Marketing - Distribution - Production HW

 

AS Media Studies
Film Industry

Production – Distribution – Marketing - Exhibition

Created by Charlie Serra

Production - Avatar

There are an array of stages involved in the making of a film, they are as followed; Development, pre-production, production and distribution.

This presentation aims to boost your perspicacity on the most fundamental aspects of film based on my favourite movie... AVATAR!!

Development

In this stage, the project's producer selects a story, which may come from a book, play, another film, a true story, original idea, etc. After identifying a theme or underlying message, the producer works with writers to prepare a synopsis. Next they produce a step outline, which breaks the story down into one-paragraph scenes that concentrate on dramatic structure. Then, they prepare a treatment, a 25-to-30-page description of the story, its mood, and characters. This usually has little dialogue and stage direction, but often contains drawings that help visualize key points. Another way is to produce a scriptment once a synopsis is produced.

Pre-production

In pre-production, every step of actually creating the film is carefully designed and planned. The production company is created and a production office established. The production is storyboarded and visualized with the help of illustrators and concept artists. A production budget is drawn up to plan expenditures for the film. For major productions, insurance is procured to protect against accidents.

The producer hires a crew. The nature of the film, and the budget, determine the size and type of crew used during filmmaking. Many Hollywood blockbusters employ a cast and crew of hundreds, while a low budget, independent film The unit production manager may be made by a skeleton crew of eight or nine (or fewer). These are typical crew positions:

•       The director

•       The assistant director

•       The casting director

•       The director of photography

•       The director of autography

•       The production sound mixer

•       The sound designer

•       The production designer

•       The art director

•       The costume designer

•       The choreographer

•       Production

In production, the video production/film is created and shot. More crew will be recruited at this stage, such as the property master, script supervisor, assistant directors, stills photographer, picture editor, and sound editors. These are just the most common roles in filmmaking; the production office will be free to create any unique blend of roles to suit the various responsibilities possible during the production of a film. A typical day's shooting begins with the crew arriving on the set/location by their call time. Actors usually have their own separate call times. Since set construction, dressing and lighting can take many hours or even days, they are often set up in advance.

Post-production

Here the video/film is assembled by the video/film editor. The modern use of video in the filmmaking process has resulted in two workflow variants: one using entirely film, and the other using a mixture of film and video.

This is the final stage, where the film is released to cinemas or, occasionally, to consumer media (DVD, VCD, VHS, Blu-ray) or direct download from a provider. The film is duplicated as required for distribution to cinemas. Press kits, posters, and other advertising materials are published and the film is advertised and promoted.

Marketing

There were various marketing strategies that made the film the highest grossing film ever.

James Cameron envisioned customizing the release so that every viewer in every theatre got the best possible experience. There are a lot of vagaries when it comes to public exhibition, for example screens are different sizes, different formats, and technologies involving 3-D. So they did a customised release (which has never been done before) where ever you went, the theatre was going to get the perfect cinema package to ensure you were going to get the best possible screening, best possible experience of watching Avatar.  James Cameron and his army of people who created Avatar wanted to deliver a perfect experience, so by customizing the release that came true. This proved very profitable too, as Avatar climbed to the top of the highest grossing film ever, he topped himself once again topping his own film ‘Titanic’ as he proclaimed after winning the award for Titanic “I’m king of the world” a line from the film, he has de-topped himself.

Avatar was finally released on DVD in April 2010, does not contain any supplemental features other than the theatrical film and the disc menu in favor of and to make space for adjusting picture and sound. On November 16^th 2010 the three disc extended collector’s edition of avatar was released. This included Three different versions of the film are present on the discs: the original theatrical cut, the special edition cut, and a collector's extended cut (with the DVD set spreading them on two discs, but the Blu-ray set presenting them on a single disc). The collector's extended cut contains 6 more minutes of footage, thus making it 16 minutes longer than the original theatrical cut. It also included an in-depth making into the film Avatar, 4 hours of never before seen footage.

Exhibition

Films can be viewed in Cinemas, purchasing a copy of the DVD, Films can be watched on TV and now the ability to download movies online are becoming more prominent.