GENRE CONVENTION: Tyrannosaur

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Budget: £750k
Box Office: $299k (Worldwide) / $22k (US)
Ratings: 84% (RottenTomatoes) / 7.6/10 (IMDb) / 3.5/4 (Roger Ebert)
Production Companies: Film4, UK Film Council, Screen Yorkshire, EM Media, Warp X, Inflammable Films
Director: Paddy Considine

IDENTS:

No Idents.

TITLES:

• serif font
• white font on black background connotes seriousness and drama
• different sizing between the titles and names to distinguish the different roles 
• the main title is centered and all capitals
• animated titles, fade in and out
• different positioning of titles
• duration of title sequence: 00:00:03 - 00:02:04
• numbers of titles: 12

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SOUND:

• soft guitar sound with notes that are a few seconds apart has an impact on our mood
• it connotes drama/seriousness
• get the serious feel
• makes us calm
• ambients sound of radio to add verisimilitude

1st SHOT:

• establishing shot
• starts with a close up of a male character
• narrative enigma because it's not very clear how the male character looks like due to shadows 
• using natural lights
• low-key lighting

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CENTRAL PROTAGONIST + NARRATIVE:

• the male character is in every shot
• tracking shot when he is walking back home while having his dog in his arms
• shot variety of him
• he is always in focus
• it cuts back to him
• anchors he is going to be the central protagonist
• he is coming from the working class ( track pants, white and dirty shirt, drunk, is desperate for money)

MISE-EN-SCENE FOR EXPOSITION:

•  small room 
•  squeaky floor
• anchors poverty

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TRANSITION TO THE MAIN FILM:

• The equilibrium is disrupted when the central protagonist kills his dog.

Production:

Tyrannosaur (2011) is a social realist movie produced by Warp. It is set in England and focuses on modern issues, such as violence and abuse. It stars Olivia Coleman and Peter Mullan as a couple that has developed in both good and bad ways since they met in a charity shop. Tyrannosaur was directed by Paddy Considine who is also an actor.

Equipment:

Not many CGI or fancy technology was used to produce this film since Tyrannosaur is heavily within the category of social realism. They used the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and the Red One MX with Cooke Panchro Lenses. 

Location:

This film was filmed in one place only. Leeds in the UK. They needed a small town instead of a set and kept everything very basic to create verisimilitude and to make it even more realistic.

Distribution:

As a Warp production, being a fairly small production company, they needed many more companies to distribute their movie around the world. In the UK, the distribution company was Optimum Releasing and in the US, it was Strand Releasing. Tyrannosaur was a fairly small project and therefore it wasn't marketed in any huge way. Warp Films were expecting DVD sales to be bigger than the opening weekend. Warp has its own website on which you can watch Tyrannosaur, therefore, is still being marked 3 years after its release. 

Tyrannosaur was released in 2 formats in the UK. Digitial Intermediate was its master format and Redcode Raw was its source format. However, the film is still available on DVD and Bluray, as well as downloading it on the internet for a small price. There are many special features on the DVD such as audio commentary with the director, dog altogether short, stills gallery, trailer and booklet. 

TERRITORIES & BOX OFFICE:

The film was released in 25 countries which is a massive number considering Warp is an independent film company. £243k was the gross in just the UK for this film, almost a third of the budget (£750k). The overall gross was £405k. However, the film is still making money to this day. The opening weekend, box office takings are unknown in the UK but Warp Films sell all their films on the basis of making good DVD films. In the US it was around $7k but this again was only shown in five screens. The fact the film only showed in a maximum of five screenings across the US suggests that Warp is an independent company.

Fail or success ?

From the ratings I can tell that the movie was quite a success. Paddy Considine even got an award for the best film and best debut director award. Olivia Colman who plays Hannah in the movie got an award for the best actress.

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However, the movie didn't do well in Box Office. One reason is that it only got a limited screening in America in just 5 theatres. Warp managed to get Tyrannosaur quite widely distributed on DVD and not so much in cinema which the Box Office doesn't count the sales of DVD. Also, the American film critic and blogger Jeffrey Wells was so taken after seeing this movie at the Los Angeles Film Festival that he started a fundraising campaign called 'Hollywood Elsewhere's Tyrannosaur' which raised $2k to cover the rental of a screening room so that the social realist film could be shown in Hollywood to gain recognition. 
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It only grossed £299k (only the Box Office worldwide), whereas, the budget is £750k. However, the movie received very positive reviews and currently has a score of 83% on RottenTomatoes. Stuart McGurk of GQ magazine called Tyrannosaur  "The best British film of the year". This is very rare for Indie movies to win awards and get good reviews from companies such as GQ or RottenTomatoes. The Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a 3.5/4. They remarked the movie as a reality of wounded personalities. This anchors that the movie was a success. But still in the UK the movie doesn't sell well due to it's genre "a brutal, frank, and ultimately rewarding story of violent men seeking far-off redemption". But it still won a lot of awards.

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For our film opening I took influence of the background music. It's an instrumental guitar melody with notes that are several seconds apart. For the font I like the serif font, it connotes seriousness. However, we are definitely including the white font on black background that anchors seriousness and drama. 

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The instrumental part starts at 00:24