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CSP 15: Chicken

Links to refer to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(2015_film)

https://getrevising.co.uk/diagrams/film-chicken

https://www.bgoodpicturecompany.com/chicken

https://quizlet.com/354561091/csp-chicken-2015-flash-cards/

Review: Joe Stephenson's Chicken - The State Of The Arts : The State Of The  Arts
Chicken on Twitter: "Where are you seeing Chicken? Find a showing near you  and book tickets today at https://t.co/g35DMo2WlV!… "

Overview:

– It is a play by Joe Stephenson

– The film follows 15 year old Richard, who has learning difficulties and often falls victim of brother Polly’s aggressive and violent mood swings

– Richard find is easier to communicate with animals, especially his pet hen, Fiona

– He forms a strong friendship with rebellious seventeen-year-old Annabel, whose family have recently acquired the farm that Polly and Richard live on

Chicken had its world premiere on 27 June 2015 Edinburgh International Film Festival.

– The film had its international premiere in competition at the 2015 Busan International Film Festival, followed by screenings at the New Hampshire International Film Festival, Giffoni International Film Festival, Cine A La Vista International Film Festival, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Schlingel International Film Festival and Dublin International Film Festival.

– It eventually received a limited theatrical release in the UK on 20 May 2016.

– It was then acquired by MUBI UK, and had its British TV premiere on FilmFour April 2017. It received its DVD and Blu-ray  released by Network on 18 September 2017.

– In order to make Chicken, director Joe Stephenson raised £110,000. He raised this entirely through investment by individuals (e.g. rich friends/contacts)

– No funding body (e.g. BFI Film Fund) was willing to fund Chicken

– Raises questions about whether film industry is accessible to lower-income filmmakers

– Adapted from a play by Freddie Machin that originally ran at Southwark Playhouse.

– Filmed in 19 days, almost all external locations so victim to rain, issues with lighting etc.

– Film produced and distributed by a new company set up by director Stephenson: B Good Picture Company.

Awards and Critics Reviews

– Grand Jury Award for Narrative Feature — Joe Stephenson (New Hampshire Film Festival 2015)

– Silver Griffoni Award for Best Film – Generation 18+ (2nd Prize) — Joe Stephenson & B Good Picture Company (Giffoni Film Festival 2016)

Award for Best Film — Chicken (Cine A La Vista International Film Festival 2016)

– Scott Chamber’s performance as Richard got a Special Critic’s Circle mention (Dublin International Film Festival 2016)The film was shortlisted for Best Director (Joe Stephenson) and Best Newcomer (Scott Chambers) by the British Independent Film Awards.

– CineVue praised the film and mentioned that it is “the sort of British indie which restores faith in cinema”.

Chicken received positive reviews and holds a 100% “Certified Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 12 critic reviews. 

– Leslie Felperin of The Guardian gave the film 3/5 stars and said “first-time director Joe Stephenson elicits lively, empathic performances from his small cast.”

– Mark Kermode rated the film at four out of five stars stating that Scott Chambers’ performance is “superb”.

–  Anna Smith of Empire magazine gave the film a rating of four stars, responding that the film is “an enjoyable, involving British Drama with and impressive turn from newcomer Scott Chambers.

– With a three-star rating from Cath Clarke of Time Out, she commented that Chicken is “an impressively acted British Drama about a young man with learning difficulties

Technology within Chicken

– Alongside film festivals, new technology was vital to promoting Chicken to a wider audience: Some traditional marketing: trailer, film poster with review quotes etc.

– Social media very important to market film – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.

– Film available on-demand now; Stephenson hoping for deal with Netflix or Amazon Prime to bring in revenue and find wider audience.

– Film4 shows mainstream films, as well as arthouse films that are aimed at niche audiences. Film4 was a good choice because it meant that a wider range of people would have seen Chicken – as well as those within the target audience.

– MUBI chose this film to be featured on the service because of the fact that the film being critically acclaimed and winning several awards at various film festivals. MUBI most likely wanted to invest in the distribution of Chicken due to its rising success and it receiving more recognition.

– ‘Chicken’ was released in the US exclusively on iTunes early 2018, and continues to maintain its 100% Fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating.

– As well iTunes, it is now available in the US & UK on Amazon Prime

– The director, Joe Stephenson, used the power of New Digital Media (the internet) to keep control over his product through both marketing and distribution

– The critic reviews served as a source of free advertisement for the film

– Official trailer available on YouTube, as well as being embedded in Chicken’s own website. This helps to promote the film virally, encouraging a broader audience as YouTube is accessible globally. Comments and likes help to produce a buzz as well as building a community around the film and providing it with free advertisement (positive comments and likes.)

– It is a form of conventional film marketing, which is Trailers, teaser posters, theatrical posters, billboards, magazine features.

– Chicken used Influencer marketing – where focus is placed on gaining and then using the opinion of influential people rather than the larger target market. It identifies individuals that have influence over potential consumers, and shapes marketing activities around persuading these influencers whose recommendations are known to shape the behaviour of others (Two Step Flow).

– Viral marketing is applied to Chicken. Viral marketing is intending to set up a word of mouth spread by creating pages that appear to be real – that of the Blair Witch is the most famous – where a website made the myth appear real and one that is currently being investigated.

– Chicken uses social media. The website, social media pages, as well as the official trailer on YouTube, are all linked together.
– Website is a portal with links to streaming services; so people can actually see the film (whatever their geographical location – broadens audience)

– Website also links to social media platforms which helps to make the audience feel connected to the product (engages them) and builds a sense of community around it.

– The synergy between all of them is that they are showing the main character in all the trailers and film posters.

– These review are important from people like Mark Kermode  because these people are seen to be opinion leaders which people follow.

– Chicken uses social media to create and maintain interest in the film because people use social media a lot so they can connect with them easily.

– Both the poster and film trailer use the same font for the title ‘Chicken’. The colour scheme is also the same and the picture used on the film poster is from one of the scenes shown in the trailer. Furthermore, both the poster and trailer also feature film reviews about the film and the names of the film festivals where the movie was shown.

– The Chicken twitter account is constantly tweeting. Recently, they had been tweeting a countdown for the release of the film in the US and Canada. This maintains the interest of the film as audiences are constantly reminded of the film.

– The Chicken Facebook page uploads pictures and videos of scenes from the film. This intrigues the audience. Furthermore, they also upload reviews from film critics, such as Mark Kermode and magazines such as Empire.

– The Chicken Facebook page has liked the pages- @ArtHouseCrouchEnd, @Everymancinemas, @LittleWhiteLies, etc. This suggests that the target audience of the film are middle class white men and women who enjoy art house films, where the cinematography has been taken in to account and the story line is very different from typical cinema movies.

– The key purpose of the website is to link people to where they can watch the movie depending on where they live. This includes iTunes for those in the US and Canada and Amazon Instant Video, Film Doo and Volta for those in the UK and Ireland. This suggests that the influence of new technology means that audiences mostly stream and watch movies on demand rather than going out and buying a DVD.

Livingstone and Lunt and Chicken

– Chicken is a film in the style of social realism. It depicts two brothers, the younger of which is disabled, who run into conflict with the owners of the farmland on which they live.

– The BBFC works to protect audiences from discriminatory language regarding disability.

– Due to the depiction of a sensitive topic and the particular narrative involved, Stephenson may have run into issues when attempting to tell the story without using such language in the script, particularly the dialogue of the new landowners.

– This is representative of the struggle theorised by Livingstone and Lunt.

Curran/Seaton and Chicken

– If we consider the marketing of Chicken and its political values, those of which are oppositional to many of those in the mainstream media industry, we can see that despite the limited funding, creativity in the marketing indicates the cultural pessimism of Curran does not mean products outside such media institutions have to fail or cannot compete at a different level for audiences.

– It could be argued that the fact the film is outside the mainstream of media institutions allows it greater degree of freedom in its message and marketing.

Chicken Mind Map

HESMONDHALGH AND TV

How do media companies maximize profit and minimize risk

HESMONDHALGHDEUTSCHLAND 83 AND CAPITAL
Star formattingCapital stars Toby Jones, who goes on to star in many other different episodes that the audience may recognise.
Television HybridisationCapital is a program that is a hybridisation of crime drama with social realism
SerialismAn spin off prequel of Deutschland 83, called Deutschland 89 was released in 2020.
GlobalisationDeutschland 83 is an American-German program that was shown locally on German TV, the BBC4 and a partnership is currently being created with Netflix.
RemakesThe program is being remade with Netflix through Anna Winger on a spin off which tells the story of a Jewish woman who flees her arranged marriage and religious community to start a new life abroad.
InternationalismDeutschland 83 is a German TV program, that became very popular in America and has been translated for these purposes.
Technological AdvancementsDeutschland 83 is available on BBC 4, which is on TV as well as a website, so it can be accessed on any device.
Artificial ScarcityDeutschland 83 is only available on the local German network and BBC 4, which will make the audience go onto the channel and discover new, similar channels, thus creating more awareness of other programmes published by the media institution.
Publicity functionsCapital has been widely advertised, such as the starts were included in interviews and other media sources, such as newspapers focused very heavily on the programme.
Independent StylizingIn Deutschland 83, the Germans are presented in a very positive way, although the programme was set in 1983, way after WW1/2, where a pejorative viewpoint has been held among the Germans.

CSP 14 and 4: TV

Deutschland 83 and Capital

Capital:

Media Language:

– A complex mainstream television product in which the codes and conventions of crime drama are intertwined with aspects of social realism

Media representation:

– Capital provides a wide range of representational areas to explore; the family, place, nation, class, ethnicity, race and issues.

– Explore the Steve Neale’s representation theory

– It is within the hybrid genre – drama, social realism and
crime genres

– Representation of place – London and by implication, the nation

– Analysis of how the representations convey values, attitudes and beliefs about the world

Media Industries:

– Capital is a BBC programme

– It fulfils the demand of public service broadcasting

– It has a purpose to ‘inform, educate and entertain’ and could be seen as part of the need to represent different groups, nations and regions.

– Capital is a Kudos production for the BBC, an independent company which also produces
successful programmes for other broadcasters.

– Kudos specialises in TV series which can be sold or remade for the US market, making it
typical of contemporary media institutions which operate globally rather than nationally

Media Audiences:

– The production, distribution and circulation of Capital shows how audiences can be reached, both on a national and global scale, through different media technologies and platforms, moving from the national to transnational through broadcast and digital technologies

– Follows Gerbner’s cultivation theory

– Follows Hall’s reception theory

– The way in which different audience interpretations reflect social, cultural and historical circumstances is evident in the analysis of Capital which is explicitly linked to contemporary issues.

– The advertising campaigns (trailers, websites at home and abroad) for the series demonstrate how media producers target, attract and potentially construct audiences

Deutschland 83:

Narrative:

– How does the use of the narrative conventions of the spy thriller and crime drama – use of enigmas, binary oppositions, restricted and omniscient narration etc. – position the
audience?

– The narrative of Deutschland 83 has been controversial – particularly in Germany -through its use of binary oppositions to contrast East and West Germany

– The role of the hero and effect of audience alignment with Martin Rauch, a Stasi Officer

– The narrative of Deutschland 83 can be defined as postmodern in its self-reflexive style

– Narratology including Todorov

Genre:

– Conventions of the TV series and the way in which this form is used to appeal to
audiences

– Definition of the series as belonging to the spy thriller genre

– Conventions of the period drama and reasons for its popularity

– Analysing the use of specific genres to discuss wider issues in society

– Genre theory including Neale

Media Representations:

– Representation of national and regional identity (East and West Germany (Europe))

– Representation of gender: male hero and spy, the female ‘love interest’ etc., the way
characters signify wider issues in society.

– Analysis of how the representations convey values, attitudes and beliefs about the world –
both contemporary and past.

– Theories of representation including Hall

– Feminist theories including bell hooks and Van Zoonen (role of women)

Media Industries:

– It is a co-production of AMC Networks’ SundanceTV and RTL Television (German and
American), positioning it to exploit the national and global market.

– Bought by C4 in Britain as part of their ‘Walter presents…’

– Cultural industries including Hesmondhalgh

Media Audiences:

– The production, distribution and circulation of Deutschland 83 shows how audiences can be reached, both on a national and global scale, through different media technologies and platforms, moving from the national to transnational through broadcast and digital technologies.

– The way in which different audience interpretations reflect social, cultural and historical circumstances is evident in the analysis of the series which are explicitly linked to contemporary issues.

– The reception of the series in Germany, Europe and the US

– The advertising campaigns (trailers, websites at home and abroad) for the series demonstrate how media producers target, attract and potentially construct audiences.

– Cultivation theory including Gerbner

– Reception theory including Hall

Research

– Commercial media = organisation that makes or distributes products for economic gain. Media is usually made for entertainment purposes

– BBC creates a total revenue of £115 million = https://www.bbc.co.uk/annualreport/2014/executive/finances/commercial.html

– Kudos creates £5m in commercial interest rates = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudos_(production_company)

– Horizontal Integration = BBC has horizontal integration with BBC News, BBC radio 1

– Endemol Shine Productions UK bought out and now own Kudos the production company

– Vertical integration = BBC has vertical integration with CBBC, BBC 1, BBC 2, BBC 3 and BBC news

– Media concentration/convergence = describes the reduction in the number of media organisations that produce products

– Media concentration/convergence = Kudos is owned by Endemol Shine Group UK, who are under the News Corp, who are then under Murdoch and his empire.

NEWSPAPER TO TV CSP

Bullet points identified from Curran and Seaton:

– The numerous radical press pamphlets and small scale newspapers of the Victorian Era, Curran argues, were engines for social and political change.

– Curran and Seaton suggest that a second and equally turbulent wave of ownership consolidation took place in the latter half of the 20th century

– Money wins, while both audience size and audience share determine content

– Peak time schedules are dominated by the lighter entertainment formats, whereas less popular minority interest products are sidelined to secondary channels or late night slots

– There was much to celebrate at the outset of the internet’s invention in terms of its potential to challenge the top down nature of traditional media.

– Radio 4 is only 1 of a few UK based radio stations that are dominated by spoken work broadcasting

– Commercial media has not been able to dominate UK television and radio markets completely

– Media formats that are successful are replicated to deliver to mass audiences. For example, the Great British Bake Off has morphed into the Great British Sewing Bee

– Curran and Seaton argue that the Uk government policy is responsible in part, for the widespread domination of the media landscape by huge conglomerates.

Comparison of Deutschland and other TV

CATEGORYFAMILIARITIESDIFFERENCESTHEORY
CHARACTERSDeutschland’83 – The detective who has a ‘natural’ instinct for law and order
Basic characters of the Hero of Martin and Princess of Annett

Capital –


Capital – Petunia is a victim as she has a tumour
PROPP
NARRATIVEBoth end with a cliff hanger or mystery for what will follow.

Deutschland – The first episode often introduces a lot of different characters
Being trapped in unfamiliar place at end of episode
Family always separated

TODOROV
THEMESThe use of binary oppositions around familiar themes: family, community, law and order, justice.
One person saving many of East Berlin

Capital – Has themes of family, unity and loss
LEVI-STRAUSS
REPRESENTATIONReactionary representations of police, family, law and order, urban/rural
Different view of Communism as good SEMIOTIC
TECHNICAL CODES / LANGUAGE OF MOVING IMAGE (music, setting, props, lighting, use of camera, editing etc)Opening montage sequence that often gives clues as to the whole series – themes, locations, characters, events etc.