Independent V Mainstream Film Openings

The main difference between mainstream and independent film companies is money. Mainstream film companies will put a lot more money into their film openings, because they can afford to. This in turn usually means they are better as more money, means they can afford better actors to star in the opening and throughout the film, up to date equipment and technology that enables the film opening to be produced.

 The Dark Knight




This film opening is produced by a mainstream company. Warner Brothers  a subsidiary of Time Warner which is the second largest media company in the world behind Walt Disney.  This means they have a lot of money to put into their films. This means the film openings are considerably better than small companies, such as the clip below which is made and funded by Film 4. By being a mainstream conglomerate, they can afford big names to star in their films, for example Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Morgan Freeman. This in turn helps sell the film. Rated 12 A, they have lost some market, however the film is targeted at teenagers and adults. The budget for this film was $185,000,000.

East is East



This film is produced by Film 4. It is set in what looks like a dirty and dated street in London.  The shots used are very basic and this may reflect the lower budgets that this film company has got to produce their films with. Being an independent film company, it means they don't have the funding available to be able to afford the top of the range equipment and the money to be able to afford to film in prolific well known settings that can help attract audiences.

From the very beginning; in comparison to the clip above, you can see that the quality isn't as great. Also you can see that the setting isn't as prolific. The above film uses establishing shots showing the skyscrapers and enabling the audience to understand where the film is being shot. Then we see 3 masked men run into a bank and 2 on the top of the bank disabling alarms etc. This shows us that a lot of thought and money has went into the setting in comparison  to this film which is set in an old looking road in East London. A wider age range of characters can be seen in this clip opposed to the above clip. This may also be to do with funding and not being able to afford well known actors who can help entice audiences in via celebrity endorsements.

Overall from the clip, we can see that the mainstream film opening companies quality is a lot better, also the setting, characters and editing is a lot better. The main reason, they had a bigger budget, meaning they could afford to fund all of these things and afford to buy the best of quality things to help aid there film and make it look good.