We are pleased to announce that we have all 3 of our shorts finally complete and sent out to festivals this year (2017). Faulty stars Sarah Solemani and Mike Bailey, Mancrush stars Blake Harrison and Oliver Chris and Pastoral stars Jeff Stewart and Elizabeth Healey.

We have had a fantastic response and would like to thank all those that gave their advice and contributions to the cuts. It is amazing to have them finished.

Links to festivals they get accepted in will be available via our twitter or facebook accounts. At the end of our festival run they will be available on the Shorts International channel.

Our short A Little Place Off The Edgware Road starring Paul McGann and directed by Tim Hewitt has been selected for 3 film festivals! It had its UK premiere at The Isle of Wight film festival and you can catch it at the Cambridge Film Festival on 19th and 28th September and the Graham Greene Festival in Berkhamsted on 27th September. Tim will introduce the film then.

More dates to follow, as and when!

The Need to Relax

After a hiatus, my blog is back – and will be focusing now primarily on analyzing content. The first subject I want to delve into is one that writers and development executives often overlook – that audiences consume entertainment in order to escape.

This may seem obvious, but writers spend a lot of time trying to create as realistic a story as possible. Realism helps viewers buy into the premise and creates a suspension of disbelief. Executive notes often revolve around maximizing conflict, creating high stakes, ensuring there’s a clear journey for the protagonist, pushing the authenticity of the world of the story, making it relatable – and fundamentally trying to ensure the audience identifies with what they’re watching. However, the audience’s own needs may actually be quite different.

There is mounting evidence to suggest that one of the key drivers of entertainment is the need to relax. This means that audiences seek content that departs from what they do on a day-to-day level. Identification may be important in order to get the viewer hooked, but – subconsciously at least – we want to watch content that helps us forget about our lives. We commissioned Dr. Kit Pleydell-Pearce (senior lecturer in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol) to examine the brain activity of different groups of people while they watch television. Kit had previously worked on a US Government DARPA project that studied the cognitive state of pilots while they were flying demanding aircraft. His initial research for us, concluded that “viewer engagement is a process in which brain activity reverts to a more relaxed and passive state.” Television physically helps us recharge our batteries.

Kit’s analysis focuses on the frontal lobe part of the brain, an area which is associated with “goal-oriented activity, planning, selection, control and focus of attention.” However, when we are paying most attention to entertainment, this part of the brain appears to be in a quieter state, while other parts of the brain may be more active (e.g. the amygdala, which is associated with emotion).

On a personal level, this makes sense to me. When I watch my team Arsenal play football, I’m pretty convinced my frontal lobe isn’t working too hard. I’m feeling tension for the team I support (and how poorly they’ve been playing), but I’m not really thinking about having to plan and write this blog. I’m feeling, rather than focusing.

There is also plenty of ratings evidence to support this idea. For instance, the legal drama ‘Suits’ is not particular popular with lawyers and judges – even though the show is about them! Using the Epsilon demographic breakdown available in Rentrak’s TV Essentials, you can look at different professions’ viewing habits. The chart below looks at the second season of ‘Suits’ on USA – and how varied the viewing share was for different professions. Since each profession has different total viewing, the index below is based on their respective shares. If a profession scores, say 1.15, it means the share of people from that profession who viewed ‘Suits’ was 15% higher than the national share of ‘Suits’.

The problems for international producers trying to break into China are many. There’s heavy regulation and censorship, and a whole set of different rules for foreign companies setting up in Beijing or Shanghai. There’s also a completely different structure to the Film & TV industries, when compared to Europe or North America.

For instance, a feature film in China makes on average 64.7% of its revenue from its domestic theatrical release, which makes cinemas the dominant mode of distribution. Contrast that with the U.S. where the domestic cinema release accrues roughly 21.4% of a film’s total revenue. Clearly ancillary markets like pay-TV, home video, and of course international theatrical releases are more mature for U.S. movies. But that’s just the basic picture.

The bigger issue in China is actually one of supply. There are a very limited number of theatrical screens which struggle to cope with high domestic demand. Chinese audiences love to attend the cinema, with its advanced audiovisual experience (compared to the lesser quality of TV or pirated content). But there are only 7.3 screens for every 10 million moviegoers in China. In the U.S., the same number of viewers share 129.8 screens.

The result is that a huge number of movies in China simply do not get the opportunity to be released in the cinemas. And there’s no way of making their money back through ancillary revenues.

In some ways, it could be argued that the purpose of making movies in China is basically to supply theatrical markets. This causes a huge lock on distribution and leaves so much of the industry control in the hands of the theater-owners.

The greatest threat to the current imbalance in the market is online distribution. Having just completed a report on potential changes to the Chinese Entertainment Industry, we discovered that there are surprisingly quite a few websites that are gaining prominence through legal online video distribution.

In China, the Internet has become one of the major video consumption platforms for younger viewers. Many sites such as tv.sohu.com and letv.com have established Hulu-like business models, incorporating paid and advertising-supported platforms. These websites circulate Chinese and foreign copyrighted TV drama series and movies.

Based on China’s market environment, these websites employ distinct operational practices. For example, tv sohu.com offered ‘Wu Xia’, a local blockbuster, for free streaming two months after its theatrical release. The period between theatrical and online releases is much shorter than the U.S. standard probably due to rampant video piracy.

LETV.com is an emerging player to watch out for. They are now regularly paying $1 million for online rights to popular Chinese films, while their revenues for the 1Q this year were $16.1m, a 1319% year-on-year increase according to the company’s financial report. Co-productions, TV dramas and comedies, and western content are now being distributed, or considered for distribution, via these platforms. Of course, they still have to overcome the Chinese censors, but they are private companies – and as their wealth and market dominance continues to grow, it would not be inconceivable to see these video sites turn into the Chinese equivalent of the US studio.

Just consider Tudou, perhaps the largest of the online distributors. They are fast becoming an all-round production and distribution hub, and a recent press release proudly states:

“In 2010, we launched Orange Box , our in-house original content production facility, and Warehouse No.6, a talent recruitment program designed for selecting and recruiting talents for our in-house content production, including actors, directors, screenwriters, editors and producers. These initiatives are aimed at developing and enhancing ‘made-for-Internet’ drama series and other independent ‘made-for-Internet’ content.”

These studio-like initiatives resulted in their first Internet dramas series, ‘That Love Comes’, which debuted in October 2010 – and generated approximately 40 million video views as of December 31, 2010.

Tudou’s website now has a large library of TV dramas and comedies, as well as movies and their own original content. This is where international producers could in the future take serious advantage.

After all, they even have a copyright policy on their website!