this stems from his dislike of writing, but he says he's comfortable with changing his script and creating an end result different to his previous plans. This is hugely different to Hollywood films and any other high budget films because he mentions that most directors feel compelled to keep to a plan and prevent creativity. Shane meadows style could be described as Social Realism for his use of realistic lighting and mise en scene. As he relies on his old system to create films when recieveing a bigger budget for his latest film he still used realistic elements.

Film budget question on affecting overall production

Question asked after watching This is England, Dead man's shoes and Hot Fuzz: How does the budget of a film institution affect production practices used to appeal to a target audience?Usually the budget for a film affects largely the outcome of the quality but by keeping the film production simple a budget doesn't have to affect the end quality. Sterotypically a low budget means the film wont use well known actors but instead aim for small time actors which suit the role of the characters within the film, this is highly effective because the actors can be chosen by their similarities to the characters within the script, this makes the film seem more realistic because the actor can feel at home with the script and the dialect of the character they are playing.

Advertisment in film

New film releases use a wide range of methods to advertise but the actual methods used will depend on the film institution and use of directors and actors.

In the case of a new film from universal studios many ‘above the line’ methods will be used such as trailers, posters and merchandising to advertise the film, these are called ATL because of the obvious nature they have and because often the audience will see these methods in play in the world around them. But when a smaller film corporation for instance Warp films releases a film they rely on ‘below the line’ methods such as word of mouth (viral), websites and interviews because the audience will have to search for the advertisements, another way of describing this would be: secondary advertisements.

The films I’ll be discussing are 2012, The Men Who Stare at Goats and Bunny and the Bull.

Possibly the biggest influence on which type of advertisement a film receives is its budget as we can see in these films:

2012: $200,000,000 – ATL advertising: trailers, posters, merchandise.

The Men Who Stare at Goats: $25,000,000 – ATL advertising: trailers, posters.

Bunny and the Bull: $5,000,000 – BTL advertising: websites, interviews. $500,000 of that was spent of marketing

Since the likes of 4 weddings and a funeral advertising has moved on immensely, whereas before the main use of advertising was trailers and bill boards current advertising incorporates the use of the internet and relies strongly on viral marketing. This is because of the huge increase in internet use and social networking sites which are viewed in the millions each day, this makes internet advertising usually better than the traditional method of trailers.

Film Budgets

Hot Fuzz

Directed by
Edgar Wright

Produced by
Nira ParkTim BevanEric Fellner
Written by
Simon PeggEdgar Wright
Starring
Simon PeggNick FrostJim BroadbentTimothy DaltonPaddy ConsidineEdward WoodwardBillie Whitelaw
Editing by
Chris Dickens
Studio
StudioCanalWorking Title Films
Distributed by
United Kingdom & Worldwide:Universal PicturesAustralia &New Zealand:Paramount PicturesCanada:Alliance FilmsUnited States:Rogue Pictures
Release date(s)
United Kingdom:February 14, 2007 (2007-02-14)New Zealand:9 March 2007Australia:15 March 2007Canada &United States:20 April 2007
Running time
116 minutes
Country
United Kingdom
Language
English
Budget
£8 million[1]
Gross revenue
Worldwide:$80,573,774

Dead Man's Shoes
UK DVD cover
Directed by
Shane Meadows
Produced by
Mark Herbert
Written by
Shane MeadowsPaddy ConsidinePaul Fraser
Starring
Paddy ConsidineToby KebbellGary Stretch
Cinematography
Danny Cohen
Editing by
Celia HainingLucas RocheChris Wyatt
Distributed by
Optimum Releasing
Release date(s)
1 October 2004 (2004-10-01)
Running time
86 min.
Country
United Kingdom
Language
English
Budget
£723,00

Working title and WARP films

1: Working Title Films is a British film production company, based in London, England. The company was founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1982. It produces feature films and some television productions. Eric Fellner and Bevan are the co-owners of the company now. They are part of universal studios.

1: Warp Films, a sister company of Warp Records was set up in 1999 with funding from NESTA. It is based in Sheffield, England with a further office in London and has 14 full-time staff. They are independent.

Conglomerate- a group of small companies, brought together by a larger company which work together.

2: If the company is owned by a bigger company then they will have a bigger budget for there films.

3:

warp films:

· My Wrongs #8245–8249 & 117

· Dead Man's Shoes

· Rubber Johnny

· This Is England

· Dog Altogether

· All Tomorrow's Parties

Working title films:

· About a Boy (film)

· Ali G Indahouse

· Atonement (film)

· User:Nayrouz Aly/Atonement

· Barton Fink

· Bean (film)

· The Big Lebowski

· Billy Elliot

· The Boat That Rocked

· Bob Roberts

· The Borrowers (1997 film)

· Bridget Jones's Diary (film)

· Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (film)

· Burn After Reading

· The Calcium Kid

· Captain Corelli's Mandolin (film)

· Catch a Fire (film)

· Chicago Joe and the Showgirl

· Chihuanhas

· Dead Man Walking (film)

· Definitely, Maybe

· Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur

· Drop Dead Fred

· Edward II (film)

· Elizabeth (film)

· Elizabeth: The Golden Age

· Fargo (film)

· For Queen and Country

· 40 Days and 40 Nights

· Four Weddings and a Funeral

· French Kiss (film)

· Frost/Nixon (film)

· Green Zone (film)

· The Guru (2002 film)

· The Hi-Lo Country

· Hippie Hippie Shake

· Hot Fuzz

· The Hudsucker Proxy

· Inside I'm Dancing

· The Interpreter

· Johnny English

· Land and Freedom

· Loch Ness (film)

· London Kills Me

· Long Time Dead

· Love Actually

· The Man Who Cried

· The Man Who Wasn't There

· Map of the Human Heart

· Mickybo and Me

· Moonlight and Valentino

· Mr. Bean's Holiday

· My Beautiful Laundrette

· My Little Eye

· Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang

· Nanny McPhee

· Ned Kelly (2003 film)

· Notting Hill (film)

· Brother, Where Art Thou?

· Panther (film)

· Paperhouse (film)

· Paul (film)

· Plunkett & Macleane

· Posse (1993 film)

· Pride & Prejudice (2005 film)

· The Return of the Borrowers

· Robin Hood (1991 film)

· Romeo Is Bleeding

· Rubin and Ed

· Sammy and Rosie Get Laid

· A Serious Man

· Shaun of the Dead

· Smokin' Aces

· The Soloist

· State of Play (film)

· Tales of the City (TV miniseries)

· The Tall Guy

· The Comic Strip

· Thunderbirds (film)

· United 93 (film)

· Wild Child (2008 film)

· Wimbledon (film)

· Wish You Were Here (1987 film)

· A World Apart (film)

· The Young Americans (film)

4: Shaun of the Dead- £4million budget

Dead man’s shoes- £723,000 budget

5: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) is the current highest budget film at $300,000,000

6: Working title films get there funds from universal pictures and Warp films get there funds from being awarded £4.5 million from the UK Film Council.

7: The genre of Warp films are social realism as seen in ‘This is England’

8: They are more realistic then normal films as they are gritty and more realistic as they appeal to the British audience.

9: Working Title and Warp Films mainly focus on British people as there audience.

10: the main genre of the films Working Title produce is Rom-Com

Film Preliminary task

For our prelim I had gone in a group and make a short film, it had to involve a man walking across a room, down and have some dialogue. I started looking at some clips of films to get some ideas. But nothing really came so I thought just I would do someone walking in to a room, sitting down talking and playing poker.

The first problem we had was that there was no rooms that we could film in we searched everywhere and eventually got 1 but it took time. We could have got round this by booking a room out or even finding one before. The filming went well and most of the shots were taken in the first few also we had difficult poisons to put the camera like up high in a corner and I had to stand on a filing cabinet to film one of the shots. As well as limited time as well most of the shot were rushed and we should have spread the filming over a few days instead of one lesson. Also there was a shot where the camera pans round the table and we had nothing to go around the table smooth, but we found a wheeled chair and it worked except it was bumpy and uneven. Also made a noise when it went round and you can hear it on the camera and I couldn’t cut it out because there was dialogue. The film took longer to film then expected because some of the séances needed to be changed slightly and re film, also we didn’t have all the right props, so I made cards out of line paper and pretended with them. The filming was good we got everything done and had loads of time to edit it which wasn’t too difficult and didn’t take much time.

Print Preliminary Task

For our preliminary we had to make our own college magazine and a film we started with the magazine because we can’t be in them and we didn’t have enough people to make the film.
We thought of loads of different ideas and our teacher was nagging us to make sure we did the work and the homework, so we came up with the idea of our teacher being this bad person. So the magazine was going to be on media, with so short story’s and reviews on how media is going so far. So we thought to use our teacher on the front cover. We took the picture of her lower than her so she looked in control, powerful and like the others students and people reading are smaller, weaker and less power. We also decided to make her eyes red to look more scary and crazed. I also got my teacher to look angry and to cross her arms and point her finger to look in control and bossy. Then we thought that we could have someone in the background behind bars so we got someone to stand against a brick wall looking sad, miserable and a bit scared. Then took a picture of a metal spiked fence and cut the fence and the person out and created two new layers and put them on. So now it looks like the teacher has a prisoner behind bars. You couldn’t see his face to well because the bars were too thick so we had to trim them down so you could see more of his face, also so you could see what expression he had as well.
The only colours we used were blue and green the same tones as the Lutterworth college logo. And the writing was in Chiller and century gothic bold and we had to make the Chiller bigger and bolder so the reader could see it clearly. The positioning of the writing took ages to find the right place and because there was another person on one side we couldn’t put too much up one side and the barcode had to be at the bottom and that took up some room. Most of the text was on the left and one was on the right with the barcode so it wasn’t taking up to much of the picture. The colour could have been bright so you could see it more but I also could have made the font bigger to see it more. As well as having two pictures at the bottom of two people. Which were scared and upset and they were taken against a blue background. The magazine was put together easily and edited easy and turned out better than I expected.

This is the finished copy of the Kerrang magazine we choose to copy. Compared to the original it look almost the same, apart from the Looney Coats that on the original is bigger and stands out more to get the readers attention. Also the strap lines at the top and bottom the colour is to bright and the writing is light and you can’t see it very well so maybe using a darker yellow and a black outline on the writing could make it better and stand out more. As well as some of the writing being too small so some of it is hard to read and maybe we should have used a thicker font or used bigger lettering. Also the pictures that are the front are almost the same but some didn’t have the same amount of people and the potions were off a small amount but the concept was right. We used all the same colours as the original but just standard tones and we didn’t use more than 3 colours. The colours appeared to be bright on our magazine and not look as dark as the original one but we could of changed the tone to make them. Then photos at the bottom were the same apart from they were bigger than the original ones but they looked the same. The main picture of the band looked like the back four had been taken in a different shot and the main man at the front had been taken on his own so we did the same. We took at shot of the back four and used that as a main background and then we took the other shot of the main person and cut him out using the magnetic lasso tool. Added a layer and put him into potion at the front also made him bigger and stand out more. The cover turned out good it wasn’t the same but we close to it and taking all the pictures didn’t take long and were easily uploaded and edited in.

Preliminary Film Story board

For my preliminary Ollie and Me decided to do a since of people playing poker round a table. We started off us a few general simple ideas. Then we adapted on the shots and ideas doing more complicated shots and actions in the film.

Eastenders Remake

The task I was set was to remake a start of an East Enders episode. We had to do everything the same and not change anything but try to get it as close to east enders as possible. The scene is typical of TV soap because there is always some drama and equilibrium. The scene is nearly a copy of the original like it was mint too, and tried to get all the shots and séances the same. We used a mid shot of a women standing next to a phone looking lose and confused. This is used so we can see that she is confused. But instead of women we used a man because there weren’t any girls in our group. Then we used a mid shot when the person playing pill walks in it zooms out into a mid shot. Then a person walks into a room and then the camera pans across the room. Then after that there is a person waiting for the toilet and getting angry and then the door opens and there is a shot reverse shot to see both of the girls and see the anger for each other.
The film was very accurate except from a small change in dialogue and so of the scenery because we where in a school, but apart from that it was almost the same and some of the shots where abet different.
The successes of the program were that the filming was done easterly and we found a room that wasn’t being used and had about 45 minutes to film. But some of shots took a while to film because some of the group weren’t concentrating and messing about and lack of the Wright scenery in the room. The original was meant to look like a home but we where in a class room. I have learnt that the miser en scene of this episode is that it’s a normal family home but some people have stopped the night and there is an awkward tension in the home and when a character opens the cretins in the morning its like a fresh star. But there is still tension between some people with in the house. The lighting in our project wasn’t good, there was no spot lights just standard room lights and didn’t have the equipment to get good lighting so we just used room lights and light from out side. The importance of continuity is very important because then the film looks more professional and flows better. I need to work on my film techniques to get film done on time and with out any mistake and make sure that all the film is done so we haven’t missed anything and need to go back and re film it.