First Stars on a Film Poster: Rebellion

I've just learned that my four star review for Filmoria is being used on the poster for Mathieu Kassovitz's Rebellion. It's not a big beautiful quote or snippet of my review but the four stars are definitely up there on the poster with Filmoria written proudly beneath them.

Filmoria have had a lot of exposure through film posters and trailers over the last year with our stars popping up on the Sightseers poster and even a quote from Chris Haydon's review being used in the Rust and Bone trailer.

I wish I could say that this was all down to my wonderful reviewing skills but of course this is more to do with the increasing profile of Filmoria which must be becoming a more and more recognizable name and can therefore feature on posters alongside Time Out, Cinevue and Empire magazine.

It’s a great, great honour to not only be writing for Filmoria but also to get my first stars on the poster for a film I am so very happy to be recommending. Rebellion is from the French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz whose La Haine I have banged on about endlessly on this blog and ever since I first saw it back in 1996.

Rebellion isn’t out until April 19^th so my review will be online at Filmoria from around April 12^th. I hope you might be tempted to go check it out! My editors at Filmoria are also in talks to get an interview with the man Mathieu Kassovitz himself which I have been offered if it happens and I am available when it gets scheduled.

Needless to say if this interview happens, I’m going to, for want of better words, slightly lose my shit. Not only will I get to meet the director of one of my top three films of all time but I’ll also get to question him all about Rebellion and hopefully manage to throw at least one question in about La Haine.

Please cross your fingers that I get to interview Kassovitz! I'll owe you one if I do!

Music videos and Producer’s Strategies

Music videos are also made as part of an overall strategy to help promote an image and develop the career of an artist. I have already posted about why music videos exist, why Blink 182's All the Small Things is a good case study and what videos are tied in with films. Now I will move on to producer's strategies.

The major labels can have very different strategies for their artists than the independent labels and then there are those artists that do not have a record label and are forced to self-produce their own music video in order to increase their presence on the internet and perhaps even television.

The major labels often have the strategy that they wish to create a very specific image of their artist in order to maximize their appeal to the target audience. Look at any pop group and their music videos will contain choreographed dancing, the latest fashions (and lots of costume changes) and a whole range of other elements that will make the artist look rich, sexy and successful.

Looking at the early videos of Eminem is interesting. My Name Is was the first major single. It features Dr Dre which helps to establish Eminem as a new and ‘cool’ hip hop artist. It does everything it can to make Eminem into an icon. He dresses up as Bob Hope, Marilyn Manson, and the President and appears in set ups that make him look like a TV star of wholesome shows like The Brady Bunch. It sets him up as a pop icon that will subversively attack all that is ‘good’ and ‘clean cut’ in pop culture.

 

His next song, Guilty Conscience, and the video for it, made Slim Shady look like the devil compared to Dr Dre’s more even tempered, sensible and wiser gangster rapper. The first music video off his following album, The Real Slim Shady, attacked and parodied a huge range of pop stars. The strategy is clear; make Eminem appeal to pop fans by putting down his competitors and still make him appeal to hip hop fans by his rude, aggressive attitude. His video for Lose Yourself featured clips from his starring role in the film 8 Mile and helped promote his film and the 8 Mile soundtrack.

The Prodigy are an excellent example of a group that have had a much more independent spirit in their music videos and career. They were on independent label XL Recordings for much of their career and recently moved to Cooking Vinyl, another independent label. Their music videos have often been very dark and controversial and they ensured that people would see them by refusing to appear live on Top of the Pops when their singles were in the charts.

A fairly early example of their music videos is Poison which features the group members performing in a small dark room and eventually becoming caked in sloppy dark filth. The music video is cheap and simple but also sells the image of the band as something different, edgy and dirty. Their later video for Firestarter, all filmed in underground tunnels in black and white, was considered too scary for children and some channels would not show it until after the watershed. All their videos paled in comparison to the video for their most controversial song Smack My Bitch Up. This video was banned from television and after huge public demand, MTV agreed to play it only after midnight. It contains drug use, violence and a very explicit sex scene but does not feature the actual group at all. It is a shocking example of an artist seeking publicity by courting controversy and determinedly positioning themselves outside of the mainstream, despite their success.

Some artists will self-produce their own videos with or without the backing of a record label. Forever the Sickest Kids put three months of hard work into a stop motion music video for their song Crossroads. Ed Sheeran gained huge exposure from the simple video filmed for SBTV of his song and performance of You Need Me, I Don’t Need You.  

Perhaps the greatest example of what a home made low budget music video can do for a band is OK Go’s A Million Ways that simply has the band perform a choreographed dance in a back yard. The video went viral, becoming an internet sensation and hurling the band into public recognition and popularity.

All the videos mentioned are below and are good examples of how music videos can be a part of a producer’s overall strategy for an artist.

Girl Guides, Smoking and Jogging

Sorry film fans, this is just another bit of self-promotion for some completely un-film-related stuff I've been writing over at Yahoo on my not very specialist subjects of the Girl Guides and smoking and jogging. Separate articles by the way! I'm sure the Girl Guides don't smoke!

The first article is all about why I think we shouldn't be getting kids to swear allegiance to God or the Queen or any other crap like that if they do not wish to. At the moment the Girl Guides have to do this when joining but they are looking into changing the pledge to reflect the modern world where not every kids believes in a God and certainly shouldn't be pledging anything to a woman who sits in a castle all day at the tax payer's expense. If you want to tackle benefits and the long term unemployed... start with her!

The second article is all about my personal experiences of overcoming bronchitis by stopping smoking and taking up jogging instead. Seems simple enough but I hope the story might be a bit inspirational to some who feel like they can't turn their life around a bit. I never used to be able to run a mile until I started running regularly and recently and now I've got my second half marathon next week!

Yahoo seem happy to publish most of the things I write for them, despite my not being an expert on anything. It is great because lots of people actually read the stuff that goes up on Yahoo and all it takes is a bit of research. I'm really enjoying their little assignments they send me and hope to continue.

The last three articles I wrote for Yahoo on teaching kids, fox culling and the NHS can all be found by clicking here.

The article on the girl guides is here.

The article on beating bronchitis is here.

Happy reading and feel free to let me know what you think about any of this stuff!

Funding and Ownership of the TV Industry

For my recent article on the ownership and funding of the film industry, please click here.

The television industry is made up of many different companies, some publicly owned and some privately owned. The BBC is privately owned and is funded by a license fee that is paid be every household that has a television. ‘The BBC used its income from the licence fee to pay for its TV, radio and online services, plus other costs’. This means it is guaranteed an income every year no matter the quality of the products it produces. It also means that it is not allowed to make any money from product placement like other TV channels can, as it says in its editorial guidelines, ‘the BBC must not commission, produce or co-produce output for its license fee funded services which contains product placement’. There have recently been concerns over how the money raised by the license fee is being spent with many people raising the issue of how much BBC stars’ salaries are. The BBC has come under pressure to reveal the salaries of their highest paid stars but have not done this, citing the right to privacy of the stars. Some have called for the license fee to be scrapped so the BBC will not be funded by the public and then it will only be funded by its profits. These ‘profits at BBC Worldwide, their commercial arm, rose by 10.3% to £160.2 million’ in 2010 so there is clearly a strong argument for this.

 The funding of the BBC through the license fee has many critics with people arguing it is just another tax people are forced to pay and anti-competitive. Historically the BBC had a monopoly over the television and radio industries in Britain, meaning it had absolutely no competition and dominated the industries, but this was broken with the ‘arrival, first of independent television in 1955, then commercial radio in 1973’. Further calls for the license fee to be scrapped were renewed with the introduction of cable and satellite TV and particularly the increasing popularity of Sky in the 1990s.

However the funding of the BBC through the license fee also has many supporters. Some argue ‘the BBC produces a lot of output that the commercial sector wouldn't even consider. It is vital to the cultural health of the nation’. The argument that the BBC has an obligation to provide a public service and therefore to educate as well as entertain means that it does not have to fight for ratings by bidding for the most popular American shows and can afford to cater for niche audiences as well as the mainstream.

On the other hand ‘Channel 4 is a publicly-owned, commercially-funded public service broadcaster’. This means that they do not make money from the license fee and instead are funded from advertising and sponsorship. They are also allowed to gain income from product placement which is where ‘is where a company pays a TV channel or a programme-maker/production company to include its products or brands in a programme’. Channel 4 is a business not made for profit and can buy and sell programmes as it sees fit in order to be a successful enterprise. It was set up (with aid from the government) to be an alternative to the BBC and to feature more cultural and ethnic diversity. All its profits go back into the business and it is a rare example of a publicly owned business that does not sell shares in the business.

Other television companies such as British Sky Broadcasting are funded through subscription and pay-per-view means. BSkyB is also a publicly owned company so it has shareholders that own shares in the company and can be consulted in the decision making process and also share in the profits and losses of the company. Sky operates a range of services and subscriptions and these services start from above £20 per month. These services are increasingly multimedia so people can have Sky TV, Broadband and Mobile apps. Their Sky Box Office and internet TV services bring in further income by allowing viewers to watch certain programmes for an extra pay per view fee. For example a recent Rolling Stones concert could be watched live by paying a one off charge and now Premier League football matches are being offered on a pay per view basis whereas before only those who subscribed to Sky Sports could watch them.

Many have accused BSkyB of being too dominant in the TV market and having a monopoly that means there is less chance of competition being able to thrive. It has even been investigated by the Competition Commission for this reason but the commission found that there is little that can be done in the face of BSkyB’s market power. Competition has increased in the form of subscriber streaming services for film and television shows such Netflix and LoveFilm but these do not have the same market share as Sky.

Ownership and funding in the TV and film industries is complex and includes many different means of making income from the licence fee to shareholders to ploughing existing profits back into the business. Concerns over the dominance of a limited number of companies are justified with huge multimedia, multinational conglomerates controlling much of the market and making it hard for other companies to emerge and compete. This is a major issue for the media because TV, film, print and radio play such a huge part of many people’s lives and it is undesirable for so much of it to be controlled by so few.

Bibliography

http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/whoweare/licencefee/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/page/guidance-product-placement

http://www.atthegrapevine.com/politics/funding-the-bbc

http://www.transdiffusion.org/tv/aspidistra/funding_the_bbc

http://www.channel4.com/info/corporate/about

http://www.channel4.com/4viewers/faq/name/productplacement/id/501310053

http://www.sky.com/mysky/latestnews/article/my-sky-updates/2012-12/watch-the-rolling-stones-live-on-sky/

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/sky-make-premier-league-matches-available-on-payperview-8475243.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/02/bskyb-power-rivals-competition-commission

Where Music Videos and Movies Meet

Another common purpose of music videos is to help sell a film that the song appears in. Here are some of my annoying, exciting and downright depressing examples:

Armageddon and Aerosmith: I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing

Love how this one takes on some special significance as lead singer Steven Tyler is effectively singing it to his daughter Liv Tyler who appears in the movie Armageddon. I also love the way the clips from the film are used with Aerosmith appearing on all the screens being watched by the characters. And the use of the rocket blast as an excuse to have the band having their hair blown dramatically around is cheesy genius! Liv Tyler crying over her father in the film played by Bruce Willis but actually replaced by her real father on the screen is the icing on the cake!



Ill Manors and Plan B: Ill Manors

This one is interesting not just because it is a bleak, violent and sensationalist look at modern British youth culture but also because although it is the title track from the film of the same name, it does not actually feature any footage from the film. Instead some of the actors/characters pop up in the music video and it is set in the same kind of locations as the film. It also deals with the same themes as the film with its look at disaffected youth running riot.



Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Bryan Adams: (Everything I Do) I Do It For You

This one stayed at number one in the pop charts for sixteen consecutive weeks back in 1991 which was a record. It no doubt helped that Robin Hood was also doing well at the box office, showing that a song and a film can help each other towards greater sales. I always enjoyed the video just for getting to see the little clips of the film but wasn't so much of a fan of the bits of Bryan Adams all dressed in denim with his own band of merry men playing in the woods.



Titanic and Celine Dion: My Heart will Go On

You can't keep a good ballad down and certainly not if it's featured in one of the biggest films in history. Not a big fan of the song or the video but it's great to see clips from the film. Celine Dion croons from the bow of the Titanic and beneath the stars but for me this video is just an opportunity to see Jack and Rose again!



Men In Black and Will Smith: Men in Black

A great example of synergy at work. Will Smith sings the song, stars in the movie and Sony produce both the film and the soundtrack meaning that one helps sell the other. Sony's music making division helps promote its film production and vice versa, meaning Sony get very rich from using different parts of their business to promote other parts. Simples! The music video uses the cast, locations, special effects, costumes and clips of the film, making it probably relatively cheap to produce.



TV does this too with The Rembrandts' music video for I'll Be There for You being a perfect example that helped to sell Friends as a brand new sit-com by featuring the stars of the show pratting about in a studio with the band.



There's many more examples. What are your best and worst?

Purposes of music videos: Blink 182 and All the Small Things

After last week looking at why music videos exist, my students will next be looking at examples and explaining the purposes of music videos with references to examples. In order to help them I have written a short piece on Blink 182's music video for All the Small Things.

The music video for pop punk band Blink 182’s All the Small Things features the three piece group lip synching to the song, playing their instruments in front of adoring fans and engaging in a range of activities that parody the conventions of boy band music videos.

It is an excellent example of a music video that promotes an artist and their single for a number of reasons. Firstly and most blatantly, the video features the words Blink 182 and their logo in many places; on the side of a private jet, on many of the fans’ signs and even on a band member’s arm. This keeps the artists name in viewers’ heads as they watch. It is also an example of Blink 182 making themselves stand out from their competition. As they are a pop-punk band, they have to compete for single and album sales with other pop artists that include boy bands who were popular at the time such as Backstreet Boys and N-Sync. They do this by parodying conventions of boy band videos such as having water poured on themselves while posing for the camera, having a private jet in the background and performing choreographed dances in matching white suits.

The video would also help promotion by being positioned in the right place so that the target audience can find it. This means it could go on rock channels such as Kerrang and Scuzz but also on the pop channels like MTV to ensure it reaches a wider audience than just rock and punk fans.  The video would also be able to be viewed on various internet sites such as YouTube, thus extending the number of outlets the song can be heard in, and is also available on the Blink 182 DVD called The Urethra Chronicles. By selling this DVD, the record company and artist can all make more income from the music video. The adverts before the video on YouTube will also raise a small amount of income.

The music video is also a part of the record label and artist’s strategy for creating a popular and recognizable image for the band. Blink 182 are known to be a playful, silly and immature pop punk band that will appeal to teenage boys as they sing about troubles with girls, being immature and having fun. They will appeal to teenage girls as they are fresh faced, good looking guys who sing occasionally about love and relationships but usually in a silly, sweet and harmless manner. This video helps Blink 182 appear as funny and light-hearted and not afraid to mock their own image as well as that of their competition. While mocking other boy bands, it also establishes Blink 182 as a band with a major label behind them that has the money to invest in quite a high budget video that features lots of extras, different locations and even a private jet in it. It also ensures that the audience can see the band playing their instruments and looking like a typical rock band.

Their other videos including M&M’s, Dammit, The Rock Show and What’s My Age Again? The latter two feature the band running naked through the streets and literally throwing away the record company's music video budget. All confirm the band’s image as fun loving, silly and immature; everything the target audience of Blink 182 and pop punk would want them to be after hearing their songs. Watch the videos below:

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Dangerous Minds enters the Emporium @StaticMass

My good friend and wonderful editor Patrick from Static Mass Emporium invited me to write a piece on the film Dangerous Minds recently. He told me that there was a back to school theme going on with a piece being contributed on Dead Poet's Society and Apt Pupil and that a piece on the 1995 film Dangerous Minds would also be very welcome, especially coming from a teacher.

I hadn't seen the film since I saw it in the cinema back in '95 but as Patrick pointed me to a YouTube link to the whole film online for free, I thought I'd give it a go. My main memory of the film is of Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise, a song I still love and know all the words to until this day. In fact my wife and I sang the whole song as we rode through the night on a moped on a Greek Island once. How gangsta is that? OK maybe not...

Anyway re-watching the film, I liked it a lot. Watching from the perspective of a teacher was very interesting as I was constantly thinking about what Michelle Pfeiffer's character was doing and whether it would be realistic to try anything similar. It's a surprisingly convincing film and pretty emotional too.

Here's a link to my full review of Dangerous Minds at Static Mass Emporium and you can watch the film below for free if you're interested.

"Dangerous Minds (as well as being the film that gave us Coolio’s classic Gangsta’s Paradise) is the story of one woman’s wish to change the future of an entire class of young adults who’ve been disregarded by the system and left with little chance to turn their lives around. LouAnne, an ex-marine divorcee enters the high school classroom determined to help these students graduate but there’ll be many complications that get in the way of her educational quest..."



Seen it? What did you think?

February Movie News and Reviews

This month has not been quite so hectic as January was fortunately but that also means there haven't been as many highlights. I've been busy writing the second chapter of my Blair Witch book and working on the second chapter of my thesis. In between that, there has been some time for writing movie news and reviews and even some stuff for Yahoo.

I've written a bunch of strange stories completely out of my movie comfort zone for Yahoo. You can check them all out by clicking on my profile. These stories are on education, fox culling, the NHS and even the flipping Girl Guides which I obviously know absolutely nothing about. However these things get read by a wide audience and so I like writing them!

Enough about that. On to the film stuff. This month I have watched all of the following and if I wrote a review then you can click the title and be magically transported to the destination of that review:

Hitchcock
Holy Motors
Shadow Dancer
Lovely Molly
Evidence
The Raid
Take This Waltz
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Cloud Atlas
Song For Marion
A Good Day to Die Hard (at Filmoria)
Stoker (at Filmoria)
V/H/S
The Paperboy
Our Children (review will be up on Filmoria nearer the release in May)
Django Unchained
Zero Dark Thirty
Broken
Rust and Bone

My reviews of Warm Bodies and Dangerous Minds also went up at Static Mass Emporium. My reviews of The Bay, No, Black Sunday, The Fall of the Essex Boys and Lisa and the Devil were also published at Filmoria this month.

I also watched and reviewed some great bits of TV: the first series of The Killing and two episodes of the second season of Black Mirror; White Bear and The Waldo Moment.

The news stories I covered for Filmoria are as follows:
Die Hard 6 Likely
How to Catch a Monster Casting
New Spring Breakers posters

I also did a top 5 funniest sex scenes for Valentine's Day.

It was a great month for winning stuff too. I won a copy of American Mary on Blu-ray from a competition on Flickering Myth and a trip to Paris on the Eurostar from StudioCanal by tweeting about I Give it a Year! I also placed £15 of bets on the Oscars and thanks to Argo, Django Unchained and Christoph Waltz I came out £3.30 up! Nice!

To conclude, the worst things I watched this month were The Fall of the Essex Boys (though I watched it last month, the review only went up this month) and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World or as I called it on Twitter seeking an acting class for the end of the world. Seriously how does Keira Knightley get work?

Best things I watched were Holy Motors, Cloud Atlas and Django Unchained. LOVED them! And of course Black Mirror: White Bear which was one of the best bits of TV I'd ever seen.

What were your best and worst of the month or thoughts on any of these?

Black Mirror: The Waldo Moment

The final part of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror series 2 aired last night, titled The Waldo Moment. I'll get this dash of negativity straight out of the way first of all by saying nothing could touch last week's episode White Bear which was possibly the best bit of TV I've seen since This is England 88. But The Waldo Moment was still smart satire; occasionally chilling, always clever but never quite hitting the highs of the previous two episodes of this series.

The Waldo Moment is all about a computer generated character voiced by a down on his luck comedian who finds that taunting and teasing politicians is the best way to grab attention. The character Waldo quickly becomes popular and the team behind him decide to put him in the running for the election. His knob gags, foul mouth and crude humour win the attention of the public and his putting down of the politicians makes him a refreshing alternative to their manipulative fakery.

I noticed in the credits of the episode that this one was based on an original idea by Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker from when they were working on Nathan Barley. I never saw that show but love a lot of Chris Morris' old stuff like The Day Today and Brass Eye. Nathan Barley was on TV in 2005 and what immediately struck me about Waldo was that he was based on Sacha Baron Cohen's character Ali G from the 11 o Clock Show and his own later TV series.

The tackling of politicians with ignorance and silly humour, the idea that the character would not work if he was given his own show and guests knew what to expect of him, the comedian hiding behind a character and satire to attack politicians but without suggesting alternatives all struck me as an attack on Ali G. I personally loved Ali G and found his early interviews for the 11 o Clock show some of the funniest television I'd ever seen. It did all go down hill when he was given his own show and the guests were in on the joke from the start. Sacha Baron Cohen could also always be accused of hiding behind his characters and causing apathy by humiliating everyone from feminists, to Tories to foxhunters to hippies. No target is safe from his satire and its easy for hime to take the piss mercilessly out of any of them.

The Waldo Moment seems to suggest that the public are stupid and easily led enough to allow someone like Waldo or Ali G with no policies, no party allegiance and no clue to run our country. It shows how an icon can be manipulated by darker forces back stage who want to gain power and it shows how if people cannot trust politicians then they might just turn to the more entertaining and seemingly truthful option, even if he is just a silly big blue bear who keeps getting his computer generated cock out. All this might of course have absolutely nothing to do with Ali G and I might be completely wrong.

The ending was a bit too abrupt for my liking and went a bit far in its depiction of a disturbing dystopian future. Its warning seemed a bit too far fetched (I hope) and revealed Brooker's complete lack of faith in humanity.

I must add all the scenes on the high street were filmed in my home town of High Wycombe and I actually remember running past as they were filming one day. I wish I hadn't been in such a rush and had stopped to check it out now! The Waldo wagon had drew a little crowd and people certainly had been drawn to the big blue bear so perhaps Brooker's vision isn't so far fecthed!

The Waldo Moment may have been the worst episode in the series but it's still better than most TV and plenty thought provoking. If you haven't seen the second episode of this series, titled White Bear, go find it now! You can still watch it on 4oD right here for the nxt 20 days or so. The first season is also all brilliant and I recommend you watch it before Hollywood starts its production of remaking them! I hope they give Black Mirror a third series.

Did you see it? What did you think?

Fox Culls and NHS Staff: Stuff I know little about

In my continuing quest to make a career out of writing, I am trying to write for anyone, anywhere, anytime and that includes writing barely informed opinion pieces over at Yahoo. My first piece for the Yahoo Contributor Network was actually quite well informed seeing as I'm a teacher and it was all about how we should encourage our students to speak better in the classroom. I showed it to some of my students who had a good laugh when I told them that the article might just be about some of the people in the class. Anyway the article got on the front page of Yahoo and then got over 130, 000 hits in one weekend which is nearly as much as this blog has had over its whole two year lifespan! Here's the link if you fancy a read:

Why there is ‘nowt’ wrong with teaching children to speak proper English

I then wrote another piece on the calls for a fox cull to help get rid of urban foxes from towns and cities. This was a response to all the media coverage of the attack on the baby when a fox got in a house and nearly dragged a child away, thinking it was fair game to eat. Now I'm no expert on this subject but I gave it my best shot writing something about it as I do feel strongly that foxes should not be slaughtered just because one baby was attacked. Anyway here is the piece:

Foxes threatened by pitch fork carrying city folk in calls for cull

Then today I just found out my other fairly ill informed piece on NHS staff and whether services should be offered seven days a week got published. My Mum has been a nurse virtually her whole life so I felt quite strongly that NHS staff deserve to be treated better (just like teachers too I might add) but I also think the seven day service thing is a good idea. So that is what I wrote about. The last piece on foxes didn't make it to the front page so the stats on that were a lot lower than my first article but it will be interesting to see how this article on the NHS does over the next few days. I would appreciate it a hell of a lot if you would share it, tweet it and spread the word about it in any way you can! Here's the link:

Why the NHS should provide seven days of service, but also care for their staff better

If you want to follow my writing at the Yahoo Contributor Network, then please head over to my profile page and become a 'fan'.