Dracula Untold (2014)

1 – Issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice

A films success often depends on which production company produces the film in the first place. The bigger production companies such as the big six (Warner Bros. Pictures, Paramount pictures, Walt Disney, Columbia pictures, Universal Studios, 20th Century Fox) will often have an unfair advantage over the other, smaller film production companies in terms of what budget they are given and their access to all of the best technologies and stars.

This is relative to Mark Kermode’s rules that will determine whether it is impossible for a film to lose money or not. Kermode says that it is impossible for a film to lose money if it complies within four rules, these rules are: newsworthy budget, spectacular visuals, not to be a comedy and to include an ‘A list’ star. A larger film company stands a better chance when creating a film that complies within these rules as they will have the newsworthy budget to be able to have the spectacular visuals and the ‘A-list’ star and because their company is so well known anyway, the film won’t have to be of a genre that is simply there to attract attention such as a comedy.

For example, Warner Bros. pictures released ‘The Green Lantern’ in 2011. The film itself was a complete flop, receiving bad reviews (especially from fans of the comic books) and losing out on an estimated $90,074,414 after only grossing $219,851,172 worldwide when their films original budget cost $200,000,000. However, the film still had an A list star, (Ryan Reynolds), spectacular visuals and special effects due to the company being able to afford the newest technologies that were available at the time. This film was not intended to be a comedy, although parts of it did come across as slightly comedic. Whilst this film did lose out on money at the box office, it was still popular as it was produced by a very well-known company that had the budget and the technology to attract some attention. This shows the issues within media ownership as the bigger companies will almost always have a larger hand over the small film companies as they

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have the fame and the money to attract attention anyway, whereas a smaller company could produce a very well made film which would gain more interest but they simply do not have a large enough audience or enough of a reputation to gain a larger audience.

‘Dracula Untold’ was made by Universal Pictures along with Legendary Pictures in 2014. This movie gained a huge audience before the movie was even released as it was made by well-known production companies that are renowned for having produced some of cinemas greatest movies such as ‘Jurassic Park’ (1993), ‘Jaws’ (1975) and more recently ‘Les Miserable’ (2013). ‘Dracula Untold’ complies within Kermode’s rules as it includes A list stars such as Luke Evans and Charles Dance, it has spectacular visual effects as well as having a newsworthy budget of an estimated $70,000,000. This film is classed as an action/drama/fantasy; therefore, it is not a comedy. According to Mark Kermode’s rules, it is impossible for this film to lose money. On its opening weekend in the USA, it made $23,514,615 on the 10th of October 2014. By the 21st of November, it had grossed around $55,942,830.

2 – The importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production, distribution and marketing

This is a stand-alone movie, meaning it has no sequel or prequel and it is not a spin off from another movie. On the one hand, this makes it easier to advertise and market the film as you have a chance to make a good first impression with the movie as opposed to having an unsuccessful prequel which would affect the way the audience would respond to the second movie. However, on the other hand this makes it harder to market the film as you have to get the audience interested in something they’ve never seen before.

This movie was advertised mainly through posters and film trailers; however, a recurring theme was present throughout each advertisement. They all featured Luke Evans with the use of bat motifs and symbolism of his vampirism. This created an iconic image which the audience already associated with vampires. I think that what partly drew the audience in to see this film was the fact that it starred Luke Evans who had recently become A list because of his role as Bard in the Hobbit movies and because it was released in October, which is near the

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time of Halloween. Around this time of year, people are looking for scary films, and what’s more iconic than Dracula when it comes to Halloween?

3 - Technologies introduced in recent years at the levels of production, distribution, marketing and exchange

Blu Ray:

Blu Ray is a more enhanced version of a movie which shows the footage in high definition. In a film with so many special effects and visual creativity, blu ray is a must in order to experience the extent of the effects.

Internet streaming:

After this film had been released, it was then made available on internet sites such as Netflix, Lovefilm and the Sky Box Office.

Downloadable content:

The soundtrack for this film was very popular, especially as the main theme, ‘Everybody wants to rule the world’ was sung by Lorde, a very popular face within the music industry currently.

4 – Proliferation in hardware and content for institutions and audience

Cameras:

Witness cameras were used to capture the action when the actors weren’t wearing markers, eg: Canon 5Ds, GoPros for reference photos, etc.

Visual Effects:

Framestore in London was used to supply most of the VFX in terms of CGI. Multiple scans were made of Luke Evans to in order to create his transformation scenes during the movie. They used various facial action coding system poses which allowed the VFX team to make Luke look like a vampire. Reference photos were used in order to digitally create the exterior locations such as the castles and valleys. The production department used an extensive version of Google Sketchup to come up with the designs

Marketing:

This movie was advertised using clips from the movie in the trailers as well as using posters. The posters were digitally edited using elements of Photoshop along with stills from the movie.

Libby Tuft

Libby Tuft