New audiences make for UK film's golden year
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New stats released Tuesday (23 July) by the British Film Institute show the UK film industry has had an exceptional year with many record breaking figures, with an older audience and VoD becoming a justified point of focus.
With UK films taking $5.3bn at the global box office in 2012, claiming a 15% share of the world market, the third highest on record, it is safe to say the industry has had an excellent year.
And this was not the only record being overturned last year. As reported previously, the James Bond film Skyfall earned £103m to become the UK's highest grossing film of all time, helping to drive another record-breaking year for the UK box office which took £1.1bn overall in 2012 and reached its third highest figure of the past 40 years.
Chief executive of the BFI, Amanda Nevill said: "UK films captivated audiences and 007 spearheaded another strong year for UK film internationally, which collectively pulled in $5.3bn and helped export British culture and creativity around the world in 2012."
She stressed film's continued importance to the UK economy overall, which, with a record turnover of £7.7bn and trade surplus of £1bn in 2011, was not a hard case to make.
Reconnecting audiences
It wasn't just due to the action-packed thrillers that the box-office takings were up. Over 45s accounted for over one-third of cinema-goers, for the first time becoming the single largest proportion of the UK's audience. This, said Sean Perkins, responsible for the annual Statistics report, was due to films that help the 45+ audience reconnect with visiting the big screen. Films such as the Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel have proven to be especially attractive for this audience.
VoD, a valid market
Another staggering figure emerged when the BFI revealed the Video on Demand (VoD) stats, showing a growth of 50% in the British VoD market (now worth £243m), a result with implications for the whole film industry value chain. Perkins said this was mainly to the launch of online platforms such as Netflix in the UK, as well as already existing services like LOVEFilm Instant.
More than 16 million households were able to access television-based VoD and spend (excl VAT) an estimated £121m on films. For the industry that sees a VoD launch still as a second rate release (read failure), these figures might be a wake-up call.
Source material from British soil
Of the top 200 global box office successes of the last decade (2001-2012), 31 films are based on stories and characters created by UK writers. Together they have earned more than £14bn at the worldwide box office. Think about the Bond films, Harry Potter and War Horse for example.
Looking at the number of adapted screenplays by type of source, the stats indicate that 15% of releases were based on adapted source material and these releases accounted for 48% of the UK box office.
A big thumbs up to British writers as only 5% of films were adapted from UK story material but they accounted for 23% of the total box office.
Sustainability in employment
Unfortunately the UK film industry is still struggling with one or two quite important matters. As the Creative Skillset Census showed last week, the level of black, Asian and minority ethnic groups (BAME) working in the industry is in decline, and though overall the amount of women in the industry is up, the BFI stats now show a decline in female directors as well as female writers.
According to Ben Roberts, head of the BFI Film Fund, here lies a challenge to stimulate and motivate. "We're concerned but are taking measures. We see lower levels of applications from women and we are focussing on this. But we need to be supporting this without becoming a box-ticking organisation and without compromising on quality."
Another issue is the huge drop-out of first time writers and directors; only a fraction return to make more than one film. Over the past eight years (2003-2012) 694 directors made one film, this figure dropped to 92 directors who made two films and 25 who made three.
Over the same period 943 writers wrote one screenplay for an independent UK film, only 87 continued to make two and 39 wrote three.
From these figures it is clear the industry needs to do more to help writers and directors sustain their career and keep more people in their preferred place of employment.
The future
Those looking at the figures in the BFI's gigantic book (ring-bound this year, it's the cuts) will see a steep decline in inward investments over 2012 (now at £629m). However, both the BFI and Andrew M Smith, Pinewood UK's company secretary and director of comms, said that the coming year would be compensating for this loss with the balance currently already 65% up and a stellar line-up of productions waiting to be made in the third quarter. Thus no need to panic just yet.
In other recent news, the BFI has collaborated with Pinewood Studios on a new internship programme. Read the full story here
What are your best film moments of the past year? Let us know via our Facebook page or leave your comments below.
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