A background to Warp Films

1. WARP FILMS

2. A HISTORY…
Warp Records was a music company which founded Warp Films as an aside in order to
make music videos and short films. At this point in Warp’s history, their films were
funded by NESTA.
Warp’s first short film that gained public attention was Chris Morris’ ‘My Wrongs’. This
production won 2003’s BAFTA for ‘best short film’. Furthermore, in 2007, Warp
released it’s ‘break through’ film: Shane Meadows’ ‘This is England’. With only a
budget of £1,500,000, this film, like many of Warp’s productions, plays to it’s
setbacks by telling a realistic, ‘gritty’ drama which has no need for the scale of
Hollywood budgets.
Warp’s distribution works as a form of synergy. For example, different distributors
circulated ‘This Is England’ in different countries: IFC Films, NETFLIX (USA), Optimum
Releasing (UK), etc. Synergy can also be seen in Warp’s use of promotion through it’s
record label platform. For example, The Arctic Monkeys used Warp records to produce
some of their music videos with director ‘Richard Ayoade. Consequently, when Warp
decided they wanted to make a film (Submarine) they were able to use their links
through Warp records to get Alex Turner to do the soundtrack. This benefitted Warp as
he is a popular artist who many people recognised and therefore this aspect promoted
the film further.

3. WARP’S TARGET AUDIENCE
Warp’s budgets lend it’s films to more independent, realistic drama genres. This generally means
that Warp’s films appeal to a smaller audience than that of Working Title’s films who aim
pretty much all of their films at something called their Tent Pole: this relates to a European or
American, young or old, male or female audience.
In contrast, Warp’s films tend to have different audiences depending on the production. This can
be seen in ‘Submarine’, where the entire film is based around the quirky romance of British
teenagers – this would therefore appeal to a predominantly British, teenage audience as the
film would be the most relatable to this branch of people.
On the other hand, we can see that Warp’s film ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ has a completely different
target audience. This film tells the story of a man who wants to claim revenge on the thugs
who abused his mentally-challenged brother in a time before the film is set. The film is
packed full of heavy violence, challenging images and is set in a bleak northern English town.
Instantly, we can see that this film would solely appeal to an older English audience,
suggestively male, as the austerity of the film would be inappropriate to younger audiences
and may be viewed as dull to American audiences who are used to seeing high budget,
violent films being packed with complex special effects.

4. KEY PLAYERS
Warp is very much a ‘family’ production company as many of the links, made to create the films, are made
through deals or favours asked between friends and independent film makers coming together to help one
another. For example, the making of Submarine came about because Ally Gipps , someone who works at
Warp, had known Joe Dunthorne, the author of Submarine, for years. Gipps put the book forwards at the
headquarters and then contacted Richard Ayoade, someone who Warp had worked with several times
before, to read the book and see if he’d be interested in directing the film.
This system means that Warp tend to have several key players who pop up in many of their productions, in fact
nearly all of the directors Warp has used have directed at least two productions with Warp. This list of names
includes, Shane Meadows, Paddy Considine, Richard Ayoade and Chris Morris.
This use of independent film makers and actors is beneficial to the British film industry as it is pumping more and
more new talent into the industry, instead of circulating the same old stories with Hugh Grant in the cinemas
again and again.