Why do people choose to go to the cinema? There's so much other choice out there now - online streaming services, catch-up TV, DVDs, and of course, piracy, all of which you can enjoy from the comfort of your own sofa on a device the size of your palm. So why are people braving the British weather to venture out to a cinema and spend £15+ on a ticket and overpriced popcorn?
Simple really - the film industry would not exist without a paying audience. People choose to go to the cinema because they want to be entertained and transported to another world for an hour and a half. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 attracted audiences in their millions, proving to be the biggest opening weekend of 2014, earning $123 million.
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Hunger Games Trailer
However, this was significantly less than the $150 million that Lionsgate had predicted, and even less than how the previous instalments of the saga performed.
Also, according to the latest figures from 2013 in the BFI Statistical Yearbook 2014, although cinema attendance in the UK has remained fairly stable since 2002, there was a 4% decline in cinema tickets in 2013 than in 2012, from 172.5 million tickets down to 165.5 million in 2013. In light of this, Doug Trumbull, who is an Academy Award winning visual effects master behind films like 2001: A Space-Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, argues that because less people of a younger audience are less inclined to venture out to the cinema, something needs to change to get those audiences back: "[The studios] want to make movies that are completely compatible with all media - if you make "Noah", it has to play on a Smartphone. And young people aren't going to the theatres; there's a tremendous dropoff. The whole rationale for the multiplex theatre doesn't exist anymore. So if theatres are going to survive, it had to be a much more spectacular experience"
(Interview from Indiewire)
This is one of the main reasons the film industry has invested a lot in the idea of 'spectacle' in recent years, as these are the films that tend to earn the studios more money. This is explained by Stephen Soderbergh in his address at the San Fransisco Film Festival in 2013 where he discussed the current state of cinema: "The most profitable movies for the studios are the big movies… psychologically it’s more comforting to spend $60 million to promote a movie that cost $100 million than spending $60 million on a movie that cost $10 million. Here’s why. $10 million movie, $60 million to promote it, that’s $70 million, so you’ve got to gross $140 million to get out. Now for a $100 million movie that costs $60 million to promote it, you’ve got to get $320 to get out. How many $10 million movies make $140 million? Not many. How many $100 million movies make $320 million? A pretty big number."
Stephen Soderbergh, SFFF 2013. (Source)
For example, Gravity cost an estimated $100 million to make, and made a over $700 million.
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Gravity has been recognised globally for its technical and astounding visual effects, scooping up 7 Oscars earlier this year, including Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. The trailer itself for the film was released in 2K resolution as an alternative to the standard 720p or 1080p on Youtube.
This is what the cinema landscape appears to be attempting to do at the moment. Arguably, most of the top Box Office films for last year all feature some element of 'spectacular', either featuring VFX, 3D or animation.
Throughout the next three or four months, this will blog will attempt to explore how beneficial and worthwhile 'spectacle' is considered within the industry, focusing on the technological aspect of creating the 'spectacle', and what affect this is having on the film industry.
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