Case Study - Avatar

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Kim Goldspink As Media Coursework 12 LEE Mrs Purser Case Study: Avatar Institutions Name of thriller film: Avatar Director: James Cameron, (Born August 16 th 1954) is a Canadian film director, screen writer, producer, editor and inventor. His writing and directing work include:- The Terminator (1984) & Terminator 2: judgement day (1991), Aliens (1986), Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009). The last two are some of the highest grossing films to date. James Cameron has also made several feature films, he then turn his focus to documentary filming and to help co-develop digital 3D Fusion cinema system. One of these films that contain the 3D Fusion Cinema system is the film Avatar. Production Company: Or the making of Avatar there was 5 production companies. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation Dune Entertainment

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Transcript of Case Study - Avatar

Page 1: Case Study - Avatar

Kim Goldspink As Media Coursework 12 LEE Mrs Purser

Case Study: Avatar

Institutions Name of thriller film: Avatar

Director: James Cameron, (Born August 16th 1954) is a Canadian film director, screen writer, producer, editor and inventor. His writing and directing work include:- The Terminator (1984) & Terminator 2: judgement day (1991), Aliens (1986), Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009). The last two are some of the highest grossing films to date. James Cameron has also made several feature films, he then turn his focus to documentary filming and to help co-develop digital 3D Fusion cinema system. One of these films that contain the 3D Fusion Cinema system is the film Avatar.

Production Company: Or the making of Avatar there was 5 production companies.

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation Dune Entertainment Giant Studios Ingenious Film PartnersLightstorm Entertainment

Release date: Avatar was released on the 18th December 2009

Country of Making: Hamakua Coast, Hawaii, USA

Genre: Action, Thriller, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Additional Details: It has a running time of 162 minutes. It was made in the United States. It had a budget of $237,000,000 and has made hefty $1,439,375,063 Gross revenue. It was budgeted to cost about $150 million to market the film. It opened two days earlier internationally and grossed $232 million worldwide in its first five days of international release. Within the first 3 weeks of its release, with a worldwide gross of

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over $1 billion, Avatar became the second highest grossing film of all time worldwide.

Awards: Nominated for 4 Golden Globes. 6 wins & 20 nominations. They won: 2 x Best Cinematography (Mauro Fiore), 2 x Best Art Direction, (James Cameron John Refoua, Stephen E. Rivkin), Best Production Design (Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg) and Best Visual Effects

Audience

Intended Target Audience: I think Avatar has a fairly wide range compared to other films as it has a lot of genres with it, and it think this is one of the reasons it is so popular, as it isn’t just one genre of film, there is approx 5, this helps it to appeal to more people. I think that people between the ages of 15-29 would like the film as it is modern, more exiting and thrilling, it would keep you on the edge of your see for the whole duration of the film, to know what is going to happen next, and more also there is ‘video game’ feel to it because the main character is playing this person, you may feel like you’re playing it too and as the ‘younger’ generation are playing a lot more console games than the ‘older’ generation would play as the technology wasn’t as developed as it is today.

Audience Reception: As you can see at the bottom of the graph that Avatar was thoroughly enjoyed by the audience as is score an average of 8.9. This is pretty impressive for a newly released film.

From what I have said in the Intended audience you can see that:- Under 18’s gave it a 9.0 out of 10 and that 18-25 gave it 8.8 out o 10 which as you can see it appeals to the younger generation more, as i said it this could be because of the game likeness in the film. However the 30-44 and 45+ did not give it a low score as it is still above 8.3 which is good because this

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means that it has appeals to most ages and the audiences have enjoyed watching this film. One person who enjoyed the film so much is Balazs Jedovszky from Hungry who gave the film 10/10. Her review title was ‘Best movie experience of the last 30 years’ from just his title you can see that she has defiantly enjoyed the film. She then goes on to say how the film that the tailor’s don’t give to much of the story away, it you get the full impact of the movie and everything when you watch it “I am very happy that the trailers didn't give the full story away”....... “Cameron was very smart keeping the teasers as teasers, nothing more... as the full movie will take your breath away.”

However Avatar wasn’t everyone’s favourite movie of the last 30 years as jerichocane-1 from Germany explains in their review. Their Review title was ‘It's a Visual Spectacle’ Unfortunately Nothing More. Scoring Avatar and 1/10 shows they didn’t enjoy it as much as others. But to begin with they say that “I enjoyed Avatar as the visual spectacle it was” this shows that there was something although very little they did enjoy something of the move but, this person then goes on saying “I don't know what Cameron has been smoking while writing this screenplay, but it's easily his worst-written movie yet.” Which this shows that they may have liked another film of James Cameron’s but what really brought my attention was that they said. It like the Cameron was stupid in what he was doing it; this could indicate that this person may think that James Cameron’s writing could have gotten worse over the years.

Technology

Audience Reception New Technology has improved audiences knowledge, because all they have to do is type in the name of a film and it would come up in something like ‘Wikipedia’ or you could go on to a reliable movie review website.

Before the date was set for Avatar to release for cinema viewing the only posters about was a very basic looking poster. As you can see it has no detail in the background and this makes you focus on the face, just from looking at this poster you don’t know much about the film apart from it looks like it about blue people/animals.

Closer to the time another poster was set about. From looking at this poster you can see that there is a lot more detail in the background, there is helicopter and big bird animals flying in

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the sky together, are they friends, and work force. Also there is a human man on the left and a blue man on the right you don’t know why this is, they could be best of friends, they could be enemies, you don’t know until you give the poster a though studying, but it does give some knowledge to the audience on what going/might happen in the film.

Audiences Access: It has become easier and easier for us to access films via the cinema, renting a DVD or even buying one. This is because of the newer highly fast technology which is forever getting better and better.

The cinema use to be cue to get your ticket to let you in to view the movie of which was playing on a screen. But because of technology changing so much they have now put touch screen ‘ticket booth’ were you select your ticket(s), slot your debit card in and pay for it, and out comes your printed ticket. You also can book and do in advance so you know you won’t miss a newly released movie you go online to the required site, search for the movie, then pay by entering your card details online and print off your ticket details to show the people at the cinema that you have them tickets/ booked the seats.

Also renting a DVD has become easier in the last decade; you use to have to go to a shop to pick a DVD pay to rent it and have it back by a certain time or you get charged more. But now there are sites such as ‘Love Film’ where you can rent a DVD and they send it to you, when your done you send it back, there is also no late fees for this particular site. You can also buy DVDs off ‘Amazon’ for reasonable prices.

Code/Forms & Conventions of the thriller genre

Conventions: At the Beginning of the film, you don’t actually realise that the film has begun as it goes straight into the story introduction. It is not until the end that the title Avatar and the credits come up.

As you can see this is the title that flies in at the end, it is in a simple text font, it also looks old, because if you look closely at it, you can see that there are

little chunks missing from the text. This could represent the hostile situation between the Na'vi-s and the marines, and this also connects to the typical thriller genre, with hostile situations and guns, and war etc which make a thriller. Also the Title is in capitals, this helps it stand out a lot and it makes a bold imprint because it is big, bold and blue. The writing being blue could symbolise the blue

species in the film called the Na'vi-s, as they have a light blue colour skin which as has glowing freckles and the glowing around the letters could represent this.

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Kim Goldspink As Media Coursework 12 LEE Mrs Purser

Settings: Most of the film is set in a jungle, which comes to life after the sun has set. The beginning of the film

is set at a marine’s base; this represents danger as the marines want to destroy the Na’vi in search for a vital raw material found under their home. In the marine’s base there are different areas, the one with the game booths being one of the main scenes that the filming takes place.

The jungle set is very dense in vegetation this symbolizes danger at the start of the film for the humans using the avatars as they have to fight their way through the jungle. Once the sun

has gone down the jungle lights up with bright colours and noise, this shows that the jungle is a place of peace and life. In the action scenes the jungle is destroyed by the marines, this shows the audience that destruction and disaster go hand in hand as one of the main Na’vi gets killed.

Sound: The Digetic material in Avatar is scenes such as the jungle scene when the main character is alone with a fire. He can hear creatures of the jungle; this creates a tense atmosphere between the character and the audience. Another scene which has Digetic material is when the Na’vi is being attacked by the marines. The characters and the audience can hear the machines and soldiers approaching the Na’vi home. The distant rumble of the machines means danger and destruction is approaching.

The non Digetic material in the film would be the music that is played when for instance the main character is flying on one of the many creates that live in the jungle. This changes the mood for the audience to match that of the character, when the main character is flying the music changes to give a sense of freedom and awareness. It also makes the sense of flying real.

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RepresentationRepresentation of particular social groups: in avatar the representation to particular social groups isn’t really present in this film as all the characters are equal in what they do. All the characters play major roles in the film. From the pilot, to the main character, each character has a vital role to play in the movie.

Cultures ideology: this film gives the message of peace in two different cultures, in that there could be peace in the cultures if someone didn’t always want something for nothing. In this film the marines want the expensive raw material that is situated under the Na’vi’s home. This leads to war and destruction.

Use of stereotypes of subversion of stereotypes: in this film there is not a lot of stereotyping because the film producers are not allowed to use it anymore, this is due to people taking offence to something they may relate to. The only stereotype that I can see in this film would be the man in charge of the marines. Normally the main person in charge of the army is very tuff and aggressive. This movie uses that stereotype to create an opinion for the character within the audience. This would lead to the audience disliking this character.