Thick Description
The first cinema I visited was the Watershed: a trendy, multi-art venue with a café and bar, its main attraction being the cinema upstairs that screens films you would never normally get to see in a standard multiplex- e.g. art-house and foreign films, such as So Long, My Son. It is located on Bristol’s harbour-side, somewhat out of place at first glance, situated on a row of restaurants and bars. When you go inside the Watershed however the café and bar area is bustling and serves a variety of drinks and food, from small plates to main courses and sides, showing that it’s not so out of place after all- though this isn’t something the average person would know from the outside looking in. Standing outside, all you can see of the Watershed is the small, modern-looking reception area, decorated with white walls and minimalist furniture. There are four screens above the main desk that provide brief information on the screenings and what other events are currently taking place there. In the corner tucked away is a humble selection of snacks, ranging from 50 pence granola bars to popcorn and confectionary. It may seem intimidating to somebody who hasn’t been to the Watershed before, as it doesn’t exactly provide a warm and welcoming atmosphere, instead being seemingly focused on looking ‘trendy’, with its bare red brick walls and minimalist décor. Going past the reception and up the staircase, you will see posters advertising current films, and if you turn right, you’ll find a seating area with floor to ceiling windows, allowing natural light to flood the rooms, continuing the venue’s theme of a modernist architectural look. A red brick archway separates this room from the larger seating area located next to the café and bar, and going beyond this room you will find conference and meeting rooms that are open for the public to use, demonstrating the Watershed’s purpose as an institution that connects with it’s community and has a purpose beyond simply being a cinema.
The second venue I visited in carrying out this research was Showcase Cinema de Lux, located in Cabot Circus, which provided me a completely different experience. Contrary to the Watershed, my initial feelings towards this cinema were that I belonged. As their ultimate aim is profit, the venue must feel welcoming to any potential customers, and it’s something they do a good job at. Going through the entrance you will find yourself in a huge and bustling room. The floors are carpeted and the lighting is very soft which provides a cosy atmosphere, and on your left as you enter are machines that you can use to purchase tickets, meaning you can go and see a film without ever having to interact with another person- emphasising convenience and thereby profit. There is a large counter with multiple tills at which you can buy food and drinks- with most of the choices being big name brands such as Coca Cola, and these brand names are plastered over television screens and posters telling you what to buy. Again these are the staples of a well-run, profit-first multiplex institution. There are seats available in this large lobby area, but only a few, and not enough that it’s inviting you to hang around. They’re also arranged in such a way that it is clearly seating for individuals rather than groups, again suggesting that it’s not somewhere you’re meant to stick around. Also in this lobby area is a bar, serving food and drinks, with tables to sit at, though it is a much smaller bar and seating area than the one in the Watershed, despite Showcase being a much bigger venue. Up the escalator is where you’ll find the screens, as well as an exclusive ‘Director’s Lounge’, a lavish looking champagne and cocktail bar exclusive to customers who opted to purchase tickets to a film screening in the ‘Director’s Hall’. As well as this exclusive bar, there are a few more seats- though again they seem to be there for short term convenience more than anything- as well as a generous 13 screens. The types of films shown at Showcase are very much what you’d expect- mostly mainstream, big-budget flicks such as Frozen 2 or Joker, often belonging to franchises or existing IPs. To their credit however, Showcase do a great job at immersing you in the world of these films, with luxury seating much more comfortable than the seats in the Watershed, and even superior to other multiplexes. The screen sizes are fantastic and the image quality is 4K. The audio- Dolby Digital Sound- is also of a very high quality and these things help massively to immerse you in the world of the movie.
When it comes to Showcase it is very clear immediately that it’s a modern multiplex, boasting multiple large screens and a welcoming atmosphere that makes it clear anyone is welcome. Once your film is over however, the only incentive you have to stay is the small bar area that also serves food- however, most will opt to find somewhere nearby that offers higher quality food for the same price. Ultimately you get the feeling that once they’ve gotten your money, they have no interest in keeping you around. While at first glance the Watershed may seem more intimidating than a multiplex cinema, it doesn’t take long until it feels much more welcoming and homely, with its large café and bar inviting customers to arrive early before the film- or to stick around afterwards, feeling much more like an area to socialise and relax than simply a place to get a some quick food or drinks. It also has numerous resources open to the public, offering venue hire for many different events from meetings and conferences to birthday and wedding celebrations. Watershed also runs multiple programs working with the local community, with goals ranging from helping young people develop skills in the industry to funding schemes for emerging technologies.
While Showcase is a great cinema for casual audiences, it is ultimately an institution focused on profit, while Watershed feels like a part of the community in Bristol and is a fantastic cultural hub that provides a more niche audience with opportunities otherwise difficult to find.
Cross-promotion, Franchising and Audiences for Alien (1979)
The huge success of Alien in 1979 birthed a cinematic universe boasting 6 films (as well as the spin-off franchise Alien vs Predator,containing two films), all with varying levels of critical and commercial success. The Alien franchise has continued to prove profitable to this day, with its most recent instalment in the series coming in 2017 with Alien: Covenant, a film that grossed a total of $240.9 million worldwide with a budget of $97 million. The success of this franchise ultimately stems from the worldwide phenomenon that the first film was- Alien made over $200 million from a budget of $10 million, and despite its critical reception being initially mixed, forty years later, Alien frequently finds itself on critics’ greatest films of all time lists, and is one of the highest rated films of all time on IMDb, demonstrating that it is a film loved by critics and casual audiences alike. The reason for the massive success of the first film is how revolutionary it was, particularly in the horror genre- it defied numerous tropes and clichés and it did so in a very interesting and effective way. It also found a perfect fusion of horror and sci-fi, with the fantastic design of the alien itself (or ‘Xenomorph’) being a huge part of this. Additionally, the film had more than enough underlying themes and subtext to encourage repeated viewings and critical analyses.
One of the many defied tropes in Alien that contributed to its success was the cast of the film- most of them were men aged forty or older, while the youngest in the cast was Sigourney Weaver at 29. This is a stark contrast to most horror films at the time- and even today- which often opt for a group in their late teens to early twenties. The characters in Alien weren’t a young, carefree or naïve group of young adults, they were, as Ebert points out in his 2003 review “not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth”- the group are constantly bickering about paycheques, and the fact that they don’t really want to be there in the first place perhaps provides additional reasons to sympathise with them. Another trope that the film boldly defies is that of the survivor- Ellen Ripley, the youngest crew member, and one of only two women, is the sole survivor from the Nostromo, the now iconic ship that the film takes place on. Ripley however is not only the last person alive but she actually defeats the seemingly unkillable Xenomorph in the films climax. The character of Ellen Ripley defies tropes in more ways than this, too- she’s not a conventional female protagonist for a film of the 1970s. Most notably the theory of the ‘male gaze’ (Mulvey) does not apply to her, which was particularly defiant for a film made in 1979.
Not only does Alien defy numerous tropes, it often criticises the very tropes that it avoids through its subtext and its themes relating to gender, sex, the patriarchy and the maternal.
In the Alien franchise, Ripley essentially plays the role of the ‘mother’. Her ‘misplaced maternal instincts’- searching for the ship’s cat- end up saving her from a death at the hands of the Xenomorph in Alien. In Aliens (1986) Ripley is maternal not towards a cat but instead the character of Rebecca, for whom Ripley risks everything to protect, becoming her surrogate mother (Irwin). Ripley’s character has an extremely maternal nature, and this leads to her being victorious on more than one occasion. The franchise is also steeped in the ‘horror of sexual violence and the effects it can have on survivors’ (Irwin). The alien ‘Facehuggers’ forcefully insert a phallic object into the victim’s throats, implanting its seed, and forcing the unsuspecting person to give hatch its offspring at a later time. The use of this parallel with rape is incredibly effective- not only does it fit with the rest of the film’s themes about motherhood and sex, but it mirrors something very real, something that women fear every day. It’s resemblance to something so real despite being science fiction is part of what makes it so scary and thus effective as a horror storytelling device, but it also places the same fears in the male viewers which is often much more alien to them than it is to women. Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon said in a 2002 interview “One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex… I said, ‘That’s how I’m going to attack the audience; I’m going to attack them sexually. And I’m not going to go after the women in the audience, I’m going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs.”
Femininity is also touched upon in the franchise, with the first two films especially following a sort of formula- “some essence of woman is extracted from the female heroine, put on trial through demonisation, then ultimately destroyed or chastised” (Vaughn 424). The women in the earlier films have nothing in common except the fight against the alien, which is something they also share with the men. “The feature that identifies them as distinct from men- their shared history of reproduction- is that which they are most set to destroy in the image of the alien and of which they are most afraid” (Jeffords 80). The most innately ‘womanly’ characteristic is perhaps the ability to reproduce, and that is the most terrifying thing in the Alien franchise- the vast swathes of Xenomorph eggs, the Facehuggers using people to forcefully implant and hatch their eggs, the alien that lays the eggs (the Xenomorph Queen) being the ultimate enemy in Aliens.
The Xenomorph itself and the design of it also contributes to the success of Alien and the establishment of the franchise. The idea of being hunted by the ‘perfect organism’ is terrifying, and not only the design of the Xenomorph but also the way in which it’s presented is done brilliantly- mostly lurking in the shadows, never properly seen until the very end of the film when it is finally defeated. A viewer’s imagination can create something much scarier than special effects, and by using darkness to conceal the Xenomorph as well as it manoeuvring through the ship without being seen thanks to the design of the Nostromo, viewers are free to imagine the Xenomorph in whatever way they wish (to some extent).
Before 2000, there were only seven film franchises that had grossed over $1 billion. Today, just 19 years later, that number has grown to over 50. While inflation may be a factor, the biggest reason for this is Hollywood’s adoption of the ‘franchise model’. Films that already have brand recognition- whether they’re based on a book such as The Hunger Games (2012) or feature an established character such as Casino Royale (2006)- films that feature characters or locations the audience can recognise are much easier to market to them, which is why they’re known as ‘pre-sold’ films within the industry (The Economist).
Although Alien had zero brand recognition when it was initially released, it was a huge success and spawned multiple sequels, novels, comics and video-game spin-offs. There are many reasons why it became such a successful franchise. It’s a suspenseful sci-fi horror film that casual audiences can enjoy while also having plenty of depth for critics and fans to analyse- it is a very well-made film, with the fantastic design of the Nostromo as well as the alien itself becoming iconic (and picking up multiple awards upon release)- it defied tropes in an exciting way. Another factor in the establishment of the franchise is that Alien (1979) started so small- the entire film was set almost exclusively on one ship, with only one Xenomorph being featured. It allowed plenty of room for growth in subsequent films, and that is perhaps the reason the films of this franchise aren’t as successful today- there is not as much to build on, not as much to do differently. The lesser success of the more recent films in the franchise may also come down to lower quality writing- while in the earlier films the themes weren’t exactly subtle, they were anything but surface-level and left plenty of room to analyse. In the later films however, the films seemed to lose any subtlety completely- for example in Alien3 (1992) the themes of rape and gender roles are overtly mentioned while in the earlier releases they were simply hinted at. While the most recent instalments in the franchise have been less successful, the fact that it is a franchise that continues to be built on today, still drawing in massive audiences, is a tribute to the immense quality of the earlier films in the series, in particular the film that started it all: Alien (1979).
Bibliography
Economist. “Film franchises- pottering on, and on.” The Economist, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2011/07/11/pottering-on-and-on. Accessed 7 December 2019.
Entertainment. “How Alien Changed the Horror Genre Forever.” Entertainment, https://entertainment.ie/cinema/movie-news/how-alien-changed-the-horror-genre-forever-230859/. Accessed 5 December 2019.
Irwin, William et al. Alien and Philosophy: I Infest, Therefore I am. Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.
Jeffords, Susan. ““The Battle of the Big Mamas”: Feminism and the Alienation of Women.” The Journal of American Culture, vol. 10, issue 3, 1987, pp. 73-84.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema.” Visual and other pleasures. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1989. 14-26.
RogerEbert. “Alien (1979).” RogerEbert, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-alien-1979. Accessed 5 December 2019.
Vaughn, Thomas. “Voices of Sexual Distortion: Rape, Birth, and Self-Annihilation Metaphors in the Alien Trilogy.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 81, 1995, pp. 423-435.
Group Work Reflection
When it came to working in a group, we decided that we would share the WordPress account for our blog in order to upload our work as we go, and also so that we could edit the blog design if we felt we had a good enough idea to improve it. We then met up on separate occasions to discuss what we had done in terms of the design and also to talk about our actual work and give each other advice if needed. Uploading as we went along also allowed us to proof read each other’s work and improve the overall quality of the blog. We wanted the design of it to look professional while being easy to navigate so the potential audience could easily locate any specific piece of writing. With the deadline looming over us, we also didn’t want to attempt to make the blog too fancy or complicate things without having the necessary WordPress experience to make it more stylistic. We all agreed that a minimalist style would work best. The tasks of organising and designing the blog were allocated pretty much equally, though if I had to do it again, I would set aside more time to get familiar with WordPress as this would result in a nicer looking blog overall.
During the process of making the blog I thought each group member had quite equal contributions and that we worked well together. However, one thing I would do differently in future is meet up in person more, and earlier- the first meeting we had was only around one week before the assignment was due, but if we’d have met up earlier perhaps we could have made the design of the blog even better- or perhaps given more advice on each other’s essays, as it’s easier to discuss things in person.
When it came to writing my own essay and report, the other group members did well proof reading and offering advice on it, and uploading our work to the blog as we went along helped with this. There were also times that I read their work after they uploaded it to the blog, and I was able to help them with theirs in return when they needed it.
Overall, the experience of working in a group was pleasant- we all did our part in the design and setup of the blog and we all managed to peer review each other’s work in a supportive way. Each of us had advice to give that ultimately improved the quality of the blog, and while we didn’t meet up until a little too close to the deadline, we had a group chat in which we discussed the blog and our work and we never felt that anything was left too late. The final result of this was a blog that we’re proud of and think would be an interesting read for any film enthusiasts.
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