FILM IN

DUSTRY MARKET

RESEARCH

INTRODUCTIONSince the film industry is very large, it would be wise to learn

about the competition seen in the market of films of our genre, focusing on drama and action. Finding out the size of this industry and how successful the industry is will help when making our teaser trailer…

THE DRAMA GENRE

The source, www.the-numbers.com, provides a lot of statistics about the film industry in a lot of detail, separating films into their genres, and how much money they make, what share of the market they have each year also. The graph below shows the market share of the drama genre year by year since 1995. It has stayed fairly consistent over the past 20 years, ranging from a fifth of the industry and a as low as an eighth of the industry, in 2013. This consistency shows that there are still people going to watch this genre, so there is still a market of people to invest in when making a film of this genre.

Looking at the film industry more widely, in terms of the different genres in these past twenty years shows that there is a lot of competition in terms of the volume of drama films. Looking at the below table of the top 14 genres since 1995, drama has been the fourth most popular genre in terms of box office earnings, however, the volume of films shows that there have been more drama films produced than any other, with a total of nearly 4,000. This is continued when looking at individual recent years, with 2015 producing over 100 more dramas than the 20 year leader, comedy, and in 2014, the industry was led by the volume of drama films, with over 170 more dramas released than the volume of action and adventure films combined.

This information shows that there are a lot of films to compete with in this genre, so if we were to invest a large budget in this genre, then the film would require a unique selling point to help sell the film, so this is something worth considering when developing the plan for our teaser trailer, so that we advertise this to make the target audience see the USP of our film idea. This will hopefully entice the audience more and make the teaser trailer overall more successful.

DRAMA IN 2014Looking at the drama genre once again, in 2014, the table below from www.the-numbers.com shows that the drama genre made the third largest sum of money in the box office in that year, with over 250 dramas released and nearly $1.7bn made and over a quarter of the total box office share of that year. Every one in every four successful films watched was a drama film. This shows once again that there is a lot of competition in this genre.

Looking at individual films in this genre, and in 2014, The Fault in Our Stars was the most popular, and was adapted from a very popular novel, which probably helped the film gain this popularity. Below this is the film Noah, and this perhaps gained a lot of success since it was based from the very well-known story in the Bible, Noah’s Ark. This would attract a lot of people. However, it is a drama, and it contains action, which is very similar to the genre balance of our film, and it contains the element of fantasy from the flood itself, so the film does have similarities to our film idea. Since it had a very large budget, it could utilise the action aspect more and they were able to use a lot of special effects when creating the flood, making the film more dramatic and exciting for the viewer. Although we don’t have this budget, including some big action scenes in our trailer may help advertise the film well, and make it more successful. However, it would have to follow a fair balance of the amount of action and drama that would be included in the real film, since advertising it more as one genre would be misleading to the potential audience. It would target the wrong people and it would not make the film successful. This film was not popular with audiences, however, it was popular with critics, so perhaps this was one of the causes. Seeing the action scenes to do with the flood, and not realising how much drama there was in the film may have misled them. Also, it was quite controversial, and this may have been to do with the content of the film and the general story of the film, since it is based on a religious story. This may have been because that the film was developed by quite a small production company, and their budget was provided by Paramount Pictures, one of the ‘Big Six’ conglomerates. However, if Paramount did provide the money for this, then they must have thought that the film idea was profitable enough.

Statistics for Noah (2014):-Worldwide Box Office: $352,831,065

2014 DRAMA FILMSBeing more specific about drama releases in 2014, the most successful drama film

to be released in 2014 was The Fault in Our Stars, which made over $300m in the international Box Office, 25 times more than the budget for the film. This film was overall the 27th most successful film for that year. It gained a rating (from IMDb) of 7.9, and from Rotten Tomatoes, the critics rated it as 80%, with the audience contributing to Rotten Tomatoes rating it higher at 85%, or 4.2 out of 5. So the film was very well received. It’s rating was a PG-13 in the US and a 12A in the UK, due to the themes in the film, some sexual elements and some use of stronger language.

This means its audience won’t be extremely young, however, since the characters in the film are quite young, and perhaps just above the age rating, a teenage/young adult aged group could make up a portion of the audience, due to the relatable age. Fans of the book that this film was adapted from would be interesting in watching the film. The author is a popular internet personality figure, and so the film will attract more of his audience, which would be relatively young. This could be a factor of the success of the film, since having a potential audience from the readers and fans of the author would allow the film to attract some instant success, because of the interest for the film.

CONCLUSION2014’s top drama film The Fault in Our Stars does pose a threat to

the success of our film, since it does include the similar themes of illness, however, it focuses more on romance. Taking a look at the most popular dramas in recent years, there are themes that are touched upon that may not necessarily be included in our film, including romance a lot, so these different dramas attract different audiences. However, since our film is a hybrid of three genres: drama, action and fantasy; the main genre focused on being drama, the film could attract a number of the audience from these three genres. Some people may like fantasy exclusively, and are intrigued by the fantasy element. But it is important not to include too much of this genre in our teaser trailer, since it will give the potential audience a skewed idea of what the film may be about and so it won’t be as successful.