Evaluation - "What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?"

A massively important part of distributing a film is finding a distribution company to get the film out there and publicise it for us, so that it can be acknowledged by the public. As appealing as the concept of travelling town to town to show the film ourselves may be, it's certainly isn't the best way to earn a good profit from it.

There are several thing we will need to take into account when deciding which company to pitch our film to -

• The appeal of our film - if the company has a history of distributing comedy films aimed at teenage kids, they're more likely to buy into our film than say, a company known for distributing Bollywood films.
• The size of the appeal - we need a company who will be able to push our film to the largest possible audience. As the film has a fairly mainstream appeal in the UK we'd probably benefit from a larger British company; we probably wouldn't have much luck pitching to a major American company as it's more than likely they wouldn't 'get' our film.
• What they could offer - It's fair to say that if we haven't heard of any existing films a company distributes, they're probably not the best at marketing/promotion. We need to find an institution who are efficient at creating public knowledge of their films, as we want our film to reach the largest possible audience.

As I'm constantly reminded, long paragraphs tend to be seen as dull, so for the sake of making this more simple to interpret, I'm going to compare these in grids. (Click to see these in their larger, high resolution beauty)... 

From these three companies I feel we would be best to pitch to Entertainment Film Distributors, on the basis that they are more likely to be open to our film's concept. This is because of the British influence behind our film which can be seen clearly in the style of humour used throughout - it would have much more of an appeal to a British audience, so EFD would benefit more when they try to market the film in the UK than one of the American companies would when they try to market internationally.

Should this not be possible out of the American firms I believe we'd have more luck with Warner Bros.; their back catalogue shows a huge range of films, some of which appear to have content produced outside of America (heck, they have some Japanese material in the form of their Pokémon/Yu-Gi-Oh material - it is the 4Kids dubs they've distributed but the Japanese influence is still somewhat visible). This shows that they may be open to distributing a film like ours which originates outside of America.

-HM.

Technological Convergence/Impact on the Film Industry

Just using this to throw down some notes; I still need to write up the A&I question response so I thought it'd make sense to dump all the relevant information I have so far in one place. Am going to throw down some things I find now in my own words here too (although copy and paste is useful for tons of different things like saving time, transferring files and developing new Call of Duty games, it's important for this to be somewhat original for the sake of being the base of this essay).

Definition
When multiple technologies are employed together to complete tasks. In this case, it refers to the number of different technologies which can benefit film production.

Use in Film-making
Production: Not too sure on this one, but I'll have a shot. The most obvious one to me is that both on-set film-making equipment (think cameras and microphones) and post-production equipment (computers, editing software) can be used to produce the film itself. Also things such as music scores/soundtrack production and newer video presentation formats (high definition, 3D) apply additional uses of technology to produce the film. Video production/sound production/graphic design programs can all run from the same kinds of machines, could be beneficial in cutting costs in regards to equipment.

Marketing: Pretty much everything to do with the film's marketing will have been done with technology of some description, but most commonly: film posters, official trailers, design of merchandise (this also relates to synergy; third parties producing t-shirts/soundtrack albums/videogames/etc. will use additional technology), web presence (official website, social networking pages etc.).

Distribution: Physical products no longer necessary, as the web allows content to be both acquired and used from the same device - think web enabled media players e.g. iPod - can connect to iTunes to buy films, then allow the user to play said films using the iPod's video player. Additionally, streaming services such as Netflix can be used across a growing number of formats including videogame consoles (Wii/3DS/Xbox 360/PlayStation3/PlayStation Vita), Operating Systems (Windows/Mac OS X/Android etc.) and general media devices (such as Apple TV). Apple TV is an interesting one on the basis that it can show videos from both free streaming websites such as Vimeo and YouTube and videos from subscription or purchasing based sources like Netflix and iTunes. Often film trailers are uploaded to official YouTube accounts; these trailer videos can mention that the film is available to buy on iTunes etc.

 iTunes' rating system is incredibly beneficial as it is a modern day word-of-mouth (even though it can be unreliable).

Brings risks - media devices having quick and easy access to the internet makes it easier to access unauthorised copies of films; institutions do not profit from this.

Slumdog Millionaire
Production: Original music was produced for the film; this would have been produced externally and later dubbed into the film. As music plays a fair part in creating the mood and tone of a film, Slumdog has benefitted massively from being able to make use of non-diegetic BGM in this way.


Marketing: FoxSearchlight have released trailers for the film on their official YouTube channel, as well as videos of director Danny Boyle discussing different matters regarding the film (such as the child actors etc.). This is highly beneficial to the promotion, as YouTube reaches a massive audience.

Multiple promotional images and posters have been produced and distributed amongst a variety of different regions. These are different as they are all designed to attract the target audience of certain local areas.


Distribution: Has suffered a fair amount of harm from piracy - statistics published by the BBC suggest that it was in the top ten most torrented films as of August 2009.

The film is available on iTunes for £7.99. Has received overwhelmingly positive feedback on iTunes' customer reviews which could give a positive outlook on the film to potential consumers.

Has also been released on DVD and Blu-Ray Disc.

Mr. Bean's Holiday
Production: As with Slumdog this has original music composed for the film,

Marketing: Also had official trailers produced. In addition, an official website was set up which features screenshots from the film and downloadable wallpapers featuring the title character.

Distribution: Is available on iTunes for £6.99. Unlike Slumdog the comments actually work against the film's favour as the reactions are mixed (the fact one of the comments is "I DEMAND A REFUND! I GOT THIS IPOD FOR MY BDAY AND UR SCAMMING ME!!!!!" suggests that people have not put much... thought into their opinions, and that many are irrelevent).

Was physically released on both DVD and HD DVD (the latter of which is now defunct, suggesting that physical distribution is not as reliable as it once was).

-HM.

Mr. Bean's Holiday - US Trailer Analysis

Because this blog needs to use different forms of media/be interesting etc.. I hate my voice. I am also terrible at commentary in general and so you'll hear lots of "ermmmm" and "like" throughout where I lose my trail of thought.

My case study work is pretty terrible as of now. This needs fixing so I think I'll make a point of fixing it up now. As with before, copyrighted material is used for educational purposes and therefore should be covered by Fair Use.

Reasons why Disney is terrible

Sir, I'm aware that you suggested I keep my thoughts towards Disney to a minimum for the sake of letting people enjoy living in their little fantasy worlds, and hey... I've lasted ten minutes and now have to continue. Sorry! I'll try and get some relevant audiences and institutions stuff in here but can't really guarantee the success rate.

DISNEY IS TERRIBLE


There are a number of reasons why I simply have nothing nice to say about Disney as a company. This is due to personal opinion as well as my complete bafflement at how society reacts to Disney and its products.

Firstly is the actual content of the products themselves. This squeaky-clean image the traditional Disney animated films have (think Lion King, the Little Mermaid etc.) does nothing to help me take them seriously, because at the end of it all they are are just dumbed down forms of entertainment.

That may sound like total blasphemy to the Disney worshippers out there, but it's true on the basis that all Disney tend to have done is taken a traditional fairytale (which are bland enough as it is) and dumbed them down so much that nothing of interest happens - so that there is nothing to upset all those little kids out there.

I'm not saying this blindly, I was forced to sit and watch a whole load of this rubbish at my primary school and even as a child I could see right through it. The only thing any of the Disney animated films have going for them in my eyes is "look at how bright and colourful and child-friendy our animation is!". Bringing me to the next point -

Child-friendly = good?
One of my biggest annoyances with Disney is the way society reacts to its products. This is especially the case with parents bringing up their children with Disney products as a norm. Picture this: you have a small child who is currently far too young to think for themselves, and is also too young to have received any kind of education about the way the world works. Surely you'd want to encourage them to develop an intelligent, logically-thinking outlook on life? Right? So why does it make sense to plonk them down in front of films which give them the generic "blah blah princess blah blah mild danger blah blah hero blah blah NOW BUY ALL OF OUR MERCHANDISE" message? It's as though parents are deliberately encouraging their children to take a consumerism-driven lifestyle where they buy whatever is put in front of them.

I genuinely believe that because of this Disney are a much bigger threat to society than any other media agent - including the likes of representation in drama and News International etc.. Why is this?

Because Disney gets to them before they are able to think for themselves.

If someone is older and reads a completely biased news report, there's a fair chance that they'd sit back and think "yeah, this is a load of [word of choice goes here]". If it's a small child becoming more and more obsessed with Disney they will have no way of working out that it's just consumer exploitation, but will instead think "I've got to get mum/dad/etc to buy ALL the Disney products!". This vast range of synergy sells a whole load of pointless products which only boosts Disney's power further. By this, I mean that the child will not just want to watch the Lion King film. He'll want the toys, he'll want the soundtrack record, he'll want the posters, he'll want clothes with the characters on them, he'll want pretty much anything with Lion King branding on it.

Society's attitude to this doesn't help. If you ask pretty much anyone about Disney (with myself being the extreme minority) they'll give you the same comment about how wonderful the films are, with no accompanying reason other than that they're "classics". What they mean by this is that they themselves went through this consumerism-fuelled brainwashing as a child and are still unaware of it. It is also likely to be because they just have this pleasant memory of their childhood where all they had to do was sit down and watch near-infinite numbers of children's films. This also annoys me, because I honestly believe that all the childhood phase of life is is being a less intelligent version of your adult life.

Let's look at this advert for the Disney theme parks.

This shows just how much brainwashing Disney have done to children over the years of them being alive. Although they are just staged scenes for an advertisement, one can see from the reaction of the children that this whole "Disney is a great thing. All hail Disney." ideology has been bullied into them from before they could talk, with the idea of being surrounded by Disney characters wherever you go in the theme park being the ultimate goal of which they've been trained to aim for.

All this does is - yet again - make Disney more and more powerful, controlling more and more of society's ideas.

Obsession-building

I mentioned this a bit earlier, but Disney rely on the concept of building obsessions around certain things as their primary marketing technique. This means that we have a bunch of kids who religiously hand over their money for merchandise/soundtrack CDs/T-shirts for the High School Musical nonsense. The problem? They're completely oblivious to how terrible it all is. Anyone who has even the most basic musical knowledge can tell that soundtracks from the likes of High School Musical and Hannah Montana are just manufactured digitally for the sake of selling the stuff, as opposed to having any musical skill put into them. Heck, they even manage to make Nickelback seem talented, and that definitely takes some doing. It's as though someone at Disney has identified a hole in the market for beyond-terrible music and thought "okay, we can dedicate our new programmes to this for the next few years!". 

There is actually a whole ton more I could say about Disney being evil, but for the sake of avoiding even more wrist pain I'm going to stop here - so tl;dr: Disney is a massive threat to society as it can socialise people into consumerism whilst they are vulnerable.

-HM.

Ideology pt. 2

This is the long awaited follow-up to the previous thing...

Althusser
Louis Althusser was a French Marxist sociologist who explored the concept of ideology. Ideology refers to the theory that social institutions (such as religion, the education system, and of course - the media) take control of people's thoughts and beliefs, thus overriding their individuality.

As the media is generally controlled by the bourgeoisie, it transmits 'ideals' which conveniently reinforce the class inequalities seen throughout society. This can be seen from media bias which can act as propaganda (Chomsky, 1992) and through class representation (below).

Representation
One of the most obvious examples of how the media can transmit 'ideals' is through the way the media represents different groups of people [LINK]. Mentioning the ideology theory and Barthe's mythologies theory will inevitably end up in a "chicken or the egg" argument - whilst Barthe says that the stereotype based representations are given to satisfy the audience's expectations, Althusser's ideology argument would suggest that those expectations only exist because the media has presented them to the audience previously.

The Marxist belief that the ruling class have control over the proletariat is heavily supported by this idea of ideology; the media presents the audience with plenty of justification as to why they should live their lives in a certain way. For example, if we go with the way that pretty much every programme ever made in the history of television has at some point had a romance based storyline, we can see that the media promotes having a partner to settle down as being an 'ideal' lifestyle. In actuality, this could be seen as taking advantage of how people are more inclined to aim for a good job if they have a partner (and eventually children) to look after, thus motivating the workforce.

Audiences & Institutions
I did previously touch on this in the previous post but it is somewhat relevant to mention again the way in which institutions make use of ideology to sell their products.

Institutions who have a product to sell need to convince the potential audience that it is worth buying - this is done through marketing. Successful marketing revolves around ensuring that as many people as possible buy the product; thus it is important to ensure that the marketing appeals to the masses.

This can be done by first spreading 'ideal' beliefs, then ensuring the product being sold meets the ideals. This is an example of institutional power; once they have created a desired ideal, they are free to market as many products as they feel the need towards this ideal, hence why sequels and spin-offs are usually commercially successful.

Criticism
Post-modern/social action (interactionalist) theorists oppose the idea of ideology brainwashing the population on the basis that they feel that society is instead run on the actions of individuals; and that although the media as an institution may have the potential to promote certain beliefs, it is ultimately up to the individual as to whether they take on those communicated or not.

-HM

Ideology

This relates to the theory of ideology being communicated through the media. Sir mentioned a while back that it is a good idea to make the blog a bit more interesting, so I tried using one of these SlideShare embed things.

Ideology & The Media

As I am particularly terrible at communicating through every medium of the "not writing" variety, I should clarify some of the points I've made here:

The ideology theory says that certain ideals are transmitted from the institution (the media product's creator) to the audience, which can influence the audience's thoughts and beliefs.

The institution can also take advantage of the audience's views of 'ideals', by creating products which appeal to those beliefs.

---

On another note, I am aware I have unacceptable lack of reference to Althusser's theories; this is because I have found little information about them that I can fully understand. As I find more relevant information I will post it.

-HM.

SOPA - Effect on the Industry?

This post is particularly off-topic, but it kind-of relates to film distribution, and I needed an excuse to have a rant. Here goes!

For those not in the know, the US Stop Online Piracy Act is a proposed legislation designed with the intention of preventing online piracy, thus stopping potential revenue being held away from intellectual property owners. However, it just so happens that the proposals appear to have been written by people who know nothing about the way computers, the internet or pretty much anything works.

Instead of just targeting those who share copyrighted files with those who do not own a license to use them, the legislation would target everything on the internet that happens to use copyrighted media.

So why is this a problem? Well, it's pretty clear that nearly all media production companies have made great use of online hype to market a product. For this to work, fans of the company will need to be allowed to talk about it on the internet, be able to share previews and leaks, make their own graphics/videos based on it, start up fansites etc.. If this law passes it will be extremely difficult for this to work, which will make media marketing even more of a challenge than it currently is.

On top of that, attitudes towards media consumption have changed significantly over the last few years. People no longer want to just sit back, watch a film and then forget about it. The influence of online culture now means that people want to take constant interest in the product and its company; they want to be able have easy access to media relating to it, and they want to create their own fan work. It's more or less an unwritten rule now that your product hasn't made it until there is an autotune remix of it on YouTube. This kind of behaviour not only maintains existing fans, but also brings in new ones - meaning that the company has a great chance of success with potential sequels.

Even the big-names would be affected by the legislation; think of all the big American-based film websites out there who review all the new releases. They often have short clips and screenshots from the film, right? That'd be illegal. The new ruling gives copyright owners the power to have sites which share even small fragments of their material taken down, meaning there is massive potential out there for production companies to make copyright claims for the sake of spiting those who give unfavourable reviews for their products. As if media journalism wasn't biased enough already...

It should also be noted that if one inspects the wording of the bill carefully, posting a link to or embedding an official film trailer on a blog/webpage would be a criminal act. A criminal act which could lead to prison time. I don't really need to explain why this is ridiculous.

So in short: if the act is put in place, online fandoms will be destroyed. If online fandoms are destroyed, media owners' chances of marketing a product will also be destroyed. As much as I would like to break up the BVB Army and get the band to stop making their "music" forever, this is most definitely not the logical way to do it.

-HM

Digital Screen Network

This blog has been about as interesting as a Nickelback album over the last week or so, so it's about time I posted something to it.

The Digital Screen Network is a system run by the UK Film Council which provides funding for cinemas to gain access to digital equiptment. The idea behind this is that it is much cheaper and easier for film-makers to send their work to cinemas digitally than by using physical media. This makes it much easier for smaller, independant films to be shown, which both feeds money into the industry and allows for more consumer choice.

So far the Digital Screen Network has invested £12m across 210 cinemas across the country, equipping 240 screens with digital projection technology overall. So far this has allowed for a fair number of non-mainstream fils to be shown in cinemas, which is beneficial to the film industry overall.

Slumdog Millionaire - Case Analysis

Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008/2009 film directed by Danny Boyle that is set in India.

The director, producer (Christian Colson) and writer (Simon Beaufoy) are all British, meaning that the majority of the creative decisions made about the film are from a British source, however the film's story is based on the novel "Q & A" by Vikas Swarup, who is an Indian author. The majority of the cast are also Indian.

The film was distributed by Parté in the UK and Fox Searchlight Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures in the US.

The film was released in cinemas thorughout the UK on 9th January 2009, where it went to #2 in box office figures. It was later released on DVD and Blu-ray on 1st June 2009.

As well as the English release, the film was also dubbed into Hindi and Tamil, which allowed for a wider audience.

- I'll add some more information as well as hopefully some trailers and stuff to make this post shinier when I get some time at home, sadly YouTube and other sources are blocked in school. -

EDIT: 10/12/2011

I've been able to find some examples of marketing techniques used to promote the film. One of these is through the release of official trailers, including those shown below:



This trailer was released by Fox Searchlight (a subsidiary of Fox) in the US. As well as Fox being a US based company we can also see that this is targeted towards the US audience by the trailer featuring quotes from US reviewers (e.g. The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Sun-Times).



This is the trailer released in the UK. It's interesting to note that whereas the US trailer was led simply by text on screen, the UK one has a spoken voice-over narration.

On top of the US trailer, Fox Spotlight also released a series of interview clips featuring the director Danny Boyle about the film, including -
Danny Boyle on India
Danny Boyle on Child Actors

These videos are notable as not only do they directly promote the film, but they also help the marketing by letting the director come across as a likeable public figure, which will encourage the public to go and see his work.

-HM.

Mr. Bean's Holiday - First Study

Mr.Bean's Holiday is a 2007 comedy film starring Rowan Atkinson. The film is the second film based on the television series "Mr. Bean".

Whilst the lead actor, director and story writer are all British, the film is set in France and some members of the cast are French.

The film's marketing is unique in that it was the official film for Comic Relief in 2007, and that some of the proceeds from the film went towards the Comic Relief charity.

The initial official reveal was through a teaser trailer in November 2006 (released by Universal Pictures) and soon after an official website was set up - http://www.mrbeansholiday.net/

The physical release of the film saw it being made available on both DVD and the now-defunct HD-DVD on 27th November 2007.

- I'll continue this as I find more information -

-HM.