Gender, Genre, and the UK Box Office

The appeal of certain genres to certain audiences has been a crucial factor in the marketing and exhibiting of motion pictures. Films may even be categorised by their intended audience – ‘teenpic,’ ‘chickflick,’ etc. Film scholars have also noted that the gender of the audiences is assumed by filmmakers in casting a film or in determining the narrative: the melodrama as ‘woman’s picture,’ for example, typically features female star who is the focus of the narrative – Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959) or Written on the Wind (1956) (see Mulvey 1987 or Doane 1987). However, to date there has been no analysis of the relationship between genre, gender, and the box office performance of a film. This study uses the mean 3-day gross ratio of a film as a measure of the proportion of a film’s total weekly gross that may be accounted for by screenings over the weekend from Friday to Sunday and focuses on the relationship between this ratio and the gender of the main character(s) in a film and genre for UK films released in the UK in 2007 and 2008.

Methods

Financial data was collected from the UK Film Council weekend box office gross archive for UK films (including minority and majority co-productions) released in 2007 and 2008. This data included the 3-day (Friday-Sunday) box office gross and the total weekly gross of each film. To counter the effect of one-off events, any gross from preview screenings was deducted from the opening 3-day total weekly grosses. This information was used to calculate the ratio of the 3-day gross to the weekly total for each week, and the mean of these values was taken. As all the gross for the first week is accumulated in the opening weekend (once previews have been subtracted) the first 3-day gross ratio is 1.000; and because this is constant for every film it was not included in the calculation of the mean ratio. Box office figures was collected for films with seven or eight weeks data, and the effective number of ratios used in the calculation of the mean is the total number of weeks minus the opening week (W_e = W_total - W₁).

Details were also collected on the gender of the main character(s) of a film and its genre.  Genre definitions were taken from www.imdb.com, and where a film had more than one genre listed only the primary genre was selected. The placing of a film in a set based on the gender of a main character(s) was determined by the nature of the narrative and the presence of stars.

Statistical Analyses

Statistical analyses were carried out using PAST v1.89 and online statistical calculators [1]. Outlying data points were identified as >1.5 times the interquartile range above the upper quartile. Independence between variables was tests using Chi-square and Fisher’s exact tests for r × c contingency tables. The significant relationships were identified using one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and a Tukey-Kramer Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) post-hoc test. A P-value of less than 0.05 was considered significant.

Results

Data was collected on a total of 50 UK films released in 2007 and 2008 that met the criteria for this study (Table 1). The sample includes large-budget Hollywood films produced in the UK (e.g. The Bourne Ultimatum), mid-level UK films (e.g. The Duchess), and small-budget independent UK productions (e.g. Grow Your Own, The Flying Scotsman). The sample includes data on feature-length fiction films only, and data on short-films and documentaries was not collected. The sample does not include films where data was missing or where errors occurred in the reporting of the data on the UK Film Council archive.

Table 1 Mean 3-day gross ratio of UK films released in 2007 and 2008

* Mean 3-day gross ratio based on weeks 2 to 7 only

The distribution of mean 3-day gross ratios by gender category is presented in Figure 1. Four films were identified as outlying data points: three films in which the main character(s) are female (St. Trinian’s, Penelope, Wild Child); and one film in which the main character(s) are male and female (The Golden Compass).

Figure 1 The distribution of mean 3-day gross ratios by gender of main character(s)

There is a significant relationship between the gender of the main character(s) in a film and its genre (Table 2). The independence between genre and the gender of the main character(s) in a film was tested using a Fisher exact test. The probability of this table is 3×10^-10, and the sum of probabilities of all unusual tables has a P-value of 0.0001: the genre of a film is not independent from the gender of the main character(s).Table 2 shows that the genres of Comedy and Musical and Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction are evenly distributed n terms of the gender of the main characters. Drama is dominated by male characters, and Action and Crime is a wholly male preserve. Romance has no films in which the main character(s) are male only, but does have a number of films that are primarily based around female characters (e.g. Becoming Jane, etc) or films that have both male and female leads (e.g. Made of Honour). There are, then, genres that are distinctly male and female.

Table 2 Genre and gender of main character(s)

There is a significant relationship between the gender of the main character(s) in a film and the mean 3-day gross ratio, when outliers are excluded. Specifically, films in which the main character(s) are male have a higher mean 3-day gross ratio than those films in which the main character(s) are female or are both male and female, with a cut-off point of 0.4000 (Table 3).

Table 3 Mean 3-day gross ratio by gender of main character(s) (outliers excluded)

For this contingency table, 𝝌² (2) = 9.4394, P = 0.0089. Films in which the main character(s) are male take a larger proportion of their weekly gross during the 3-day weekend than films in which the main character(s) are female. Although gender does influence the size of the mean 3-day gross ratio, it should be noted that for many films with male main character(s) the mean ration is below 0.5000, and so the major proportion of weekly box office gross is taken outside the 3-day weekend. There is a slight tendency for films with both male and female characters to have a mean ratio below 0.4000. These relationships are confirmed by a one-way ANOVA, F (2, 43) = 3.6455, P = 0.0345; and a Tukey-Kramer HSD post-hoc test, in which the significant relationship was shown to be between films in which the main character(s) are male or female (Table 4).

Table 4 Tukey-Kramer HSD post-hoc test (α = 0.05) (excluding outliers)

Given the significant relationship between genre and gender, and gender and the mean 3-day gross ratio, we would expect to find a significant relationship between genre and the mean 3-day gross ratio and this is the case.

Table 5 Mean 3-day gross ratio by genre

The mean 3-day gross ratio of a film is not independent of its genre (Fisher exact probability of table: 3.1 × 10^-5, P (sum of all unusual tables) = 0.016. Action and Crime, and Comedy and Musical have higher ratios so that a greater proportion of the gross is accumulated during the 3-day weekend than Romance films, which have lower ratios. The ratios for drama and Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction show no overall pattern across the week.

The outlying data points may be explained by factors other than gender and genre. The mean 3-day gross ratio for Wild Child is 0.6441, the highest of any film in the sample. The film tells the story of a spoilt American teenage girl who is sent to boarding school in the UK and eventually learns to fit in. The high ratio may be accounted for by the timing of the films release: the film opened in the UK on 15 August 2008, and the eight-weeks of data collected span the final month of UK schools’ summer holiday and the first month of the new school term. The primary audience for this film – teenage girls between 12 and 16 – was therefore unable to attend screenings during the week, and the increase in the proportion of the gross accumulated at the weekend reflects this. By contrast, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was released on the same day; but with an adult theme and an older (i.e. non-teenage) cast, it appealed to an older audience and did not suffer the dame dramatic shift as Wild Child (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Mean 3-day gross ratios of weeks 2 to 8 for Wild Child and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (released 15 August 2008)

A similar explanation may be put forward for St. Trinian’s (0.6204). Like Wild Child, St. Trinian’s film is set in an English boarding school for girls, and its primary audience is the same. Released on 21 December 2007, the audience for St. Trinian’s was unable to attend during the week for most of the film’s release due to the new school term beginning in January. Consequently, its audience attended at the weekend, and this is shown by ratios that are higher than typical for a film with female characters. Penelope was released on 1 February 2008, and the profile of its 3-day gross ratios shows variation across February half-term (approximately 15 February to 29 March) and Easter weekend (21-23 March 2008) (Figure 3). Although the film has a female main character, the 3-day gross ratio never falls below 0.4000 and this may be accounted for by the variation in half-term that occurs across different UK education authorities.

Figure 3 Mean 3-day gross ratios of weeks 2 to 8 for Penelope (released 1 February 2008)

This is also likely to be true of The Golden Compass (0.5922), which was released outside the school holiday periods (7 December 2007) but take in the Christmas holiday period, when the ratio drops to 0.4272 for the week ending 6 January 2008.

Beyond these outlying data points in which timing of release is a critical factor, there does not appear to be any association between the month of release and the mean 3-day gross ratio (Figure 4). However, the three films released in December (one from each gender category, including St. Trinian’s and The Golden Compass) all have similar mean ratios indicating that a Christmas release could impact directly on how an audience watches a film in December and January. Films in which the main character(s) are male do not appear to be affected by the school holidays, with their low point occurring in June rather than July and August.

Figure 4 Mean 3-day gross ratio by gender category and month of release for UK films released in 2007 and 2008

Discussion

This study has identified a significant relationship between (1) the gender of a film’s main character(s) and its genre; and (2) the mean 3-day gross ratio of a film and the gender of the main character(s); and (3) the mean 3-day gross ratio of a film and its genre.

The relationships between gender and genre are intuitively predictable (Action and Crime for boys, Romance for girls), although the heavy skew to male characters in Drama is worth noting. The number of films in which the main character(s) are male exceeds those for females, indicating an overall gender bias in British films. This may be because the idea of the ‘woman’s film’ has not gone away, with a shift from Sirkian melodramas to heritage romances such as The Edge of Love and Miss Potter. Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction films appear to be much more egalitarian, and this reasons for this are likely to be dependent upon the specific narratives of specific films which require heroes and villains (both usually male), and princesses.

The variation of mean 3-day gross ratio with gender indicates that some types of films will perform differently at different times of the week: action and crime films will, as a ‘male’ genre, perform more strongly at the weekends than during the week; while romance films in which the main character(s) are female will perform more strongly during the week. Exhibitors seeking to draw in the maximum possible audience could vary the type of films they show over the course of a week, pushing Romance films during the week and Action and Crime and/or Comedy and Musical films at the weekend, for example. Greater research on film audiences in the UK is needed to explain why these differences occur, but this study does suggest that there are deeper issues ion UK audiences’ preferences for films at work. This does not necessarily mean that male audiences are watching ‘male’ films – certainly this would not be the case for pornography (which would be classified as ‘female’ here) – although this seems to be the most likely explanation.

Gender, genre, and the 3-day box office gross are related, but they may not be the decisive factors. Specific factors such as the timing of a film’s release (e.g. to coincide with school holidays) and its relationship to other patterns of activity of its audience (e.g. school, Christmas holidays) may determine the size of the mean 3-day gross ratio. The success of films such as Titanic (1997) and Mamma Mia! (2009) has been attributed to the number of female patrons who repeatedly return to a film, and releasing films such as St. Trinian’s and Wild Child that have a primary audience of females aged from 12 to 18 outside the summer school holiday may limit the number times the audience attends (assuming it finds the film sufficiently worthy) due to the restriction the school term places on when the audience is able to attend. Distributors and exhibitors looking to capitalise on the strong female audience in the UK (which made Mamma Mia! and Titanic the two highest grossing films of all time in the UK) should consider how the timing of a release over the course of an eight week period will be affected and plan their release schedule accordingly. This effect does not appear to occur for ‘male’ films, suggesting that there is no equivalent effect of school terms on male audiences.

A limitation of this study is the incomplete data available from the UK Film Council. A larger dataset that takes into account more UK films is needed. Further, data on non-UK films needs to be considered given Hollywood domination of the UK box office. A problem here is that data for many films is not available after the sixth week of release, leaving only five effective data points (once the opening week has been removed). It is questionable as to whether this will provide enough data for a meaningful comparison.

A further issue is the subjective nature of judging a film’s genre, and the generic hybridity of a film. Hot Fuzz, for example, was classed here as a comedy but it could also have been considered an action film; while the genre of heritage film was not used, with films such as Brideshead Revisited and Atonement defined as drama and romance, respectively. Reclassification of genres could produce different results depending on what the main genre of a film is considered to be. A similar problem occurs when judging who is or is not the main character(s) of a film, and assigning them to a particular gender grouping.

Conclusion

There is a significant relationship between the proportion of a UK film’s gross accumulated during the 3-day weekend from Friday to Sunday and the gender of the main character(s): films in which the main character(s) are male accumulate a greater proportion of their gross at the weekend than films in which the main character(s) are female. Specific factors, such as the ability of a particular section of the audience to access a cinema at particular times, may also be a factor. This result could be used by exhibitors to vary their exhibition strategies, emphasising different films on different days of the week to appeal to particular audiences. Further research is needed on the gender differences of cinema going habits is needed to explain these relationships.

Notes

1. http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/stats/Index.html, accessed 26 March 2009.

References

Doane, M.A. (1987) The ‘woman’s film:’ possession and address, in C. Gledhill (ed.) Home is Where the Heart is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: BFI: 283-298.

Mulvey, L. (1987) Notes on Sirk and melodrama, in C. Gledhill (ed.) Home is Where the Heart is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: BFI: 75-79.

Scottish Cinema: national cinema or regional cinema?

This piece was originally written as part of my Ph.D., rewritten for a journal but not published, lost (!), and now found. The issue of scale in the UK film industry – local, regional, national, global – has not been adequately addressed, and this piece attempts to establish some sort of rational for thinking about how a particular part of the UK (Scotland) can be thought of as part of the British nation without destroying what is unique about Scottish cinema. Duncan Petrie’s work on cinema in Scotland provides an approach that recognises and attempts to solve this problem; and I find it much more successful than Martin McLoone’s confused use of spatial metaphors. Although it seems a little dated in the films it refers to, the problems identified in talking about the cinema of the UK’s so-called ‘Celtic fringe’ are still relevant.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been described as a ‘multinational state,’ comprised of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, that lacks a coherent national identity (Rose 1982). Given this situation it is far from clear that filmmaking in the United Kingdom may be defined as a single British national cinema, rather than as a set of national cinemas that is comprised of English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish cinemas. British cinema studies frequently regards English cinema as being co-extensive with British cinema, and treats Scottish, Irish, and Welsh cinemas as ‘national’ cinemas in their own right. However, this approach is problematic as Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales do not exist as independent and sovereign nation-states in their own right, while marginalising the diverse cultural geography of England. In this paper I discuss the problems of describing the cinema in terms of geographical categories (e.g., centre, periphery, national) in two discussions of contemporary Scottish cinema, and I argue that Scottish cinema is best understood as a regional cinema of the UK.

Cinemas of the Celtic fringe?

Martin McLoone makes a distinction between the Anglo-British cinema and the cinemas of the ‘Celtic fringe,’ in which he includes Wales, Scotland, and, to a lesser extent, Northern Ireland. (He does not include Cornwall in this categorisation of the cinemas of the periphery). McLoone states that in the past, British cinema was synonymous with an assertive, middle-class, metropolitan Englishness. The Celtic fringe was not ignored by this cinema, but was ‘traduced into playing a peripheral and heavily circumscribed role within the larger national project.’ The centrality of the English and their continued right to dominance was, he states, reinforced by an ‘internal colonialism’ in which the ‘metropolitan urbanity’ of the English was set in counterpoint to the Celtic fringe that was projected as being a wild, romantic, and essentially irrational place peopled by loveable rogues. This internal colonialism was ‘dependent upon a strict division of labour in which English and Englishness predominated and the Celtic fringes and their primitive languages were marginal’ (McLoone 2001: 52).

McLoone argues that recent films such as Human Traffic (Justin Kerrigan, 1999) and Late Night Shopping (Saul Metzstein, 2001) challenge the dominant colonial traditions of the British cinema, leaving behind the stereotypes of tartanry and kailyardism (which he associates with all non Anglo-British cinemas) and recasting the relationship between centre and periphery. He characterises them as presenting an attitude of ‘anywhere-but-traditionally-British,’ and representing ‘a kind of decolonisation of Britain’s Celtic fringe’ (McLoone 2001: 52). McLoone writes that the cinemas of Britain’s Celtic fringes have a double focus: they produce films that are ‘concerned to explode myths and move beyond the regimes of representation that have been bequeathed by dominant British cinemas down the years;’ and that they also explore the dominant nationalist responses to the centre.

Above all, this is a cinema that is no longer content to operate on the margins. These are cultures that are no longer content to be peripheral and exploited partners in a strict cultural division of labour. In fact, this new cinema has pushed peripherality into the centre and now operates on the very cutting edge of a contemporary cultural debate about identity (McLoone 2001: 54).

McLoone is right to identify a transformation in the relationship between the constituent parts of the UK in the 1990s, and that this transformation has been represented in the cinema.

However, this argument is problematic. First, McLoone does not examine the role of territory coherently. He initially states that Human Traffic and Late Night Shopping make little reference to their locations (respectively, Wales and Scotland) and are characterised by an ‘urban placelessness,’ a sense of ‘dislocation’ and ‘inbetweeness;’ and yet it is clear that his argument is based precisely upon an awareness of space, territory, and an awareness of place, as the genesis of these films on the Celtic fringe is described as ‘very important’ (McLoone 2001: 51). As a consequence, it is not clear at what territorial scale the Celtic cinema should be understood: McLoone refers to them as ‘national’ cinemas but never suggests how they might exist as such within the nation-state of the United Kingdom. In fact, as fringe cinemas they must be considered as part of a British national cinema. As it is to be defined in terms of its relation to a central point, and the statement that ‘this new cinema has pushed peripherality into the centre and now operates on the very cutting edge of a contemporary cultural debate about identity,’ is linguistically very troubling: how can a fringe cinema place the periphery at the centre whilst it is on the edge? As McLoone describes it, contemporary Celtic cinema longs to be both at the centre and on the periphery.

Second, the concept of Celtic cinemas as ‘fringe cinemas’ is dependent upon a simplistic model of the centre and the periphery in the UK that fails to account for the diversity and complexity of British political and cultural geography. For example, Rose (1982: 11) has argued that there is no nation associated with the UK state: ‘No one speaks of the “UKes” as a nation;’ while Michael Keating (1988: 10) suggests that ‘the United Kingdom lacks even a term for the common “nationality” of its citizens.’ Robin Cohen writes that,

British identity shows a general pattern of fragmentation. Multiple axes of identification have meant that Irish, Scots, Welsh and English people, those from the white, black and brown Commonwealth, Americans, English-speakers, Europeans and even ‘aliens’ have had their lives intersect one with another in overlapping and complex circles of identity construction and rejection. The shape and edges of British identity are thus historically changing, often vague, and, to a degree, malleable – an aspect of British identity I have called a ‘fuzzy frontier’ (Cohen 1994: 35).

In light of the complications with regard to the appropriate terminology that can be applied to the UK and its citizens, it is unsurprising to find that, in the opinion of Gamble and Wright, the ‘British have long been distinguished by having no clear idea about who they are, where they are, or what they are’ (2000: 1). McLoone’s model that neatly divides contemporary cinema in the UK into a Celtic ‘us’ and an Anglo ‘them’ is unconvincing given the complicated nature of identity in the UK and lacks the required flexibility to deal with the ‘fuzziness’ of what it means to be British. Furthermore, it is a model that assumes the Celtic fringe exists a single entity and does not respect the differences between Wales, Scotland, and Ireland – territories that do not share a single Celtic culture, a border, or history – whilst ignoring Cornwall completely.

Third, McLoone assumes that England can be represented unproblematically as a homogenous entity, and fails to acknowledge that the North East, the North West, Yorkshire and Humber, and the South West all have strong regionalist movements (largely inspired by the Scottish Constitutional Convention), and each makes significant claims to a unique identity and wish to see that identity represented on film. Films such as Blue Juice (Carl Prechezer, 1995), Brassed Off (Mark Herman, 1996), and 24 Hour Party People (Michael Winterbottom, 2002) are as concerned with issues of centrality and peripherality, regional cultures, and regional identity as films emerging from the Celtic fringe of the UK. These films dramatise the shift from traditional heavy industries to cultural industries in the late twentieth century, and make the case that the rest of the UK needs to recognise this shift and reorient their mental maps of the regions. They emphasise the vitality of regional subcultures (surfers, brass bands, Madchester), and make the case that the nation should respect the uniqueness and diversity of the regions, recognising their contribution to the cultural life of the United Kingdom. The challenging of traditional images of the North of England, for example, is as much a part of contemporary British cinema as the challenge to the traditions of tartanry and kailyardism (see, for example, Redfern 2005).

Terminology and industry

A similar problem with terminology arises in attempting to describe the relationship between the United Kingdom and Scottish cinema. Duncan Petrie’s analysis of recent Scottish cinema has been inspired by the upsurge of creativity in Scottish filmmaking in the mid-1990s. At the root of this film boom is the sense of alienation felt by many Scots from the Conservative governments of the 1980s, and the ‘bold new affirmation of Scottish cultural creativity and self-expression’ that accompanied this political dislocation (Petrie 2000a: 153). This upsurge is identifiable in the critical and commercial success of ‘Scottish’ films such as Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle, 1994), Small Faces (Gillies MacKinnon, 1996), Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996), Orphans (Peter Mullan, 1999), and Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay, 1999) that have introduced a new generation of filmmakers (e.g., Andrew Macdonald, Danny Boyle, Lynne Ramsay) and actors (e.g., Ewan Macgregor, Robert Carlyle) to the world of cinema. At this time a number of international productions including Braveheart (Mel Gibson, 1995), Rob Roy (Michael Caton-Jones, 1995), and Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996), also represented Scotland to audiences around the world, and, in the case of Braveheart particularly, were adopted by Scottish nationalist organisations. Petrie cites the emergence of a new indigenous institutional framework and new sources of film finance that as the most important developments in creating the conditions for the development of recognisably ‘Scottish’ cinema. The merger of a number of pre-existing bodies to form Scottish Screen in 1997, the establishment of the Glasgow Film Fund in 1993, and the distribution of lottery money by regional arts councils has stimulated film production and film culture on a sub-national level in the UK. Similarly, the Scottish film industry has benefited from a number of programmes to develop and showcase new talent throughout Scotland, and it is through short film programmes such as Tartan Shorts, Gear Ghear, and Prime Cuts that filmmakers such as Peter Mullan and Lynne Ramsay have come to the fore.

For Petrie, the development of Scottish filmmaking from the mid-1990s represents a significant change in the representation of a Scottish identity in the cinema.

Until recently, the cinematic representation of Scotland has been largely an external creation, produced by and securing the commercial needs of a London-based British film industry, or occasionally Hollywood. The repertoire of images created by an emerging Scottish cinema represents both a challenge to and an extension of certain dominant cinematic projections of Scotland and the Scots dating back to the earliest days of the medium (Petrie 2000b: 1).

However, the extent to which this Scottish cinema may be regarded as a ‘national’ cinema is unclear. Petrie defines the ‘new Scottish cinema’ primarily in terms of a sphere of indigenous practice, and describes it as a ‘national’ cinema (2000a: 162). However, he acknowledges that Scottish film production and reception only has meaning in relation to the rest if the United Kingdom:

Scottish productions rely heavily on securing deals with British distributors and being shown in cinemas across the United Kingdom, Scottish cinema-going representing only 10 per cent of the UK total for audience figures. … the new Scottish cinema still needs to be seen in the context of the wider British cinema. The new Scottish cinema is a distinct and meaningful identity but as yet its status should be understood in terms of a devolved British cinema rather than full independence (Petrie 2000a: 166).

In regarding the new Scottish cinema as a regional cinema of the United Kingdom it is possible to regard it as representing ‘a distinct and meaningful identity’ without the confusion of the label ‘national,’ which Petrie admits is inadequate at the same time as he employs it. The term ‘national cinema’ implies a degree of homogeneity in recent Scottish cinema that is unwarranted since not all contemporary Scottish films are nationalistic in their attitude: Trainspotting, for example, equates Scottishness with heroin addiction, and the main character’s ultimate escape from both afflictions is to be found in London – the very Anglo centre that McLoone rejects. A regional approach makes it possible to distinguish between the different discourses of Scottishness, from separatism (what Connor [1977] referred to as ethnonationalism) and more moderate (e.g., bourgeois, progressive, or social democratic) forms of regionalism (Keating 1998). This is not to deny that a Scottish national cinema may at some point in the future emerge; but as Petrie seeks to document historical changes in Scottish filmmaking, the use of the term region allows us to be more precise in describing the texts and contexts of the cinema in the United Kingdom since the 1990s.

Conclusion

Adopting a regional approach to contemporary Scottish cinema brings the role of space, place, and territory to the fore without the confusion that is evident in the models of McLoone and Petrie. It is an approach that can be applied to contemporary Northern Irish and Welsh cinemas, as well as the various cinemas of England, making it possible to take on overall view of British cinema since the mid-1990s rather than seeing each part of the UK in isolation. The category of the region is preferable to the nation in discussing the industrial, textual, and spatial relationships between the cinemas that represent various identities (Scottish, Welsh, Yorkshire, Londoner, etc.) within a single nation-state (the United Kingdom) in an era of devolution. By introducing the concept of the regional to the study of contemporary British cinema it is possible to examine the relationship between Britishness and regional identities without relying upon a simplistic core-periphery model, recognising the geographical diversity of culture in the United Kingdom, and allowing us to relate these films to their historical and political moment. Luckett (2000: 91) states that regional difference is ‘increasingly included as an important part of British multiculturalism,’ but in relying on confusing and simplistic spatial categories the analysis of contemporary Scottish cinema runs the risk of becoming evermore parochial as it becomes conceptually remote from the rest of the nation.

References

Cohen, R. (1994) Frontiers of Identity: The British and the Others. London and New York: Longman.

Connor, W. (1977) Ethnonationalism in the first world: the present in historical perspective,’ in M.J. Esman (ed.) Ethnic Conflict in the Western World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 19-45.

Gamble, A. and T. Wright (2000) The end of Britain?, The Political Quarterly 71 (1), 1-3.

Keating, M. (1988) State and Regional Nationalism: Territorial Politics and the European State. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester-Wheatsheaf.

Keating, M. (1998) The New Regionalism in Western Europe: Territorial Restructuring and Political Change. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Luckett, M. (2000), Image and nation in the 1990s, in R. Murphy (ed.) British Cinema of the 90s. London: BFI: 88-99.

McLoone, M. (2001) Challenging colonial traditions: British cinema in the Celtic fringe, Cineaste 26 (4), 51-54.

Petrie, D. (2000a) The new Scottish cinema, in M. Hjort and S. Mackenzie (eds.) Cinema and Nation. London and New York: Routledge: 153-169.

Petrie, D. (2000b) Screening Scotland. London: BFI.

Redfern, N. (2005) ‘We Do Things Differently Here:’ Manchester as a cultural region in 24 Hour Party People, EnterText 5 (2) 2005: 286-306. [Available online: http://arts.brunel.ac.uk/gate/entertext/5_2/ET52RedfernEd.doc, accessed 19 March 2009].

Rose, R. (1982) Understanding the United Kingdom: The Territorial Dimension in Government. London: Longman.

AHRC funding for film and television studies, 2003 to 2008

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) was established in 2005, when it replaced the Arts and Humanities Research Board. The AHRC is publicly funded by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, and is the major funding body with responsibility for research in Film and Television Studies in higher education institutions (HEIs) the United Kingdom. While the AHRC makes available statistics for awards and submissions by its core themes and HEIs, it does not provide a subject-by-subject breakdown. Nor does it provide data at the level of the twelve government office regions of the UK, or by university consortium, or by gender. This survey presents an analysis of funding for postgraduates and academics in Film and Television Studies in these terms using publicly available data taken from the AHRC website [1].

Postgraduate funding

Awards to postgraduates in Film and Television Studies from 2003 to 2008 were made in three categories:

• Doctoral competition: support for postgraduates studying towards a doctoral degree. This category includes collaborative doctoral awards.
• Research Preparation Masters Scheme (RPMS): support for postgraduates in advanced study and training prior to going on to study for a doctoral degree. This category includes awards previously made under Competition A.
• Professional Preparation Masters Scheme (PPMS): support for postgraduates in developing high-level skills and competencies in a relevant area. This category includes awards previously made under Competition P.

The AHRC has changed the way it allocates postgraduate funding from 2009. Block Grant Partnership (BGP) studentships are now awarded at an institutional level, with responsibility for allocating support at the departmental level now in the hands of universities that hold the funding. HEIs that do not hold BGP funding are eligible to enter postgraduate students into a studentship competition that functions in a similar fashion to the previous open competition.

The number of awards made in each category from 2003 to 2008 is presented in Figure 1. In total, 194 awards were made of which 91 were for the doctoral competition, 93 were for the Research Preparation Masters Scheme, and 10 were for the Professional Preparation Masters Scheme. There is an overall decline in the number of postgraduates funded by the AHRC after 2006, with a greater drop-off in the number students receiving funding for Masters level qualifications.

Figure 1 AHRC postgraduate awards in film and television studies by funding category, 2003 to 2008

Higher Education Institutions

Postgraduate awards were made to a total of 36 institutions (including several colleges of the University of London) – a fraction of the 169 HEIs in the UK that were open in August 2008 and eligible to apply for funding during the time period covered. The number of postgraduate awards by funding category for each institution is given in Table 1. Two universities  – the University of East Anglia and the University of Warwick – have considerably more awards (31 in each case) than the other institutions, and are the only HEIs to achieve doctoral awards in double figures (13 and 10, respectively). Only four other institutions achieve double figures in total (King’s College London and the Universities of Exeter, Glasgow, and Nottingham). There are eleven institutions with a single award only for the six year period covered by the data.

Table 1 AHRC postgraduate awards in film and television studies by institution and funding category, 2003-2008

Of these 36 institutions, 15 are part of the Russell Group of research intensive universities, 13 are members of the 1994 Group, 5 are members of the University Alliance, 1 is a member of Million+, and 2 are not aligned with any consortium. The 28 universities of the Russell and 1994 Groups of research intensive universities account for 92.27 per cent of the total number awards. Postgraduate awards by university consortium are presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Percentage of AHRC postgraduate awards in film and television studies by university consortium, 2003 to 2008

Region

The regional distribution of AHRC postgraduate funding is concentrated in the South East of England and the West Midlands, although this is largely due to the extraordinary impact a single institution can have on the regional figures. For example, the West Midlands accounts for 32 out of a total of 194 awards (16.5%) – but of these, 31 are accounted for by the University of Warwick, with a single award to the University of Birmingham. Similarly, of the 39 awards made to HEIs in the East (20.1%), 31 were to the University of East Anglia, 6 to the University of Cambridge, and 2 to the University of Essex. The North West and Yorkshire and the Humber have a greater number of HEIs (five in each case) but receive fewer awards – 4.1% and 6.2%, respectively. The North East received no awards, while the figures for Northern Ireland (1.0%) and Wales (0.5%) are negligible and represent awards to a single HEI in each case. A regional breakdown of the distribution of postgraduate funding is presented in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Percentage of AHRC postgraduate awards in film and television studies by government region, 2003 to 2008

Gender

The male-female split in awards for all categories of postgraduate funding are given in Table 2. In each year the percentage of awards to male postgraduates has exceeded those to female postgraduates, and overall awards to male postgraduates account for approximately 62% in all categories from 2003 to 2008. However, there is a clearly identifiable drop in the proportion of awards to female postgraduates from around 40% between 2003 and 2006 to less than 30% in 2007 and 2008.

Table 2 AHRC postgraduate awards in film and television studies by gender, 2003-2008

There are also gender disparities at an institutional level. At the University of Warwick male students outnumbered female students in each year, and in 2005 and 2006 the male-female ratio was 8-1 and 6-0 respectively. Of the 31 awards to the university, a total of 23 were to male postgraduates and just 8 to female students.  At the University of East Anglia, 17 of the 31 awards were made to female students, who outnumbered their male counterparts in 2005, 2006, and 2007. The University of Glasgow has a male-female ratio of 4:7, and that of King’s College London is 7:3. The ratio for the University of Exeter is 7:6, but this university clearly represents the trend for fewer female postgraduates in recent years illustrated in Table 3: for the period 2003 to 2006, the ratio was 1 male student to 5 females, but for 2007 to 2008 it is 6 male students to 1 female.

Research funding

From 2003 to 2008, a total of £3,932,677 was allocated by the AHRC for research in film and television across a range of programmes, including:

• Research leave: salary and related costs to enable academics to gain relief from teaching and administrative duties while researching.
• Research grants (standard): funding for well-defined research projects with a full economic cost of between £20,000 and £1,000,000.
• Small Grants in the Creative and Performing Arts: funding of up to £20,000 towards costs of research. This scheme is no longer active.
• Other schemes: research fellowships, resource enhancements, etc.

The total amount of research funding in film and television studies has generally increased over the period 2003 to 2008 (see Figure 4). Researchers bidding for funding under the Research Grants (Standard) programme have achieved some significant success in for projects that cover wide-ranging topics such as early colour cinema, the films of Lindsay Anderson, and the social geography of cities on film. After a decline, the level of funding for Research Leave has returned to its 2003 level over the past couple of years. The Small Grants programme made a small, if important, contribution before closing in 2005; but apart from a single fellowship and one award for resource enhancement there has been no extra funding for these subjects.

Figure 4 Value of AHRC research funding in film and television studies by funding category, 2003 to 2008

Higher Education Institutions

Forty-three HEIs received some funding, though the level of that funding ranges from as little as £2,246 to as much as £418,827, with a median of £34,728 (Table 3). Most institutions (23) received only a single award over the period covered, while six were successful on four occasions. However, the scale of the award varies enormously: the University of Surrey was successful in winning £418,827 for a single research project in 6 years, while researchers at the University of Sussex received £34,889 across four awards.

Table 3 AHRC research funding in film and television studies by institution and funding category, 2003-2008

Although, the distribution of research funding is dominated by the Russell and 1994 Groups of research-orientated universities, accounting for 74.19% of the total, this figure is lower than that for postgraduate funding. With only one exception (Bournemouth University), all the funding allocated under the Research Grants (Standard) scheme was allocated to Russell Group and 1994 Group universities, and this accounts for 69.30% of the total research funding for Film and Television Studies. The allocation of research funding by university consortium is presented in Figure 5.

Figure 5 Percentage of AHRC research funding in film and television studies by university consortium, 2003 to 2008

Region

The regional distribution of funding for Film and Television Studies by the AHRC makes for stark reading. Five regions (North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands, East, and Wales) received less than 2.5% of research funding each, and Northern Ireland received no funding. These six regions account for only 9.0% of the total funding allocated. Scotland has received a healthy proportion of research funding (13.1%), but this is to be accounted for research grants to only two HEIs (the universities of Glasgow and Stirling). The West Midlands received 8.1% of total funding, although most of this may be accounted for by single Research Grants (Standard) award to the University of Warwick. Similarly, the £377,188 awarded to the University of Liverpool accounts for most of the North West’s allocation (10.9%). Universities in the South East and South West have been very successful in attracting funding for Research Grants (Standard) and this accounts for their leading positions in the country – of a total of 11 eleven such grants, these regions accounted for 6 (3 apiece) and a total of £1,338,770. In fact both these regions eclipse London, which accounts for 14.0% across 13 HEIs. Figure 6 shows the regional distribution of research funding in the UK.

Figure 6 Percentage of AHRC research funding in film and television studies by region, 2003 to 2008

Gender

Overall, the number of research awards is slightly higher for male researchers than for female but the gender disparity evident in the postgraduate awards is not replicated (see Table 4). For Research Grants (Standard) the data refers only to the named applicant in the database, and so it does not reflect the total number of staff who may be employed on a specific research programme. However, this data does provide a means of identifying the gender of the senior researcher who has managerial control programme, and from this perspective there has been a significant bias to male researchers over the period covered here. The four projects with headed by female researchers were all awarded in 2007 and 2008, with no such funding allocated from 2003 to 2006. In 2007 and 2008, only one award was made to a programme headed by a male researcher under the Research Grants (Standard) programme.

Table 4 Number of AHRC awards in film and television studies by gender, 2003-2008

The patterns in Table 4 are repeated when looking at the value of the funding allocated by gender: male researchers have received more funding for Research Leave and Research Grants (Standard); while female researchers received a greater proportion of the now-defunct Small Research Grants (Table 5).

Table 5 Value of AHRC awards in film and television studies by gender, 2003-2008

Conclusion

From 2003 to 2008, the AHRC allocated substantial funds to researchers and postgraduates in Film and Television Studies, but there are some important questions that remain to be answered.

• As university finances are increasingly stretched across programmes how can Film and Television Studies continue to attract and support postgraduate students?
• Given the ‘pockets of research excellence’ identified throughout the UK by the 2008 RAE, how can research funding be more evenly spread across the sector to involve more HEIs from the University Alliance, Million+, and the remaining universities?
• How can regional imbalances be mitigated so that researchers and students throughout the country can benefit? Are Northern Ireland, Wales, and the North East of England deserts of research in Film and Television Studies?
• Given the limited distribution of research funding by type of university and region we must conclude that a large body of research in film and television studies (if not the major part) is carried out by academics who either receive funds from other sources (e.g. the British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, etc.) or have no funding at all.  Given this state of affairs, is the AHRC even relevant to the majority of film and television researchers in the UK?
• Will the new system of Block Grant Partnerships only entrench these disparities, concentrating research funding into an ever more exclusive group of universities?
• Why has there been such a large drop off in the number of awards to female postgraduates in 2007 and 2008? Is the subject failing to keep excellent female students beyond graduation; and if so, why? This is arguably the most pressing issue to be raised here.

These are questions that the AHRC must address, but perhaps most importantly, they are issues that must be debated by film and media scholars in the UK as a whole. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a forum in which such issues may be presented. A limitation of this survey is the short time span (only six years) and only a single source of funding is covered, but it has been my intention to raise a range of issues that can be further explored with a view to developing research in Film and Television Studies in the post-RAE environment.

Notes

1. http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundedResearch/Pages/default.aspx, accessed 5 March 2009.

Shot scales in the films of Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang’s career spans both European and Hollywood filmmaking, and the coming of sound cinema. We may ask of Lang’s films which of these changes impacted on his style – if, indeed, they had any impact at all; and this study explores this question by analysing the frequency of shot scales in the films of Lang in two contexts: (1) the frequency of shot scales is analysed by country; and (2), the frequency of shot scales is examined in light of the shift from silent filmmaking to sound.

Methods

Data on shot scales was taken from Barry Salt’s database (Salt n.d.), and was sorted by country of registration (either Germany or the US) and if the film was silent or sound.  Salt defines seven shot scales – big close-up (BCU), close-up (CU), medium close-up (MCU), medium shot (MS), medium long shot (MLS), long shot (LS), and very long shot (VLS) – and this data is normalised to the figure that would have occurred if the film was made up of 500 shots (see Salt 2006).

Statistical analysis

All statistical analyses were carried out using PAST v1.89 for Windows, and the frequency of shot scales in the German and US films was analysed using a Mann-Whitney U test. A two-tailed P-value of less than 0.05 was considered significant.

Results

A total of 22 feature films directed by Fritz Lang were selected from Salt’s database, of which 11 were produced in Germany between 1919 and 1933 (including nine silent films between 1919 and 1928) and 11 were produced in the US between 1936 and 1956 (see Table 1).

Table 1 Sample of films directed by Fritz Lang (n = 22)

There is a significant difference between the German and US films for the number of close-ups (U = 25.5, P = 0.0235), medium close-ups (U = 3.5, P = 0.0002), medium shots (U = 3, P = 0.0002): the frequency of these shot scales is greater in the US films. There is also a significant difference in the number of long shots (U = 3, P = 0.0002) and very long shots (U = 22.5, P = 0.0138), the frequency of which are greater in the German films. There is no significant difference in the number of big close-ups (U = 54, P = 0.6936) and medium long shots (U = 44.5, P = 0.3088). The differences in sample medians for shot scales are represented in Figure 1. Overall, these results indicate a shift in the style of Lang’s films, with the US films typically using closer framing than the German films.

Figure 1 Sample medians for shot scales (normalised per 500 shots) in the films of Fritz Lang by country

In comparing Lang’s silent films (n = 9) with his sound films (n = 13) from the same sample, there are significant differences between the frequency of medium close-ups (U = 14.5, P = 0.0037), medium shots (U = 4, P = 0.0003), and long shots (U = 9, P = 0.0011). The same trend over time that is evident in the shift from Germany to Hollywood is evident, with an increase in the number tighter shots and a decrease in long shots with the transition from silent to sound. In contrast, close-ups (U = 38.5, P = 0.1929) and very long shots (U = 30, P = 0.0615) are not significantly different when Lang’s films are divided into the categories of silent and sound films, while they are significant when divided by country. There are no significant differences in the number of big close-ups (U = 37, P = 0.1608) and medium long shots (U = 55, P = 0.8412), and this is consistent with the results above. Figure 2 presents the differences in sample medians for these categories.

Figure 2 Sample medians for shot scales (normalised per 500 shots) in the silent and sound films of Fritz Lang

Discussion

The shift towards tighter framing in Lang’s Hollywood era is consistent with changes in the frequency of shot scales of other filmmakers who have spent part of their career in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s and part in Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s (Redfern unpublished). This indicates that this change may be a fundamental difference between the industrial contexts of European and Hollywood cinema in terms of shot scales, and the decrease in very long shots and the increase in close-ups support this conclusion. However, for medium close-ups, medium shots, and long shots this argument is less clear cut as the move to tighter framing may also be considered a result of the development of sound film rather than a change in industry. Lang directed only two sound films in Germany before moving to France for Liliom (1934) and then onto Hollywood, and the limited amount of data this affords poses an obstacle in determining whether industry or technology is the decisive factor for this change. A broader study of filmmakers who made a greater number of silent and sound films in Europe and Hollywood (e.g. Alfred Hitchcock, Max Ophuls, Ernst Lubitsch, etc.) is needed to explore this issue. Unfortunately, the flow of filmmakers has been in the one direction from East to West, and so identifying American filmmakers who move to Europe at this time and could provide further data for comparison is extremely difficult.

The medium long shot is consistent in all categories and is not a distinctive indicator of film style. This result is consistent with other findings that show medium scale shots can be invariant (Redfern unpublished). Unlike other shot scales that have been subject to critical attention (especially close-ups), the use of medium scale shots (MS, MLS) is at present little understood in film studies and there is no theoretical context in which this result may be interpreted.

The use of BCUs by Lang is also independent of industrial and/or technological contexts but occurs infrequently, and is probably motivated by the specific formal and aesthetic needs of a particular film rather than being an indicator of a particular style.

References

Redfern, N. (unpublished) Cinemetric analysis of shot types in the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

Salt, B. (n.d.) http://www.cinemetrics.lv/saltdb.php, accessed 18 February 2009.

Salt, B. (2006) Moving into Pictures: More on Film History, Style, and Analysis. London: Starwood.