S

Company CreationA look into ‘creating’ my own company and looking at some of the

key features of how my company would operate!

Name!

Okay, so first of all is the best part, naming my company! This should be easy, but as we all know, naming can take forever and a day! So, I decided to get thinking. The problem was, I wanted my company to really help sell a ‘brand’ much like Warner Bros does. It needs to be something short and snappy, like Warp, but also be different enough so that people would think of my company, when they hear the name! Also, what’s a brand name if it doesn’t have something to do with the person who owns it? Again, like Warner Bros. So, I didn’t want to have ‘Jack’ or ‘Waring’ direct, as it seems too simple and unprofessional. After lots of thoughts and coming up with ideas as simple as ‘J’, I decided to go with ‘Jaywars’. The name is easy enough to say and sounds quite quirky, so an audience will want to know what it’s all about!

What Does It Do?

So, it’s all fine and good having a company, but what does it actually do? Well, unfortunately, it’s going to have to do everything! Because my company doesn’t have the funding to ask different companies to help distribute, market, produce, etc, my company is going to have to do all of those things! Production was going to be done by my company anyway, so this isn’t too bad, but marketing and distribution are going to be tricky. But, I will cover these things in a different presentation!

Subsidiaries?

So, my main company is ‘Jaywars’ but what we can see from other companies, is that even though they have their ‘main company’ they usually have many subsidiaries that cover different specialisations. We can see this in the company ‘Time Warner’ who own over 100 different subsidiaries, such as ‘Cartoon Network’ and ‘Warner Bros’. Yet more relevantly, they own ‘Monolith Productions’, ‘Outright Distrubution’, ‘Nether Realm Studios’ and many many more! The reason they do this is so that any money spent on different things, effectively just circulates their own companies, making profits higher! Plus, it’s generally easier for the company. Now, whilst I won’t be actually creating a company, it’s interesting to think about whether or not I would create different companies. Such as ‘Jaywars Distribution’ or ‘Jaywars Website Design’ for my ancillary tasks. Doing this would capitalise my profits and also broaden my company, perhaps bringing in money from other production companies who need a distributor. But, this is simply in theory, as I’d need money to pull this off and different employees with different experience, of which I don’t have, making ‘Jaywars’ a standalone company, which simply dealt with many different things.

Funding!

The biggest part of a company, is where does the money come from? For companies like Time Warner, this isn’t much of an issue, as they already have money, due to being such a huge company! This is different to a company like Warp, who whilst they do have subsidiaries, have nowhere near as many resources as Time Warner and so look to different institutions for funding. These institutions are all over and for British films, there are even Government foundations in place to help fund British film, such as the British film council. Now, if I were to have to fund an actual film, then I believe I would look to somewhere like the British Film Council, as I fully expect my film to be mostly British. I say this, as the BFC have strict standards on what makes a film ‘British’, as if the film isn’t so, then they won’t fund it at all.

Private Help?

Even though I’d want to stay ‘independent’ I don’t think it’s completely practical to do so. So, I would consider looking to other companies for help, by perhaps approaching other British companies such as Warp or Optimum Releasing to help, for a split of the profit, or simply to help create something brilliant. As we can see from companies like Warp, they don’t necessarily create films to make mega profits, like Time Warner, they make films to make films and attempt to earn what they spent back, or make a small profit. So, approaching a private company and asking for help could be a good way to go, in exchange for payment after the film makes profit, or the promise of working together in the future. It’s a long shot, but there may possibly be a company willing to work with a small, low budget company, for the sake of making films!

Audience.

When talking about audience, I mean my target audience. Any good company has a particular group of people they are targeting. As can already probably be picked up on, I’m targeting a British audience, but I’m not trying to single out too many people. Although, because of currently studying British Youth Culture, I want to target a relatively young audience, probably through the ages of 15 to 21, which is quite specialised, but not niche. As for particular ‘preference’ as we see in some audience theories, I think I’m going to try and keep it broad and mainly be quite mainstream British about it, as cancelling the target audience down to a minority would turn any productions niche, which I don’t want to do. A company to do something quite similar is Warp films, but they do branch out into more niche audiences. As we can see from a film like Dead Man’s Shoes, which is a British Horror, they target a mainstream audience, in an age range of about 18-30, which is reasonably small. I want my company to go in a similar direction to this, but obviously not exactly the same, as I’d like mine to give out more of a message, as Warp often don’t.

Law And Copyright.

A big thing to take into consideration is the law. This seems quite obvious, but I need to consider different areas of legal stuff. Firstly, any production I make will need to credit anyone that has worked on it or helped with it and it would also be a good idea to show that everything is copyrighted. Also, I’d like to ‘Trademark’ my logo, so that people can’t just take my image and use it as their own. This would also mean that should my film become a huge hit, the logo would become an icon that is trademarked and so could be used on anything. Obviously, there’s lots to have to consider when discussing law and I have no shame in admitting that I do not know every law surrounding film, so I would have to hire a lawyer to help me with this and overall look after my company, not just my film.

Actors.

By actors, I mean what style of actors I want to hire to be in my films, or other media products. Although, for other media products I’d hire models (Posters, etc). But, back to the point, when hiring people for my media products, as I will have a small company, I won’t have the money to hire top name actors, so I’ll most likely scout around drama clubs or small time theatre productions, to find different actors. Also, I’ll hold auditions and advertise the parts, so that the talent comes to me, rather me going to the talent. People want to be noticed, so they’ll take any opportunity they can to get into film, meaning it should ho