THE CONNECTED VIEWER

This article is from The Connected Viewer, a business briefing paper published by the British Screen Advisory Council (BSAC). It deals with contemporary viewing patterns: that is, consumer trends.

WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS?

Who turned out the lights? How the decade's final month changed cinema for ever 

Ryan Gilbey The Guardian

Fri 13 Dec 2019 06.00 GMT Last modified on Fri 13 Dec 2019 07.39 GMT

The intensity of audience reception to The Irishman and Marriage Story has knocked the film industry sideways. Suddenly the future has arrived – but is anyone besides Netflix happy?  

he year and the decade are ending and the battle appears to have been lost. On your television, laptop, tablet or smartphone, the evidence is there, cold as a body on the slab: Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, two of the most impressively scaled films of the year, are now available to watch at a time of your choosing, or to play in the background while you chat, eat, scroll through social media or ignore them entirely.

These movies have entered our homes without undergoing the traditional cinematic lifecycle: a few months on the big screen, then a further three or four months in limbo before arriving on DVD, television and the repertory circuit, where they will see out the rest of their days. Most people are not willing to wait that long, and Netflix has been instrumental in predicting, shaping and indulging our impatience. It has not merely closed the theatrical release window, but lobbed a brick through it. Tied to that brick is a note that reads: “Welcome to the future.”

It is true that both movies played exclusively in cinemas for just under a month. But if an established titan such as Scorsese can negotiate only a measly three weeks, what hope is there for the up-and-comers in the foothills of their careers? Perhaps the biggest shock is the speed with which the industry has capitulated; after all, it is only four years since Netflix produced its first original movie, Beasts of No Nation.
Last year, there was resistance to the idea that a Netflix film could win a best picture Oscar, and it was widely felt that the backlash against Netflix (led by Steven Spielberg, who argued that films that,after a token theatrical run to qualify for awards consideration, go straight to streaming should not be in contention for Oscars) cost Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma the top prize.
But Roma was an arthouse film, irrespective of its very un-arthouse marketing budget. The same cannot be said of The Irishman or Marriage Story, which have big-name stars as well as a commercial reach and appeal that far outstrips Cuarón’s picture. And if the foreshortened theatrical lifespans of these new movies have adversely affected their standing, either among audiences or the industry, that is not reflected in the breadth of online discussion or the first wave of awards nominations.

The cast and crew of Marriage Story at Netflix’s Paris Theater in New York. Photograph: John Lamparski/Getty Images

Those of us who fancy ourselves as purists about cinema can gripe all we like about films being diminished by the haste with which they have reached our teeny-weeny screens. But when the Golden Globes contenders were announced this week, it was a full-blown Netflix love-in, with 34 shout-outs to the streaming service’s film and TV productions, including 17 shared among The Irishman, Marriage Story (the most popular movie with six nominations), The Two Popes, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, and the Eddie Murphy vehicle Dolemite Is My Name.
Those who argue that it is all for the good of film-making should be reminded that Netflix is now leasing its first cinema in New York City, a single-screener devoted exclusively to its own product, with plans possibly to open another in Los Angeles. It is a move that smacks of “vertical integration” — vertical integration is the practice, outlawed by the US supreme court in 1948, whereby the major studios not only produced movies, but owned and monopolised the cinemas in which they were shown.
It is also hard to take seriously Netflix’s image of itself as the guardian of cinema when it unveiled earlier this year a facility to allow viewers to skim through its content at a variety of speeds. Abridged versions of classic literature once rightly attracted charges of philistinism, whereas the act of concertinaing The Irishman is regarded as a necessary response to a hectic world.

Then again, something else has become apparent in the fallout over Netflix’s desecration of the theatrical experience. People are watching The Irishman and Marriage Story – millions of people, in fact, with many of them discussing and dissecting these films in the sorts of numbers that would have been unthinkable under the old system. In a spirit of generosity, it might be said that Netflix has revived something close to that unifying cultural experience that older viewers will remember from the days of three channels, when everyone would feverishly discuss the previous evening’s Play for Today.
It would be unrealistic to expect a precise equivalent when our consumption is so fractured and dispersed. But if gravitas has been sacrificed in the instant availability of The Irishman and Marriage Story, perhaps gains in accessibility have been made – no need for babysitters, no schlepping to the nearest town for anyone not lucky enough to have a local screen willing to play a three-and-a-half-hour rumination on mobsters and mortality, or a patient, tender divorce drama. The movies are there and they are ours.
Carol Morley, whose thriller Out of Blue was released this year, feels broadly positive about these changes in the viewing landscape. “Streaming is important and a great way to reach a lot more people, so I’m all for that,” she says. “For some of my younger relatives who live nowhere near a cinema and find them expensive to get to, it’s meant that they have access to films in a way they never have before. So there is a democratisation, which is all for the good. But having a film distributed and on in the cinema means it’s guaranteed to be reviewed. It at least has some momentum, and makes some noise, whereas independent films released straight to streaming may not generate any noise at all, and so they disappear. Having a cinema release is like the advert to the film and its later life.”
A new Scorsese was always going to be seen, whichever platform it premiered on, and Netflix, which never releases viewing figures unless it has something to boast about, has been quick to trumpet its impressive success: 26 million people watched at least 70% of The Irishman in its first week of streaming. Less clear is the fate of a film such as Atlantics, Mati Diop’s haunting migrant drama, which Netflix snapped up after its Cannes premiere, neatly bypassing the competition ban on films produced by the streaming service. (This followed the infamous 2017 spat when the jury president, Pedro Almodóvar, made it clear that he would not be awarding prizes to films that were not guaranteed a cinema release – in that case, Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories and Bong Joon-ho’s Okja.) Atlantics began streaming last month, augmented by a limited (but not exclusive) theatrical run. Figures for such a comparatively marginal film are unlikely to surface, which raises a timeless philosophical question: if an acclaimed French-Senegalese film is available on Netflix, where it ends up unflagged and largely unwatched, has it really been shown?

The director Todd Haynes (Carol and Far from Heaven) is less tolerant of streaming than Morley. He tells me he has been so busy finishing his new film, the environmental thriller Dark Waters, that he has only had time to see one movie this year. “And it was The Irishman. On the big screen. I just cannot imagine it having the same impact watching it on streaming. I am very ambivalent about that whole thing.”
For Haynes, the problem extends beyond simply the size of the screen: it is also a matter of plenitude. “I was watching TCM [the film channel Turner Classic Movies] recently – which is one of the reasons to stay alive in the world – but I had it in the streaming version where you can pick from all the movies at once. What’s strange is that I missed actually having it on cable and being presented with a single movie at a time, and enjoying that happenstance of a film just being on: you didn’t select it, you didn’t have to sit there and think: ‘What should I watch?’ You feel a deeper connection to things when they’re not totally being administered by your every whim. And, in a weird way, I think it changes desire. When everything is available at once, we don’t want it any more.”
Russell Brandom, the 35-year-old policy editor at the technology site the Verge, insists that younger audiences don’t think that way. “For young people, the idea of sitting and watching one thing for two hours is just not culturally central,” he explains. “The 20-year-olds of this world are more invested in YouTube and TikTok and that more immediate, less ‘produced’ kind of media. There is a lot more competition for their attention these days and film is not really a medium that is well suited to that. If you’re doing film right, you want some silence, some sense of time stretching out: that’s part of the art of film, and I do think it’s harder to create space for that in the modern attention economy.”

If this promises a future population who will never know what it is to surrender completely to film as a collective and all-consuming experience, then it is also important not to romanticise the reality of cinema-going. Brandom points out that going to the movies can be “a garbage experience. You’re bombarded with 20 minutes of commercials before every film.”
It is easy to see why a 20-year-old – or anyone, for that matter – might stay at home, where their viewing options come with a “skip ad” option in the corner of the screen. And there are pitfalls even for those directors whose work reaches cinemas. “We are always competing for space against the much bigger studio releases with larger advertising budgets,” Morley points out. “You may only get one showing a day at an odd hour. It’s frustrating, but it’s the reality. But I make films for them to have a long life, so I like to think that someone will still be showing them in cinemas and elsewhere in years to come.”
Haynes sounds a more plaintive note. “I keep thinking there’s gonna be a revolt,” he says. “You know, how vinyl came back? People need to say: ‘No, no, we don’t want the end of this. It mustn’t die!’”

FILM INDUSTRY ESSAY PREPARATION

THREE ITEMS FOR TODAY In today's lesson, to prepare for your holiday day essay which I will give you tomorrow, please read carefully the following.

Below, with the red heading, is the subject content. In today's lesson, you should get to know what key terms mean, like cross-media convergence, synergy, technological convergence, marketing, distribution and so on. On your laptop, write your own list of key terms. Writing them down will help you remember them. You need to know what 'consumption' means, for instance, in relation to the film industry.

You can use the search engine on our class blog to check meanings.

There are text books on the bookshelf by the door.

Online sites to find meanings of terms:

AQA glossary

EDUQAS Glossary

MediaKnowall for AL students

MediaKnowall for GCSE

The next step is to go through our case studies. You can open these links:

Roma (2018, director Alfonso Cuaron)

Legend (2015 director Brian Helgeland)

Rogue One A Star Wars Story (2016, director Gareth Edwards) 
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
We are also going to prepare Captain Marvell but we haven't done this together yet.

Finally, write a paragraph about your own experiences of watching films (= "media consumption") and how your consumption of film is typical /atypical. To see some pointers on 'trends', look on the class blog below, as the .final bullet point context asks you to discuss

“The ways in which candidates’ own experience of media consumption illustrate wider patterns and trends in audience behaviour.”

TO USE EXAMPLES OF PERSONAL CONSUMPTION "As a teenager, I.." "People of my age, such as my friends..." "My preference is for..." "I usually find out about films from..." "When I go to the cinema..." Give your reasons - price, convenience, fast /slow internet provision, companionship / when alone /mobile; quality of experience

TRENDS in film consumption (=viewing films)
- UK cinema-going is strong (cinema admissions 2018: 177 million; 2017: 170 million; 2016: 168 million. Source FDA Yearbook 2019)
 - cinema exhibition (where you would also see trailers promoting similar films in ideal conditions with Dolby Surround Sound, wide screen etc)
- choice of IMAX with huge screens, 3D for particular films
- technology that is already taking massive strides in this direction is Dolby Atmos, a new generation of surround sound technology that supports up to 128 discrete audio tracks and up to 64 unique speaker feeds, (compared to six or eight in most commercial cinemas).

- digital consumption of films and other entertainment content continued to strengthen in 2018, although sales of DVDs and BluRay fell. They are still valued for family events, as franchise collector's pieces and as gifts.
- However, the video market rose to 3.2 billion thanks to continued growth in digital consumption via download platforms (Amazon, Apple, SkyStore)   and streaming services (Netflix, Amazon Prime Now TV).


- The best selling videos of 2018 were The Greatest Showman, Avengers Infinity War, Mama Mia: Here We Go Again, Star Wars:The Last Jedi, Paddington



- home cinema with tv screens of high quality + access to many online platforms;; VoD; catch up TV, BBC iPlayer, BBC Sounds
- Home cinema /home viewing no longer refers to just broadcast content, with streaming and downloading, on laptops, smartphones for individual, mobile and interactive benefits.  Read this article on streaming services explained.
- Across all devices, in 2017, people's total TV and audio-visual daily viewing was about 5 hours daily, with 70% of this broadcast TV but the remaining 30% was YouTube and subscription on demand services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. 
- Broadcast TV viewing decreased but non-broadcast content increased, enabled by increased broadband speeds and increased use of connected TVs. The change in viewing habits is driven by younger viewers, who watch more non-broadcast than broadcast content: in 2017, 16-34s watched an average of 2 hours 37 minutes of non-broadcast content daily across all devices.
- By contrast, the profile of TV viewers continues to get older with over-54s now making up half the audience in the UK.
- 80% of UK adults have a smartphone and 7 in 10 commuters use them.

Source: FDA Yearbook 2018. Market analysis Jan 2019

5 hours 1 minute 
- where you hear about films, watch trailers
- how you use social media to make decisions about films; film websites, Twitter, Instagram feeds
- how distributors are editing for phones
- how marketing campaigns use social media, tie-ins, merchandise ads

FILM INDUSTRY: CAPTAIN MARVELL

Below is a case study on Captain Marvell, made using a questionnaire.

Please use the questionnaire to investigate .....another film

https://disney.co.uk/movies/captain-marvel

• Who produced the film? 

• Who directed the film?  Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck   

                          

• What other films have they directed? 

• What was the budget? $118.6 million

• Who stars in it? 

Brie Larson: Marvel Studios' landmark movie featuring its first female lead.
Jude Law as Yon-Rogg

• What other films have they been in?

• What technology has been used to make the film? (What cameras did they use? How was the film edited? What CGI was involved?) 

https://www.inverse.com/article/54303-captain-marvel-nick-fury-de-aging-technology-vfx-interview-exclusive

• How was the film marketed? Which different marketing tools were used?

Official trailer 1

Fan trailer here A new Captain Marvel fan video breaks down the movement trying to derail the film in what may well be the best piece of marketing the movie has received to date.

Comedians Kirk Deveyck and Julien Keermelckbrugge released the video on their social media channels as part of their ongoing #MarvelFansUnited campaign. Their viral videos promote upcoming releases and, right now, all their attention is directed to Brie Larson as Carol Danvers.

It just seemed like an interesting party to join in with at an interesting time in their ascendancy,” Law said of joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe in an interview last year. “That to me is an interesting playground to work in because suddenly you’ve got filmmakers who are looking at humor and script work and character, within an infrastructure that is obviously capable of creating enormous universes and worlds and special effects — while also not bogging down the creativity of the director.”

Captain Marvel will arrive in theaters on March 8th. Upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Avengers: Endgame on April 26th and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th.

'Captain Marvel' Featurette Finally Confirms Jude Law's Role

One of the biggest mysteries throughout the production and advertising for Captain Marvel has been the identity of Carol Danvers' Kree mentor, played by Jude Law. It was initially believed, and reported, that he was playing Mar-Vell, but then several toy leaks and packages made it seem as though he'd be playing Yon-Rogg. Through all of the rumors and grumblings online, there had been nothing in the way of confirmation from Marvel Studios. That is, until today.

A new behind-the-scenes featurette has put the issue to rest once and for all; Jude Law is Yon-Rogg, end of story.On Friday, Marvel shared a video that saw the cast and crew of the film talking about the overarching storyline surrounding Captain Marvel: the war between the Kree and the Skrulls. When Law appeared on the screen for the first time in the clip, the lower third beneath him revealed his character's name, Yon-Rogg.

'Captain Marvel' throws back to the '90s with optical illusion posters

TWITTER

Here's the brand new @EW cover for Marvel Studios' #CaptainMarvel⁠ ⁠! Read more: bit.ly/2GRdjkj

I ❤️ 90’s #TBT #CaptainMarvel⁠ ⁠

 • What examples of synergy with other products/merchandise can you find? 

Comics, TV series, an interconnected web of films; merchandise here in the Disney Store

Available on DVD, Blu-Ray & Digital Download

It's all about the Marvell Cinematic Universe. Read this 

The films of the MCU offer numerous intertextual references but each film is a story in its own right.

The creation of the Fantastic Four effectively launched the Marvel Comics brand in 1961. Within ten years, the introduction (or reintroduction) of characters such as Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, and the X-Men catapulted Marvel past its primary rival, DC Comics, for domination of the comic book market. Since the 2000s, the company's iconic characters have leaped from page to screens with the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which includes everything from live-action film franchises of Iron Man and the Avengers to television and streaming media, including the critically acclaimed Netflix series Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Marvel, now owned by Disney, has clearly found the key to transmedia success.
Make Ours Marvel traces the rise of the Marvel brand and its transformation into a transmedia empire over the past fifty years. A dozen original essays range across topics such as how Marvel expanded the notion of an all-star team book with The Avengers, which provided a roadmap for the later films, to the company's attempts to create lasting female characters and readerships, to its regular endeavors to reinvigorate its brand while still maintaining the stability that fans crave. Demonstrating that the secret to Marvel's success comes from adeptly crossing media boundaries while inviting its audience to participate in creating Marvel's narrative universe, this book shows why the company and its characters will continue to influence storytelling and transmedia empire building for the foreseeable future.

In 2003 a new COO, David Maisel wanted to take Marvel in a new direction: original filmmaking. He spearheaded a move to secure funding from a major investment bank, using as collateral the remaining heroes, many of them "second-tier superheroes, who may not resonate with younger moviegoers" to try to build a new cinematic empire. Seemed like a risky maneuver, but when the original "Iron Man" made waves in 2008 as not only a good superhero flick (low bar) but as a good action movie (higher bar) it seemed Maisel may have been onto something.
The concept of post-credits scenes was created by Feige, and the MCU was born. The idea that movies from different directors drawn from connected source material could exist within the same persistent universe was novel, and in a major franchise hadn't been done before. The superhero movies we'd seen before had all been in their own little bubbles. There were five Superman movies, a Spider-Man trilogy, scattered Batman movies and two Fantastic Four's, an X-Men trilogy and that horror fest Hulk. They all had their own entertainment value, but none of them acknowledged the others, even though they were all born of their respective DC or Marvel families. 

• What examples of cross media convergence can you find? 

The secret to Marvel's success comes from adeptly crossing media boundaries while inviting its audience to participate in creating Marvel's narrative universe.  The company and its characters will continue to influence storytelling and transmedia empire building for the foreseeable future.

• What examples of technological convergence can you find? Available on DVD, Blu-Ray & Digital Download
Available on Disney+

• Where and when was this film released (nationwide, worldwide) and in what cinemas?

Captain Marvel will arrive in theaters on March 8th. Upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Avengers: Endgame on April 26th and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th.

Release Date: 03/07/2019 PG-13

43,000 US screens

QUIZLET

Have a go to learn and to revise!

QUIZLET

TV DRAMA: ORDINARY LIES

Representation Open the file on the school's ClickView 

Answer the question below, with detailed reference to specific examples from the extract only. 
Extract: Ordinary Lies written by Danny Brocklehurst. Episode 2. First screened 24 March 2015. 

Receptionists Tracy and Viv  tell everyone at work that they are both going to Ibiza on holiday, when actually they are actually running an errand for Tracy's boyfriend Jimmy. When they discover that the errand involves heading to the Dominican Republic to smuggle drugs back into the country, the pair immediately try to back out, but Jimmy isn't having any of it. Whilst Tracy makes it back without being caught, Viv is arrested by local customs officials.

PREP Complete for prep by Friday 6 December and email to JM.

Discuss the ways in which the extract constructs representation using the following: 
• Camera shots, angle, movement and composition 
• Editing
• Sound 
• Mise-en-scène

Candidates will be assessed on their ability to understand how meaning is constructed in a media text through the analysis of different technical areas. Marks are awarded for three different criteria:

Terminology (max 10)

Use of examples (max 20)

Explanation/argument/analysis (max 20)