FILM INDUSTRY: CASE STUDIES

After coursework deadline day on Wednesday 22 March, we will focus on exam work. You have already completed nine written exam questions on analysing representation in TV drama and many oral analyses.  Our next focus is the film industry question for which you will have a 'define the key terms' task and written essay questions.
 
Our starter activity involves a Disney case study Beauty and the Beast and an independent UK film '71.
Beauty and the Beast (2017)

• its website clearly demonstrates how Disney uses horizontal integration in its marketing as the banner shows links to its TV, DVDs, games, merchandising, live events, theme parks, travel company, cruise line, videos, competitions and DisneyLife. 
• Beauty took  $350 on its opening weekend. It had the biggest ever opening weekend for a PG-rated film, and notched up the seventh best opening overall. This marks Disney's best opening for a live action remake yet - beating The Jungle Book, Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland.
• Disney can afford to use big names such as Emma Watson , Emma Thompson, Ewan McGregor and so on.
• Is the film an example of Dalecki's '4 S' model? Yes: whilst not a sequel, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is a live-action re-telling of the studio’s animated classic which refashions the classic characters from the tale as old as time for a contemporary audience. 
• Budget $ 160, the most expensive musical ever made

'71 (2014)

•  By contrast, '71 is a low-budget national film but one that aimed at international audiences as its subject (radicalization of young men during the Troubles in Northern Ireland) was of universal interest. Plot summary here.
• Jack O'Connell had previously attracted critical acclaim for Unbroken (2014) appearing as a prisoner of war in a Japanese war camp. Directed by Angelina Jolie, this film made O'Connell known to an American audience.
• 71 won Best Director at the 2014 British Independent Film Awards, after receiving nine nominations. The National Board of Review named '71 one of the top 10 independent films of 2015.
• Budget, £8.1 million. Box office, $3.2 million.