The British Film Industry - Questions

1 - Based on the statistics, does the British Film Industry seem to be in good shape?

These statistics suggest that the British Film Industry is in reasonably good shape - certainly a sustainable one - though it is clear that there are some weaknesses with regard to it at present, many of which could be put down to the current economic conditions. The value of domestic production has fallen by 22%, and the median budget of UK films has gone from approximately 3 million pounds to 1 million. Nonetheless, the British Film Industry remains the third largest in the world. It has seen some prolific accolades and successes over the past few years - for example, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 earned almost £1 billion, and The King's Speech, a fairly low budget British film, went on to become a huge success and winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture.

2 - How does film production in the UK seem to be very different from the Hollywood model?

One of the main differences between UK film production and Hollywood film production is that the UK often has co-productions between several different production companies and distributors, whereas Hollywood films often rely one one major film production company such as Universal Studios or Warner Bros. Many British films also rely on European or American investments, e.g. Ken Loach's Looking for Eric had investment from Germany and Spain, while The Dark Knight was a UK/American co-production.

3 - What does the table tell us about the state of the UK film industry in 2010?

The table tells us that the vast majority of films released in the UK are in fact American, and that these films have the largest box office earnings of all films released. It also suggests that UK independent productions are not nearly as popular as UK studio-backed productions, given that the studio-backed productions had a 10% higher share of the box office than independent productions, when the latter had around 100 more released. Overall, it states that a quater of the box office share was from UK films - though this is pale by comparison to the USA box office share, it is also very high above the share of films from the rest of the world combined.

4 - How many of these cilms could be considered British films? What does this say about the scale of the UK film industry?

Shrek Forever After - this was distributed by Paramount UK.
Twilight Saga: Eclipse - this was distributed by E1 entertainment in the UK.
Sherlock Holmes - this was distributed by Warner Bros UK.
Alvin and the Chipmunks - this was distributed by Twentiefth Century Fox UK.
Sex and the City 2 - this was distributed by Warner Bros UK. It also recieved worldwide New Line Cinema distribution.

None of these films can be considered wholly British, as most of them had American production companies backing them and recieved worldwide distribution, with most distribution companies such as Warner Bros and Paramount also distributing in the USA, Ireland, European and other countries.

5 - Which of these two films recently released in the UK do you think is a BBC co-production and why?

My Week with Marylin, given that it seems to be a majorly British film with an all-British cast - it is also set in England.

6 - Why do you think the Coalition government decided to close down the UKFC?

It would appear that the UK Film Council used it's money unwisely - sometimes investing in arthouse pictures which do not often make profit, while at other times investing in bigger budget films that could have found money elsewhere. Furthermore, in the year leading up to it's closing down,  it put £160 million of Lotery monney into more than 900 productions, not all of which were successful. It had recieved criticism for narrowing the rate of return for the industry.