LO1 Task One: Media Products in the Audio Visual Industry

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:

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 which was adapted into the 1999 film which grossed $100,853,753 and has become a cult classic. 




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 more gritty 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 prgrames are produced for a far different audiance allowig a creao wih a darker vision  of the characters (and brand) to produce content for a diffeent audiance.

The advantages of avin such a wide audiance (due to having so much content targeted a s man diffeent people) becomes clea when i is seen that Marvel has made $10,916,958,583 from its cinematic univese alone.  


Brand two:  Star Wars

Much like Marvel the Star Wars brand uses its prevlance to promote many different media products as well as mercandice to create revenue. As of June 2017 there are 9 films avaible (as well as 4 being produced), 3 animated telivision programes fo children as well as dozens of Videogames and books. for audiances to enjoy. All of theseproucts are made to appeal to their target audiaces which is why they can be seen to use certan 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 atrobutes of EA's other sucessfull first person shooter that being the batlefeild series.

The use of a joint ventue in ode to produce this video game shows that Disey had a particualr audiance in mind when planning te game. This target audiance is likely teenage and older men.

In contrast to this Disney is also responcible for the creation of a telivision series called Star Wars forces of destiny whic is an animated series focused on the female characters of the saga which is likely to make young girls more interested inte brand and more likely to buy is coresponding merchendice.