Discuss the issues raised by media ownership in the production, distribution and exchange of media texts in your chosen media area?
Media ownership is looking at the consequences for a type of business ownership that media companies have, for example, conglomerates have a larger benefit for producing, distributing and exhibiting a movie because of being large media companies. Examples of conglomerates are 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Walt Disney, Columbia, Warner Bros and Universal. These are an oligopoly because they dominate the market in America. Revolver Entertainment, BBC FIlms and Microwave are all smaller independent companies who worked on the low budgeted movie Ill Manors. There are many different issues, both positive and negative, raised by media ownership in the production, distribution and exchange process.
Firstly, conglomerates such as Walt Disney (The Walt Disney Studios) and Columbia (Sony Corporations) were able to successfully make progress with their media products such as Disney's Frozen and Sony's Skyfall which both got incredible amounts of attention and in turn put into the cinema. Smaller companies and the majority of British Film is given a back seat due to the vast amount of American Blockbusters which dominate the cinemas. BBC Films who produced Ill Manors and Revolver Entertainment who distributed Ill Manors struggled more with creating a film that their target audience would enjoy, because they are low budget companies with very little money and therefore have to spend it wisely. Institutions have to be positive that the initial idea of their film is going to be good and therefore an overall success. A range of decisions are thought about in deciding the suitability of a film, from the choice of director to the storyline, whether it be in 3-D, HD or digital; all of which can affect costs and the audiences response to the movie for both conglomerates and independant companies.
Furthermore, the production stage for Ill Manors and Skyfall were completely different. Skyfall had a budget of $150-200 million whereas Ill Manors had just a minute £100,000 budget in comparison. Skyfall, due to being produced by a large production company, Sony, were able to use a host of well known famous stars such as Daniel Craig and Judi Dench. Whereas most of the cast of Ill Manors were unknown or first time actors, making the characters in this movie less interesting and appealing to an audience. Skyfall used exotic and varied locations around the world which keep the audience interested and fascinated because it would be difficult to become bored with a film that explores so many different settings. Ill Manors setting was a lot more geographically specific because Plan B wanted to convey the social corruption amongst the streets of London, and therefore filmed in just one location. Special effects are effective in producing a captivating and interesting movie, and Skyfall used a lot of expensive ones in order to convey more dramatic scenes and increase the excitement amongs the audience. They also had expensive action sequences, for example the highly produced fight and chase scenes. Ill Manors used no special effects whatsoever, and although this film may not have needed any, it is still something that made it lose out on that wow factor that Skyfall has. There were also less action in the dramatic scenes of this movie aswell, causing it to be a complete opposite to Skyfall, and not in a very good way.
Moreover, the differences in distribution for Skyfall and Ill Manors was again, extremely different. Skyfall's marketing campaign was huge and extensive; it first brought out a teaser trailer and then brought out the official trailer. This trailer currently has 23,060,791 views compared to Ill Manors trailer with 741,717 views. The trailer to Skyfall was shown at the start of many cinema releases, such as The Bourne Legacy, 21 Jump Street and The Hunger Games. By playing it at the start of these movies, it will attract middle aged audiences, those who enjoy the same genre and "spy" plot along with the theme of action and drama; all of which Skyfall contains. Posters advertising the movie were placed all around London, on various billboards, tube stations and buses. This was successful because it meant that the advertisement of this film would be circulating around a constantly busy city to a variety of age ranges, as the target audience for Skyfall is 15-55 year olds. On the official Skyfall website, the audience were able to find out what cinemas were showing this film, what times and then how to book the tickets. The premiere information was also found on their website, along with news and pictures of the film and the official Skyfall trailer. Ill Manors marketing was very specific and highly targeted, and they had to mainly use web 2.0 in order to advertise this movie because of it being a low budget film. Social media was it's main source of marketing, as Ill Manors also had their own website with links to the DVD and Blu-Ray copy to purchase, stills from the footage, videos and also a link to Plan B's album featuring the soundtrack of the movie. Ill Manors created a Facebook account to promote the movie, where they posted clips from the footage, held competitions for the viewers and advertised limited editions of the movie. Shares on Facebook allow friends of friends to see the post, and the shares on their Facebook posts are very limited from minimum 2 and maximum 20. If their posts get no shares, only their likers will see their posts, not their likers friends, which has a large effect on their marketing campaign because hardly anyone other than those who were interested in the page (currently 29,000 people) will see the movie promotion, therefore making the distribution of Ill Manors less successful. Skyfall were able to use synergy, for example Sony PS3, phones, games, the DVD, TV, soundtrack and the film were released at the same time, whereas Ill Manors couldn't use synergy to the same extent by just releasing the DVD and the soundtrack at the same time as the film Skyfall had a series of huge premieres all over the world; Ill Manors didn't. Skyfall also used cross promotion through a range of companies all advertising Skyfall - Heinekein, Omega, Sony TV's, Coca-Cola etc. Product placement earned $50Million, $44M for just Heinekein alone. Even though the distribution for Ill Manors was less lavish than Skyfall's, it was still successful, grossing £256,288 on its opening weekend, more than double of it's £100,000 budget, which proves that its marketing campaign was a success nevertheless.
Additionally, aspects such as the films format will affect the exchange of a film. For example, a film shot in digital is easily distributed to cinemas all over with the simple use of a memory stick. Whereas the traditional 35mm films reels are far larger and more awkward and expensive to distribute, limiting the quantity of copies and also exhibition to audiences. The format also decides the fundamental quality of a feature and its overall appearance. The exchange rate for Skyfall was once again more of a success. Skyfall opened in 580 cinemas - over 1000 screens in the UK and Ireland and managed to break the box office records, and overtake the highest grossing film of all time, Avatar. Ill Manors didn't manage to break any box office records as it's gross was so small, nor did it get to the top of the DVD or Blu-ray charts on the day of the release. Because cinema's couldn't risk showing a film that wouldn't definitely attract a large amount of audience, as being a British film, Ill Manors was played in much fewer, selected and niche cinemas, meaning that less people knew about it and less attention it got. Ben Drew wanted Ill Manors to attract an audience of 16 years olds and above, but becuase of it containning such dramatic violence, drugs, alcohol and horrific language, it was rated as an 18, meaning that anyone younger than this age were unable to even view it in the cinema if it was brought out in their local one, causing Ben to lose out on lots of audience and furher affect it's total gross on the opening weekend.
Following on from the target audience of Ill Manors, audiences in general are affected by media ownership. Skyfall was aimed at a huge mainstream target audience: 15-55 year olds. They had a core male target audience with a wider secondary female audience, straddling broad cross sections of class, ethnicity and sexuality. It was aimed at more of an international audience so the dialogue/script is less specific than Ill Manors which uses contemportary urban colloquialisms. Ill Manors was aimed at 16-24 year olds, and heavily pitched at a male audience, yet as mentioned previously, was rated an 18, therefore meaning that part of Ben Drew's target audience were not able to view the film in a cinema.
Ultimately, Skyfall and Ill Manors convey how media ownership plays a massive role in the production, distributuon and exchange of a film, whether it be its downfall of its claim-to-fame. The companies involved are extremely important to a film' success, as they provide the bulk of a film's existence - the budget - which can either limit or widen the choices which can be made when producing and distributing a movie.
