COMPARING ATTACK THE BLOCK AND FROZEN

Attack the Block SummaryAttack the Block follows an unlucky young woman and a gang of tough inner-city kids who make an unlikely alliance to try to defend their turf against an invasion of savage alien creatures, turning a South London apartment complex into a war-zone.

Director- Joe Cornish Writer- Joe CornishStars- John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Alex Esmail, Leeon Jones, Franz Drameh

Genre- Science fiction, action, comedy horror

The Director- Joe CornishJoe Cornish has made a few video diaries and documentaries, including Little Britain Series 2, video diaries for Hot Fuzz (Fuzzball Rally which was a behind-the-scenes look at the US Press Tour - this included a 28 minute and a 71 minute cut) and Shaun of the Dead.

He has contributed to the work of Edgar Wright, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. Edgar Wright was an executive producer for Attack The Block and together they rewrote the script for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (which co-starred Simon Pegg and Nick Frost). Upcoming work includes films on a more international scale. Cornish and Wright have co-written The Astonishing Ant Man for Marvel Studios and The Adventures of Tinin: The Secret Unicorn for Dreamworks (with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson).

ProductionThe location in the film was the fictional Wyndham House in South London, but in reality it was a mixture of the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle, and Islington.Heygate Estate is a deserted estate, and had been used for other films, Harry Brown and Hereafter. The London housing estates, when they were first built, were seen as futuristic; Cornish saw the estate as being the perfect location for his modern, sci-fi tale. To adapt this the block was made to look like a spaceship in its own right, as part of the production design; tube lighting, dark corridors and stairwells, as well as distorted sounds, all add to the effect.Other low budget / high visual effects included presenting a map of the block, this is so the audience could understand and connect with the narrative, and the budget did without an expensive aerial shot, as well as wetting own the streets to emphasise the lighting.

The creatures were not CGI, as Cornish wanted something that you could really ‘see’ in front of the camera. The aliens were therefore performed by quadrupeds. Cornish was keen to take the animalistic imagery stereotypically used in the British press for teenagers and personify it with the beasts. He wanted the humanity of the youths to shine against the ‘aliens’ who were interested in attacking all in their path to get what they wanted.

Distribution Target Media ran the media campaign. Its primary audience is aimed at the teen / youth market and secondary target market are those with cultural capital - fans of Nick Frost, Spaced, the work of Wright / Pegg and Adam and Joe. All marketing tried to direct the audience to the social network sites and there was a large TV and print campaign. Standout media included an E4 promotion for the young audience, the social media such as Twitter and Facebook, also a national 6 page outdoor campaign.The estimated budget costs is £9 million. The film was distributed by Optimum Releasing for the UK. Optimum have released films including Tyrannosaur, Brighton Rock, Submarine and BBC film, The Awakening. It was released on the 13th May 2011.There were no initial plans for US distribution. One of the reasons for this was the use of London accents and the slang used by the teens. There was even talk of subtitles being needed. But Cornish asked if the audience could understand the accents and they said yes.

Exhibition The release date was 13th May 2011 in the UK. The opening weekend figures are £1,133,859 for the UK. This was on 352 screens and it was third in the box office results. This amount of screens would constitute as a wide release. This is quite unusual for a British film without a major studio distributor, but is common for European co-production.

The UK DVD and Blu-ray Disc release was on the 19th September 2011. On play.com a limited edition glow-in-the-dark box set is on offer. In the USA, it had a limited release to 8 screens and took $137,580. It was eventually released to 66 screen across the USA. The US theatrical release was on July 29th 2011.The USA DVD / Blue-ray Disc was released on 25th October 2011. The USA release of the DVD and Blu-ray Disc actually traded on the accents as a selling point.

Successes and failures It gained critical acclaim with 75/100 on Metacritic and 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was UK film critic Mark Kermode who gave it a mixed review, wanting it to be scarier and funnier.Attack The Block both won, and was nominated for, many awards. Including:

•2011 Nominated for Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, Best Film Screenplay•2011 Won Toronto Film Critics Association Awards, Best First Feature•2011 Won Los Angeles Film Festival, Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature•2011 Nominated for British Independent Film Awards, Most Promising Newcomer (John Boyega) and Best Debut Director•2012 Nominated Black Reel Awards for Best Actor and Best Breakthrough Performance(John Boyega), Best Ensemble, Best Film, Best Original Score and Outstanding Foreign Film

As the film has had a return of $5,824,175 (£3,803,943), the film is not seen as a commercial success. It does however look like ancillary markets (not theatrical) will raise this return over time.

Synergy Attack the Block is an independent film so they lack in financial funding that a major company would have so they are therefore limited. Some examples of Synergy for Attack the Block:- DVD- Blue- Ray- Soundtrack- Game

Frozen Summary:Fearless optimist Anna teams up with Kristoff in an epic journey, encountering Everest-like conditions, and a hilarious snowman named Olaf in a race to find Anna's sister Elsa, whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom in eternal winter.

Director- Chris Buck, Jenifer LeeWriters- Jenifer Lee, Hans Christian Anderson, Chris Buck, Shane Morris, Dean Wellins

Stars- Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, Idina Menzel

The directors

Chris Buck is an American film director known for co- directing Tarzan, Surfs Up, The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas and Frozen. He also worked as supervising animator on Home on the Range. He has awards for:Academy Award for best animated feature filmBAFTA award for best animated film

Jenifer Lee is an American motion picture writer and director. She co- wrote the screen play for Wreck it Ralph and writing and co- directing Frozen with Chris Buck. She is the first female director of a Walt Disney Animation Studios feature film, and the first writer at any major animation studio to become a director

Exhibition On January 31st, 2014, a sing along version of the movie was in select theatres for a limited time. The film premiered at the El Captian Theatre on November 19th, 21 and went into general release on November 27th. Frozen was released theatrically in the United States on November 27th, 2013 and it was accompanied by the new Mickey Mouse animated short film, Get a horse!Frozen was promoted heavily at several Disney theme parks including Disneyland’s Fantasyland, Disney California Adventures World of Colour, Epcots Norway pavilion, and Disney's Dreams show. Several film critics considered it to be the best Disney animated musical since the studios renaissance era.

Synergy Frozen was released for digital download on February 25th 2014 on ITunes and Amazon. It will also be released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on March 18th 2014. The bonus features for the Blu-ray will include the making of the film, an inside look at how Disney tried to adapt the original fairy tale into an animated feature, four deleted scenes, the films teaser trailer, and music videos from songs in the film. A video game was released on November 19th 201 for Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3ds. There is a frozen toy box pack for the toy-based video game Disney Infinity on November 26th 2013 and both figures were released separately on March 11th 2014. Disney mobile released a match-three game titled Frozen for IOS, Android and Windows phone platforms. Also six mini games of frozen can be played on Disney's website. There is a lot of Frozen merchandise available in the Disney store and on online websites such as Amazon.