Visit to Working Title.

On the 5^th of April us Media students (among Years 13 and 11 students) were privileged enough to go and visit the prestigious Working Title film studio in London. We arrived in the city at mid-morning, officially entering the doors of Working Title at around 11.40. We were almost immediately greeted by our insider at WT, Debra, and directed downstairs into the plush Screening Room. Upon making ourselves comfortable, we were given a brief talk on who would be visiting and talking to us. Firstly we were lucky enough to chat with Tim Bevan, Co-Founder of Working Title, and Producer on the mightily successful period drama Atonement. Here are some brief notes regarding what was discussed:

Tim Bevan.

• Working Title is funded (among other British film studios) by Universal Studios in America. This covers ownership; anything that Working Title does is given the all clear by Universal Studios.
• The screenplay of a film is the ‘Bible’ of movie making.
• When developing the beginnings of a film, they must firstly approach multiple writers with the potential project.
• They must create a ‘package’. This consists of script, budget and cast.
• Along the way, the Marketing Department hint at good and bad ideas regarding promotion, and audience.

Piracy…

• One way of deterring piracy is promoting the appeal of cinemas, giving people a reason to go out and view films at a big theatre.
• Piracy is a large problem for Working Title in the DVD sales, therefore they believe that lowering the cost to a fair price would be a successful solution, making people to be more inclined to buy a DVD.

Challenges and Problems…

• Fact based films are the most difficult to create, as you must move through ‘a legal minefield’ in order to create a movie.
• Translating a novel onto the big screen is normally a gamble, as it is a challenge to create a strong and relevant narrative.

After talking to Tim Bevan we were then spoken to by Production Executive of Working Title Sarah Jane Wright.

Sarah Jane Wright.

• One of the main tasks of the Producer is to break down the script and to work out an estimated cost for the potential movie.
• Monitor filming and production on a daily basis.

Film Budgeting…

• A film costing under 20 million gives you a 20% tax rebate in the UK, whereas the rebate in Hungry is 25%.
• Atonement cost around 17 million - cheap for a period drama.
• When deciding on the setting, location shooting is very much favoured, as construction is far more expensive. Atonement was all shot on location and in 62 days, probably the main reasons for it being so cheap to produce.

Problems and solutions…

• Studio space is very much a problem in the UK, there are few big film studios in the UK, whereas there are considerably more in the US.
• Studios are no longer favouring the genre of drama, so there is far less funding for these films. However upon the vast success of The Kings Speech, film producers are hoping that drama will become more popular again, and that there will be a boom in the market for film drama.

                                    

Representation of ‘Englishness’ in Midsomer Murders.

In order to ‘accurately’ represent Englishness, Midsomer Murders has to consist of a multitude of different aspects of the English portrayal. The main three aspects are as follows; Mise-En-Scene, Sound and Camera Angles.      

                Mise-En-Scene is key for putting an image, feeling or thought into the viewers conscious. It represents so many different things, and comes in so many different physical forms i.e. costume, props etc. Obviously Mise-En-Scene features heavily in Midsomer Murders, to make the audience feel as if they really have been landed in some picturesque little English ‘gem’ of a village, thriving on cricket and afternoon tea. Firstly you have the landscape, which in this case is very English. The viewer is bombarded with perfectly kept rose bushes, village greens and pretty little traditional cottages - all about to be tainted by some brutal murder. Next are the costumes of the villagers. Many of the women from Midsomer Murders tend to be of an older generation, so therefore are dressed in floral skirts/dresses or blouses and cardigans. The gentlemen are often seen in smart shirts and blazers or with a knitted jumper tied across their shoulders, these outfits are very appropriate to the countryside, giving of a pleasant and approachable vibe. Another common character is the ‘farmer type’, often sporting tweed and wellington boots - also very appropriate to the English countryside.  

                The second element of English representation is sound, both diegetic and non-diegetic. Much of the diegetic sounds include common sounds of the countryside; bees buzzing, birds singing and maybe the odd farm animal. However it is the non-diegetic sound that gives us more of a feel of the program. Much of this is music, often very jolly and soft - almost polite (very English).

                Lastly is Camera Angles. The key angles to discuss (the only angles that really portray Englishness) are long shots and panning shots. It’s these shots in particular that give us a clear idea of Englishness; long sweeping fields, quiet country roads, wooded areas, bridle ways etc. There is maybe an odd close up to draw our attention to a particular object or person, but other than this the camera shots and angles are quite average. However camera movement may be a little more representative of Englishness. It’s consistently quite steady and slowly paced - this could be representing the Midsomer community as a whole, with their relaxed and steady pace of life.  

                To conclude I believe that Midsomer Murders does well to represent stereotypical Englishness (even if this particular type is a slight rarity in real life these days). People are, however, more than happy to be whisked away into the sun bathed, polite world that is Midsomers. However, if the question of versatility and accurate representation were to arise, the series is rather set in its ways, and may be considered to not be truthfully representing today’s take on Englishness.

Laura Mulvey - The Male Gaze

It was Laura Mulvey who coined the ever so famous term 'The Male Gaze' when she published her 1975 feminist essay; 'Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema'. In this she identified how female characters were portrayed as objects to simply look at, and admire through the male roaming eye. Women were simply seen as simbols of sex and lust, alluring the male protagonist - or his 'reward' after a hard time saving the world from imminant doom (or something of a similar nature). The film industry would often do this by only selecting beautiful, sexy women with a dash of cheek and wit, the camera would often roam over the 'key' features of the woman's body - making her merely an object to be looked at. This was extremely prevelent in the 50s era, but that's not to say that the male gaze isn't still hugely popular today, in just about all forms of media.

Thriller Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Firstly, and maybe most importantly, was our decision to create a thriller of a psychological nature; this being because it captured our ideas well and the psychological genre proved one of the most popular choices within our audience survey. Psychological thrillers are more intimate with the viewers mind, making the audience try and work things out for themselves and solve various plots – it’s this that makes the genre so effective, it involves (almost relies) on the viewer, the viewer feels almost part of it all – making it all the more ‘thrilling’.

We also utilised various thriller conventions prevalent within other thriller films, such as; Donnie Darko, The Book of Eli etc. We were very much influenced by the opening scene of The Book of Eli, and recreated it to include in our product. The dingy and isolated woodland area set an eerie and disturbing atmosphere straight away, and the thick dark trees created a sense of imprisonment – acting like bars in a jail cell. Another convention we used was the fact that we made our villain anonymous by obscuring the face with a gasmask. This puts us as the audience on our seats, as we have no idea who or what we’re being made to interact with, or what they’re/it’s capable of – the fear of the unknown.  

Please go here to see more influences over us, and how our media product uses the conventions within them.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product included British youth, and a representation of both males and females within thrillers – however preconceptions about the conventional roles of both sexes were proved wrong.

In Britain’s current youth culture we see frequent acts of crime, violence, sex and copious amounts of drug abuse. Many British youths take part in the use of cannabis, acid, cocaine etc. – forming a separate ‘social group’. We included this social group with our production’s character (and victim) Rhys – a schizophrenic who takes part in a rave, and mixes his prescription drugs with acid. He’s visually an everyday, normal looking male teenager – but has a secret life of mental terror and drug abuse.

We represent both males and females within our production – but the roles we have given them break the norms and conventions of other thrillers. Normally in any action/thriller/romance/comedy you have the strong male protagonist, and the female cast as a victim or ‘damsel in distress’. However we have decided to reverse these roles in order to make our production more interesting and unusual. Rhys is a tall, masculine young adult – who looks like he could hold his own in a fight – however the audience is shocked when he becomes the victim under the hand of a mysterious lady. He is brutally assaulted by this woman (which is very unusual as he looks far stronger than her), and left to die in an abandoned woods. This attack will shock and confuse the audience, as we have altered the normal conventional gender roles within previous thriller films.

Please continue here to read our character profiles.

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

Obviously as this is only a two minute opening, we would be looking at using Youtube as a starting point. Youtube is highly convenient for first-timers like ourselves, as it is a no cost, no strings attached way to distribute our thriller opening. We would be able to receive a rough idea of its popularity among the general public, and general comments and feedback. Also, many people get their ‘break’ on sites such as Youtube, attracting larger more professional names in the media distribution market is a possibility. If we were to do so, I imagine a smaller company would fund us to create a full feature length, a company far less well known that creates films of the ‘indie’ genre i.e. Miramax or MetroDome.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our main target audience is men and women varying from ages fifteen - eighteen onwards. Our audience is more likely to be of an intellectual type, one who has a good attention span and the ability to think independently and logically in order to understand and enjoy our production. Our audience research showed us that the main audience for our thriller would be fifteen upwards, both male and female. In our screening session the audience was made up of college students, and we received a very positive reaction from them regarding our plot, characters, visual conventions and sound.

Please refer to our audience research data here.

How did you attract/address your audience?  

We decided to include aspects of life relevant to our audience, i.e. our characters, youth culture etc. We also had no dialogue within our production, this made it all the more tense and eerie – also the dialogue would have had to have been written and acted out perfectly so as not to break this tension we had built. I believe that our choice of making it a psychological thriller was a success, as this sub-genre is becoming more and more popular among the general public – with box office smashes such as Shutter Island and Inception.