Ex Machina notes

Ex Machina was produced by both Andrew MacDonald and Allon Reich and was directed by Alex Garland. It was distributed by Universal studios on 21 January 2015. The cast included  Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac and Sonoya Mizuno. Ex Machina qualifies as a British film as all the cast are British and both producers and director is British, as well as others. The film had a budget of $15 million and making $36.9 million at the box office which is really good for a British film. A film being British can have a negative impact of the audience of the film. This is due to a few reasons; one, being that it will appeal greatly to British citizens because they are interested on seeing how they are betrayed on screen and two, the film may not make enough money to get out to a wider audience.  

The film was shot in 2 different countries and bout 6 locations with in these countries. The first part of the film took place in London,UK and the rest was shot in Norway.  Ex Machina was shot on a Sony f65 with a achromatic lenses. They used roto-scoping to insert and remove Ava's body from the image to create the illusion of a robotic body.  The film started off on 4 screens and grew greatly to 2000 screens over the course of 2 months because of how well the film was doing.

This film worked in synergy with other bigger companies such as Film 4 and DNA films which works in favour with British films. This is because British films do not have enough money to promote and distribute the film themselves and rely greatly on other big companies. During the marketing side of Ex Machina, the company worked in convergence to use forms of media such as twitter, facebook and tinder to promote the film saving them money.

Ex Machina is a film that relies greatly on the new developments of technology. For example, they way of removing Ava's real body and adding robotic parts  could not have been achieved a short time ago. This is called roto-scoping. Roto-scoping is where they film the scene with the actor and then again with out. after they do this they overlap the clips and remove and pencil in certain areas. Also having social media such as Youtube is also great for marketing a film and getting it to a wide audience.

To what extent does digital distribution affect the marketing and consumption of media products in the area of media you have studied?

To what extent does digital distribution affect the marketing and consumption of media products in the area of media you have studied? 

Digital media first started to come about in mid 2010. People are making films digital because it can make them a lot of money in the long run. Digital media includes websites such as Youtube and Netflix which means that films can be widely released-increasing sales and can be used for home entertainment revenue. Even though this increase can be due to fast-food and soft-drink sales.This has a negative impact on the companies who make the films because people can use piracy to watch them which stops profit going to the film company and losing them a lot of money. Using digital media is very expensive which is why small cinemas can not afford to show any digital films. The price just to transfer the form of digital between companies is $10,000 and $20,000 per film and to buy the equipment to show the film (digital projector) is between $60,000 and $150,000 each. Which is way to expensive for indie cinemas. Between 2006 and 2013, the number of Hollywood films has fallen considerable by 40 percent due to independent film makers needed rich patrons. Although this cost is a negative on a lot of cinemas, it is very useful for a lot of places to use digital films. For example, during a screening of 'the titanic' , the film being used fell apart in the machine, which would not happen to a new digital screening. 

There was a large gap between the first digital film and last film shot on a film camera where there was a mixture of both and before the last movie to be shot entirely on film was released. The fist film to be shot entirely on digital was 'star wars: Episode II -Attack of the clones' (2002) and the last film to be shot entirely on film was anchorman 2: The legend continues. (2013).

Digital media has also been used for marketing films such as Ex Machina. This is a small independent film who's success relied greatly on digital marking. The marketing type used for this film was 'viral marketing'. This is a way of using social media sites to promote something in order to save money on other kinds of marketing such as adverts and posters. For example, The people in charge of marketing Ex Machina made a fake tinder account to talk to people online (which cost them no money at all). When it was found out the account was fake and it was this company, it caused a huge uproar across many social media accounts which made the word bout the film carry across many countries and be known to people all over the world. This wouldn't have been able to do without digital media. Another film that used digital media is 'Mad Max: Fury road'. This film worked in cross media to produce a video game about the film before it was released in cinemas. This lets people know what to expect in the film and attracted the correct target audience.

What significance does the continuing development of digital media technology have for media institutions and audiences?

The continuing development of digital media technology has had a large significance on media audiences and institutions. over many years there have been many developments of distributing films; cinemas to DVD to now being able to use cross-media to watch film online using VOD such as Netflix.

In production, digital media has come along way, for example in mad max: Fury road- directed by George miller, they used a phantom camera. A camera that can shoot 300 frames per second, increasing greatly in quality. Another camera they used was a flash camera, allowing them to film it in 2D and 3D at the same time. They also used an edge arm to film scenes on moving vehicles. For example, in the scenes where Nux hangs off of the truck, we see very close detail and it allows the audience to follow him as he moves around. This is a large improvement, saving them time and money. This film also consists of CGI to add detail to the background and make it more dramatic. Another film that used CGI is ex machina- directed by Alex Garland. In this film they use rota-scoping to pencil in the body of the AI after shooting the scene twice, once with the actress and once without.

The marketing process of films has had significant development, which is important to get the film out to audiences. Ex machina was marketed using viral marketing. They did this by creating a fake tinder account in Texas under the name of Ava, who is not a real person and got people to talk to 'her'. When it came out that it wasn't a real person, it caused a lot of an up roar on social media pages such as twitter and Facebook, creating free advertising for the film. Having the access to viral marketing is really good for low budget British films such as Ex machina. Mad max had more traditional marketing such as posters and adverts, which would have costed a lot of money. However, This film worked in cross-media with a gaming company to create a game that was released before the film came out. This style of marketing was not available when the first of the mad max series came out, showing a significant development in the marketing processes.

When films where first about they could only be seen in the cinema, this was later developed to now being able to purchase DVDs and later on, blurays. There where many cases of films being illegally downloaded online, so blurays introduced a way of over coming this by giving a free download of the film they purchased. In very recent developments, we now have VOD (video on demand) this is a legal way of watching films online or at home. This has become very popular because it saves the user a lot of money because instead of spending £10 on a cinema ticket, they can pay £10 monthly instead to get a wide range of over 1000 films to watch at home. The biggest VOD site is Netflix, this site contains both old and new releases of films for the user to enjoy.

In conclusion the significance of the continuing development of digital media technology has meant that both institutions and audiences have benefited from a great film experience. Media institutions have made hit films such as Mad Max and Ex Machina generating a huge profit and media audiences have had the opportunity to watch the new films for their enjoyment.