Monday, 5 October 2015

UK Film Industry



The UK film industry has been creating more films and more creative jobs now than ever before. With recent hits like Paddington Bear, which charmed audiences around the world, creating over £131 million at the box office making it the highest grossing family movie outside Hollywood. The UK has been receiving millions in investments from Hollywood executives and companies such as Disney using the UK as a base for their remake of Cinderella as well as the next installment of the Star Wars series. Other future hits are being film in the UK this year, Impossible 5 and the new James Bond – Spectre. The James Bond and Harry Potter series have been two of the highest grossing film series of all time, the UK must be doing something right!

Household names and good writers is not the only factor in creating a successful film, “Britain is one of the world leaders in visual effects. But also we shouldn’t forget the carpenters, wig makers, costume designers and all the other support. We’re a hugely creative country.” Commented Andrew Smith from Pinewood Studios. The recent success of Gravity, which won six Baftas and seven Oscars last year, was filmed and made entirely in Britain. Having their sets at Pinewood and Shepperton Studios and their groundbreaking visual effects created by Framestore. 

“There’s a real buzz in the UK at the moment, the tax relief has settled down and people can see it’s secure. When you’re making big budget movies or TV shows, you need security. The UK has become such a big hub for production — more and more companies are coming here.” Said Stephen Bristow, a member of the film and TV unit at accountancy firm Saffery Champness. The UK has created some of the highest grossing films of all time which have huge budgets, however the UK film industry also includes a thriving low budget sector with films such as Searching for Sugarman. Below are some bullet points quoted from a website (with the link to at the bottom of this blog post).

   The UK film with highest global gross (under £1m, Jan 2008 to Aug 2014) was Searching For Sugarman.
   Between January 2008 and August 2014, there were 1,419 films made in the UK budgeted under £1 million
   Only 7 of these grossed over £1 million in cinemas worldwide
   0.17% of the 1,190 UK films made on under £500k grossed over £1 million worldwide.
   20% of UK films budgeted under £1 million grossed at least £1 in any cinema around the world.
   That figure drops to 16% for films under £500k and 10% for films budgeted under £150k.
   Rotten Tomatoes provides data on just 24% of UK films budgeted under £500k and Metacritic only rated 4% of the same group.

Between the years of 2008 and 2014, there were 1,419 low budget films created in the UK with a budget under £1 million. Seven of those films grossed over £1 million; two of them, Marley and Weekend had a budget cost of under £500k.

Overall, the UK film industry is thriving in both high and low budget films. There are an increasing number of specialist jobs of all kinds within the creative industry, allowing for productions to fully take shape with numbers of people with different outlooks.

Below are links to websites where I did my research for this blog post.    



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