3D

What are the benefits of 3D films for audiences and producers?

For producers, 3D films 
make more money, as it costs more for an audience member to see a film in 3D. 3D films, supposedly, give a more immersive experience for the viewer, giving greater depth to the images on screen. 3D films can also help towards preventing piracy, as people may want the spectacle of seeing a film in 3D, which they can’t get at home.

What are the negatives?

During a film, 3D glasses can be quite irritating for audience members, and make the picture darker, giving a worse experience of the film. It also costs more for consumers, which also might put them off seeing a film in 3D. 3D can also promote a mentality in film makers where they value spectacle over story. Furthermore, converting a film into the 3D can often be done poorly, giving a worse product for consumers, and costing the studio money.

Audience Construction – Three Films

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Age:

Because of the comic-book origins of the film, action and teenage protagonist, this film would be mainly distributed towards young adults and teenagers. As the films contains swearing, heavy amounts of violence and hints of the sexual nature, however, it would be probably marketed towards the 16-18 age range, to avoid BBFC issues and other legal issues related with unethical distribution.

Gender:

I believe that the movie is presented as being gender-neutral for the most part, as there is no set emphasis on which gender is presented as being ‘superior’ in the film. For example, although the main protagonist is male and the ast itself is mainly headed by male actors such as Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Caine, Colin Firth and Mark Strong, the most physical and action- orientated characters are actually female, with the dangerous assassin Gazelle being played by Sofia Boutella and the upper-class Kingsman recruit ‘Roxy’ being played by Sophie Cookson- the former character having originally been male. This myriad of genders therefore balances out the gender-scales for the film, making accessible to all genders going to see the film.

NRS Social Grade:

I believe that this film would be directed towards those with an NRS Grade of around A-to-B or D-to-E, as the plot being centered around an lower-class nobody becoming a high-class secret agent would appeal to people with a lower social grade, and the high-octane, upper-class-action themes would attract those with more lucrative professions, attracting those with a high social grade.

Characteristics and Values:

I believe the audience going to watch this film would have very nationalistic or high moral views, such as serving your country, stopping violence, rising in the world and doing the necessary things to stop calamities- all of which are very noble values upheld in the film itself, the comic book it is based on and the spy genre as a whole, such as in the popular 007 spy franchise.

Guardians Of The Galaxy

Age:

This film has a very broad appeal. It contains an easy to follow story, bright colours, anthropomorphic animals and trees that a young child may find entertaining, while the film’s humour and action are appealing to teen and young adult tendencies, and the 70’s music prominently featured in the film and its promotion may appeal to the nostalgia of a slightly older audience.

Gender

While the sci-fi/fantasy action genre does traditionally appeal more to men, in recent years audiences interested in these films has become more proportional, in terms of gender.

NRS Social Grade

This film would be likely to attract people from most social grades, due to its broad and unoffensive nature, however the most upper-class people may be put off by the film’s perceived lack of depth.

Characteristics & Values

The film doesn’t really have any controversial or thought-provoking ideas in it, it’s effectively about team-work, which people of all kinds of world view can be on-board with, meaning that the film doesn’t particularly limit its audience.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water

Age

This film is aimed at young children, it has ‘funny,’ colourful, animated characters, that come from a very popular kid’s cartoon.

Gender

This film is probably more for young boys than girls. Most of the principal cast are male; there’s some toilet humour, which is traditionally more male and there’s a sequence where they become superheroes, which is also a more male dominated area.

Social Grade

Probably more towards the lower end of the social spectrum, as a lot of the humour is quite immature.

Crowd Funding Example – Kung Fury

How have films challenged traditional funding and filming methods?

Films like Kung Fury have challenged traditional distribution and filming methods by using new methods such as crowd crowd funding. This is when they producers of the film set up an online fund for strangers to invest money into the film. As you can see the film tripled its target funding to $600,000 and is currently being made into a full length movie.

This new modern method of producing films has been allowed due to advances in the film industry. For example technology has advanced much more in the recent decades and has allowed people to film their own films without being able to afford professional equipment. In this case the producer of Kung Fury only spent $5,000 of his own funds to purchase the filming equipment and software to produce his film.

Other changes have made it easier for low budget films to be created too. For instance the use of social media is very beneficial for low budget films and film advertising in general as it allows the producers to advertise their films for absolutely free. Furthermore word of mouth is the best and most effective method of advertisement used and social media enhances this as it is the virtual form of word of mouth. Some examples of this could be sharing it on Facebook or Twitter, in addition to this trailers can be put on Youtube for free or a profit can even be made from this if they choose to have adverts.

In the film industry, how has one media conglomerate used synergy successfully?

Disney

Disney owns a number smaller companies such as Pixar, Marvel Entertainment and Lucasfilm. Through these subsidiaries many films have been created, or are in development, these in include animated films from Pixar such as the Toy Story films, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles; superhero films from Marvel, including the Avengers and the films that tie-in to the Avengers  and the upcoming seventh Star Wars film from Lucasfilm.

Theme Parks

Disney has numerous theme parks around the globe, where people can interact with disney’s characters, and rides are themed around their franchises.

Stores 

There are many Disney stores, these sell merchandise that pertain to Disney’s properties, helping to increase and maintain awareness of their franchises.

Prosumers, Proliferated Hardware and Content and Converged Devices

What Is A Prosumer?

A prosumer is a consumer who uses technology, which is becoming more and more easily accessible, to produce their own content and share via platforms such as Youtube.

What are the benefits and negatives of a proliferation of hardware and content?

The proliferation of hardware and content has led to benefits such as; lowering prices for high quality hardware, making it easier for smaller, independent projects to get made; as more members of the audience can make films themselves, the quality of professional films is driven up, since they have to seem better than products made by prosumers in order to appear worth paying for.

However, there are some drawbacks; online piracy means that films may not gross as much, giving a disproportionate idea of a film’s popularity to producers.

How are producers using converged devices to promote and distribute content?

Converged devices, such as smart phones and tablets, are being used in the promotion of films, primarily because these devices mean that we are almost always connected to social media, which companies often use as a marketing platform. Distribution is also changing due to our constant connectivity. VoD is growing, with companies like Netflix now distributing television-style shows(such as Emmy nominated, House of Cards andOrange is the new Black) and feature-length documentaries (including Oscar nominatedVirunga), and are about to move into features films. They recently picked up the distribution rights to Beasts of no Nation, which is generating early Oscar buzz. Netflix plans to release this in cinemas and on the streaming platform on the same day, in order to give the film Oscar eligibility.

What have attendances increased? What is the DFP and the VPF? What problems face ‘Alternative Content’?

2013 saw digitisation in the UK enter its endgame, such that by the end of the year only a handful of screens remained unconverted. As a result, the question being asked was one of when rather than if the major studios would cease supplying films in anything other than a digital format. As 2013 closed, several distributors were already moving to digital-only releases, with 35 mm being made available only on an exceptional basis.

While 3D exhibition remained a key element of the cinemas mix, there were signs that audiences were exercising increasing choice over which films they saw in that format. As a result the split of income between 3D and 2D screens (where available in both formats) varied significantly from film-to-film. That said, where the 3D format was seen as indispensible to the experience – such as with Gravity – then audiences responded in huge numbers.

Event cinema – formerly called ‘alternative content’ – also continued to thrive during the year. By the end of 2013, income from this source – primarily from live theatre, ballet and opera – represented 1.8 per cent of box office or almost £20 million.

How has the Avengers Franchise benefited from Cross-Media Convergence?

This franchise uses a multitude of cross-media convergence methods for both business and artistic reason.

Comics

These films are based on the Marvel comicbooks, Marvel exploit this fact to promote their films amongst comicbook readers as well as using the films to make comicbooks more accessible to new readers.

This comicbook was released in conjunction with the first Avengers film. This was designed to milk the success of the Avengers film by giving readers more of the flavour of those films.

Here, on Comixology (the primary platform that large comicbook publishers use to publish digital comics), they are highlighting comics that relate to upcoming Marvel movies (Ant-Man, Captain America Civil War and Avengers: Infinity war parts 1 & 2), this helps to engage audiences as they may be more likely to see things pertaining to the films.

In 2012, around the time of the release of the first Avengers film, Marvel startedto publish the large crossover event Avengers Vs. X-Men. This helped to promote the Avengers films with comicbook readers as it put those characters at the forefront of their minds and discussions, even if they were not particularly interested in Avengers comics, this event had tie-ins in many corners of the Marvel universe, meaning that the majority of Marvel books were effected by this event.

Coming out of the event, Marvel launched the MARVEL NOW! initiative, which involved the release of a large number of new series, and as such made it easier for people who had recently watched the films to get into the comicbooks.

Television

Following the Avengers’ release in 2012, Marvel began production of the television show Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, which would explore a post-alien invasion Marvel Universe. The show would be used to tie-into the films, giving the release of the films extra promotion, for example, Sif, a character from the Thor films has made two guest appearances, and the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier had a huge impact on the dynamics of the show as that film involved the dismantling of the organisation that the show follows, SHIELD.

More recently, Marvel produced the eight episode mini-series Marvel’s Agent Carter, which followed Peggy Carter, the love interest from the first Captain America film in 1946, mourning the apparent death of the captain and working as a spy. This was used to fill a gap while Agents of SHIELD took a break over Christmas, and helped to maintain interest in this universe without AoS being on.

Marvel are, also, producing 4 thirteen episode shows for Netflix that will tie together and build to a team-up mini-series entitled Marvel’s The Defenders. These shows areMarvel’s Daredevil, Marvel’s A.K.A. Jessica Jones, Marvel’s Luke Cage and Marvel’s Iron Fist. These shows similarly tie-into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, however are aimed at much older audience, the first of these shows, Daredevil having a ’15’ bbfc rating. This broadens the audience that the Marvel films can appeal to as more mature people may find Agents of SHIELD a bit light and fluffy to keep them engaged.

Convergence used on the X-Men days of future past website

Explain how the websites have used convergence to increase audience awareness and participation in order to promote and sustain interest in the film and/or its franchise.

At the top of the home page, the visitor sees a impactful banner featuring the large cast of the film. The user can drag the ‘X’ that is layered over the image to reveal characters from the two different time periods seen in this film. This helps to engage the audience as it involves participating in an activity.  This gives insight into the film as the user can clearly see that within the ‘X’ it shows government buildings in Washington DC in tact, while outside of the ‘X’ the same scene appears more dystopian.

Users can click on individual characters to view a bio of the character, their super powers and the actor’s bio. This further engages the visitor as they can go through the information on each character. They will also see that there are two Professor X’s and two Magneto’s, conveying that they are major characters in this film.At the bottom of the website, there is an advertisement for the ‘Cerebro’ mobile app. Through this app, users can find out information about the characters, story and production of the film. This app could act as a ‘second screen’ app, meaning that you can have it open while watching the film and see information about what is currently on screen.There is a section on the site that contains links to social media sites and three in-universe viral market sites. The social networks include the most most popular two, Twitter and Facebook, as well as Tumblr, which is particularly popular with fans of the genre.

The first of the in-universe sites is one for the fictional company Trask Industries, on this site, users can see the product range that this business offers, particularly the products that help them to hunt mutants within the film. Users can take a quiz to discover what job they would be best suited for at Trask Industries. The next site is ‘the Bent Bullet,’ which is a conspiracy theory website, about JFK being a mutant and Magneto’s involvement in his assassination. The third site is called ’25 moments,’ which walks through 25 key moments in the history of the universe, leading from the previous film (X-men: First Class) to the dystopian future seen in Days of Future Past. These help to engage audiences as they can get an interactive insight into the world of the film.

Final Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop of challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our Thriller conforms to some common thriller convention, however, it also challenges conventions. We created a sense of isolation (a common thriller convention) through the use of shot types, camera angles and the location itself. The last shot of the thriller opening is an extreme long shot of a solitary character walking away from the camera. This creates a sense of isolation by having the character on his own with no outstanding features nearby. He is also walking away from the camera rather than towards it, this creates a sense that the character cannot face what he has done, and that he stands out from the crowd, again, creating a sense of isolation.

We chose to film in a derelict barn to help create the atmosphere we wanted the opening to have. We chose a derelict barn because this contained a lot of common thriller conventions, such as isolation and bars. The thriller convention helped create a sense of tension because if it was relatable to a normal thriller, people may have an idea of what to expect.

Towards the end of the thriller there is a large lens flare while the camera pans around to see the character off in the distance. This flare obscures most of the image on screen before we glimpse the character walking away from camera. This is supposed to represent the fact that the character is an enigma at this point, a characteristic common in the thriller genre.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our thriller tries not to represent any particular social groups. This was done because we wanted to let a larger audience relate to our product. The only social group it could be argued that we went more for was is the teenage market; because we had teenage actors, all that was available to us however we would have used professional actors if the budget had allowed for something like that.

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

Because we are only students and we do not have a full size production budget, we would most likely distribute our product through free media sharing websites such as YouTube or any other social network where it is free to upload video content. We used non copyrighted sound for our title sequence so that we would not run into any copyright issues and face legal fees or be forced to remove the video. It also passes all websites terms of services meaning that if it is free, it can be uploaded almost anywhere. This makes it easy for people with access to the internet to be able to view our thriller meaning that if we monetised the video with adverts we could theoretically make money off of it, depending on how well adverts bring people to the video.

If we were a proper film production studio we could pay a company such as Miramax to release our film because they are a very large film production company that could easily advertise our film on a large scale. They could be trusted to do this because of the fact that they have released a number of successful thrillers in the time they’ve been active including Pulp Fiction.

 

 

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our main target audience is anyone that fits into the 15-50 age category. This is quite a large target audience because we want the film to be for everyone that wants to see it and hopefully everyone should have some element of enjoyment from viewing it. This category starts at the age of 15 because that is the age rating of our thriller due to its strong connotations with death. The vast majority of people that would watch this are the people that regularly watch crime dramas or police programmes/films due to the film noir-esque effect we tried to create.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We addressed our audience by sharing a questionnaire with the general public which contained a range of questions about if people liked thrillers and if so, which aspects appealed to them and which aspects did not. We took this information and tried to incorporate some of these elements into our thriller. People said that they did not like all the blood and the gore that can be common in thriller films so we tackled this issues by having the deaths appear off camera. This means that we can still have characters die in our film and keep our connotations with death but we can reduce the amount of gore that people might see on screen. Another thing that audiences responded with was the fact that they enjoy police driven narratives. This ties in with the film noir effect we attempted to create by using black and white. We did not plan the rest of our film other than the title sequence but it is entirely possible that it may contain a lot of police elements because of the murder at the beginning, something that would have to involve police if it was a real life situation or event.

 

What you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

From constructing our thriller opening I have learnt and demonstrated a competent use of both hardware and software used in the making of films. I have demonstrated an understanding of using film cameras to record footage which was then edited using adobe premiere pro. I have learnt how to edit footage and mix it together to create an understandable and competent thriller opening through the use of cuts, sound editing and changing the footage in order to make it black and white.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I have now got a better understanding of camera angles and editing in order to make a video flow better and be more interesting; whereas before I was experimenting with angles and editing techniques, I quickly gained an understanding of how things worked and what effects they could create.

Completed Thriller Opening

This is our AS media thriller opening, now complete.