Guardian article summary “Hollywood and Tv put the squeeze on UK’s low-budget film-makers”, Media studies Unit 2.

Guardian article summary “Hollywood and Tv put the squeeze on UK’s low-budget film-makers”, Media studies Unit 2.

 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/may/31/hollywood-and-tv-put-the-squeeze-on-uks-low-budget-film-makers


Paragraph 1: 
  • Talks about a film festival
  • Talks about small film makers

Paragraph 2:
  • The paragraph explains that the global expansion of large hollywood films has been successful, and they now wish to focus their attention on lower-cost productions in the UK.
  • They wish to focus on smaller films. 

Paragraph 3:
  • Uk has mid-low budget film industry 
  • The number of domestic UK films costs from £500,000 to roughly £30m to make.
  • T2: Trainspotting and Florence Foster Jenkins, fell from 77 to 60 between 2014 and 2015 which is the lowest number made since 2006, according to annual figures which are published by the British Film Institute (BFI).

Paragraph 4:
  • Hollywood blockbusters made in the UK, such as “Star Wars: The last Jedi:”, and “Alien:Covenant”, which account for the 1.6 billion feature film market, are still rocksteady, with just under 20 films produced in 2015. 
  • David Hancock (A film analyst), says that “After the financial crisis dried up, major Hollywood studios ended up cutting loads of their production slates and increased budgets pretty much for franchises and superhero stuff”.
  • He also says ““The theory of everything, films with budgets of that sort of range, are quite often the first to get the squeeze”.

Paragraph 5:
  • He also cites the mechanics of the $11 billion US box office as a good example of the difficulties facing film-makers who lack big budgets. 
  • Films from the major studios take 90% of that”

Paragraph 6:
-This paragraph explains that whilst there is a change in the film industry, there is pressure being ramped up by the increase in big-budget drama flooding television, represented by shows such as the Netflix co-production The Crown.

Paragraph 7:
- Number of scripted shows in the US has more than doubled since 2010 to more than 500 this year. 
  • It explains that Netflix has recently revealed that it has 90 original productions under way in Europe alone. 
  • Sky has 80
  • Traditional broadcasters such as ITV and the BBC have also upped their game (Eg shows such as Broadchurch and Line of Duty).

Paragraph 8:
  • Richard Johnston claims that there is not a lot of difference between high-end TV and many films these days.
  • This is because most TV drama now is a minimum of £1m an episode, in which the quality and experience is very high. 
  • Because of Market Change, this is where a lot of money and funding is. 


Paragraph 9:
- The BFI says the figure for inward production investment in TV, mainly from US companies such as Amazon, Netflix and HBO, nearly doubled from £252m in 2013 almost £500m last year, which was a record. 
  • Mentions that this boost has been part fuelled by a film industry style tax break for glossy shows costing less than £1m an episode to make which was introduced in 2013. 
  • Contrastingly, the money spent on UK domestic films dropped to £198 million in 2015, the lowest it has been since 2007. 

Paragraph 10:
  • Because of all the money, and the overlap of skills, related to glossy drama has attracted many of the UK’s well-known film production companies to expand into the sector. EG working title, arguably Britain’s best-known film producer, Ridley Scott’s Scott Free and Heyday, the producer of the Harry Potter films, the Paddington films and Gravity,  have all launched TV divisions in the last few years.
  • The TV shows from these companies include:
  • Sky’s you, me and the apocalypse. 
  • BBC 2’s London Spy, out of Africa. 
  • BBC 1 drama taboo and an upcoming navy seal drama. 

Paragraph 11:
  • Entertainment one said it was getting out of small budget films. 
  • Following a similar model to the Hollywood majors, the Canadian media group will now focus on “producing and sourcing a reduced slate of premium films”.
Paragraph 12:
- BFI insists that mid-budget films appear to be in decent health.
- It says that initial reporting shows that a number of UK domestic features being made in the first quarter this year (17) is the same as in 2016 and that there has been a 30% jump in spend to nearly 32 million. 

Paragraph 13:
- However, last week entertainment one, distributer of films such as La la land, arrival, and Luc Bessons forthcoming $180 million valerian and the city of a thousand planets said it was getting out of  small budget films. 

Paragraph 14:
 - Kate Little, managing director of Lime Pictures, says that the big budgets, creative freedom and longer story arcs offered by high-end TV have become a bona fide draw for talent. 
- “From scriptwriter to artist to director there has been an increasing attraction to telling a story over maybe 10 or more hours rather than 2. 

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Comments

  1. JCoSS Media Dept17 September 2017 at 10:51

    This is a fantastic set of notes Sam. Make sure you paste the link of the article so you know what to refer to!

    Miss C.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sam Bromley999 November 2017 at 07:13

    This task is completed

    ReplyDelete

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