Skyfall Research

Skyfall is the 23rd James Bond film made. It was directed by Sam Mendes (director of Jarhead, American Beauty) The film premiered on the 23rd of October at the Royal Albert Hall. The films release was on the same day of the 50th anniversary of the James Bond movies. At first MGM were experiencing financial issues with funding for Skyfall but they didn't stop the movie being made. The film has an estimated budget of $150 million and has since made back approximately $96,600,000 back. A third of this is supposedly came solely from product placement deals. Filming began in November 2011 and took place in the UK, China and Turkey.

                                                                                         (Trailer for Skyfall)
The film was advertised through many different outlets such as trailers, billboards, etc. This gave the film an incredible amount of exposure setting it up to make the film the UK's second highest weekend debut ever behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows part 2. The Skyfall trailer which aired on ITV, Film 4, NBC and many other channels also contributing into the excellent Marketing behind the film. The trailer was also uploaded onto YouTube, where it has nearly 11 million views. Skyfall also has a Twitter and Facebook page, using social networking as a marketing tool. There is also a website for Skyfall, allowing people without Twitter and Facebook to access to videos, downloads and news from the set.

                                                                                             (Skyfall billboard)
The film premiered at Royal Albert hall on the 23rd of October. A live stream was made available on the YouTube allowing everyone with internet access to watch the happenings. It was also announced that the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall would attend the premiere. This created more buzz around the film and got more people talking about it.

                                                                                             (Adele - Skyfall)
Adele was approached to write and perform the theme song for the film. She recorded and wrote this song with her regular collaborator Paul Epworth. The song was released on the 5th of October at 0:07 and is being sold for 99p. The fact that the song is also quite cheap in terms of how much singles are sold for, this means more people will buy the song and more people will be aware of the film. The song reached to number 1 in the UK and number 8 in the US and almost 50 million views on YouTube. Adele is currently at her peak in her career and having her sing the theme tune is great publicity for Skyfall.

Creating an Ad campaign - Twitter

Facebook and Twitter are currently the most popular social networking websites in the world. Facebook having over 1 billion users worldwide and Twitter having over 500 million. Social networking is a crucial part of marketing in present time. Advertisement online is important as everything is now going online and more and more people are using the internet everyday. It can really help determine whether a movie does well or not. Due to this we made both a Facebook and Twitter page to boost our swedes YouTube views.

Planning for our own Swede

We began planning our swede by discussing what Films would be good to recreate. We went back and forth with ideas of films. All of us came to the agreement of Scream as we had all seen the film before and were relatively familiar with it. Together we watched clips from the original movie and decided that the opening scene would be easiest to recreate as it is simple and very iconic.

We then started to allocate the roles our group would fulfill. Layla was the only blonde in our group, so we immediately thought the lead would be an appropriate role for her and she was happy in taking this role. Myself and Emma wanted to direct and do the camera work, so Dionne took the role of Ghost Face. I contributed the voice for Ghost Face.

We noticed that the popcorn is quite a important prop to the opening scene of Scream so we bought some, we then improvised and used a cardboard box as a frying pan. We decided to make a mask for Dionne out of paper and Emma drew on it. The costume we gave Dionne to wear for Ghost Face was this paper mask and a black bin liner.

The setting of the opening scene starts with Drew Barrymore in the kitchen making some popcorn. Luckily we were able to film in a kitchen in the college. We later filmed in a corridor in the college. There is screaming in the film so we had to ask the teachers around the area we were filming if we could shoot Layla doing so. We also had to have a time-keeper as we only had that lesson to film our swede.

Creating an Ad campaign - Poster

This is the poster I made for our swede of Scream. I used the original poster as inspiration for this photo. I used paint for add red lipstick to the black and white photo.

Skyfall Research

Skyfall is the 23^rd James Bond film from MGM, Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment. Although initially having financial difficulties, the film has an estimated budget of $150 million (approximately £93million) and a third of this is reported to have come from product placement deals. I have found that some of the advertisements, including those advertising these products, are shown on television after 9pm on channels such as Sky Atlantic and Channel 4.

The companies that are partners with the film include OPI, VisitBritain, Sony, Omega, Coca-Cola Zero and Heineken. This information can be found on Skyfall’s official website. The website also includes images, videos and downloads.

These adverts can also be accessed on Youtube which is another way for Skyfall to gain a larger audience. The Youtube account also shows video clips from the film and past James Bond films. So far the ‘jamesbond007’ account has 14,722 subscribers and over 13,000,000 video views.

Youtube was also used to air the première of Skyfall live (shown here) this gave everyone with internet the chance to see many interviews with the cast and production team. The première  which was held at the Royal Albert Hall, was also on the date of the 50^th anniversary of the very 1^st James Bond movie which helped to gain a lot more press, as well as this, producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli announced that the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall would be attending the première.

Youtube is also a great platform to advertise the soundtrack of the film which is sung by multi-award winning singer, Adele. The soundtrack can easily be found on Youtube in the music section along with the most viewed songs of the week.
The song can also be found on iTunes and costs 99p. The song, which was first premièred on Adele's website, managed to top the iTunes chart within 10 hours of release. 

The internet also promotes the film on various news websites that share the latest information about the film. Some of the websites are shown below.

Among these websites are some that promote the film through competitions, they offer a chance to win tickets to the premiere, win a holiday abroad and various different merchandise. The slideshow below shows some of these websites. 

Some of the merchandise promoting Skyfall include a fragrance, USB stick, special edition Sony laptops, soundtrack and the ‘Bond on set: filming Skyfall’ book. The previous James Bond films are also on stands in many stores that highlight the 50th anniversary of them. This draws attention to the new release while people are grocery shopping.

Skyfall has also be advertised in newspaper, below are some examples of advertisement in the week before the release of the film. They include cast interviews and information on the premiere. Here are some examples of this:

I have found many photo billboards around London with advertisements of Skyfall, they also appear on the side of buses and at bus stops. Some of the images of these are shown below.

The film itself was released on Friday 26^th October and is available to watch in many cinemas including; ODEON, Cineworld, Vue and independent cinemas. In some UK cinemas, the film was prepared to be shown over 30 times in one day; almost 100 times in the opening weekend. 

Research on Swedes

The dark Knight Sweded

Edward Scissorhands Sweded

Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory

These swedes gave me inspiration for our swede because each of these use an impressive range of props to replicate the original film. I also enjoyed them, because each of these stick to many of the original scenes from the original films, however they add elements of comedy which make them interesting and entertaining to watch. Many of the costumes designed and worn in these swedes effectively portray the character they are mimicking.

Research on Production, Distribution, Marketing and Exhibition

FILM INDUSTRY

Production: This is the process of making a film. It involves an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a film release and exhibition.

Distribution: The intermediary between production and exhibition and involves the following functions: sales, that is, the securing of rental contracts for specific play dates; advertising directed to theatres through trade publications and to filmgoers through the print and electronic media; the physical delivery of prints to theatres, and the method of release.

Marketing: This is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers. Every film has to have a marketing plan: Who what when where how, Strategies to motivate audiences interest/awareness and taking advantage of the Media, publicity, promotions and the internet. Examples of how marketing is used in the Film industry are: Trailers, Interviews, Billboards, Newspaper adverts, related Merchandise.

Exhibition: This is the retail branch of the film industry. It involves not the production or the distribution of motion pictures, but their public screening, usually for paying customers in a site devoted to such screenings. What the exhibitor sells is the experience of a film (and, frequently, concessions like soft drinks and popcorn) because exhibitors to some extent control how films are programmed, promoted, and presented to the public, they have considerable influence over the box-office success and, more importantly, the reception of films.