Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

• Who funds production and what are the financial/artistic ambitions of the industry/film in question?

In contemporary Hollywood there are many ways that a production can get funded from anything through from investors to sales and marketing.

The main way that Hollywood productions get funded is through the film studios and their interest in the films that they are willing to put forward. Film studios become the investors in the film and they are presented a whole package and from this they decide if the like it or not and whether they are willing to take it forward into production but mainly they do so if the producers like it then they will take this forward and 9 times out of 10 this happens.

There are many companies that can become investors in the modern day in Hollywood and they include MGM, Twentieth century fox, Universal, Paramount and DreamWorks just to name a few with four out of the “big five” from the golden age existing to this current day.

When looking at financial/artistic ambitions of what the film and film company want to achieve it has to be pretty big scale mainly to make up all the money that they have spent making on that film and more so that they make a profit from things. Hollywood films are the most artistic in my opinion of this day and age and they achieve this through many things; Hollywood is prevalent for its big name stars and its gripping storylines but they have the authentic way of letting you live the life of the stars through them which, thoroughly, no other type of cinema has done throughout the years. You only have to look at a film such as Love Actually to see this, we as the viewer live the lives of the characters of Liam Neeson and Hugh Grant but then you have the blockbuster era where you have films such as jaws and Star Wars films that were big name high concept films and Steven Spielberg was the creator of all of this ‘era’.

• How is the film from your chosen industry distributed and exhibited? What impact does this have on audiences?

The 1975 picture, Jaws, was the first to have what is called a wide release movement; this is where it is eventually released across all platforms and becomes available to as many people worldwide as possible. When Jaws was released on June 20, 1975, it opened at 464 theatres. The release was subsequently expanded on July 25 to a total of 675 theatres, the largest simultaneous distribution of a film in motion picture history at the time. During the first weekend of wide release, Jaws grossed more than $7 million, and was the top grosser for the following five weeks.

Opening it out to cinemas first creates a real hype for the audience, not that this is needed for such a big film like Jaws but it creates the hype and suddenly become word of mouth where everyone is talking about it and after the hype has died down a little Universal can create a little more hype by releasing on DVD when everyone has been to see it in the cinemas.

• How do both genre and stars relate to your chosen film and industry?

Jaws is an adventure thriller which automatically, with a film such as Universals Jaws, give a real buzz of adrenaline where people can go and watch for escapism And really enjoy themselves when watching the film.

Having this hybrid genre gives the audience creative vision as to the way that they see and view the film and really encourage the creativity when the audience are watching the film which is something that most films do well, or encourage.

As Jaws nowadays is classed as an older film considering it was made in 1975 we don’t see the film as having any big name actors in which we don’t really relate to anything because we don’t see them as big so were purely watching the film for the film and the film only.

Roy Schneider and Richard Dreyfuss are two of the main actors in the storyline and back in the time they would have been real big names but they’re important and the directors and Universal have chosen them specifically for the role and they feel they offer something key and important to the role so that the film is played out in said way they want it to go and I think that this video really goes against the normal stereotype where in high concept film we want and expect to see the big name stars but this really goes against it and they have chosen the right actors for the right roles.