BRIT VS HOLLY

According to ‘The Telegraph’ it has been a record-breaking year for the British film industry in terms of Bafta Awards (Telegraph, February 2017). However, my research into the British and American film industry shows that this still does not mean the British film industry is proving a real threat for Hollywood as they have been topping the UK for all 100 years and make far more profits every year than the British film industry. However, as The Telegraph article, the Bafta Awards and my research has shown, the British film industry does have the potential to make films as good, if not better, than Hollywood films and things like technological advances, the Hollywood writers strike and some amazing British source material and talent are leading to some British films grossing massive profits internationally and at home.

I will now explore this further with reference to my two case study films the British category ______ film (MacDougal, _______YEAR OF THEORY)

James Bond : Skyfall (YEAR_____) and the Hollywood sci-fi film Men in Black 3 (YEAR____). Both films were part of already established popular franchises and both had age ratings that allowed for a mass audience to see the film. Skyful had an age rating of 12A while Men in Black 3 has an age rating of PG-13. The most popular age to go to the cinema is 15-24 year olds in the social grade C1-E so when comparing the 2 films, they both fit in with the most popular age; this demonstrates that the British film industry has perhaps learned from mistakes it made during the 1990s where it made mostly niche market films that got 18 age ratings making them unappealing to the majority of cinema goers who were either to young to get in or would be put off by the serious themes that were not as entertaining as Hollywood escapist films (Blumer and     Katz, 1973).

In terms of genre, narrative and audience appeal I think both films show that Britain can compete on a level playing field as both scripts provided gripping narratives and genres that would appeal to a mass audience. In fact, if I was to be swayed one way or the other, I would say the British film that is part of the James Bond franchise had the better script and is currently, being a spy-action-thriller hybrid genre film, was better than The Men in Black 3 as, even though sci-fi films that made Hollywood rich in the 1980s are still popular the script was a bit tired as it was dragging out narratives and characters from two other films in a way that was not as exciting and fresh as this Bond film. Also, from a home market perspective according ‘Statista Portal’ action/thriller is the most popular genre in the U.K which explains why the Bond film grossed more that Men in Black 3 in the UK. This shows, thanks to good scripts and talent British audiences are now prepared to choose home grown films of Hollywood films. The film also did well internationally which shows Britain can make films that can compete against Hollywood.

However, good ideas alone are not enough to make a film successful because after years of Hollywood domination audiences expect high-budget high quality films to entertain them (Blumer and Katz, 1973). This is where the British film industry often struggles because unlike Hollywood that has over a century of profit and equipment to put into new films the British film industry often struggle to raise the funds needed to produce a high-quality film that can rival a Hollywood one. However, sometimes the British film industry manages to raise the necessary budget and Skyfall is one example of this as the production company Eon Productions put up a budget of $150-$200 million to produce this film. As a British film, this is a very large budget. Normally if a British film has a large budget like this then an American company has something to do with the Production. However, Eon Productions produced all the James Bond films and they are a British company showing Britain can work alone on a big production successfully. Men in Black 3, produced by Amblin Entertainment, had according to www.the-numbers.com, www.slashfilm.com, www.imdb.com a budget of $215,000,000. This budget is not unusual for a big Hollywood Studios production. In 2007, the average budget for a major Hollywood film was roughly $137,000,000  (www.the-numbers.com) and this keeps going up despite technology changes potentially being able to lower production costs.

One of the main things that the high production budgets are often spent on is actors as the cast can make or break a film and make it a lot easier to marketing and sell if big name star vehicles are employed. Hollywood, with higher budgets and better access to actors who want to make it big and be where the money is generally have the advantage here and my case study films support this as Men in Black 3 featured two established actors; Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones along with Josh Brolin. According to StatisticBrain, Will Smith had a salary of $20,000,000, and it is fees like this that really make it hard for the British film industry to compete. James Bond used more British actors, like Daniel Craig, who would have cost millions from the budget as he was already famous in the role making it important he returned for this film. However, even though he is famous globally for his Bond role he is not as famous as the A List celebrities in Men in Black 3 meaning Hollywood had the advantage as technically their stars were marketable to more people. Budgets also get spent on crew members and the experience of these people can make a film more marketable as the film can look better and pull in audiences who are fans of the previous work of a certain director, writer, music providers or editor. Both my case study films had high budgets, which meant they both had good crew members making the films more marketable . For example, Men in Black 3 was directed by _________, edited by_________, written by___________, filmed by____________ and had music from ______________. While Skyfall was directed by _________, edited by_________, written by___________, filmed by____________ and had music from ______________.

Budgets also get spent on editing, CGI and SFX and some genres are more epensive to produce well than others. In the case of Skyfall v Men in Black 3 technically the sci-fi could have been more expensive to produce as this genre has always cost a lot in terms of SFX and CGI to make the effects and narrative world look believable for the audience which is why Britain could not compete through making films of this genre in the 1980s when Hollywood profited a lot from sci-fi. However, action films like Bond have the potential to get very expensive to produce as well as things often need blowing up and action chase scenes can be very costly in terms of stunts and locations so this genre also takes a lot of production money. This shows that the playing field is not level between Hollywood and the British film industry as it is rare Britain can make films like Skyfall as the production costs are so high.

Distribution and marketing a high budget film is arguably easier than marketing a low budget one because with films that have had a high production budget you have better star vehicles to use and a higher quality film to promote. This means it is easier for Hollywood films to attract a distributor than British films, having said this in the case of SkyFall Columbia Pictures were quick to offer to distribute the film because the franchise was already successful and the film had a budget that matched Hollywood films. However, the fact it is Hollywood companies dominating the distributing market and distributing this British film shows that the playfield is not yet level. In the UK, this is partly because multiplex cinemas like Vue and Odeon are owned by American companies who favor Hollywood films as they make more money which means getting a Hollywood distributor gives you a better change of getting your film distributed and exhibited in profitable cinemas at profitable times. Another reason why the are not many successful British distributors is because the average distribution and marketing budget is now between $30 - $150 million which makes it hard for British companies to raise the money to compete with Hollywood companies.

The marketing budget for James Bond: Skyfall was around the $30 million mark, while Men in Black 3 was higher at around $60 million, this is not unusual as Hollywood distributors, like Columbia Pictures who also distributed Men in Black 3, tend to invest more in Hollywood produced films as they feel they are more likely to gross high profits and therefore deserve higher investment. The difference in budget is noticeable in the marketing campaign as Men in Black 3 has more of an online presence, in terms of social media, websites and pop-up adverts, which could have attracted more teen males in the primary target audience as online is their preferred medium. Also Men in Black 3 trailers appeared more on television in the USA and before films than the two trailers for Skyfall did. Both films had a similar amount of posters, both using media language like star vehicles, mise-en-scene, colour pallet and typography to represent and attract the target audience. Out of the two, I prefer the Bond poster as it shows more creativity while the Men in Black one just relies on the colour pallet of blue, white, silver and black along with the star vehicles to sell the film but the star vehicles, as I said earlier, arguably make this film more marketable giving Hollywood the advantage.

EXHIBTION – WHAT DID BOTH FILMS GROSS? WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT THE FILM INDUSTRIES?

In conclusion, technological changes over the last 20 years could have level the playfield more as digital cameras and cinemas are now replacing traditional 35mm film and audiences are choosing to go straight to the web for their products (Gauntlett, 2008) on sites like Netflix which show less bias towards films produced outside of Hollywood however, as my case studies show big production budgets are still needed to get the film quality high enough to entertain audiences (Blumer and Katz, 1973) and to secure the big name stars audiences want to see. This, combined with the strangle hold Hollywood companies have on the distribution market and the strangle hold USA companies have on multiplex cinema, means we are still not at a stage where apart from in the case of the odd exceptional film Britain can really compete on a level playfield with Hollywood as massive budgets still tend to lead to better films that make more money. However, compared to the 1980s and 1990s the contemporary British film industry is making more money and, in the case of films like Skyfall is making films that can gross more than many Hollywood films which shows that the British film industry can compete with Hollywood it just needs the money to do so more often.