Web 2.0

The interactivity of web 2.0 where people around he world do not only communicate but share information and concepts together to captivate a bigger audience. Examples such as these would include the movement of web 1.0 to web 2.0, s this could mean 'piczo' to 'facebook' or 'myspace' where you not only produce something but you are interacting and distributing ideas to others. This has given way also to digital downloads for cheaper prices for those who are 'time rich' and 'money poor' (piracy). For 'Slumdog Millionaire' because of the different types of distribution used to attract a big audience this has managed to proliferate the success of more films in the future for the same genre through youtube etc.

Synergies within Film4 Productions

'Slumdog Millionaire' was created through a joint production, or synergy, with Film 4 and Celador Productions as they were connected to produce and distribute the film. Although not as popular for films as Channel 4, Celador Productions is popular with the hit television quiz show 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' which is one of the major themes and ideas in 'Slumdog Millionaire'.  

Slumdog Millionaire Cinema Statistics

The website Pearl and Dean offers information about the types and age of audiences that watched the film in cinemas. It showed that no-one between the ages of 4 and 14 saw the film in the cinema. 46% of the audience were aged between 15 and 24; 16% for 25 to 34-year-olds; 10% for 35 to 44-year-olds and 27% for people aged 45 and over. This shows that the majority of the audiences were young - nearly half of those who went to see the film were aged between 15 and 24.
The gender statistics shows that the film was slightly more popular with the female audience with a 56:44 ratio of females to males.

Box Office Success of Slumdog Millionaire

North America - After debuting on a Wednesday, the film grossed $360,018 in 10 theatres in its first weekend, a strong average of $36,002 per theatre. In its second weekend, it expanded to 32 theatres and made $947,795, or an average of $29,619 per theatre, representing a drop of only 18%. In the 10 original theatres that it was released in, viewership went up 16%, and this is attributed to strong word-of-mouth. The film expanded into wide release on 25 December 2008 at 614 theatres and earned $5,647,007 over the extended Christmas weekend. Following its success at the 81st Academy Awards, the film's takings increased by 43%, the most for any film since Titanic.

Europe - The film was released in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2009, and opened at #2 at the UK box office. The film reached #1 in its second weekend and set a UK box office record, as the film's takings increased by 47%. This is the "biggest ever increase for a UK saturation release," breaking "the record previously held by Billy Elliot's 13%." This record-breaking "ticket surge" in the second weekend came after Slumdog Millionaire won four Golden Globes and receive eleven BAFTA nominations. The film grossed £6.1 million in its first eleven days of release in the UK.

The release of Slumdog Millionaire

Fox Searchlight Pictures President Peter Rice and Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov announced that the companies would join forces on the North American release of Slumdog Millionaire. The project was initiated at Film4 who co-developed and co-financed the film with UK production company Celador Films. The film is produced by Celador's Christian Colson. Film4 chief Tessa Ross and Celador Films Chairman Paul Smith act as executive producers.

Fox Searchlight Pictures is a specialty film company that both finances and acquires motion pictures. It has its own marketing and distribution operations, and its films are distributed internationally by Twentieth Century Fox. Fox Searchlight Pictures is a unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment, a unit of Fox Entertainment Group.

The distribution of the film sparked a lot of interactivity and exchange between movie-goers and Danny Boyle films, as this was primarily the intended audience. The internet distributed key concepts before the release of the film - the soundtrack is available on youtube and its own website has the trailer on it. Social networking sites have attracted people to watch the film through high concept posters which has generated a lot of buzz as they are becoming more and more popular. TV adverts for the film and DVD/Blue ray releases (around early June 2009) has caused exchange on youtube and have since created fansites and blogsites dedicated to film actors/actresses/directors involved.

Youtube has the trailers of the film and has attracted a large audience because of its mixture of eastern and western music music, the use of bright colours to make it visually appealing and connoting the array of emotions and twists in the film and the theme of rags-to-riches to make it relatable to some of the audience. Phone applications have been used through Apple iPod stores to attract those through creating games and competitions and again generating a buzz - a 'commercial tie-ins'.  The release of DVD and Blue-ray would have attracted another audience of HD films, which is already popular in America. Due to the time and development of media such as television, radio and cameras, this shows there is a revolution of how and when people can watch these films. The film was originally released as a mainstream idea and was primarily released to a limited audience, but was well received by North America an Europe so they released it to a wider audience 2 months later.

Vikas Swarup

Vikas Swarup is an Indian novelist best known for his novels Q&A and Six Suspects. His debut novel Q&A tells the story of how a penniless waiter in Mumbai becomes the biggest winner of a uiz show in history. It was critically acclaimed in India and abroad, being translated into 41 different languages. It was shortlisted for the Best First Book by the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and won many other awards. A BBC Radio Play was based on the book and went on to win two awards in 2008. Film4 in the UK had optioned the movie rights and movie title 'Slumdog Millionaire' and also went on to receive global critical acclaim.

Six Suspects has also been translated in many different languages and has been optioned for a film by the BBC and John Hodge, who wrote the script for films such as Trainspotting has been commissioned to write the screenplay.

Technological Convergence - Filming Process

     Slumdog Millionaire was filmed in several parts of India in order to make the production for the film a success. The crew found this to be difficult at times because they were filming in the real slums in Mumbai, so the chaos surrounding them may have caused the filming to be difficult. They needed to find a way to come up with a way to make the filming easier for Boyle, so they used newer digital hand-held cameras and therefore spending more time on editing to get good results. The silicon imagery created a very dramatic overtone and real-life feel of the film. This was a big risk as the budget was high for a film of the genre 'rags-to-riches' theme and is not a popular theme.

Music for Slumdog Millionaire

The soundtrack to the film was mainly composed by A.R. Rahman, who is an Indian film composer and record producer. He planned the score for over two months and completed it within two weeks. Danny Boyle chose Rahman because not only did he draw on Indian classical music, but he also brought R&B and hip-hop from America and house music from Europe to create an incredible fusion. Rahman won the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score and won two out of three nominations for the Academy Awards. The soundtrack includes the popular Hindi song ‘Jai Ho’ which has entered the international lexicon and M.I.A, an English songwriter, recording artist and producer with a Sri Lankan Tamil origin. Film critic Goher Iqad Punn termed the soundtrack Rahman’s ‘magnum opus’ which will acquaint ‘the entire world’ with his artistry.

Slumdog Millionaire UK Trailer

Theatrical Poster for Slumdog Millionaire

The title ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ has been written in bold and in a block colour of pink to immediately attract the attention of the audience. The two main characters shown on the film poster are Dev Patel and Freida Pinto and their names are shown at the bottom in small print. This is because they are not well-known and they are young. There are only a few images used on the poster because most of it is taken up by the writing. It shows the Dev Patel and Freida Pinto smiling while confetti is falling on them. Next to them is a question with a reference to ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ which says: ‘What does it take to find a lost love?: A) Money, B) Luck, C) Brainpower or D) Destiny’ with Destiny highlighted, telling the audience one of the main themes of the film.

These images give the plot of the film away to the audience. No setting is given away on the poster. Different colours are used for the title, director, quotes from reviews and the confetti which reflects the different emotions that are evoked in the film. The quote “The Feel-Good Film of the Decade” followed with 5 stars has “Feel-Good” and “Decade” in a larger font to sell itself to the audience. Also, with the image of Dev Patel cheering furthers the sense of the film having a feel-good theme about it. 

Critical Acclaim

Slumdog is highly acclaimed, named in top ten lists for many newspapers:
The film won 8 Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Film Editing and Best Sound Mixing.
It won 7 BAFTAs for Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Music, Best Editing and Best Sound.
It also won 4 Golden Globe Awards for Best Picture - Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score. It was released widely in the UK on 9th January 2009 and US on 23rd January 2009, just weeks before the awards ceremonies - Academy Awards, BAFTAS and Golden Globes.
Slumdog Millionaire has also been critically acclaimed in the Western World. As of 11 November 2009, Rotten Tomatoes has given the film a 93% rating with an average score of 8.2/10. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 86, based on 36 reviews. IMDB (Internet Movie Database) also gave the film a high rating of 8.4/10 - the 73rd highest out of all the movies they have ever reviewed.

Inspiration for Slumdog Millionaire

In addition to Swarup's original novel, the film was also inspired by Indian cinema. Tandan has referred to Slumdog Millionaire as a homage to Hindi commercial cinema. Boyle has cited the influence of several Bollywood films set in Mumbai. Satya (1998) and Company (2002) both offered 'slick, often mesmerizing portrayals of the Mumbai underworld' and displayed realistic 'brutality and urban violence.' Boyle has also stated that the chase in one of the opening scenes of Slumdog Millionaire was based on a '12-minute police chase through the crowded Dharavi slum' in Black Friday (2004). Deewar (1975) which Boyle described as being 'absolutey key to the Indian cinema' is a crime film based on the Bombay gangster Haj Mastan, whose autograph Jamal seeks at the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire. 

The rags-to-riches underdog theme underlying the film was also a recurring theme in classic Bollywood movies from the 1950s through to the 1980s, when "India worked to lift itself from hunger and poverty." 

Casting

Gail Stevens came on board to see oversee casting global. Stevens had worked with Boyle throughout his career and was well-known for discovering new talent. Meredith Tucker was appointed to cast out of the US. The film-makers then travelled to Mumbai in September 2007 with a partial crew and began hiring local cast and crew for production in Karjat. 

Loveleen Tandnan was appointed one of the five casting directors and said "I suggested to Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy that it was important to put some of the film in Hindi to bring the film alive...They asked me to pen the Hindi dialogue which I instantly agreed to do. And as we drew closer to the shoot date, Danny asked me to step in as the co-director." Boyle then decided to translate a third of the film's English dialogue into Hindi. He asked for the dialogue to be 10% Hindi and the president of Warner Independent approved of the change. 

The main actors in the film, Jamal and Lakita, portrayed by Dev Patel and Freida Pinto are both British-Indian actors that were relatively well-known actor before Slumdog Millionaire - Dev Patel was a main character in the BAFTA-winning Skins, who was discovered by Danny Boyle when his daughter pointed him out to her dad. Freida Pinto was a model for four years appearing in multiple advertisements, but Slumdog was her breakthrough. Due to this, it became an advantage because the film would win a large audience of young people.

Production of Slumdog Millionaire

To hone the script, screenwriter Simon Beaufoy made three research trips to India and interviewed street children, finding himself impressed with their attitudes. He said "I want to get across the sense of this huge amount of fun, laughter, chat, and sense of community that is in these slums. What you pick up on is this mass of energy." Danny Boyle, after being approached by Simon Beaufoy, initially believed that no-one would be interested in a film about Who Want to be a Millionaire but revisited the script later on.

By the summer of 2006 British production companies Celador Films and Film 4  Productions invited director Danny Boyle to read the script of Slumdog Millionaire, but initially hesitated as he was not interested in making a film about 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' however soon found out that Simon Beaufoy wrote 'The Full Monty' one of the director's favourite films so decided to revisit the script. The film is in production with Film 4, Celador Films and Pathe Pictures International.

I believe that films such as 'Borat', 'Bruno' and 'Enduring Love' have helped Film 4 Productions thrive as a film business. It was rare for a blockbuster to receive so much commercial and critical acclaim that involved so little planning and distribution.

Recent films in Film4 Production

The film I have chosen from Film4 is 'Slumdog Millionaire'. It is a 2008 British film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Simon Beaufoy and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan. It is an adaptation of the novel Q&A written in 2005 by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup. Set and filmed in India, the film tells the story of a young man from the slums of Mumbia who appears on the Indian verison of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and exceeds many people's expectations, thereby arousing the suspicions of the game show host and of law enforcement officials. 

It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards in 2009 and won eight, the most for any film in 2008, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. It also won seven BAFTA awards including Best Film, five Critics' Choice awards, and four Golden Globe awards.