Working Title Studios 5/4/2011

 Tim Bevan

At Working Title nothing happens without their sister company Universal (ownership).
First they find an idea, sometimes its from a book or a whole new idea and they then pitch the idea to do the producers. They make a draft of the script and it takes between 10-12 weeks - the script is the biggest department.

Piracy is affecting the DVD market the worst because DVDs are so expensive, they are now looking at bringing the prices down so more people will want to buy them to reduce piracy.

All films are tricky to make and it all depends on the people working on the film. Fact based movies are the hardest to make because they need to get all the infomation correct. Working Title made a film about 9/11 and that was the hardest film because it was about real life. When adapting a novel to film it's always a gamble because you don't know how the fans of the book will react to a adaptation.

Tim Bevan said that the most enjoyable part was the development stage and the editing.

SJ

Hungary is the best place to film because of the beautiful scenery and there are many locations, and also because is it one of the cheapest places to do so.

Atonement is an art-house film and cost £17 million to make (cheap for a period drama) and took 62 days of filming. It grossed a huge amount of $129,266,06. It is an adaption so it was a  bit of a gamble and though the ticket sales where dropping to see period dramas the DVD sales of Atonement rocketed. 
All the film was shot in locations around the UK.


This famous Dunkirk scene in Atonement took 7 takes and they only had one window to get it done in because of the lighting, the extras were all members of the army and there were only 500 so they tiled them along the beach to make it look like more, the props were all real including the ferris wheel!