Past Paper Question - Section A

State reasons for the popularity of US films to a UK audience

The main target audiences for many films within the UK is people between the ages of 15-25, due to these being the people who have the most disposable income willing to spend on going to the cinema. People within this age groups tend to be more interested in Hollywood blockbuster films, rather than foreign or independent films because Hollywood films are portrayed as more “popcorn movies” and don’t contain many deep set issues or controversy, these types of films are watched more by more middle class society and cultured people. And this who each of these films tends to be targeted towards during the post-production stages of the film e.g. Marketing.

The marketing is a huge factor in the popularity for any film, in the case of Hollywood films, many of them contain huge budgets with the marketing for them in some cases being half of these multimillion dollar budgets. Marketing can consist of teaser trailers and posters, tie-ins and social networking, with huge amounts being spent on things like these with American films it helps to create a “buzz” around the film and its release building the films popularity. Without a strong advertising campaign from an US film then the production company is already setting itself up for a fall, as with such large amount of money at stake, without a large audience to watch the profits will not come rolling in. This can be shown from Disney’s 2011 release of John Carter, this film had difficulty raising an audience as the marketing companies changed half way through resulting in uncertainty with any audience that may have already been there. However, as a result of this, and obviously other factors, the film lost over $160 million. Whereas the 2012 release of A Good Day To Die Hard which opened up in the UK on Valentines day managed to take $16 million, due to a highly anticipated release of the newest instalment of the franchise. This shows that much of the popularity surrounding US films within the UK is due to a high marketing budgets and more successful campaigns compared to foreign language films which do not have the budget for large advertising UK campaigns and so there is no knowledge of there release.

This also brings out the point that the popularity for US films may in fact not come from necessarily good US films, but because of the little awareness that people have of other options, (such as British independent films or foreign language films,) demographic inertia or even inability to go to see other forms of movies.  Nowadays it is not part of the working class culture to visit an arts centre to watch a foreign language film, with most of the UK population being working class has a huge impact on the audiences for US films and foreign films. The working class are not necessarily open to the change of going to visit an arts centre, which is more than likely a much larger journey for them than the average multiplex cinema, and so tend to stick with what they know and settle for US films shown in mainstream cinemas. Personally, I think this is a huge factor on the popularity for US films, as they are mainly all that are shown in the average cinema, and so, for families, or 15-25 year olds for instance wanting to go spend an evening out watching a new film, they are limited for choices between anything but American films and so they go to see them anyway: increasing the demand for US film. This is an endless cycle which, without changes to what does actually get shown in mainstream cinemas, will we actually be able to see whether this is in fact the case.

Although, this is actually just personal opinion, and there are also many other reasons which contribute to the high popularity of US films within the UK. Including the roles of stars: the use of famous American stars such as Tom Hanks or even Bruce Willis (usually in type cast roles) usually leads to a US films being even more successful than usual due to audiences who will go and see that film just to watch the star. US stars are the most well known across the world, so with the use of them in US films automatically create popularity for the films that cannot be achieved without them. Take for instance, comparing John Carter and Die Hard 5, both American films, one with a massive global star (Die Hard with Bruce Willis) and John Carter, with... Non. The difference as stated before, meant a loss of $160 million for John Carter but $16 million for Die Hard 5 in the UK box office alone.

And so, it can be concluded that there are factors within the production and post production stages of a US film which entice UK audiences and create the large popularity that they have, but there are also more issues with society that could in fact be behind this dominance of the UK cinema market that the US blockbusters currently have.