FRESHERS FILM GUIDE
FREE STUFF
One of the underrated treats of student life is the student discounts you can get your hands on and that includes free films and box sets. In our guide below we will show you where to look and how to get it.
FILMS EDITION Prime Video As long as you’ve got a valid .ac.uk email address, you’re entitled to Prime Student membership. Not only does this get you access to Prime Video, but it also unlocks Prime Music, Prime Photos, and perhaps best of all, free delivery on all Prime-eligible products. If you’re eligible for Prime Student, you should also be able to get your hands on a free six month trial of the service! And even if your .ac.uk email address no longer works, standard users are still entitled to a free trial of Prime Video, which lasts a month before reverting to the standard price of £5.99/month. Make sure you cancel your subscription after your trial, if you dont want to pay for a subscription. Apple TV+ The Apple Music student plan lets you stream and download songs from a library of 50 million, ad-free. It has a three-month free trial, costing £4.99/month thereafter for up to 48 months (or until you leave uni) when it’ll go up to the standard price of £9.99/month. It costs the same as a student subscription of Spotify Premium, but with the added bonus of the Apple TV shows. As Apple TV+ expands, this could end up being a very good way of saving money on streaming TV and music.
Front page artwork by Heather Skerritt
NOW TV As you’ll find with most other streaming services, there’s a free trial of NOW TV on offer to new customers (sadly just 7 days long, though). With a relatively small selection of titles, NOW TV has very much gone for the ‘quality not quantity’ approach. As it’s owned by Sky, NOW TV boasts exclusive rights to some of the best shows around. Their film offering isn’t bad either, but that’s probably not a surprise given that it’s basically just the back catalogue of Sky Cinema.
Netflix Just as Google has become a by-word for any kind of online search, Netflix is now pretty much the go-to term for a streaming service. While Netflix’s selection of films is certainly nothing to be sniffed at (Seven, The Wolf of Wall Street, Pulp Fiction and Whiplash, to name just four), it’s the catalogue of TV shows that has really helped establish it as the popular choice. Unfortunately Netflix currently doesnt offer a free trial but subscriptions can be had from £5.99 a month and you can also get gift cards which can part of deals, with people often selling unwanted gift cards on ebay and shops like Tesco will often run deals on gift cards so keep an eye out.
BoB BoB is intended as an online learning resource (it’s genuinely useful as one, too), and it has an archive of over two million TV and radio broadcasts. This includes films, and believe us when we say that we’re yet to find a major title that isn’t on there. The Harry Potter films? American Horror Story? They’re all on it. The picture quality isn’t as good as you’ll find on a paid-for streaming service, and the episode selection can be slightly hit and miss – but when you’re not paying a penny and it’s completely legal, who cares? BoB uses your university’s login service to confirm you’re a current student and, to find exactly what you’re looking for, make sure to select ‘Title only’ under ‘Search options’.
Catch-up services Suggesting iPlayer and All 4 and other catch-up services as ways to watch TV for free might make us sound totally out of touch, but hear us out. iPlayer allows you to watch a selection of the films that have been on the BBC in the past 30 days, as well as some iPlayer-exclusive documentaries. Current films include Gravity, Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy and vampire classic The Lost Boys.
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RIDLEY SCOTT
In 2018 The Northern School of Art were astounded by the special mention of Hartlepool College of Art (we were previously West Hartlepool College of Art before CCAD and now The Northern) in Sir Ridley Scott’s BAFTA fellowship speech Sir Ridley has privately supported our standing as an independent art school as recently as the summer of 2017; when he kindly loaned some of the original story boards from Boy and Bicycle to our bi-annual festival of illustration. Three minutes and thirty seconds into to his speech, Sir Ridley came to mention how supportive his father was in following a path in which he loved, which took him to applying for what at the time was called West Hartlepool College of Art. His words about the college will have resonated with many students who entered art college from a secondary education they did not fully enjoy:
“The college was a revelation, it’s weirdly dressed students expressing their individualism and passionate teachers who are genuinely interested in the students, not just tolerating, but actually engaging with them – a world apart from my schooling until then. It is extraordinary what an enthusiastic teacher can do; drawing the student out, igniting independence and encouraging the design of your own future rather than waiting for something to happen.”
FILM SUGGESTIONS Check out some of our film suggestions that you can stream now on amazon prime video, NOW TV and iPlayer
THE PRESTIGE When people think of director Christopher Nolan, they tend to remember his blockbuster epics The Dark Knight, Inception and Interstellar, but his 2006 film The Prestige is worthy of equal acclaim. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale star as warring magicians in 19th century London, whose rivalry escalates to unhealthy and dangerous levels. There are great performances throughout, including a small and important one from David Bowie playing Nicola Tesla, as Nolan weaves a complex, non-linear story, but the genius is this isn’t just a film about magic, the film itself is a magic trick. It’s a must watch for any Nolan fan and a useful touchstone for his later work.
READY PLAYER ONE Ernest Cline’s book Ready Player One was excellent. The film, which had the rights purchased before the book was even released, doesn’t quite live up to the standard of the original novel but is still one you can enjoy. The challenge for the movie adaption would always be making virtual reality worlds work for the big screen but director Steven Spielberg makes it work. The film definitely has flaws but for the most part these can be overlooked. The entire movie is packed with pop culture references and retro moments that everyone can enjoy.
GRAVITY Gravity stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in a heart-pounding thriller that pulls you into the infinite and unforgiving realm of deep space. Bullock plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (Clooney). But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone
and Kowalsky completely alone - tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness. The deafening silence tells them they have lost any link to Earth and any chance for rescue. As fear turns to panic, every gulp of air eats away at what little oxygen is left. But the only way home may be to go further out into the terrifying expanse of space.
BlacKkKlansman No-one’s created the emoji mashup yet of the face you’ll pull for most of BlacKkKlansman. Wide eyes, frowning + laughing, maybe the drop of sweat. Spike Lee’s take on the true story of Ron Stallworth, a black cop who goes undercover - sort of - at the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado in the 70s is fast, fun and typically fearless with both John David Washington (Denzel junior) and Adam Driver on cracking form. The encounters with everyone from Grand Wizard David Duke to civil rights activist Kwame Sure (Stokely Carmichael) – fictionalised to various degrees – are electric. Oh and what a soundtrack.
NORTHERN FILM
BLADE RUNNER
Hartlepool, Teesside and the north has long been a source of great films and inspiration. Whether it be locations, directors, actors or the stories themselves. Here are few examples: There’s a walk from Redcar into Hartlepool ... I’d cross a bridge at night, and walk above the steel works. So that’s probably where the opening of Blade Runner comes from. It always seemed to be rather gloomy and raining, and I’d just think “God, this is beautiful.” You can find beauty in everything, and so I think I found the beauty in that darkness. Ridley Scott talking about the inspiration for dystopian, industrial landscape in the opening scenes of Blade Runner
ATONEMENT
NORTHERN FILM LOCATIONS FILMED IN REDCAR Redcar beach was turned in to a scene recreating the Dunkirk evacuation for the film Atonement. The 2007 film, starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, earned critical acclaim - and gave scores of Teessiders a claim to fame as they appeared as extras on the big screen.
1917 The huge first world war epic released in cinemas earlier this year was shot in part at our very own Tees Barrage white water centre and at locations further upriver in Teesdale. River scenes were filmed in the stunning landscapes between Low Force and High Force, which as well as being a great weekend talk location, has been an inspiration to many of our photographers over the years.
Harry Potter The very first movie, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, used the North York Moors Railway station at Goathland as Hogsmeade Station, the arrival and departure point of the Hogwart’s Express carrying the boy wizard and his mates to and from Hogwarts. Durham Cathedral’s ancient cloisters were also part of the franchise as it doubled as a film location for Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone back in 2001. Against a snowy backdrop, the cloisters became the snow-covered quadrangle where Harry magically releases Hedwig the owl from his hands. Harry and friends returned to Durham’s UNESCO World Heritage Site the following year for the Chamber of Secrets sequel.
Get Carter The 1971 gangster movie’s finale was filmed on Blackhall Colliery Beach, for more than a century, the 12-mile stretch of coast from Hartlepool to Sunderland served as a carbonic dumping ground for the collieries of East Durham which created haunting black beaches that helped put the noir in the classic British gangster film Get Carter. The beach is now unrecognisable as it has undergone a dramatic make over and has won a prestigious Council of Europe Landscape Award.
Alien 3 Blast Beach at Dawdon, where more than 3,000 workers produced a million tonnes of coal a year at the height of production, has also undergone a dramatic makeover. It stood in as the penal colony-cum-foundry, Fiorina “Fury” 161, in the third installment of the Alien franchise starring Sigourney Weaver under the apt publicity line: “Here in a world where the sun burns cold and the wind blows colder.”