“Media production is dominated by global institutions, which sell their products and services to national audiences”. To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was distributed by Disney Motion Pictures and was produced by a subsidiary of Disney which is Lucasfilm and it was also produced by Bad Robot Productions and the film had a budget of $306 million and earned a box office of $2.028 billion. The film was very successful due to the effective marketing, distribution ect which was all done by the conglomerate institution of Disney and without this, the film most likely wouldn’t have been as successful. This shows that due to the fact that Disney is one of the Hollywood ‘Big 6’ companies so therefore will be well known and this means any marketing Disney does for the film will be very wide spread and earn Star Wars a lot of publicity. Because Star Wars is such a well known series, the fact Disney are distributing the next film will already gain a lot of interest in the film due to the amount of companies Disney work with which will be very beneficial for the film’s success. This agrees with the idea that media production is dominated by global institutions as the fact Star Wars: The Force Awakens was distributed by Disney will be a secure factor that the film will be successful as Disney can easily market the film to the audience.

Disney is considered to be a global institution as it’s a very successful company and has subsidiaries of various well known companies including The Muppets Studio, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Entertainment and Lucasfilm.  The Walt Disney company is very successful and has its own theme park and through Disney Consumer Products, they produce toys, clothing and other merchandising based on Disney. This means when Disney work with a film The Walt Disney Studios will begin to market the film through merchandise and publicity acts such as ‘Force Friday’ which was the date they released the merchandise in order to build excitement for the upcoming film. This shows that by having a global institution promote the film will already benefit the film due to the wide spread marketing Disney will be able to produce for Star Wars: The Force Awakens which is evidently shown through the merchandise of toys such as Lego and the products aimed as girls such as the Stormtrooper necklace by Kay Jewelers and the ‘Dark Side’ mascaras by Covergirl in order to be able to achieve the film related products to both audiences in order to gain as much publicity possible for the film. This agrees with the statement as it shows the simple fact that the film was promoted and distributed by a subsidiary of Walt Disney which is a wide spread global institution that earned the film effective marketing and publicity.

In contrast to this, Ex Machina had a budget of $15 million and earned a box office of $36.9 million and it was produced by Film4 and DNA Films and it was distributed by Universal Pictures. Universal Studios is an American film studio owned by Comcast through the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group division of its owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. Universal Studios is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America and is also one of Hollywood’s ‘Big Six’ studios. Biut Universal Studios didn’t have as large as a marketing campaign compared to Disney which explains why Star Wars: The Force Awakens was so much more successful than Ex Machina. Although Ex Machina has the basic publicity marketing areas such as film posters and trailers, other than a Tinder publicity stunt there wasn’t much marketing in order for the audience to gain interest in the film. Ex Machina used guerilla marketing in order to gain publicity for the film which included setting up a Tinder account for the main character which earned the film a lot of publicity and didn’t cost the film any extra money so there was no loss of money which would impact the profit of the film. This suggests that having a well known institution is only beneficial for the films success if the institution uses it’s well known name and success in order to achieve successful marketing which will earn a large amount of interest in the film. For example, it’s very likely Star Wars: The Force Awakens wouldn’t have been as successful if Disney didn’t use cross media convergence and synergy (both of which are very important and significant processes in the film’s success) as the film wouldn’t have been seen by the audience so no one would’ve heard about the film or bought the products. There wasn’t really any merchandise for Ex Machina which may have helped the film’s success as members of the public would’ve seen the products and furthermore gone on to look into what the film is about.

Overall, I feel that media production is dominated by global institutions but it depends on what these global institutions do with their well known name and how they promote the film. By using cross media convergence and synergy in order to use other companies to reach to all audiences the film will most likely be much more successful than a film which hasn’t used this marketing technique as no one would’ve been able to hear about the film. This is shown through Star Wars: The Force Awakens marketing techniques through lots of different companies so many members of the target audience heard about the film so would buy the products and wait for the release date. But, Ex Machina didn’t promote the film enough on a wide spread scale so not many members of the audience would hear about the film and which inevitably leads to less success than Star Wars. But I feel for a low budget film Ex Machina did very well especially due to the fact they used guerilla marketing through the Tinder publicity stunt, it was a clever idea and I feel this did earn the film a considerable amount of audience members seeing the film but I feel if Universal Pictures promoted the film more through other companies the film would’ve been much more successful.

"Cross media convergence and synergy are vital processes in the successful marketing of media products to audiences." To what extent do you agree with this statement in relation to your media area?

To some extent I agree with this statement as cross media convergence and synergy are important processes in order for certain films to be successful. Cross media convergence is the way films and other products are produced and distributed to other marketing platforms in order to publicize the film from another aspect. An example of a global institution which does this is Walt Disney who distributed the high budget film of Star Wars: The Force Awakens which had a gross budget of $306 million and earned a box office of $2.068 billion. Disney is a conglomerate institution as it’s a company that owns large numbers of companies in various mass media such as television, movies and the internet. An example of some of the companies Disney owns is Walt Disney Studies, Pixar Animation Studios and Lucasfilm. Lucasfilm alongside Bad Robot Productions produced Star Wars: The Force Awakens which shows the effect of how Disney is a conglomerate company and owns Lucasfilm which overall earns Disney lots of profit and publicity.  An example of cross media convergence is through social media how sharing the film through Facebook can lead to the film being discussed on other media platforms such as Twitter or Instagram. This is an effective marketing method as it doesn’t cost Disney any money for this marketing as the audience are taking it upon themselves to talk about the film which overall leads to more success and profit for the film and the film products.

Ex Machina had a budget of $15 million and earned a box office of $36.9 million and it was produced by Film4 and DNA Films and it was distributed by Universal Pictures. Universal Pictures is also described as being one of Hollywood’s ‘big six’ but they weren’t as effective in their marketing campaign promoting Ex Machina. Ex Machina used guerilla marketing setting up the main character a Tinder account and matching it with numerous users. This was an effective marketing campaign as through cross media convergence the audience then took it upon themselves to discuss this publicity stunt on various social media and earned the film free publicity. But I feel that other processes of the marketing are important too as wide spread marketing is very important which is displayed in Star Wars but wasn’t in Ex Machina as the film would then introduced to many members of the audience. By not having lots of marketing with different companies, it’s possible that the marketing technique won’t appeal to all demographics. This factor isn’t present in the marketing of Star Wars as they used many techniques appealing for all age groups and both genders.

Synergy is the interaction and cooperation that two or more organizations have on certain products which means that agents can produce more effective marketing techniques in order to achieve maximum profit, publicity and success for the film and the film products. In relation to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, synergy was used to tie in different companies to release products and merchandise that would be available for the audience to buy. Disney Consumer Products and Lucasfilm announced that the 4^th of September 2015 would be called “Force Friday” and that day was the official launch of all the merchandise for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Starting at 12:01am, fans could buy various products relating to the film such as toys, books, clothing and various other products at the Disney Stores and other retailers around the world. Some merchandise that was available was the popular Lego Star Wars sets and it was the third most popular toy that was bought on Black Friday and the Star Wars Battlefront game which Sony holds the exclusive rights for. Disney also released merchandise targeted at girls including “The Dark Side” mascara by Covergirl and jewelry such as a Stormtrooper necklace at Kay Jewelers. This is an effective marketing technique as it promotes the fact the target audience is both females and males aged 12 and over which demonstrates how the film isn’t just traditionally for males. This overall benefits the marketing of the products as females will be more likely to take an interest in the film as it’s more openly accepted that the film is targeted at both genders. Ex Machina on the other hand did not use synergy to promote their film which I feel was a decision that had an impact on the success rate of the film. I feel by cooperating with other organizations the film will be available to a wide spread audience and will help achieve the maximum success and interest rate in the film.

Ex Machina did release a soundtrack including the artists Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury and it included songs that were in the film including ‘The Turing test’, ‘Watching’ and ‘Ava’ but there was also many more. This soundtrack album was released digitally on the 20^th of January 2015 with an LP AND Compact Disc UK release in February 2015 by Invada Records. This demonstrates synergy as the organizations are working together to produce this soundtrack and sell to the audience. But, apart from this soundtrack no other official merchandise was released and I feel Ex Machina should have released merchandise for the film as it’s an effective way to earn more money through the products and as members of the audience see the products they’ll be reminded about the film so will encouraged to go and watch it. This will cause an increase in the amount of interest shown for the film.

Overall, I feel that cross media convergence and synergy are vital for the film’s success but I feel the actions of the distributers promoting the film have a large effect on how successful the film will be. This is shown through Star Wars as Disney showed successful marketing over a wide spread campaign with several companies in contrast to Ex Machina which Universal Pictures did not achieve successful marketing which meant the vast majority of the target audience were unaware about the film.