Method 2 Audience research

Warp Films

About Warp Films:
Warp Films has created some of the most exciting pieces of British film making in the last five years. It has won numerous plaudits and awards (including three BAFTAs) since being set up in 2002.

'My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117' was Warp’s first short film and was directed by Chris Morris. It won the BAFTA in 2003 and for its television premiere on Channel 4, more than one million viewers tuned in to watch it. Warp sold an astounding 22,000 DVDs of My Wrongs and was the first DVD single in the UK market.

Warp's debut feature 'Dead Man's Shoes', directed by Shane Meadows, received a record eight British Independent Film Award nominations, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Achievement in Production. ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ was also nominated for a BAFTA and won the Southbank Award for Best Film. The film has received nothing less that rave reviews across the board, and is being hailed by some as a landmark in British cinema.

Chris Cunningham directed Warp's next film, Rubber Johnny, –an experimental short and 42-page book that shocked and amazed audiences.

Following Rubber Johnny Warp made the critical success 'Grow Your Own', a film written by Frank Cottrell Boyce (24-Hour Party People), which tackled the subject of immigration.

In 2006 Warp made their most successful production to date: 'This is England', the story of Shaun, a boy who is befriended by a local skin-head gang after his father is killed in the Falklands war. With it's evocative soundtrack, dazzling young star and emotive content it has won numerous international festival awards as well as scooping Best FIlm at the British Independent Film Awards and Best British Film at the BAFTAs. At the same award ceremony Warp collected it's third BAFTA as Paddy Considine's directorial debut 'Dog Altogether' won best short.

Warp FIlms has also worked closely with the Arctic Monkeys, producing two music videos for them and collaborating on the short film 'Scummy Man' starring Stephen Graham, which won best music video at this year's NME awards. Richard Ayoade has recently directed a feature length live show film with of them. shot at their final concert of a world tour.

Warp Films' development slate currently includes projects with directors Shane Meadows, Chris Morris, Chris Cunningham, Richard Ayoade, David Slade and Lynne Ramsay. They are also dedicated to seeking out new voices; this goal is reflected in their recent ventures into promo making and the new digital slate, Warp X.

The purpose of Warp Films:

“By keeping the creative process at the core of our approach to filmmaking, Warp Films aims to create fresh and innovative feature length and short films to be viewed by a wide audience. Our current priorities are nurturing and developing existing talent, as well as discovering new exciting filmmakers.”

Films they have created:
Scummy Man
Rubber Johnny
Dead Man’s Shoes
My Wrongs
Paradise Lost
Cinema 16: US
Cinema 16: EU
Cinema 16: UK
Grow Your Own
This Is England
A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures

Chris Cunningham:

Chris Cunningham is most well known for his music videos whilst working with Warp Films. He has worked with the likes of Squarepusher, Bjork, Madonna, Portishead and most memorably, Aphex Twin. He has won MTV awards for his work and was even nominated for a Grammy as well as 4 silvers and the first ever Gold Award for a music video at the D&AD Awards. He then wrote two short films with Warp Films: ‘Rubber Johnny’ and ‘Spectral Musicians’.

This is the list of his Filmography:
"Mental Wealth" (1994) commercial for PlayStation
"Second Bad Vilbel" (1996) video for Autechre
"Back With The Killer Again" (1996) video for The Auteurs
"Light Aircraft on Fire" (1996) video for The Auteurs
"36 Degrees" (1996) video for Placebo
"The Next Big Thing" (1997) video for Jesus Jones
"Come To Daddy" (1997) video for Aphex Twin
"Only You" (1998) video for Portishead
"Frozen" (1998) video for Madonna
"Come On My Selector" (1998) video for Squarepusher
"All Is Full of Love" (1999) video for Björk
"Windowlicker" (1999) video for Aphex Twin
"Afrika Shox" (1999) video for Leftfield and Afrika Bambaataa
"Flex" (2000), using sounds created by Aphex Twin
"Monkey Drummer" (2001), using "Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michaels mount" from Aphex Twin's album Drukqs
"Rubber Johnny" (2005), using "Afx237 V7" from Aphex Twin's album Drukqs
"Sheena Is A Parasite" (2006), video for The Horrors

This is England Case Study

Certification: 18 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2007/apr/23/an18forthisisenglandthis

There was much uproar about the BBFC’s decision to make the film and 18 for its “realistic violence and racist language”. The makers believed that the ones who would benefit the film the most would not permitted to see the film due to this. Bristol City Council decided to give the film a 15 certificate but whether or not it will be changed remains to be seen.

Locations:
The ending credits were filmed in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England, UK.
Most of it was filmed in Nottingham except the abandoned houses which were filmed in RAF Newton, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England, UK.
This was a place where This Is England was filmed

Funding: National Lottery

Production Companies
· Big Arty Productions
· EM Media
· Film4
· Optimum Releasing
· Screen Yorkshire
· UK Film Council
· Warp Films
Distributors
· IFC Films (2007) (USA) (theatrical)
· IFC First Take (2007) (USA) (theatrical)
· Madman Entertainment (2007) (Australia) (all media)
· NetFlix (2007) (USA) (DVD)
· NonStop Entertainment (2007) (Sweden) (theatrical)
· Optimum Releasing (2006) (UK) (theatrical)
· Red Envelope Entertainment (2007) (USA) (DVD)
· Sandrew Metronome Distribution (2008) (Finland) (DVD)
Special Effects
· MotionFX (digital intermediate)
Other Companies
· Abadia Catering catering
· Anglo American Filming Vehicles tracking vehicles (as Anglo American)
· Arn Lighting lighting equipment
· Barclays Bank PLC banking services
· Chitwell Van Hire vehicle hire
· Clearing House, The clearances
· DeLuxe Laboratories prints by
· EM Foundation publicity: UK
· EM Media developed by
· Film Finance completion guarantor (as Film Finances Inc.)
· Film Lab North rushes processing
· FilmFour developed by
· Ice Films camera and grip equipment (as ICE Films)
· Ice House accommodation
· Kodak film stock
· Kodak filmed on
· Media Insurance Brokers insurance (as Media Insurances Brokers)
· Movie Makers facilities vehicles
· Premiere Travel Inn hotel
· Saco World accommodation
· Sapex Scripts post-production script
· Spool Post Production audio & offline post facility
· Trans Sport rigging equipment (as Trans-Sport)
· Urban Short Stay accommodation
· Videosonics Cinema Sound sound re-recording
· Wavendcommunications communications equipment (as Wavend Communications)
· Whitehouse & Co legal and business affairs
· Works, The international sales
Review from Peter Bradshaw (British):
“Shane Meadows continues his fast and fluent film-making career with this quasi-autobiographical picture about skinheads: a movie with hints of Alan Clarke's Made in Britain and, in its final image, the haunted disenchantment of Truffaut's The 400 Blows. It is a sad, painful and sometimes funny story from the white working classes of 1980s Britain, the cannon-fodder caste alienated from Falklands rejoicing on the home front and not invited to participate in the nation's promised service-economy prosperity.
Meadows boldly attempts to reclaim the skinhead from the traditional neo-Nazi image, explicitly distinguishing his characters from a separate racist influence, and presenting them as an anarchic youth tribe that idolised West Indian music. He sees their susceptibility to the extremist right as a poignant and even tragic part of their fatherless culture, literally and figuratively orphaned by the times.
There's a winning lead performance from 13-year-old newcomer Thomas Turgoose playing a put-upon lad called Shaun in the run-down Grimsby of 1983. His dad was a serviceman killed in the Falklands and he's perennially getting picked on for this, and for his horrible flared jeans which make him look, as one bully cruelly puts it, like Keith Chegwin's son. Sloping and moping his way home after a standard-issue school day of humiliation, Shaun gets waylaid by some skins in a dodgy underpass, but instead of yet more battering, the gang give him sympathy and understanding; they become Shaun's only friends, and with a new Ben Sherman shirt and number one cut, Shaun has new pride and a new identity.
The gang's leader is Woody - a cheerful, sparky performance from Joe Gilgun - and they have an African-Caribbean member facetiously nicknamed Milky, played by Meadows regular Andrew Shim; Shaun even finds romance with one of the group's girl-punk fellow travellers: a languid and rather elegant older woman called Smell (Rosamund Hanson) who earnestly explains to Shaun's mum that she is called that simply because it rhymes with Michelle. The idyll is soon destroyed with the highly unwelcome appearance of Combo, a ferocious and sinister skin warrior just out of prison, played by Stephen Graham. He demands the group join his National Front cell, and turn out for an NF meeting in a tatty pub, addressed by one of the movement's suit-wearing officer class, played in cameo by Frank Harper.
Turgoose is the picture's heart and soul, and it's a terrifically natural, easy and commanding performance. Turgoose's open face radiates charm, and then, when he goes over to the dark side of racism, a creepy, anti-cherubic scorn: almost like one of the little blond kids in Village of the Damned. But Meadows is always concerned to preserve a sympathetic core to Shaun, and in fact to all the skins. Even the deeply objectionable Combo is shown to be suffering from emotional pain.
Like Meadows' earlier pictures, Dead Man's Shoes and A Room for Romeo Brass, This Is England is about younger, vulnerable figures being taken under the wing of older, flawed men, and this personal theme here finds its richest and maturest expression yet. As to whether we should buy its implied leniency about skinhead culture: that is another question. The West Indian influence is advanced as proof that skins were not necessarily racist: yet it can't cancel out Combo's hate campaign against South Asians, the "Pakis" who "smell of curry", a campaign which goes quite unchallenged or even unremarked upon by any of the skins, good or bad.
The skinhead identity is, after all, obviously supposed to be more aggressive than that of other tribes: I remember as a 10-year-old cowering on the terraces of Watford football club in the early 70s, as the Luton boot boys got stuck in, and my father grimly telling me that the reason they shaved their heads that way was so the coppers couldn't grab them by the hair. Whether or not that is true, it certainly made the wearer's head look like a big, third clenched fist. And it's still difficult to get a handle on them.
Meadows appears to want to find emotional truths behind the bravado, to find reasons for the male rage. It's a valid quest, and there are telling and touching moments, particularly between Turgoose and Rosamund Hanson. I found myself wishing that their love story could occupy more of the film, maybe for the same reason that the Shane Meadows film I have enjoyed most is the one his real fans loathe: the comedy Once Upon a Time in the Midlands. But from the get-go of this drama, it is obvious that things are heading only one way: towards a climactic flourish of violence, and it's a glum business wondering to whom and from whom this is going to happen. This is a violent subject, and these are violent people, and yet I couldn't help feeling that Meadows is, as so often, more comfortable with machismo than with the humour and gentleness which play a smaller, yet intensely welcome part of his movies. However agnostic I confess to still feeling about his work, there's no doubt that Meadows is a real film-maker with a growing and evolving career, and with his own natural cinematic language. When I think of his films, I think, for good or ill: this is English cinema.”

Film distribution in Norwich

Odeon
Total number of films being exhibited: 19
Total number of screenings: 74
This is on average 4 showings per film, each day, obviously this varies on how long the film has been released.
Hollywood films: 63%
British films: 31%
Foreign: 6%
Australasian or Canadian: 0%

Vue
Total number of films being exhibited: 10
Total number of screenings: 31
This is on average 3 showings per film, again varying on age of the film.
Hollywood films: 70%
British films: 20%
Foreign films: 10%
Australasian or Canadian: 0%

Hollywood
Total number of films exhibited: 8
Total number of screenings: 30
This is on average 4 showings per film which is the same as Odeon cinema, the largest of all the multiplexes in Norwich.
Hollywood films: 87%
British films: 13%

I found out that the majority of films shown in multiplexes are American this is largely down to Hollywood’s amount of resources and money. Also, the most famous actors/tress are American. This means that most films shown in the UK do not always relate to the audiences watching them and are often unintelligent and made quickly.
Nevertheless British films are still shown in all cinemas but there are not enough opportunities for British film makers, actors, directors and technicians, which is why there are fewer released than Hollywood.
Bette Midler on Hollywood Films: "Look at the movies that they put out... It's so junky. So much junk, it's like the food. No content. Nothing."

My questionnaire into Audience Research

Age:

Gender:

Occupation:

Student

Full Time

Part Time

Retired

Unemployed

Aspiration:

Get a job

Travelling

University

Moving abroad

Other

Of these three which do you most prefer?

Thriller

Comedy

Horror

Which British films from this list have you seen?

East is East

Anita and Me

About a Boy

Chocolat

Love Actually

Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone

Calendar Girls

This is England

Billy Elliot

Snatch

What attracts you most to watch a film?

Word of mouth

Director

Actor/ress

Advertising/ Marketing

Other

Which radio station do you listen to?

Which newspaper do you read?

Which film viewing setting do you prefer?

At the cinema

At home on the sofa alone

At home with friends/family

Round a friends house

Don’t care

How often do you go to the cinema?

Never

Once a year

Once a month

Twice a month

Every week

Other

Which type of cinema do you go to?

Multiplex (Like Odeon)

Independent (Like cinema city)

How often do you watch films in general?

1-2 times a week

Once a month

Less

More

Thriller Openings

Leon (The Proffesional) Dir. Luc Besson, Released:France September 1994. United States: November 1994.
Shots
The opening shot of 'Leon' is a slow-moving helecopter shot above the woodland outskirts of NewYork. It travels at a constant speed towards the Silhouetted stretch of sky scrapers. There is then a quick dissolve cut into a, still moving, shot through the city. The camera is now following the city roads as if placed on top of a car. The shots keep dissolving into each other, each time getting closer to the destination. The camera finally reaches a shop and whilst it carries on travelling the shot is eventually emmerced in complete darkness of the extreme close-up. The darkness of the shot before is merged with the darkness of the room in the following shot in which Leon and another man occupy. The camera is in extreme close-up of a section of Leon's face and it carries on cutting between the shots of him, the picture sliding across the table and the glass slamming down on the table.
Sound
The sound in the opening of 'Leon' is predominantly non-diagetic. As the camera travels through the city there is a peaceful soundtrack with a slightly oriental sound, this completely contradicts the film's theme. Then, as the camera zooms into the black doorway we hear a loud dooming sound, this makes the audience feel alarmed and know everything is not what it seems. When in the room with Leon all we hear is dialogue (Diagetic), this signifies the beginning of the film.
Mise-En-Scene
The Mise-En-Scene in Leon is all very conventional to the thriller genre. For example the staircase shot and the climbing lift numbers. The colour of the film is yellow tinged grey, I think that this highlights the bleak lives of the two protagonists.