Terminology

The hyperdermic needle theory suggests that we are passive to the media. As the name suggests, the media and it's ideologies are simply injected into our brain like a needle.

The opposing theory to this is called the "Uses and gratifications" theory. It suggests that we are active to the media and that we use it for our own uses (EG conversation material) and gratifications (For fun and entertainment)

Syntagm- the completed product (such as a completed magazine or dvd cover)

Avatar Trailer

20th Century Fox

Some of Fox's most popular films:

Star Wars, Ice Age, Garfield, Marley and Me, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Jennifer's Body, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and of course, Avatar.

Fox Film Corporation was formed in 1915 by a theatre pioneer William Fox by merging two of his companies he had established: Greater New York Film rental and Fox (or Box). A year after opening the campany had distributed the groundbreaking distributor 'Gertie the Dinosaur'.

20th century fox - Avatar

Directed and written by James Cameron, released in 17th December 09, but already has already won 2 golden globes and another 6 wins.
Genre: Action, Sciece-fiction, Adventure
http://www.avatarmovie.com/index.html

Exhibition
On IMDB it rates 8.7/10 and 37th in the site's top 250 films.
$77,025,481 (USA) (20 December 2009) (3,452 Screens)
£8,509,050 (UK) (20 December 2009) (503 Screens)
£18,404,659 (UK) (27 December 2009) gross to date

It has been said that 'after tomorrow, industry experts predict, 3D cinema will never be the same again.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/20/james-cameron-avatar-3d-film

"Wildly different reports have been published, ranging from $230 million (The New Yorker) to nearly $500 million (The New York Times). Avatar’s official budget lies somewhere in between, probably closest to the figure the Los Angeles Times’s John Horn and Claudia Eller cited earlier this month—$280 million for the production, plus marketing costs. “It is the most expensive film we’ve made, but now, having the luxury of hindsight, it is money well spent, so I’m not concerned about it,” James Gianopulos, co-chairman and C.E.O. of Fox Filmed Entertainment, told CNN in early December."
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/12/how-much-did-avatar-really-cost.html

Distribution
"In the UK alone, only around 320 out of 3,600 cinemas are digitally equipped, while in the US the ratio is even worse (2,500 out of 38,000). "So there is a big problem looming," admits Peter Buckingham, head of distribution and exhibition at the UK Film Council"

Production

“I wanted to create a familiar type of adventure in an unfamiliar environment, “ Cameron explains, “by setting the classic tale of a newcomer to a foreign land and culture on an alien planet. The story is by design classic in its broad strokes, but we have plenty of twists and turns in store for the audience. I’ve dreamed of creating a film like this, set on another world of great danger and beauty, since I was a kid reading pulp science fiction and comic books by the truckload."

Characters in the film were made using CG, resembling the actors who play them, but changing the main proportions of the human body to alien. The Na'vi eyes are twice the size, and further apart, they're much leaner, with longer necks and different bone and muscle structure, CG techniques made all of these creations possible as blue make-up would have made the skin opaque, instead with CG the characters can be given translucent skin which behaves like real skin. In which the pigment at the surface does not mask the red glow of the blood beneath, such as when strong sunlight hits the backs of the characters’ ears. All of these subtleties combine to allow the creation of seemingly living creatures.

Cameron revealed this project in 2005, seeming like the techniques were just around the corner, but at this time, Cameron was still concerned that the characters would not appear real, and would suffer from the disturbing “dead eye” effect seen in some early performance capture films. Camerons team went tonew teritory to ensure he complete reality of he character. This was done by using a newly devloped “image-based facial performance capture” system, which used a head-rig camera to accurately record the smallest nuances of the actors’ facial performances. Instead of using the motion capture technique of placing reflective markers on the actors’ faces to capture their expressions, the actors wore special headgear, like a football helmet to which a tiny camera was attached. The rig faced towards the actors’ faces and the camera recorded facial expression and muscle movements to a degree never before possible. Most importantly, the camera recorded eye movement, which had not been the case with previous systems.

"Another innovation created especially for AVATAR was the Virtual Camera, which allowed Cameron to shoot scenes within his computer-generated world, just as if he were filming on a Hollywood soundstage. Through this virtual camera, the director would see not Zoë Saldana, but her 10-foot tall blue-skinned character, Neytiri. Instead of Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, he would see their giant blue avatars, complete with tails and huge golden eyes. And instead of the austere gray space of the Volume, he would see the lush rainforest of Pandora, or perhaps the floating Hallelujah Mountains, or the human colony at Hell’s Gate.

After working out the details of how to exactly capture the actor’s performances, the next step was to enlist the aid of Peter Jackson’s Academy AwardÒ-winning visual effects powerhouse WETA Digital, in New Zealand. WETA’s groundbreaking photo-real characters like Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings,” and the utterly real-seeming King Kong, led Cameron to believe that they could breathe life into his Na’vi characters" http://bookmarqc.com/8khakis/k7/avatar-production-notes/

The Website

Slumdog has it's own website - http://www.slumdogmillionairemovie.co.uk/

This helped the promotion of the film before it's release, giving information about the film, listing the cast and crew, synopsis, videos of parts of the film and trailer, and also downloads for all the fans of he film. Catering for everyone's need. An introduction is played before entering the actual site, showing off the awards and quotes from papers and magazines of it's success, with the familiar colours from the trailer and posters, so the audience can familiarise themselves with the film's connotations. As the audience watches all these things, the infamous song 'Jai Ho' which helped the film in so many ways, and was released in the charts is played, and in fact, once in the website itself, the whole album is there to be listened to. These are all features of a 2.0 technological convergence.

Technological Convergence

Technological convergence - the tendency for different technological systems to evolve towards performing similar tasks. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_convergence). Two types of technological - 1.0 which is passive/the 'old' analogue way of technology, and 2.0 which is the 'new'/interactive way of technology, things like blogs, the red button on television and facebook.

Proliferation of exchange - 'Proliferation'= Increase. 'Exchange'= Unintended websites, fanclubs and blogs made from the film.

Advantages - Youtube, Facebook, other networking sites, blogs and fan clubs. Word of mouth help promote the film.

Disadvantages - Digital downloads, people make copies of movie and sell. Lower profits made from the film.

Slumdog Millionaire used a new method in constructing the film. To save money, the production team focused on the editing and used hand-held cameras to shoot the film. They used a camera called a Innovative SI-2K Digital Cinema Camera which allows them to film in small spaces normally unable to normally allow Hollywood's massive cameras. This shows the production technological convergence.

The Trailer.