Media Products in the
Audio Visual Industry
Ownership:
There
are several different types of media ownership. These all serve to produce
different types of products for different audiences
Ownership structure
one: Conglomerate structure.
A
conglomerate company is one which is made up of a series of companies
(called subsidiary) which are all owned by one larger business
(called the parent company.) This structure of ownership provides several
advantages to the company when producing media products. To provide examples of
these advantages I will use the film Suicide Squad which was produced by Warner
Bros (The main film subsidiary owned by Warner Brothers.) This film took
advantage of a system know as horizontal integration within its production.
Horizontal integration is where a conglomerate uses its existing assets in
order to create equity within its products. In this case this is most easily
observed with the soundtrack of the film that was mainly made up of music owned
by the Warner Publishing group. The use of this music helps the companies
profits in two ways firstly, it means that they do not have to pay to use the
music of other conglomerates in their project and secondly it means that the
music from the film (such as the track “Heathens" by the band "Twenty
One Pilots" in Suicide Squad) will gain more traction because it will be
heard by more people which results in more people purchasing it.
As well as Horizontal
integration Conglomerate companies can use vertical integration which is wen a
company owns the means of producing as well as marketing and distribution of
their films. This means that they don't need to spend time negotiating with
companies which socialise in this as that they can just use their own.
Ownership structure
two: Independent ownership
Independent
media ownership is when a company works on it's own without owning any
subsidiaries or being the subsidiary of a larger parent company. Naturally this
structure means that the company cannot perform horizontal or vertical integration.
This is a large disadvantage for independent companies and it mans that they
must sometimes work with conglomerates (in what is called a joint venture
project) to bring their products to fruition.

However the smaller
nature of an independent company means that they can make products that are
more catered towards a specific audience. A good example of this would be the
film "Four Lions" which was produced by warp films. This film was
targeted at the rather niche audience of people who live in Sheffield and are
familiar with local culture (as that this is the focus of many of the jokes
within the piece.) This film was produced as a joint venture between Warp Films
and film four (which is a subsidiary of channel 4, a public service television
corporation)
Adaption in relation
to different structures of ownership:
Many media products are adapted from earlier
works in order to increase the interest of
the target audience in the property. A good example of an
adaption would be the 2009 film of Alan Moore's classic comic book miniseries
"Watchmen" which was originally published between September 1986 and
October 1987. The film was so successful in raising interest in the
source material that DC comics produced 900,000 copies to feed the exes demand
for the original comic book.
Adaption is very
benefits for large conglomerate companies which can simply adapt popular
franchises and be guaranteed an audience who are interested in the
previously established narrative and characters. This is seen in
the $107,509,799 total gross that the film pulled in by
being faithful to the target audience.
A very successful
example of an adaption of a text into a film would be the novel "Fight
Club" by Chuck Palahniuk that was adapted into the 1999 film which
grossed $100,853,753 and has become a cult classic. A conglomerate company
produced both of these adaptions however and therefore had hug budgets, which
meant that they could feature, sophisticated special effects and large teams of
people that would not be available to independent companies such as Warp.
Despite not being
able to fund huge projects like fight club or Watchmen, independent companies
can still create adaptions of source material in a way which benefits both the
company which adapted it as well as the original producers of the source
material. An example of this would be Al Gore's "An Inconvenient
Truth" which was a documentary adapted from a slide show Gore was famous
for giving regarding Global Warming activism.
This film pulled in
49.8 million dollars despite being made on the relatively small budget of 1.5
million and as of writing this price (June 2017) is the top-grossing
documentary of all time despite being created by Rodale, Inc. A company, which
produces exclusively environmental films.
Brands:
Many different
companies use brands to make their assets more appealing to different groups of
people this can be seen below:
Brand one: Marvel
Marvel
uses several different types of media to appeal to different audiences
Firstly the Marvel
cinematic universe is meant to be aimed towards younger viewers while still
being accessible to older viewer as well however the company also makes several
animated shows such as "Marvel's Guardians of the galaxy,"
"Marvel's Avengers: Ultron Revolution" and "Marvel's
Ultimate Spider-Man Vs. The Sinister 6" all of which exclusively target
younger audiences. This can be seen in the bright colours and lack of elements
that could be seen as inappropriate for younger audiences such as Drug use,
nudity and strong bloody violence (despite violence being prevalence.)
In
contrast to this Marvel work in a joint venture with Netflix to produce several
different series, which portray their characters in a more grounded and
realistic way. These series are far grittier and show far more mature topics
than the animated shows such as Jessica Jones, which has nudity, explicit
scenes, alcoholism and strong bloody violence.
It is therefore clear
that these programmes are produced for a far different audience allowing a
creator with a darker vision of the characters (and brand) to produce
content for a different audience.
The advantages of having
such a wide audience (due to having so much content targeted at many different
people) becomes clear when I is seen that Marvel has made
$10,916,958,583 from its cinematic universe alone.
This revenue is
likely highly influenced by Marvel's ability to keep its audiences engaged with
the media products they produce. For example with application of Rick Altman’s
"audience pleasures" theory it can be seen that the series Daredevil
appeals to Emotional, visceral and intellectual pleasures. This is done by
using characters who the audience is made to feel sympathetic for via
development and that the audience are already familiar with from the source
material they were taken from (that being Marvel comics) to create intricate
puzzles and scenarios which the viewer is made to work out by gaining more
information (the only way of doing this is to watch more of the series)
On this subject it is
also important to remember that the success of a show trying to make viewers
feel Emotional towards the characters means that they have to be relatable. This
is likely why all of the cast (disregarding the Villain) are very young and in
the ABC1 class section.
Brand
two: Star Wars
Much like Marvel the
Star Wars brand uses its prevalence to promote many different media products as
well as merchandise to create revenue. As of June 2017 there are 9 films
available (as well as 4 being produced), 3 animated television programmes for
children as well as dozens of Videogames and books. For audiences to enjoy. All
of these products are made to appeal to their target audiences, which is why
they can be seen to use certain features. One example of this would be Disney
working in a joint venture with Electronic Arts to create 2015's Star wars
battlefront video game, which combined elements of the star wars universe with
the gameplay attributes of EA’s other successful first person shooter, that
being the battlefield series. The ownership of one sector of production in
relation to a specific brand (for example: EA owning the rights to produce Star
Wars video games) is called cross media ownership.
The use of a joint
venture in order to produce this video game shows that Disney had a particular
audience in mind when planning the game. This target audience is likely teenage
and older men.
In contrast to this
Disney is also responsible for the creation of a television series called Star
Wars forces of destiny which is an animated series focused on the female
characters of the saga which is likely to make young girls more interested in the
brand and more likely to buy is corresponding merchandise.
Brand 3: Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles
It can be seen here
that conglomerates typically make several products with brands they have the
permissions for in order to reach the largest possible market available.
This differs a great deal
from the methods usually devised by independent companies when given a chance
to create a film for an already established brand. This can be seen very
clearly in the 1990 film adaptation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles produced by
5 separate independent film companies and working with a sixth for distribution
In a joint venture project. The brand for this film was not changed by the
production companies in order to reach a larger audience but was instead
focused on the same young male target audience demographic that the cartoon
series already catered to.
Brands also use elements of
Mcquails “Uses and Gratifications” theory which states that media products keep
audiences engaged by providing them with surveillance (information on people
and events,) Building of personal relationships (ie. Giving people something to
talk about,) Building of personal identity (showing people a way to live their
own life or escapism which relates to allowing the audience to disengage from
real life and have the product shown to them and being able to understand it
without a large level of intellectual engagement. These themes can be seen clearly among the
media products which I have studied for example the Star Wars films provide
building personal identities, developing personal relationships and providing
escapism. This is because they are films that are very engrained in popular
culture and therefore are regularly discussed by people as well as this the
simplistic plot and characters make the films easy to understand without having
to have the plot explained to you. The mode of address of the star wars films
is very much peer to peer as that the characters as well as the opening
narrative crawl are written in such a way that it does not make an audience
member feel talked down to.