My Real Thing - Case Study: Vertigo

Dear Readers,

This written half of my exam is split into two sections: (From the Specification).

"G322: Key Media Concepts (TV Drama)

This paper covers the two areas of Textual Analysis and Representation alongside Institutions and Audiences. In Section A, candidates answer questions on an unseen moving image extract that is then linked to some aspect of the representation within the sequence. In Section B, candidates study a specific media industry from a choice of: film, music, newspapers, radio, magazines or video games. This unit is externally examined."

This blog is focusing on Section B - where we compare two media industries in film and contrast their differences/ similarities. However the difference between the companies is that one is a big expensive funded company such as DISNEY and one is a small British film company VERTIGO.

I've chosen to write about VERTIGO because seeing how they market their small movies and generate publicity could be how i do the to mine!

On their website they say:

"Vertigo Films is a UK Film and Distribution company founded in 2002 by Allan Niblo and James Richardson. The following year Rupert Preston and Nick Love joined and became partners. The company’s mission is to create and distribute commercially driven independent cinema and since inception it has produced 28 films and distributed a further 35. 

The Films span a range of genres and audience taste and include the box office smash hit Streetdance 3D, the biggest independent UK DVD of all time The Football Factory, the multi award winning Monsters, Vertigo co-production Ajami (nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film), smash hit family film Horrid Henry The Movie, audience favourite The Sweeney, and the hottest director of the moment, Nicolas Winding Refn's first English-language film, Bronson.

In 2013 Vertigo has eight films in production including Pudsey The Movie – a co-production with Simon Cowell’s company Syco, Walking on Sunshine – a feel good musical in partnership with IM Global and Monsters:The Dark Continent from hot new director Tom Green.

Championing new talent has been key to Vertigo Film’s production strategy and it continues to pride itself on being at the forefront of breaking new talent, including Tom Hardy (Bronson), Scoot McNairy (Monsters), Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist), Gareth Edwards (Monsters), Paul Andrew Williams (London to Brighton), Ben Gregor (All Stars) and Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson).

Vertigo also owns a successful post production company in Berlin, The Post Republic and is a partner in sales company Protagonist Pictures along with Film 4 and Ingenious"

Vertigo have produced 65 films and here are some:

Their rating on two of their films:

Catch Pudsey The Dog: The Movie in Cinemas 18th July 2014

David Walliams voices Pudsey in Britain's best loved dog's debut as bone-a-fide movie star; Olivia Colman also announced...
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However from this rain we can see the minimal ratings and people I'm pressed - this could be due to the minimal funds allowed or for the minimal advertising.




Spring Breakers - Released 5 April

Brit (Benson), Candy (Hudgens), Cotty (Korine) and Faith (Gomez) have been best friends since grade school. They live together in an average college dorm and are hungry for adventure...
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the critics rating is high in comparison to the viewer this is because the actors involved are big named actors - Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens.

The movie we have chosen to study is:
BILL

Vertigo Films lacks the global audience for their marking therefore resulting in a lower or no domination of the industry, however, it still manages to sell services and products to its audiences.  Following their digital marketing, overall they have only produced 28 films and distributed 35 films, yet they have helped on many larger films such as Walking on Sunshine in 2013.  However they do own a post-production company in Berlin called The Post Republic and is a partner in sales company Protagonist Pictures along with Fim4 and Ingenious. Nevertheless they only have horizontal ownership, which means they have to pay other companies to help market, produce and film the movie, losing them money, as they don’t have the resources to do it themselves. This will decrease their budget on marketing disallowing them to appear globally but keeping them in Britain.  However the film I studied was ‘Bill’ and this was released by Vertigo film in September 2015.  £1million was invested with further undisclosed amounts from BBC Films, LipSync and Screen Yorkshire. Yet Vertigo still used their budget to market the movie as well, such as producing a trailer on platforms such as YouTube that has received nearly 94,000 views considering their target audience is only very small, is quite a lot. However there are 64.1million people in Britain that’s less than 1% (641,000) people have seen the trailer.

Although the low budget movie has social networking sites such as its twitter account has 15.4K followers and its Facebook has 5,000 likes, to spread word. Plus a big marketing point is the actors have their fan base from BBC’s Horrible Histories, which stretches from 6 years olds to 30 years old.  Also its classed as a light-hearted comedy therefore it’s not look for that specific audience type but target it at anyone, which is good for low budget as they can get more views.  Also in its marketing it’s being released on DVD on marketing platforms such as Amazon where its released date is February the 15^th 2016.

However as Vertigo is such as small production they don’t have the money to make merchandise, therefore Bill doesn’t have any. Therefore lacking the marketing of merchandise, which decrease fund income as well.

until next time... bye!