Just a make belief presenta

1. Company Creation
A look into ‘creating’ my own company and looking at some of the key features of
how my company would operate!
S

2. Name!
S Okay, so first of all is the best part, naming my company! This
should be easy, but as we all know, naming can take forever and a
day! So, I decided to get thinking. The problem was, I wanted my
company to really help sell a ‘brand’ much like Warner Bros does.
It needs to be something short and snappy, like Warp, but also be
different enough so that people would think of my
company, when they hear the name! Also, what’s a brand name if
it doesn’t have something to do with the person who owns it?
Again, like Warner Bros. So, I didn’t want to have ‘Jack’ or
‘Waring’ direct, as it seems too simple and unprofessional. After
lots of thoughts and coming up with ideas as simple as ‘J’, I
decided to go with ‘Jaywars’. The name is easy enough to say and
sounds quite quirky, so an audience will want to know what it’s all
about!

3. What Does It Do?
S So, it’s all fine and good having a company, but what does it
actually do? Well, unfortunately, it’s going to have to do
everything! Because my company doesn’t have the funding
to ask different companies to help
distribute, market, produce, etc, my company is going to
have to do all of those things! Production was going to be
done by my company anyway, so this isn’t too bad, but
marketing and distribution are going to be tricky. But, I will
cover these things in a different presentation!

4. Subsidiaries?
S So, my main company is ‘Jaywars’ but what we can see from other
companies, is that even though they have their ‘main company’ they usually
have many subsidiaries that cover different specialisations. We can see this in
the company ‘Time Warner’ who own over 100 different subsidiaries, such as
‘Cartoon Network’ and ‘Warner Bros’. Yet more relevantly, they own
‘Monolith Productions’, ‘Outright Distrubution’, ‘Nether Realm Studios’ and
many many more! The reason they do this is so that any money spent on
different things, effectively just circulates their own companies, making profits
higher! Plus, it’s generally easier for the company. Now, whilst I won’t be
actually creating a company, it’s interesting to think about whether or not I
would create different companies. Such as ‘Jaywars Distribution’ or ‘Jaywars
Website Design’ for my ancillary tasks. Doing this would capitalise my profits
and also broaden my company, perhaps bringing in money from other
production companies who need a distributor. But, this is simply in theory, as
I’d need money to pull this off and different employees with different
experience, of which I don’t have, making ‘Jaywars’ a standalone
company, which simply dealt with many different things.

5. Funding!
S The biggest part of a company, is where does the money come
from? For companies like Time Warner, this isn’t much of an
issue, as they already have money, due to being such a huge
company! This is different to a company like Warp, who whilst
they do have subsidiaries, have nowhere near as many resources as
Time Warner and so look to different institutions for funding.
These institutions are all over and for British films, there are even
Government foundations in place to help fund British film, such
as the British film council. Now, if I were to have to fund an actual
film, then I believe I would look to somewhere like the British
Film Council, as I fully expect my film to be mostly British. I say
this, as the BFC have strict standards on what makes a film
‘British’, as if the film isn’t so, then they won’t fund it at all.

6. Private Help?
S Even though I’d want to stay ‘independent’ I don’t think it’s
completely practical to do so. So, I would consider looking to other
companies for help, by perhaps approaching other British companies
such as Warp or Optimum Releasing to help, for a split of the
profit, or simply to help create something brilliant. As we can see
from companies like Warp, they don’t necessarily create films to make
mega profits, like Time Warner, they make films to make films and
attempt to earn what they spent back, or make a small profit.
So, approaching a private company and asking for help could be a
good way to go, in exchange for payment after the film makes
profit, or the promise of working together in the future. It’s a long
shot, but there may possibly be a company willing to work with a
small, low budget company, for the sake of making films!

7. Audience.
S When talking about audience, I mean my target audience. Any good company
has a particular group of people they are targeting. As can already probably
be picked up on, I’m targeting a British audience, but I’m not trying to single
out too many people. Although, because of currently studying British Youth
Culture, I want to target a relatively young audience, probably through the
ages of 15 to 21, which is quite specialised, but not niche. As for particular
‘preference’ as we see in some audience theories, I think I’m going to try and
keep it broad and mainly be quite mainstream British about it, as cancelling
the target audience down to a minority would turn any productions
niche, which I don’t want to do. A company to do something quite similar is
Warp films, but they do branch out into more niche audiences. As we can see
from a film like Dead Man’s Shoes, which is a British Horror, they target a
mainstream audience, in an age range of about 18-30, which is reasonably
small. I want my company to go in a similar direction to this, but obviously
not exactly the same, as I’d like mine to give out more of a message, as Warp
often don’t.

8. Law And Copyright.
S A big thing to take into consideration is the law. This seems quite
obvious, but I need to consider different areas of legal stuff.
Firstly, any production I make will need to credit anyone that has
worked on it or helped with it and it would also be a good idea to
show that everything is copyrighted. Also, I’d like to ‘Trademark’
my logo, so that people can’t just take my image and use it as their
own. This would also mean that should my film become a huge
hit, the logo would become an icon that is trademarked and so
could be used on anything. Obviously, there’s lots to have to
consider when discussing law and I have no shame in admitting
that I do not know every law surrounding film, so I would have to
hire a lawyer to help me with this and overall look after my
company, not just my film.

9. Actors.
S By actors, I mean what style of actors I want to hire to be in my
films, or other media products. Although, for other media
products I’d hire models (Posters, etc). But, back to the point,
when hiring people for my media products, as I will have a small
company, I won’t have the money to hire top name actors, so I’ll
most likely scout around drama clubs or small time theatre
productions, to find different actors. Also, I’ll hold auditions and
advertise the parts, so that the talent comes to me, rather me going
to the talent. People want to be noticed, so they’ll take any
opportunity they can to get into film, meaning it should ho