“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.