Media
Ownership essay
Opening sentence:
Media ownership plays a big part in the overall success and ascendancy of a film. Media ownership is structured in a way that big conglomerates, like the big 5, Disney, MGM, Paramount, Columbia and Warner brothers have possession of big Hollywood blockbusters. These multi million dollar companies produce films in order to gain a profit and add to their business. Many of them own/acquire subsidiaries. One of the Warner Brothers largest subsidiaries are DC comics. Aquaman alone has a net worth of over $150 trillion dollars, making it one of the largest grossing ‘comic’ characters ever. Whilst this sum may interrogate some, Disney has matched Warners Bros with Marvel comics/studios. Marvel characters were first introduced on paper pages that had been made accessible on the internet, reaching a larger number of people, generating publicity. In order to reach a new branch of media consumers, Marvel did a crossover with the Avengers VS. X-Men, publishing it in order to create hype for the new Avengers film. A blogpost by Edward Haynes quotes, “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.”. He was referring to the fact that not only did Marvel make comics and films that were targeted at younger viewers, but they also created a cornucopia of adulistic tv shows and films to bolster their media consumers. Examples of this includes series like, Marvel’s Daredevil, Marvel’s A.K.A. Jessica Jones, Marvel’s Luke Cage and Marvel’s Iron Fist.
Disney is the second largest media conglomerate in the world. It is one of the biggest companies in the world and is estimated to have a total of more than $130 billion dollars. Disney alone has an estimate of 84 subsidiaries, most of them being million dollar companies like Pixar and ESPN. Disney has created a name for themselves through the many cross media convergence that has taken place where they have advertised their big budget films on various different platforms. A big one that occured was Disney Infinity, this was a downloadable game for many pieces of software which allowed them to not over take over the film industry but aos the gaming. Disney does not have vertical or horizontal integration with other companies meaning that all the publicity that is carried out for their films is done by them. In 2018 Disney took the top 3 spots for the highest grossing films domestically. Coming in at number one was Black Panther generating around a $700 million dollar profit, in second place was Avengers Infinity War coming in with $679 million and in third place was Incredibles 2 making $609 million dollars. Disney currently accounts for an average of around 40% of the box office sales in the U.S. alone.
Hollywood is widely known for producing the biggest films hence why some are called hollywood blockbusters. It is home to oversized conglomerates such as Walt Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount pictures and other big named media producers. Hollywood alone produces an estimate of 600 movies per year according to Quora who states that "According to the Motion Picture Association of America, the number fluctuates, but the average seems to be around 600 movies created in the US every year. This doesn't account for every movie made in the USA - many independent films and documentaries don't go through the MPAA, but it probably represents most movies bound for general release.". This is a monstrous release compared to a country like New Zealand where its average film release per year is around 25. This is disregarding private or small films created by local directors/screenwriters. Most of the big named movies or series produced from New Zealand are somewhat funded by the New Zealand film commission. One of their highest accomplishment films was Hunt for the Wilderpeople, starring Taika Waititi,Julian Dennison, Rhys Darby. This had a budget of 2.5 million dollars USD and almost quintupled their original amount. This led to the film becoming the highest grossing film that New Zealand’s box office has ever seen earning a whopping $12.18 million dollars. NZFC’s main aim is to empower the creation of impactful screen stories, compared to the likes of big businesses who are in it for nothing more than the money.
Money is a massive influencer when it comes to any part of a film. By having the right amount of funding it can make steps like cross-media convergence and synergy opportunities easier to occur. This does not necessarily mean that it determines the successfulness of a film or series. The New Zealand film series ‘What we do in the shadows’ directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi was given the greenlight to become a crowdfunded film series. With a budget of only $1.6 million USD this TV show generated over $6.9 million dollars. Due to Taika Waititi’s bad reputation with delivering on promises from a previous film this caused bad publicity and forced Jemaine Clement to step in and relied on his crowd followers to fund this show. In order to market the film they did little low budget moves to create hype amongst the public, examples of their publicity stunts were holding a free art competition, colouring the films characters as well as changing New Zealand's capital sign from Wellington to Vellington, something that generated an unprecedented amount of chatter. Horizontal and Vertical integration can be very beneficial to the success of a film where by having it advertised on different streaming platforms can broaden the amount of publicity examples of this is how Disney has become such a big multi billion dollar industry. They own companies such as editing industries in order to produce their film saving them money when it comes to the production process.
By having a sufficient amount of funding to invest in all the stages of production this can help ensure that the film has the infinite potential for success but this isn't the case for all. ‘The Interview’ was directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and had many A-list celebrities starring in it like James Franco, Seth Rogen, Rob Lowe and Nicki Minaj. The film had a $44 million dollar budget and was expected to have a big sales revenue in the box office but only ended up generating $12.3 million USD. This is because of the controversial message that it was portraying which disturbied higher powers including the population of North Korea who threatened the film if it was not taken down. Whereas While Rider, a New Zealand produced film had a budget of $6 million NZD and grossed over $41.4 million dollars USD. No large actors made an appearance in this movie nor did it have the funding for high tech equipment but it still grossed a massive amount considering the production process that was used.
In this day in age there are so many streaming platforms for media consumption some of them including but not limiting, Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, Spotify, Apple Music, Disney+, Apple TV+, Quibi, CrunchyRoll, the Criterion Channel, YouTube Red. Netflix is currently one of the top websites for media consumption, it is worth $189.92 billion dollars. With such a big company offering movies on demand you would think that it would decrease the levels of piracy… wrong. The downside to these companies is that all of them require some type of subscription or monthly payment. This is what is deterring media consumers as they dont want to have to pay for the films when they could just download them illegally. These streaming platforms are always updating new content to keep customers interested but they are also removing content just as fast. The hit comedy TV series ‘the office’ is being taken off netflix causing disruption amongst viewers and generating bad publicity. Whilst pirating is illegal and losing media streaming platforms money hamilton says, and I quote, "People know there are multiple sites where it is possible to download illegal material. They also know that blocking the most popular ones simply means you'll get pirated material elsewhere”. Suicide sqaud, although being a high budget film it has one of the biggest anit-piracy policy in order to stop illegal downloads.
Disney is the second largest media conglomerate in the world. It is one of the biggest companies in the world and is estimated to have a total of more than $130 billion dollars. Disney alone has an estimate of 84 subsidiaries, most of them being million dollar companies like Pixar and ESPN. Disney has created a name for themselves through the many cross media convergence that has taken place where they have advertised their big budget films on various different platforms. A big one that occured was Disney Infinity, this was a downloadable game for many pieces of software which allowed them to not over take over the film industry but aos the gaming. Disney does not have vertical or horizontal integration with other companies meaning that all the publicity that is carried out for their films is done by them. In 2018 Disney took the top 3 spots for the highest grossing films domestically. Coming in at number one was Black Panther generating around a $700 million dollar profit, in second place was Avengers Infinity War coming in with $679 million and in third place was Incredibles 2 making $609 million dollars. Disney currently accounts for an average of around 40% of the box office sales in the U.S. alone.
Hollywood is widely known for producing the biggest films hence why some are called hollywood blockbusters. It is home to oversized conglomerates such as Walt Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount pictures and other big named media producers. Hollywood alone produces an estimate of 600 movies per year according to Quora who states that "According to the Motion Picture Association of America, the number fluctuates, but the average seems to be around 600 movies created in the US every year. This doesn't account for every movie made in the USA - many independent films and documentaries don't go through the MPAA, but it probably represents most movies bound for general release.". This is a monstrous release compared to a country like New Zealand where its average film release per year is around 25. This is disregarding private or small films created by local directors/screenwriters. Most of the big named movies or series produced from New Zealand are somewhat funded by the New Zealand film commission. One of their highest accomplishment films was Hunt for the Wilderpeople, starring Taika Waititi,Julian Dennison, Rhys Darby. This had a budget of 2.5 million dollars USD and almost quintupled their original amount. This led to the film becoming the highest grossing film that New Zealand’s box office has ever seen earning a whopping $12.18 million dollars. NZFC’s main aim is to empower the creation of impactful screen stories, compared to the likes of big businesses who are in it for nothing more than the money.
Money is a massive influencer when it comes to any part of a film. By having the right amount of funding it can make steps like cross-media convergence and synergy opportunities easier to occur. This does not necessarily mean that it determines the successfulness of a film or series. The New Zealand film series ‘What we do in the shadows’ directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi was given the greenlight to become a crowdfunded film series. With a budget of only $1.6 million USD this TV show generated over $6.9 million dollars. Due to Taika Waititi’s bad reputation with delivering on promises from a previous film this caused bad publicity and forced Jemaine Clement to step in and relied on his crowd followers to fund this show. In order to market the film they did little low budget moves to create hype amongst the public, examples of their publicity stunts were holding a free art competition, colouring the films characters as well as changing New Zealand's capital sign from Wellington to Vellington, something that generated an unprecedented amount of chatter. Horizontal and Vertical integration can be very beneficial to the success of a film where by having it advertised on different streaming platforms can broaden the amount of publicity examples of this is how Disney has become such a big multi billion dollar industry. They own companies such as editing industries in order to produce their film saving them money when it comes to the production process.
By having a sufficient amount of funding to invest in all the stages of production this can help ensure that the film has the infinite potential for success but this isn't the case for all. ‘The Interview’ was directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and had many A-list celebrities starring in it like James Franco, Seth Rogen, Rob Lowe and Nicki Minaj. The film had a $44 million dollar budget and was expected to have a big sales revenue in the box office but only ended up generating $12.3 million USD. This is because of the controversial message that it was portraying which disturbied higher powers including the population of North Korea who threatened the film if it was not taken down. Whereas While Rider, a New Zealand produced film had a budget of $6 million NZD and grossed over $41.4 million dollars USD. No large actors made an appearance in this movie nor did it have the funding for high tech equipment but it still grossed a massive amount considering the production process that was used.
In this day in age there are so many streaming platforms for media consumption some of them including but not limiting, Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, Spotify, Apple Music, Disney+, Apple TV+, Quibi, CrunchyRoll, the Criterion Channel, YouTube Red. Netflix is currently one of the top websites for media consumption, it is worth $189.92 billion dollars. With such a big company offering movies on demand you would think that it would decrease the levels of piracy… wrong. The downside to these companies is that all of them require some type of subscription or monthly payment. This is what is deterring media consumers as they dont want to have to pay for the films when they could just download them illegally. These streaming platforms are always updating new content to keep customers interested but they are also removing content just as fast. The hit comedy TV series ‘the office’ is being taken off netflix causing disruption amongst viewers and generating bad publicity. Whilst pirating is illegal and losing media streaming platforms money hamilton says, and I quote, "People know there are multiple sites where it is possible to download illegal material. They also know that blocking the most popular ones simply means you'll get pirated material elsewhere”. Suicide sqaud, although being a high budget film it has one of the biggest anit-piracy policy in order to stop illegal downloads.
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ReplyDeleteHi Kayla
ReplyDeleteOverall Score: 41/50
Terminology: 7/10
Analysis / Argument: 17/20
Explanation/ Examples: 17/20
Paragraph 1 -
- " have possession of big Hollywood blockbusters" - would be better saying, "having the monopoly in producing and benefiting from Hollywood Blockbusters"
- so opening paragraph is basically making the point - the bigger the conglomerate = the more companies it can acquire = the bigger the audience reach. Make this point really clear throughout otherwise a great opening paragraph.
Paragraph 2:
- "Disney does not have vertical or horizontal integration with other companies meaning that all the publicity that is carried out for their films is done by them..."
- this doesn't really make sense. We only can term something vertical or horizontal integration if it is within the same company. You would want to say, "Disney has examples of horizontal and vertical integration (actually explain what they are, give examples) and this means it doesn't rely on other companies to have to provide services in the film production chain such as distribution / editing..."
Paragraph 2 -
- you are trying to compare the advantage Hollywood has to NZ film industry but this needs to be a clearer aim of this paragraph. Needs a stronger, more direct topic sentence. You need to spend more time in the paragraph linking your info to the question to make it relevant.
Paragraoh 4
- Some good detail for case study and clear point made. Just add more details like dates
paragraph 5
- I like that you're making the point that money and big budget and big stars doesn't automatically equal success.
- For the Interview, you need to make the distuingtion that it was a government issue, Nort Korean government took offence. The threats made were not against the movie but the safety of the movie-goers if they released it, at the premier. How did this affect the film's release? What company was relaxing it? (Sony). What does this say about how 'free' or how much autonomy media conglomerates have over the films they make as opposed to Indi films? (not much money but essentially nothing to lose).
Paragraph 6
- Piracy paragraph needs some work. Seems a bit disjointed and all over the place. Some good stats in terms how how big streaming services are but not enough ;linking to the question. You want to get into how many times your case study movies were pirated and be comparing and contrasting how it affects indi films/ NZ films and Hollywood films.
- also stats here on whether piracy is up or down and talking about this in your own opinion