To what extent does Media Ownership impact the success of a film.
Media ownership impacts the success of a film greatly as many conglomerates can have big marketing schemes compared to a small independent film companies. Hollywood has a major dominance over the film industry and many people see it is as the capitol of film making. In Hollywood there are 5 big conglomerates that make up the majority of AAA title films that are released throughout the year. The Big five are: Disney, Warner Bros, Universal, MGM, Paramount, Columbia Pictures. Disney is by far the biggest conglomerate worth over, $130 billion. Disney has the ability to create major films that can bring in lots of money such as ,"Star Wars Rise of the skywalker." This film grossed over $1,074,141,030 billion in the box office. This film was made by Disney and by this we can see that the bigger conglomerate will bring in more money on average compared to a smaller film company. If we contrast the New Zealand Film Commission to Hollywood and their film conglomerates we can see the difference in the amount of films being produced and also the amount of money that each of the film made in the box office. Another comparison between these two areas in the fact that the NZFC uses mostly NZ locations to try and promote the amazing landscape that NZ has, however Hollywood conglomerates use locations across the globe as they have the money to do so.
The money that large conglomerates have affects the way the film can be marketed. For example the "Why so serious" campaign for "The Dark Knight" involved 10 million people and spanned over 75 different countries. The film grossed over $1,003,509,293 billion and this can definitely be credited to the large marketing scheme that helped the film do as well as it did. A contrast from a large film conglomerate marketing their film would be to take a NZFC film like "Boy" and compare the marketing for that film. "Boy" which released in 2010 and grossed over $6,000,000 million in the box office was directed by Taika Waititi who had a bit of a scandal regarding his way of marketing the film. He used a Go-Fund me page and said to the donaters that they would receive rewards for donating to the film. However those donaters never received their rewards. This hurt Taika's career but he eventually bounced back. Another reason that having more money when making a film is the fact that during production you can have more crew to help out with the jobs that need doing. Having more money and being signed to a conglomerate means that your film can include "A-list" actors that will promote your film by just being in it. When audiences see that a big actor is in a new film they are immediately drawn to going and watching it based on how popular the actor is and how good their truly are. For example "Robert Downy Jr" promoting the new avengers movie will help the movie overall as audiences will be drawn to watch the film as RDJ is in it. Another good use of a conglomerate and having a lot of money would be because of the use expensive equipment and vfx. The better the equipment the better the overall quality of the film will be.
A way in which conglomerate are better than indi film companies would be the fact that they can use money for their distribution so that more people can see the film. I mentioned the Dark Knight Film earlier and their marketing plan and distribution would have cost lots of money and for a conglomerate this is very easy. This would be a big difference between a conglomerate and an indi film company. Having more money within a conglomerate definitely gets the film a better chance to do well due to the expensive production, better marketing and more distribution.
Piracy has had a massive impact to the film industry and has made many conglomerates lose a lot of money. Piracy takes place when a film is produced in the form of a videocassette without proper authorization from the right holder i.e. the producer. Often, film producers sell video rights to another party (generally after six weeks or more of release in theatres), which makes video cassettes for selling, or lending. Piracy grew largely when the internet got better and started to gain popularity because it gave people a platform to download films off the internet illegally. In 2018 in the United States piracy websites had been access over 17 billion times, and that is just in the USA alone. This shows us that piracy is stil a major problem in our world today. However the introduction of streaming services has actually decreased the amount of piracy that goes on. This is due to the inexpensive cost to subscribe to streaming services and many people who would normally pirate films would rather just pay the $15 to have access to the all the films as it is not THAT expensive to own.
The money that large conglomerates have affects the way the film can be marketed. For example the "Why so serious" campaign for "The Dark Knight" involved 10 million people and spanned over 75 different countries. The film grossed over $1,003,509,293 billion and this can definitely be credited to the large marketing scheme that helped the film do as well as it did. A contrast from a large film conglomerate marketing their film would be to take a NZFC film like "Boy" and compare the marketing for that film. "Boy" which released in 2010 and grossed over $6,000,000 million in the box office was directed by Taika Waititi who had a bit of a scandal regarding his way of marketing the film. He used a Go-Fund me page and said to the donaters that they would receive rewards for donating to the film. However those donaters never received their rewards. This hurt Taika's career but he eventually bounced back. Another reason that having more money when making a film is the fact that during production you can have more crew to help out with the jobs that need doing. Having more money and being signed to a conglomerate means that your film can include "A-list" actors that will promote your film by just being in it. When audiences see that a big actor is in a new film they are immediately drawn to going and watching it based on how popular the actor is and how good their truly are. For example "Robert Downy Jr" promoting the new avengers movie will help the movie overall as audiences will be drawn to watch the film as RDJ is in it. Another good use of a conglomerate and having a lot of money would be because of the use expensive equipment and vfx. The better the equipment the better the overall quality of the film will be.
A way in which conglomerate are better than indi film companies would be the fact that they can use money for their distribution so that more people can see the film. I mentioned the Dark Knight Film earlier and their marketing plan and distribution would have cost lots of money and for a conglomerate this is very easy. This would be a big difference between a conglomerate and an indi film company. Having more money within a conglomerate definitely gets the film a better chance to do well due to the expensive production, better marketing and more distribution.
Piracy has had a massive impact to the film industry and has made many conglomerates lose a lot of money. Piracy takes place when a film is produced in the form of a videocassette without proper authorization from the right holder i.e. the producer. Often, film producers sell video rights to another party (generally after six weeks or more of release in theatres), which makes video cassettes for selling, or lending. Piracy grew largely when the internet got better and started to gain popularity because it gave people a platform to download films off the internet illegally. In 2018 in the United States piracy websites had been access over 17 billion times, and that is just in the USA alone. This shows us that piracy is stil a major problem in our world today. However the introduction of streaming services has actually decreased the amount of piracy that goes on. This is due to the inexpensive cost to subscribe to streaming services and many people who would normally pirate films would rather just pay the $15 to have access to the all the films as it is not THAT expensive to own.
Hi Addison
ReplyDeleteOverall Score: 32/50
Terminology: 6/10
Analysis/ Argument: 13/20
Examples/ Explanation & details: 13/20
Overall, not a bad essay. Keep practising these and you'll keep getting better! You still need to aim for real detail in these. This is a great start but more details backing up very concise, clear points and statements is going to get you those higher marks.
Paragraph 1 - keep that topic statement really clear and broad. You make that first statement all about marketing. Remember the question here is about film production so they're asking about each phase and stage of production
- Great that you mention Big 5. Great that you talk about how much Disney is worth. You mention the new Star Wars movie which is great but what factors contriburted to the film's success? What did that big budget help them do to achieve that measure of Box Office success? When was it released and how was it released? What year? Who directed it? What marketing strategies did Disney use to market it to us?
- In mentioning Disney as a conglomerate, this is where you want to go into some detail about what Disney owns. Cross-media-convergence within Disney, vertical and horizontal integration examples within Disney and how they use synergy (lots of examples). And of course mentioning the theme parks! They are a massive income generating machine for Disney and synergistic tool selling their movies.
- The NZFC almost needs it's own paragraph here. You mention it briefly but you need to make it clearer that as a government run company, they are more interested in NZ economy and tourism. the Hobit and Lord of The Rings are great examples to mention here. You could talk about the cross-media-convergence oportunituies the NZ government has because it owns TV networks and radio etc, also the Air NZ in flight safety video from the Hobit (how was that successful campaign? How many hits on Youtube? How many likes on FBook??)
Paragraph 2 - great that you mention the Dark Knight advertising campaign. If you mention it, give some more detail as to what they did over those 75 countries. Did the film gross that aount worldwide or locally? Mention which one.
- the go-fund me page = CROWD FUNDING, make sure you show you know what that means. Also, it didn't really hurt his career, rather just his reputation.
- great example of RDJ in Avengers - what was film's budget? How many followers does he have on Insta? How did they use A-list cast to promote film specifically?
Para 3 - Distribution paragraph doesn't show me anything about you understanding the distribution process. You did a whole day's research on how films are distributed. You need to demonstrate using concepts and terminolofy that you understand things like wide releases, limited releases, how distribution companies work and how a conglomerate like Disney would own distribution companies so they wouldn't have to sell rights to the film and they save money throughout the whole production process
How do Indi films distribute their films? Case study examples. How easy is it for Indi films to get global distribution vs Disney film?
Para 4 - not a bad paragraph but a very waffly one that can be cut down to 1 or 2 sentences and then needs to be full of examples. How many times were your films pirated? How does it duty a conglomerate as opposed to a smaller independant filmmaker? Use lots of stats here from research. Also the definition of piracy isn't correct (or seems outdated / too narrow). You said, "Piracy takes place when a film is produced in the form of a videocassette without proper authorization from the right holder i.e. the producer. " It is not got anything to do with cassette tapes but rather just any illegally obtained film material that gets distributed on streaming platforms or in other formats but for the most part it's all online now days.