Institutional context

'YouTube'

• 3 former paypal employees created it in Feb 2005

• In Nov 2006 'Youtube' was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion and now operates as a subsidary for Google.
• The company is based in San Bruno, CA
• Uses Adobe flash video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content. Inc: movie clips, TV clips, music videos.
• Most of the content is uploaded by individuals although media coporations (Inc: CBS,BBC and UMG) offer their material as part of the 'YouTube' partnership programme.
• Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jaued Karim set 'YouTube' up and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at University of Lllinuis at Urbana-Champaign.
• Began as a venture-funded technology start up, from a US$11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital.
• Headquarters in its early stages situated above a pizzeria and japanese restaurant in San Mateo, CA.
• The first video posted on 'YouTube' was 'Me at the Zoo', this was posted by Karim on 23rd April 2005 and can still be seen today.
• 'YouTube' is the dominant provider of online video in the US and holds a market share of 43%
• The name choice of 'YouTube' led to many problems as there was already a website ' http://www.utube.com/, the owners of this website made a lawsuit against 'YouTube' in Nov 2006
• In Nov 2008 'YouTube' reached an agreement with MGM, Lionsgate Entertainment and CBS which will allow the companies to post full-length films and TV shows, accompanied by advertisements.
• On Oct 9th 2009 it was the 3rd aniversary of the acquisitia by Google, Chad Hurley announced in a blog posting that 'YouTube' was recieveing over 1 billion views a day- worldwide. 
• 'YouTube' has made it possible for anyone with an internet connection to post a video that a worldwide audience could watch within a few minuets (Internet Culture)
• 'YouTube' has a slogan: 'Broadcast yourself'
• 'YouTube' is also available in 14 different languages, making it available to many different ethnicities.
• 'YouTube' however has had some critisisms:
• Copyrighted material: 'YouTube' has been critised for failing to ensure that copyrighted material is not uploaded. A notice comes when your signing up for a 'YouTube' account: 'Do not upload and TV shows, music videos, music concerts or commercials with out permission unless they consist entierly of content you created yourself. The copyright tips page and the community guidelines can help you determine whether your video infringes someone else's copyright'
• The videos are not viewed before they are posted online which makes it difficult to see whether they are copyright free or not.
• Viacom,mediaset and English Premier League all filed lawsuits against 'YouTube' for copyrighted material on the website.
• Video ID checks uploaded videos against a database of copyrighted content with the aim of deducting violations.
• piracy and inappropriate content are also issues/critisisms which 'YouTube' have had.

Budgets

• Ive looked at budgets of feature length films both old and new but mostly rescent and found that:
• -Saw-$1.2 million (released 2004)
• -Friday the 13th-$55000 (released 1980)
• -Blair Witch Project-$2000 (released 1999)
• -Paranormal Activity-$11000- is out now, has a very low budget and was shot within a week.
• Parnormal Activity and Blair Witch Project are more likley to be the kind of films we would compare our film trailer to in the industry at the moment as they're horror films on a low budget, which are both set in relativley close surounding ie more or less activies the audience can imagine doing themselves, this creates versimilartude which increases tension in the audience.

Distribution

• The internet is key to distribution of low budget films using unkown actors through corpoarte websites suc as Flint as mentioned earlier Youtube is another great example as well as blogs which keep people up to date.
•  If we were to choose a distributor for our film it would probably be WarpX as they specialise in regional, low budget films with realism intertwined, and ours is a regional horror film with a very low budget which has verisimilitude throughout making the film real to the audience gives our film a sense of realism.
•  We can also compare it to the horror/thriller film Donkey Punch which was distributed by WarpX in 2008 with a budget of £50, 0000 most of which was spent on boat hire, their cast is also full of strong northern accents, I feel as this film has done well appearing on the internet, DVD etc our film would also do well with this distribution company as our film holds many of the same factors, and would target a similar audience.
•  Our film would probably be best first starting off on the internet through WarpX and YouTube, Stella etc, then moving on to being screened at film festivals eg Raindance film festival and Edingburugh film festival, all of which aim to find new independant talented film makers, we would also try viral marketing which proves to be very effective on social networking sites From here we would either be discovered exhibited in cinemas or straight onto DVD for our loyal fans, as having such a low budget means advertising is difficult, therefore making it more difficult to get recognised and into cinemas.
• We have four main characters; two boys and two girls, they're quite representative of different social groups as stereotypically there’s a popular jock, a geek, a slut and a nice girl, this wide spectrum of character types will be representative of the audience as they should all feel they can relate to one of the characters, on a basic level the gender and more in depth the personalities/social status, so it becomes more interesting to the audience as they feel the film is more about them.
• Teaser trailers such as ours create narrative enigma and we closley followed the style used from the teaser trailer of Valentine, as we though it was very effective and a fairly modern version of a teaser trailer.
• The narrative enigma is created by little speech, carefully chosen sound and lots of shots to give good exposition not necessarily in a linear fashion. This will all create tension and give the audience a brief idea of the plot and the genre type of the film, usually ending on a cliff-hanger like ours, which both keeps the audience in suspense and leaves them wanting more, i.e. they can’t wait to go to the cinema and see the film or buy it on DVD.
• Teaser trailers are used to entice the audience into watching a film they come out before the trailer, to increase the suspense in the audience and are watched by many, mostly by the youth generation as they want to be up to date and see all the latest films, a teaser trailer is good way of giving insight to see weather the films suitable for you or not.
• Spoofs on films particularly seen on YouTube can increase the popularity of a film quite dramatically or bring an old one to your attention, as to find the some spoofs funny or completely understand seeing the actual film first is best, so with increased amateur films being seen all over the world on sites such as YouTube, so the popularity of the film they've spoofed increases to, usually directly proportional but at a slower rate.
• For example Mary Poppins spoof is very different to the normal Mary Poppins trailer, having this new spoof created much interest in the film and it was released on DVD in more outlets especially in America, who it gave more cross-over appeal than the original trailer.