Tuesday 13 October 2015

Ex Machina essay


Ex Machina should not have been a big success at the box office as it did not include many special effects, large “set” pieces or well known actors; however it made a $36.9 million worldwide, $3.8 million in the UK and $25.4 million in America. Having a reasonably small budget the film can be considered a reasonable large success because it  had a reasonably small budget of $15 million, and made well over $35 million which is double the profit so is considered as a success. So Ex Machina was a success and it could be put down to one or more of the following things:

The film was classed as a sci-fi film because it involved a AI or artificial intelligence which is classed as a robot or alien as it isn’t fully human. The science part of the film came when they were talking about the modern technology used to make the AI, and the fictional element comes from it not being a true story. The film also contains some elements of romance as the main character (Caleb) falls in love with the AI. However the ending of the film was not romantic and was more sci-fi related which was unexpected, and a little disappointing as it was not the typical Hollywood ending where they live together happily ever after.

The film was produced by DNA films, a well know British Film Company which was founded by Andrew Macdonald and Duncan Kenworthy. DNA films have produced several other films such as Dredd, trainspotting and 28 days later all making a profit; they are well known as one of the biggest film production companies in the UK. A24 a newcomer to the distribution marketing bought the distribution rights to Ex Machina, have recently been exploring new marketing techniques to try and support smaller projects, because of this Ex Machina had a good marketing scheme:


The film used clever marketing techniques to get the media’s attention, these included trailers, teaser trailers, interviews with the cast/production crew, “the making of ava”, tinder dating scandal and the online quiz. They put the AI from the film (ava) on a dating website in order to attract media attention, people were angry because they had been talking to a machine when they thought they had been talking to a person. They also had a website which allowed people to interact with ava though a very basic set of questions, and they could then take a picture on their phone and she would “draw it”. Ex Machina ran on 4542 cinema screens in total, which is a lot for a small budget movie, at its peak it was at 2002 cinema screens at once. Another way that Ex Machina used clever marketing techniques was that it tied into the plot of the movie, because of this many nerdy or geeky people like the marketing and want to watch the movie. The plot of the movie is that they want to test an AI with the Turing test, they then used a tinder bot to make it seem as they are talking to people, making the movie seem really interesting.

The film is set in modern day time, which shows him with all this technology which we would class as sci-fi because it isn’t a normal house to have for regular people, which shows us that he is rich and that all he really cares about is making more money. The house that Nathan lives in is supposed to make us feel that he is technologically ahead of everyone else, showing his wealth and power over other characters and the rest of the world.

The film was made on a low budget of around $15 million which is nothing compared to a regular blockbuster, which normally has a budget of around $80 million. They saved a lot of money by using very few actors, who are not currently known as big actors however are thought to be upcoming actors who are preforming in the new star wars film, the cast included Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander and Oscar Isaac, and no CGI or special effects.

Ex Machina was filmed in a remote location in Norway which tells us how Nathan really wants the project to remain secretive, and attempt to wow the audience with all the technology and gizmos he has in his house, which emphasises how rich he is, the only issues they encountered whilst filming was that they had to use two different houses to make it seem bigger than it really was, this meant they had to keep moving between the houses to record the movie. The other issue they encountered was “pencilling” in ava’s body, which could have taken them along time to do.
The way the film was released around the world was clever because it premiered at the same time as the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie, which would normally be considered a mistake because people are much more likely to go see a large movie like that instead of a small movie. However Ex Machina was different because it started screening on only a few screens and then slowly increased as the hype for the new Marvel movie slowly dropped, allowing them to market it to a large number of people which made a steady increase in sales.

The film was a UK 15, America R because it showed full nudity. This means that the film is aimed at teenagers or adults who like the idea of technology, gadgets and gizmos. Because the film has a 15 or R rating it is not a four quadrant film, making it attract a specific audience, which consisted off mainly film buffs and sci-fi fans. Most films want to be in the four quadrants because it means there film is more likely to make money as it will have a larger target audience, however Ex Machina had a specific target audience which allowed them to make the film good for a specific set of people, so some people will like it, where’s other will not.

The film was made using no CGI, because there wasn’t a big enough budget to use it, this meant that they had to use “pencilling” which is difficult to do, and has a lower quality than CGI however it Is much cheaper than using other methods such as CGI or Special effects so saved them a lot of money.

The director has wrote 4 fairly well know films in the past however this was his first film as director, however he may have wanted his debut film was good, and not disappointing so that he would be hired as a director for other movies afterwards.

Overall the film should not have been a success, but it was because of the clever marketing they did, the low rated actors, lack of CGI and a small cast.