LO1 - Task 1

Ownership: Script 

My name is Lewis Wright and I’m here to talk to you about the world of movie production on behalf of educationwise.

Let’s start by talking out independent companies. Whilst many other companies are part of major conglomerates, Independent companies are often more arty and whilst they do still want to earn a profit, because money is a pretty important part of modern society, they tend to be in the business for the sake of being good at it. Take Warp Films for example, it’s not highly likely you’ve heard of many of their films, I mean, you might have seen four lions but it wasn’t really advertised or distributed that much. However if I asked you if you’ve seen any of the Transformers films you’d probably say yes.

Independent business’s often have to take part in joint ventures for big projects. This is often because due to their smaller size and often lower budget, the companies are limited in what they can do by themselves. And so by joining together they can make something even better. An example of this is warp films who very often team up with film4. One example of a film that was a joint venture was Ben Wheatley's "kill list".  Wheatley co-wrote and directed the film under the funding of warp films and film4 and whilst it only made £111,682, which is quite a low amount for a film, the film received multiple awards and was nominated for many more garnering it a critical success. Raise your hand if you know what a conglomerate is … now lower them because I’m a video and can’t see what you’re doing… idiots. For those of you who are unclear a conglomerate is basically a pie. You see a pie is made out of different slices, all of which are fine are fine on their own,but when they’re all together make something even better. Rupert Murdoch is the owner of fox and has a net worth of over 12.5 billion. Because of how long he's been making money and expanding his business he now owns two major conglomerates: Newscorp and 21st century fox 

Operating models

The nextx thing we will be looking at are operating models, which sound simple but actually have much mroe to them: did you know for example companies have 2 different types of integration: horizontal and vertical , but to understand them we first need to understand the 3 stages of a company releasing a product. Stage one is production so that's the actually creation of the product, it could be actually filming for a film or building something like a toy or gadget or writing a book. Then you have stage 2, the distribution, in which you take the take the product and get it out to the masses. Then there's the third final and possibly most important stage: exchange, this is when the company gives the product to public in exchange for something which is almost always money. 

 Vertical and Horizontal integration are basically the different ways of which a company can go about completing a project, seeing as each smaller company like a subsidiary or an independent company can't find funding to complete the whole process by themselves, usually either focussing on either production or distribution, they need to come together with other companies for a joint venture or as I like the call it "the big fun super happy company friends game". 

Both forms of integration are a variation on this, with horizontal being when it happens with companies that you aren't part of a conglomerate with, making it the only option for independent companies, and vertical being when you complete the whole process from within the conglomerate. Vertical integration is the most economically friendly option seeing as it will allow you do everything for cheaper as you are all part of the same company and the profits will be equally useful to all subsidiaries who took part in the process. It's like buying a pizza for yourself or with friends, if you do it with friends it costs less, but then you also get less (*holds up a slice of pizza) and if you do it by yourself, it'll cost more but be worth it in the end (*takes a mouthful of the pizza). 

Conglomerates can use horizontal integration, whenever they have joint ventures with parent companies for example, but usually they'll stick to vertical integration, because it makes a lot more money  

To find out about Warp x you must first cast your mind back to 2005, when the Digital Screen Network was founded. It was founded to try and combat the fact that the only films available to see in cinema were blockbuster American action films. They thought to try and create more variety they needed to allow smaller independent film companies to be able to distribute their products easier. Thereby they introduced digital film projectors to most cinemas across the UK; this made it cheaper for smaller companies to distribute their films as they did not need to create large quantities of expensive film. 

Warp x is the sister company to warp films. Their job is to convert all of Warp film's products from film to digital and then distribute it to cinemas both local like the showroom and national like Odeon or Cineworld.  

Products

Warp films is in a parent company with warp records and a sister company with warp x and  until recently only made one product, films. However they have now started to venture into strange and exciting territory with a brand spanking new TV show called "the last panthers"  being released on sky atlantic and another show called "southcliffe" and whilst these aren't the first TV shows they've made, it'll be the first that didn't start of as a film. Of course I'm on about the "This is England" series, which has already had 2 series: "This is England '86" and "'88". the series is set to finish this year with the release of "This is England '90" concluding the story of the characters.

They have also released 2 documentaries, both following popular bands, with the first being a, warp favourite, Shane Meadows featuring the rolling stones, their rise to fame and their 2012 reunion tour. And the second as Richard Ayoade presenting the final gig of the arctic monkeys renowed 2007 tour.  

In total Warp have released 17 feature films, all of which are very niche and unconventional projects and while rates of commercial success have varied all of which have gathered critical acclaim and a cult following. Whilst for many studios an income the size of warp's would be a massive failure, their use of low budgets and horizontal integration means that it doesn't have as much of a negative effect if a film makes a low box office.

First up it's "independent productions", who have adapted several novels to films already including "we need to talk about Kevin, which was released to critical acclaim. This will help them attract a new market as people who have already read the novels would be interested to see an on screen adaptation. However their have been a few original projects with "the falling" a new film starring Masie Williams (Game of thrones) being the brainchild of writer and director Carol Morley. Though it was a critical success The falling only scraped together £359,082, which when considering it's probably one of the company's best known films isn't alot. Warp Films most successful project "This is England" grossed a worldwide profit of $8,155,222 absolutely dwarfing that of "the falling".

It also put warp on a lot of people's radars making them pay attention and give a lot of their films a chance,

this lead to a lot of their films being more successful and receiving a higher box office, e.g. Four Lions. 

So in short, though Independent productions do a have a strong set of films  

Another independent film company posing a possible threat to warp films is the equally pretentiously named 

Big Buddha films (*Logo flashes up on screen with a popping sound effect). They specialise in producing

short films to be released 

Market Position

Warp films is one of the most well established and successful independent film companies in Britain (or even the world). They have managed to release 17 feature films and won multiple awards including Baftas (*audience applauding sound clip) making them a critics favourite and often highly anticipated projects. Their current net worth sits at around £482,200 pounds and is only expected to go up as the company expands. Each year the company raises an increasing amount with their 2014 income being 50.9% higher than 2013’s.