Research: Secondary (British Cinema)

Hill, J. (1999). Cinema. In: Stokes, J. and Reading, A. The Media in Britain. Great Britain: MACMILLAN PRESS LTD. p74-86.

From reading this chapter of 'The Media in Britain' I have since been able to analyse the chapter to discover the impact that cinema has had on people over the years.

As technology has progressed so has the creation of film. Alongside films progression is the increase in the number of people who watch films. The number of people watching films as also increased alongside the monopolisation o television. People are becoming more and more aware and used to the idea of other peoples lives and stories in a visual manner that the idea of cinema has been increasing.

Cinema has become increasingly popular with the public over the past twenty years. This has then led to an increase in cinemas and an increase in films. The British film industry has increased its number of films produced a year from thirty in 1989 to one hundred and twelve in 1997 (as seen on page 75). Although despite British cinema producing more films the British public still have more of an interest in the American/ Hollywood films.

Quote: "During the 1990s, US films have generally accounted for over 80 per cent, and often over 90 per cent, of UK revenues"

This then questions the effect of the British film industry over American and Hollywood films. Further research then shows how the economic production of the film appears most important to the audience as high funded American productions are getting more audiences than smaller funded films, therefore more of them are shown in cinemas. Because British cinema has struggled to attract the audiences attention due to their lower budgets they have since developed into a different direction in film. Instead of imitating American film the British film industry has since decided to do the opposite i.e. use real locations instead of studios and use unknown actors. In some cases this has proved a success with Danny Boyle's 'Trainspotting' and Uberto Pasolini 'The Full Monty', although there still have not been many British film successes.

From reading this chapter I now have the task of researching cinema and British cinema since 1997.