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.