Blog 3 — Film Festival Fiesta

▶ BCM288 TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA AND CULTURE INDUSTRIES

Image taken from berlinale.de

Film Festivals are a platform for those independent filmmakers who want to be recognised by a bigger audience. It is a way for local directors and filmmakers to get their work out to other directors and filmmakers to give traction to their work to be pre-released to a small portion of the public eye (Watson, 2005). It is commonly used as a quality test to weed out good and bad directors and filmmakers.

That said, in Hong Kong, there are two very unique types of film festivals that are commonly held in the city. The HKAFF (Hong Kong Asian Film Festival) and the Hong Kong French Film Festival. Both have their own well-received qualities and downsides; even though these factors exist, locals and people overseas alike do enjoy the film festivals anyways.

The film festival scene in Hong Kong has several other unique qualities but they have one thing in common, their customers that has an interest in the art of film. HKAFF has showcased many local movies made by local film directors in their own native language; Cantonese, with consideration to overseas audiences by providing English subtitles.

Secondly, the Hong Kong French Film Festival has made an impression on the local film festival industry by introducing European culture and film to create a new audience that enjoys European films as well. This type of festival is mostly catered to the local audience because its main purpose is to educate the locals in worldly culture.

Both of these film festivals serve a purpose of educating the public with culture and film from different countries as well as local countries (i.e. Hong Kong), and it is a way to gain a certain type of respect from different types of audiences whether that is filmmakers and directors, citizens who are interested in knowing more about film and/or a certain country’s culture, or even aspiring filmmakers and directors such as students who are willing to learn more about how to earn a place in the film community.

References:

1. Hong Kong Asian Film Festival. (n.d.). Hong Kong Asian Film Festival. Retrieved from http://www.hkaff.asia/index.html.
2. Hong Kong French Film Festival. (n.d.). Hong Kong French Film Festival 2019. Retrieved from https://www.hkfrenchfilmfestival.com/.Watson, S. (2005, May 20).
3. What are film festivals? Retrieved from https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/question743.htm.

Blog 2 — Ko-produced Karate Kid

▶ BCM288 TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA AND CULTURE INDUSTRIES

Gif taken from gfycat.com

Co-production between two companies is common especially in more internationally-based films, typically co-production happens when a particular company wants to produce the same movie together — in the case of international films; a company from one country will want to collaborate and work together with another company from a different country (Sorrentino, Sicilia, & Howlett, 2018).

Let’s use the film The Karate Kid from 2010 as an example, because of the upcoming 2008 Summer Olympics at the time; Overbrook Entertainment — the production company for Sony – pitched that maybe the remake of the movie should be filmed in Beijing, China (Horn, 2010). China is the most populated nation in the world, the American company is most likely aware of it thus why they made the pitch — the film market in China is the most fast-growing market to-date, which makes it easier and quicker to gain a lot of money (Jones, 2015).

The biggest reason as to why companies and industries from the U.S. would want to co-produce films in China especially is because of the mainland market and their large appeal to Western movies — and not to mention the market is quite a big number in Hong Kong as well (Li, 2010). Collaborating with another country means that the film will be open to two different markets and creating a greater pool of audiences, although in China there were some scenes from The Karate Kid that were cut (like the kissing scene) due to the policies of censorship in China — this still doesn’t change the fact that because the film was set in China itself, locals from the country will feel more culturally appreciated since the film was set in their hometown rather than just a depiction of it and as a bonus foreigners are more aware as well.

So it seems that having a film co-produced is more beneficial to film industries and companies; the film that would be co-produced would reach a global scale rather than just be famous in one country — this also opens the door to new audiences and boosting creativity and appeal in more than one country. The finance department in both countries will be pretty happy as well to be earning a share in the film that’s co-produced and not only particularly earning but saving as well considering that the production and release would be budgeted since the film is co-produced.

References:

1. Horn, J. (2010, May 30). ‘Karate Kid’ update breaks down some Chinese walls. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-may-30-la-ca-karatekid-20100530-story.html.
2. Jones, S. (2015, June 12). The Future Is Now: China and US Co-Produced Films. Retrieved from https://blog.hollywoodbranded.com/the-future-is-now-china-and-us-co-produced-films.
3. Li, A. (2010, July 1). China invests in ‘The Karate Kid’. Retrieved from https://archive.shine.cn/feature/events-and-tv/China-invests-in-The-Karate-Kid/shdaily.shtml.
4. Sorrentino, M., Sicilia, M., & Howlett, M. (2018). Understanding co-production as a new public governance tool. Policy and Society, 37(3), 277–293. doi: 10.1080/14494035.2018.1521676

Blog 1 — What’s so funny?

▶ BCM288 TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA AND CULTURE INDUSTRIES

Image from dmdamedia.hu

Image from pinterest.com

Ever wondered what it would be like to live out your life as a different person everyday? Skins is the show that can do that for you! I’ve watched the entire Skins series (more than once) and I’ve never gotten tired of it. It can come off a little strong to others if you have certain opinions on sensitive topics because Skins is all about sensitive, dark topics.

Gif from giphy.com

The whole show has 7 seasons in total with a different set of characters every 2-3 seasons, but the main plot for each season is roughly the same; a group of chaotic British teens living their life before the Instagram-Twitter-Facebook day in age (Travis 2017). Apart from love, sex and drugs being the three main contestants of the series, there were hints of topics-that-shall-not-be-named (but I’m naming them anyways) and they were about abortion, mental health/illness, abuse and much more. One of the best reasons why this show was successful was because of the way each character was put into spotlight, for each episode we look more into the eyes of an individual character but it doesn’t just goes down simply — the show does it in a way that we have to anticipate the next episode or even just the next few seconds later. Think of it as an onion, there’s many layers but you have to peel through each one before you get to the core (Estes 2011).

The original Skins is based off in the UK, the US decided it would be a good idea to remake their own version of the show considering the big fan base over on the other side of the world, not to mention the overwhelming amount of high ratings and reviews— little do they know that it wouldn’t even be good enough to have a second season. Skins US only ended up releasing 1 season after cancelling production of the next one, it didn’t take long for the show to be disliked because the ratings already plummeted after the first episode was aired (Grant 2011).

So what happened? Why didn’t it work out for the Americans? Well for starters, if you put the first episodes of Skins US and Skins UK next to each other you can see that they just copied it entirely scene-for-scene (Davies 2019). Skins was meant to show teenagers raw and unfiltered, the show is made to show teenagers just being teenagers without any parents or parental figures around but the US version just didn’t seem to understand that. Instead the US version of the show seems more scripted as compared with the UK version, therefore losing it’s purpose of “seeing life in the eyes of a teenager”.

References:

1. Davies, Bree. “American Skins Versus U.K. Skins: Looks like MTV Forgot That the Boobs Were the Best Part.” Westword, 4, 23 Jan. 2019, https://www.westword.com/arts/american-skins-versus-uk-skins-looks-like-mtv-forgot-that-the-boobs-were-the-best-part-5795194.
2. Estes, Mark O. “Skins UK vs. Skins US: An Analysis.” TVOvermind, 4 Mar. 2011, https://www.tvovermind.com/skins-uk-skins-analysis/.
3. Grant, Drew. “Why MTV Canceled ‘Skins.’” Salon, Salon.com, 25 Sept. 2011, https://www.salon.com/2011/06/10/american_skins_canceled/.
4. Travis, Ben. “Why Skins Was the Perfect Teen Show.” Evening Standard, 25 Jan. 2017, https://www.standard.co.uk/stayingin/tvfilm/skins-was-ambitious-messy-erratic-and-inventive-and-that-s-why-it-was-the-perfect-teen-show-a3449721.html.