Film Company Production Research (9/12/2011)

An American film company – 20^th Century Fox

They are one of the six major American film studios as on 2011. They are located in the Century City area of Los Angeles. The studio is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s news corporation.  The company was founded on May 31^st 1935. This was due to a merger between Fox Film Corporation and founded in 1915 by William Fox, and Twentieth Century Pictures founded 1933 by Darryl F. Zanuck, Joseph Schenck, Raymond Griffith and William Goetz. Stephen Blairson is the current CEO of the corporation.

Some of 20^th Century Fox’s biggest films include, Avatar, Star Wars, Ice Age, Die Hard, Planet of the Apes and The Chronicles Of Narnia, plus many more. Many famous TV shows have also been known to come out of these studios such as, The Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad. The production companies first film star was Shirley Temple. Other major stars to have come from there are Betty Grable, Gene Tierney, Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. They also had the first African-American cinema star Dorothy Dandridge.

20^th Century Fox now are joined to other production companies which include Lightstorm Entertainment, Regency Enterprises, Blue Sky Studios and Spyglass Entertainment as well as many more successful production companies.

British – British Lion films

British Lion films Corporation is a film production and distribution company. They have produced 170 films. Until 1976 they were also film distributers as British Lion Films Ltd. British Lion Incorporated was founded in November 1927 by Sam .W. Smith, he was the brother of Herbert Smith. By the end of WW2 they had released 55 films including, In which We Serve. In 1949 they suffered financial problems and were forced to accept a loan from the National Film Finance Corporation. As they were unable to pay it back they went into receivership in 1955. As a results of this they were formed as a distribution company in January 1955. Until 1976 their distributer filmography included 155 films.

British Lion Corporation were taken over by EMI in 1976. They were sold to Cannon, then to Weintraub Entertainment, Movie Acquisitions Corporation which went on to be renamed as Lumiere Pictures, then UGC (DA) now with Studio Canal.

Low Budget-Coffee Films

Coffee Films came around in 1996. It has grown from the Naked Pony Theatre Company and Mr Spambapstic Films.

Naked Pony was a Fringe Theatre Company based in South East England. As well in 1996 Steve Piper produced the 4 minute short Televisual Man with friend Dave Smith, they worked under the company name of Mr. Spambapstic Films. An Orwellian themed experiment shot on a S-VHS tape, edited on camera and completed the same day. Unfortunately it would be 9 years before anyone in the public would see any of the film. Naked Pony wanted to take the theatre company forward. They asked for a grant from the lottery, which was refused. Instead the company assets  were sold to fund a short film of King Lear, their intention was to use this to move the company into film production. Shortly after completing the film, Piper settled into a marketing day job and started organising his own film production company team, Coffee Films. The team was made from all his friends who had little or no experience in making films. The intention was to prove that anyone could have a go at making films, huge budgets, films schools, special effects and stars was not as important as a tight knit team, determined to prove their point. 1998 produced 10 experimental film shorts, animated sequences and documentaries. In 1999 they became inspired by the achievements of Rodriguez thy started working towards being able to shoot a feature length film with no budget. Three scripts were completed and shooting started, but scheduling around the cast and crews day job was impossible so all 3 projects ended up on the shelf.

In 2002 shooting began on the final no budget short Dealer, due to be released to festivals and internet streaming sites. A few months later the script to ‘How to Disappear Completely’ landed in the mailbox from Canada. Towards the end of the year the first ever board of directors were established. Piper was managing director, television QC Rob Fairlie as technical director, and entertainment lawyer Vanda Rapti as director of legal and business affairs. Contributor Gelli-Graham set up a sister artist management company Coffee Artists, the rest of the original team stayed on the board as shareholders. They were used to fulfil roles from acting to location scouts. The company was incorporated in 2003 as Coffee Arts and Media Ltd.


~Abbie Hales