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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.