Spiderman 2 - Production Costs

Script and Development - $10m - 5% of the overall budget.

Licencing - $20m - Sony had to buy the rights to make of movie for Spiderman from Marvel. (Stan Lee - creator of spiderman, gets paid $1m a year but is threatening to sue for more.)

Producers - $15m - 2 producers, 1 co-producer and 3 executive producers.

Director - $10m - Directors have lost their importance over time. For example they have to re shoot a scene if the test audiences are not satisfied with it.

Cast - $30m -
Tobey Maguire played spiderman after Heath Ledger turned down the roll. He was payed $4 for Spiderman and $17 for the sequel.
Kirsten Dunst was estimated a pay of $5 - 6m for Spiderman 2.
Alfred Molina played Doc Ock and was payed $1m.

Below the line - $45m - This includes the rest of the crew, expenses of the shoot, equipment, a mass amount of extras,  locations and everything else.

Special Effects - $65 - becoming more expensive recently.

Music - $5 - Danny Elfman was payed a mere 2% of the overall budget.

Prints & Advertising - $75m - Not officially part of the production budget.

Final Box Office Figures $821 Million!

"Kick Ass"

Directer: 
Matthew Vaughn


Producers: 

Adam Bohling

Darren Goldberg
Jane Goldman
Jeremy Kleiner
Lyn Lucibello
Stephen Marks
Mark Millar
Tarquin Pack
Brad Pitt
David Reid
John Romita Jr.
Kris Thykier
Matthew Vaughn	.

Writers:

Mark Miller

John Romita Jr.

Kick-Ass is about a teenage boy (David) who isn't a very important character at school and is classed as an ordinary person "who just exists." David h as often wondered why nobody has put being a superhero into a reality, and therefore decides that he will be the first to do it. At first he tries to fight crime but ends up getting stabbed and hit by a car. His second attempt was caught by the media who managed to post a video of him protecting a man from 3 thugs onto the internet. He then set up a MySpace blog where he could anonymously communicate with the public as 'Kick-Ass.' After gaining the reputation of fighting crime, he gets cocky, decides to fight a gang and ends up in a near death experience if it wasn't for 'Big-Daddy' and 'Hit-Girl' who are real superheroes and kill all of the gangsters. The gangsters boss Frank D'Amico blames Kick-Ass for the death of his men and forges a plan with his son; his son Chris D'Amico claims to be another superhero 'Red-Mist' who pretends he's fighting crime for the media and becomes just as popular. Eventually Red-Mist and Kick-Ass meet up and decide to fight crime together. Red-Mist was suppose to lead Kick-Ass into the gangster's warehouse where they'd kill him but as they arrive they find out that the warehouse is on fire and all the men are dead. Red-Mist gets Kick-Ass to call Big-Daddy and Hit-Girl to fight the gangsters and they end up capturing Kick-Ass and Big-Daddy. Big-Daddy gets burned alive and Hit-Girl just manages to save Kick-Ass before he also dies. After Hit-Girl's dad's death, she seeks revenge and goes to Frank D'amico's building to kill everyone. Kick-Ass later arrives on a jet pack and kills the rest of the henchmen. Frank D'Amico ends up getting thrown out the window and exploded by a rocket launcher.

Original Kick-Ass comic book.

The film is a comedy which was based on a comic called 'Kick-Ass Comics' By Mark Miller and John Romita Jr.The comic was published by Marvel Comics. The comic is very similar to the film as it has the same characters with the same costumes, however there are slight alterations, such as the scene where David (Kick-Ass) goes into Katie's room via the window to reveal the truth... whereas in the comic he shouts it from outside her window.


The producers and marketing producers decided to release a series of posters presenting the individual characters with also displaying the name of the film, also presenting the actors who are playing the characters.

There were more posters made which also presented each of the characters individually. The characters are shown in different action poses. Each posted has a URL address which all linked to the official Kick-Ass website.
The final poster was a theoretical poster. Created 2 weeks before the first screening, this showed the title in large letters with the characters jumping through.

A trailer was then released that introduced the idea of superhereos with no powers.

The producers also released individual short clips for each of the characters.. apart from Kick-Ass.
This is the clip for the character Hit-Girl.



The film's budget was $28 Million. 'Double Negative' did just over 835 visual effects for the movie, using mostly CGI through green screens and other methods. Between $8-9 Million was spent on special effects.


Mark Miller and Jane Goldmen were payed to help edit the script and develop it further, this included the deals that cost around $3 Million. these writers were also known for developing the script for Stardust.


Matthew Vaughn invested his own money into making this film, therefore took the largest revenue. Vaughn and Brad Pitt helped produce the film.


Prints & Advertising costs were near enough $10.5 Million, Lionsgate distributed the film taking a large percentage of the final box office figures. ($96,188,903)


The film went over their budget by $10 Million because of the advertising they did.


There was a lot of controversy surrounding this film due to the fact that Hit Girl who is around 10 years old used lots of swear words. Parents didn't think it was right for a child of that age to be using that kind of language and started protests which in theory generated more publicity for the film anyway. There is also a lot of violence, the girl kills lots of men very violently which caused a lot of controversy.  

Reviews of Cinema

Purdey NurseWhere: The Vue, Leicester
Why: To take her nieces and nephews out
What film: My Popper's Penguins
How much: Kids AM Ticket x 3 - £3.75 + Popcorn - £5
                                                                   Total = £8.75

Katie Ford
Where: Cineworld, Rugby
Why: To enjoy the film with a 3 dimensional experience
What film: The Lion King - 3D
How much: Ticket: - £5 + 3D Glasses - £1,80 + Fanta Freeze - £2.80
                                                                                      Total = £9.60

Josh Jones
Where: De Lux, Leicester
Why: To watch a film with his friend and socialise.
What film: The Lion King - 3D
How much: Ticket - £9 + 3D Glasses - £2 + Popcorn - £4
                                                                        Total = £15

Jacob Smith
Where: The Vue, Leicester
Why: Because he was enticed by the trailers
What film: Contagion
How much: Ticket £7 (took own food)

The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company was founded in 1923 where it

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In this short film made by Disney in 1923, a young girl played by Virginia Davis, visits Disney Studios and the animators show her various scenes on their drawing board. This film also stars Walt Disney who is shown to be the main animator. More information on this film can be found here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013823/


In 1938 Disney started to produce coloured animations. The first one they did was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs...

Since this film was released, Disney has produced many more animated stories like this one such as...

• Beauty and the Beast
• Sleeping Beauty
• Little Mermaid
• Pocahontas
• Hercules
• Robin Hood
• Peter Pan
• Pinocchio
• Bambi
• Lady and the Tramp
• The Jungle Book
• Aristo Cats
• The Emperor's New Groove
• And Many more...

The Walt Disney Studios distributes motion pictures under Walt Disney Pictures - which includes Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios and DisneyToon Studios - Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures.

The top ten highest grossing films for Disney are:

• Finding Nemo (2003)
• The Lion King (1994)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
• The Incredibles (2004)
• Monsters, Inc. (2001)
• Toy Story 2 (1999)
• Aladdin (1992)
• Toy Story (1995)
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
• Tarzan (1999)

The new and upcoming movies by Disney are:

• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
• Winnie the Pooh
• Cars 2
• Prep and Landing

Disney are widely known for the children's films that they produce. This is shown through the Disney channel that they have; everything is shown to be fun and colourful.

...And also the website is full of colour and child friendly material.

Disney uses a range of technology and software.

• Ptex - A texture mapping system
• SeExpre - Expression Language
• Reposado - is a set of tools written in Python that replicate the key functionality of Mac OS X Server's Software Update Service
• Partio - is an open source C++ library for reading, writing and manipulating a variety of standard particle formats (GEO,BGEO,PTC,PDB,PDA).
• munki - is a set of tools that, used together with a webserver-based repository of packages and package metadata, can be used by Mac OS X administrators to manage software installs (and in many cases removals) on Mac OS X client machines.
• Dynamica - is a plug-in for Maya that provides an interface to the Bullet rigid body engine.
• Pythoscope - is a unit test generator for programs written in Python.

"Moon"

Director - Duncan Jones
Writers - Duncan Jones; Nathan Parker
Producer - Trudie Snyder (Snatch; Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels)
Stars - Sam Rockwell; Kevin Spacey; Dominique McElligott; Kaya Scodelario.

Plot
The film is about an astronaut called Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) who is signed a 3 year contract to work for Lunar Industries on the moon to send back to Earth parcels of a resource (helium -3)to use as power for Earth. When his 3 year contract is almost up, he finds himself in an accident where his moon vehicle crashes. Sam then wakes up in the infirmary without showing any signs of harm. He goes outside to see what is going on and finds his own body still laying inside the crashed car. After rushing him to the infirmary he works out that the Sam that was in the car crash is a clone of himself. When both Sams are conscious they learn to be civilised with each other. Old Sam looks through the old video records to see if there are any other clones of himself and finds that there are, and towards the end of their 3 years, the clones start to lose their hair, cough up blood and self destruct, which is what Sam is starting to experience. The new Sam devises a plan to use the pods that carry the helium resources as transport to get back to Earth, but by this time, old Sam is very ill and decides that he should stay on the Moon because he won't make it. Before returning to Earth, new Sam carries old Sam's weak and feeble body back into the crashed vehicle where another clone of Sam would later find him. The film ends with a rescue team from Earth called 'Eliza' coming to fix the harvesters and finding Sam's body in the vehicle.

Information
The film only took 33 days to film. Compared to most films, this is only a percentage of how long it would normally take to produce a film. The film's target audience is directed at people who are interested in science and people who read science magazines. This is because Duncan Jones visited science events and went to NASA to do interviews for magazines ETC.

The film's budget was just 5 million dollars. Again, compared to normal films this is just a fraction. Duncan Jones cut a lot of the expense though by minimising the cast to just one main character throughout the film and filming it in a studio (Shepperton Studios - London)

A lot of CGI was used to create the 'clone effect' and this is what most of the budget was spent on.

Kevin Spacey was the voice of Gerty and didn't actually agree to do the voice until after the film had been made and shown to him. He didn't trust the film would be a success therefore waited till after to decide. The creator of the music (Clint Mansell) was also in this situation and didn't agree until after the film was shown to him.

Awards
The film won a Bafta but did not get nominated for an Oscar as the costs were too high to send the film out to each of the judges on the panelling board.

Production Companies

Pathe - Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, Jeepers Creepers

Film4 - Inbetweeners, Finding Eric, Four Lions
Film4 is different as it has its own channel

Working Title - Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Spaced

Film Network - The Damned United

Momentum Pictures - Longest Yard

Hierarchy of needs

1. The need for information about our geographical and social world news + drama.
2. The need for identity by using characters and personality to define out sense of self and social behaviour film celebs.
3. The need for social interaction through experiencing the relationships and interaction of others.
4. The need for diversion by using the media for purposes of play + entertainment.

Character Roles

Villain - Struggles against hero.

Donor - Prepares the her/gives hero magical objects.

Magic Helper - Helps hero in quest.

Princess + Father - Gives task to hero. Identifies false hero. Marries hero. Sought for during narrative. (Can not be clearly distinguished.)

Dispatcher - Makes the lack known and sends hero off.

Hero/Victim/Seeker hero - Reacts to donor, weds princess.

False Hero - Tries to take credit for hero's good deed.

Narrative - How the story is portrayed

Linea Story Line - A story that plays from beginning to middle to end.

Non-Linea - A manipulated narrative
E.g The ending is shown first/flashbacks


Tzvetan Todorov's theory is that there is a basic structure to all story lines...

• Equilibrium: State of normality
• Distruption: Something disturbs equilibrium
• New Equilibrium: A new normality is created as a result of disruption

Narrative History - Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes had a theory that narrative can be broken down into 5 different codes.

The Hermeneutic Code (Enigma code) - Gives the audience a mystery or puzzle that they have to solve. The full truth is avoided and usually revealed later on. Examples of narratives that have enigma codes are The Scooby Doo Show, CSI or soap operas such as Eastenders - 'Who killed Archie Mitchell?'

The Proairetic Code (Action code) - Creates tension within the text and often prepares the audience for something which is about to happen.
E.g A close up shot of a letterbox represents that there is mail, possibly important mail. 


The Semantic Code - The hidden meaning or connotations that are present within a text. The text has a  pragmatics and semantics meaning.
E.g Children's TV Program 'Brum' appears to be a helpful car that helps people but pragmatically it is teaching children that being helpful is the right thing. The bright colours also give connotations of happiness and fun.

The Symbolic Code - Similar to the semantic code; when two texts that have opposite connotations or meanings come together and conflict ideas.
E.g The film 'Crash' has many different stereotypes that come together and judge each other.


The Cultural code - Refers to external knowledge in the text.
For example - Science, religion, historical and cultural knowledge.

Editing Basics

Continuinty - A series of shots which are put into sequences. It makes the film seem realistic and believable so that the audience can enjoy it
Hollywood Montage - Combining a series of shots together to form a sequence.
Representation - How the media makes someone/something look
                                - Linked to target audience
                                - Individuals/groups/settings.
Media Language - how?
Example - Use of colour/language/dialect/costumes/setting/camera angles/light & shadows/music & sound/editing.
Audience - Response to the representation.
                 - Target audience.
Genre - Genetic conventions.
            - Linked to representation
Narrative - How is the storyline organised?
                  - Narrative theory

The British Film Industry

BBFC - An independant, non-government body which classifies and cencors film, video and also video/computer games released in the UK
British Acadamy of Film and Television Arts - Promotes understanding and apprechiation of Britain's rich agilma nd television heriatage and culture.
BFI - Aims to support, develop and promote the art forms of the moving image.
Uk Film Council - Government backed lead film agency for film in the UK ensuring that the economic, cultural and educational of aspects of film are effectively represent at home and abroad.

Representation - Gender

Representation: Age/Gender/Physical ability/Class + Status/Ethnicity/regional Identity/Sexuality.

Blumer's Four Stages

A man called Herbert Blumer named and developed the topic of 'symbolic interactionism.' He developed a theory as to what type of audience attend the cinema and what levels of interaction are amongst them. He believed there are four different stages to audience.

1. He believed that every variation of person attends the cinema. This means that a lawyer, child and old man could go to watch the same film. How ever this theory is wrong because different films have specific target audiences.
2.  The audience is anonymous. This means that everyone who attends the cinema goes by themselves purely to watch then film and there is no collaboration between anybody. There is also a fault in this theory as most people want to go to the cinema with a friend.
3. There is little communication between audience. People go to the cinema with a peer but don't talk or interact during.
4. The chances of interaction are by coincidence. For example someone may bump into their friend at the cinema resulting in communication.

Back to the Future II

This is the scene from Back to the Future 2 where Marty Mcfly steals the girls hover board in order to escape from Biff.

Anton Corbijn

Anton Corbijn was bron in May 1955 and is most famous for directing music videos and photography and he also directed a film called The American starring George Clooney.
He has photographed famous celebrities such as Clint Eastwood. He tends to shoot close up shots of the subjects to show expressions. He also likes using black and white to create dark, moody shots. Corbijn has photographed for Rolling Stone magazine before.
Anton Corbijn has directed music videos for Depeche Mode and the Killers. Within his music videos, he likes to use washed out colours.