Stephen Follows - Film industry data and education

Major new study into gender inequality among UK film and TV writers

May 23, 2018 4 comments

Almost exactly two years ago, Alexis Kreager and I published a big report into the gender inequality faced by film directors working in the UK film industry.

Soon after it was published, we were approached by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) about studying the plight of screenwriters, both in the film and television industries. This led to the WGGB (along with the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society – ALCS) supporting us in carrying out a deep data dive into the experiences of UK writers.

The full 177-page report can be downloaded here, and I have written a brief summary in the article below.

Download the full report

You can read more about the Writers’ Guild and ALCS’ campaign connected to the report at writersguild.org.uk/equalitywrites

The report covers both …

Read full article

What do Cannes-nominated short films have in common?

May 14, 2018 0 comments

In just under a week’s time, the 2018 Cannes Film Festival will come to a close and the winners of the top prizes will be announced. I’ve looked at the feature films nominated for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top award, in previous articles (here, here, here, here and here).

So today I am going to turn to the main competition’s little sister – the Short Film Palme d’Or (or Palme d’Or du Court Métrage, to give it its French name).

I looked at all films nominated for the Short Film Palme d’Or between the first Cannes film festival in 1946 and this year (2018).

How many short films are nominated for the Palme d’Or?

Including this year’s nominees, 1,211 short films have been in the running …

Read full article

How long does the average Hollywood movie take to make?

May 7, 2018 6 comments

Today’s topic is one I’ve had on my ‘to do’ list for a while and it took the help of four students to gather all the data. We looked at the key dates behind Hollywood studio movies in order to work out roughly how long the average Hollywood movie takes to make.

We built a database of 782 live-action studio-produced feature films, all of which were released domestically between 2006 and 2016, inclusive. We then scoured trades and traditional press outlets to find the earliest date for the following key milestones:

Announcement – The date when it’s publicly announced that the film will be made. Often this is when the industry announces that the script has been optioned, but could also be when the mainstream press …

Read full article

The prevalence of sequels, remakes and original movies

April 30, 2018 8 comments

Over the weekend, I saw Avengers: Infinity War. I shall avoid talking about the actual movie so you don’t have to worry about spoilers here. What I do want to discuss is originality amongst top movies. Before the Avengers began saving the world, we were treated to trailers for nothing but sequels, prequels and other movies based on existing material.

While hardly a scientific way of judging all of Hollywood’s output, it did underline the issue for me. 2018 is going to be a bumper year for such movies, with cinemas showing:

Sequels such as Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Sherlock Gnomes, Johnny English Strikes Again, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Pacific Rim: Uprising, Fifty Shades Freed, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, Deadpool 2, The Equalizer 2, Super …

Read full article