Media Essay Ford

 

What impact does media ownership have upon the range of products available to audiences in the media area you have studied?

Media Ownership has a massive influence over the range of products that are available due to the big six companies which are Universals, Columbia, Paramount Pictures, 20^th Century Fox, Warner bros and Disney. These six big companies have most of the control over the movie making industry as they own over 80% of it all.

Due to the big six companies mostly making all of the big hit movies such as Batman and Transformers they know how to correctly make the film as they have done it many times before. The main impact it creates is that all of the films they all have in some way the same element in it, which is action. They all know by adding some sort of action to the movie it will gain more interest from audiences. They may make some original story lines and creative ideas for each  film to try and make a profit but it always will relate to action because each of the big six companies know that by adding an action element into the movie it will gain them more viewers and more profit overall.

Warner Bros distributed films such as Batman and Superman which were films that were based around action and general fighting but films that were not made by one of the big six such as Twilight which Is also a film based around romance did bring action into the film due to the fact that they know that from the films that the big six has made and have all had action elements in normally make a profit so this shows that the media ownership will impact how other people will create movies.

The big six dominate the media industry because of the money they have at their disposal so they can create pure action movies or movies that aren’t based around action but can still make the quality and effects to a brilliant standard due to the amount of money they can spend on editing the film. Smaller film companies must follow the ideas and creations of the big six so they hope that they can gain a profit if the movie is somewhat based or has the same idea as one of these movies. Due to the big six having massive budgets and having control over the movie making industry they can take more risks due to the amount of money they can spend and already have but barely any small solo movie making companies will take the risk in there movies due to there being a massive chance of them not making any profit.

The film Paranormal Activity was made Orin Peli with a very small budget of $15,000 but then needed to use the funding of Paramount pictures so they could advertise the film so in the end Paramount Pictures distributed the film and they made a profit of over $193 million. This shows media ownership can cause a very small budget film that no one knows about and turn it into an international success  due to the control and power that the one of the big six’s influence.

In Conclusions media ownership has a massive impact over the range of products that are available to audiences due the amount of influences that certain companies have in the movie making industry and it then forces and encourages other companies to follow and base their ideas around the companies with power and dominance. Small companies even need the companies with ownership to help them boost there productions.

Mr Ford Essay (Marketing)

"Successful media depend as much upon marketing and distribution to a specific audience as they do upon good production products"

The main thing that influences people to go and see a movie is the marketing that has been produced for it. If a movie is made to an amazing standard it wont matter due to people not even noticing the movie has even been created because of no advertising and marketing. Because of this i strongly agree with the statement.

Movies that have distribution companies such as Universal or Disney have a major advantage due to the amount for money they can spend on marketing, and example is the Batman franchise, the distributers for Batman Dark Knight and Batman Dark Knight Rises were the Warner Bros which are a very well known distribution company from other films such as the Harry Potter franchise. Films like Batman The Dark Knight and the Harry Potter franchise may not of been as successful as they were if they did not advertise and use marketing to show the film because without things like trailers and posters some people would not even no the film has even been created or released so they would never go and see it even if it is a well known company or franchise.

You can use marketing in many different ways such as a big distributer would be able to produce multiple advertisements internationally and produce things like apps to let people know of the movie what they are creating but there are much cheaper ways for much smaller solo movie distributers to advertise there movie is by posting information and pictures about on international social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Some movies do not need constant amounts of advertisements, the best example of this is if a sequel of a movie of a movie or if a remake of a book series so people are expecting a second film and if the first was up to a good standard people a lot of people will come to watch with minimal advertisement.

Movies such as Avatar is a great example of a film which would require constant amounts of trailers, posters and apps being made for it because it is an original film made from scratch, people may argue that with its massive budget of $237 million it was obviously going to be a fantastically made movie but  no-one would even known about the fantastic quality the movie was made to without constant amounts of marketing and advertisements. Some examples of advertising that the distributers of Avatar (20th Century Fox) did was releasing two trailers, one was 129 seconds while the other was 210 seconds, they showed these trailers in very strategic places like at half time at a American football match, this trailer was 3 and a half minutes long. The trailers then progressed to be shown online of Yahoo and in 3D IMAX in countless cinemas around America. The constant spamming of trailers did pay off because a teaser of the film has become the most watched trailer in the world with 4 million views on Apple.com. They also made deals with world-wild companies such as Coca-Cola and Fox Studies to show advertisements of the movie. In my personal opinion i feel that without the massive range of advertisements and marketing that 20th Century Fox used Avatar would not of made a outstanding profit of over $2.7  billion, so with this evidence it makes strongly believe with the statement.

Some movie genres have a advantage over others with marketing because the action genre dominate over other genres due to the enjoyment it gives people, you could use Avatar as an example with the help of there overwhelming budget but you could also use a classic action film such as Mad Max which was a low budget film of $400,000 and a very low amount of advertisements but to this it has made a profit of over $421 million just because of the entertainment people find from the action and entertainment in the film. Because action is the dominating genre it gives a massive advantage to film such as The Avengers Assemble and most comic book films because people are going to expect to enjoy due to the action in the film so it means that they need less advertisements from other genres like romance or horror.

Advertising and marketing work in synergy in with money and finance, without the money to produce the advertisements the film would be at a great disadvantage as they would have no way to tell people about the movie or any information about it so they would not be influenced to see the movie. This gives a massive advantage to massive distribution companies such as Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures, due to there massive amount of money each company they have they are able to successful advertise any movie that they are creating.

In conclusion I strongly agree with the statement "Successful media depend as much upon marketing and distribution to a specific audience as they do upon good production products" due tot he fact that without advertising and marketing people would not be influenced to see the film no matter what the quality it is made to.