Institutions

Institutions and Audiences

In Media purposes, the producer and director always needs to be aware of the aspects that will affect the money that the film will make. The main industry practices that need to be thought about are:• Production• Distribution• Marketing• Ownership• Synergy• Proliferation• Technology

Media Institutions:

Media will use the ideas of institution very carefully, and this is for specific reasons. Main, dominating companies all have media conglomerates, and this is effectively the combination of two or more companies of different types, and they will involve subsidiaries.

Conglomerates:

By looking at subsidiary examples of media institutions, it is seen that conglomerates are clear examples of cross-media ownership, due to the fact that one company will own media outlets that produce different types of media. Rupert Murdoch is a strong example of how he can owns several different companies in different areas, but he has a strong influence on important asepcts of media, due to the way that he is able to mediate his outlets in order to effectively convey a specific opinion and bias.

Independents:

Producers will sometimes work outside of major studies, with smaller companies trying to get funding from larger companies in order to help with distribution for the film. At times when directors and companies will fail to gain large budgets in order to create a film, they will gain extra funding in order to create a better product that ultimately will gain more revenue and gross profit.

Synergy:

An example of synergy is:• Vivendi Universal make a film in Universal Studios.• It releases the film’s soundtrack on Polygram, one of its record

labels.• The tracks can be bought online at MP3.com, one of its internet

companies.• The film can be downloaded on Vivendi Telecom phones.• The film is then shown in its Odeon cinema chain.

Owning all of the different assets makes it cheaper for a company to make a large production without having to spend as much money but the product ultimately will be of a good quality. Distributing the film and marketing is a much cheaper process subsequently, enabling companies to make more money than they originally would anyway.

Influence of Technology:

People are now able to watch films in a number of new ways, with mobile phones, mp4 players, portable consoles and also laptops. This means that multimedia is a lot more important, and is another thing considered when institutions come together to create a production. Games consoles are able to view films, as well as personal computers and home cinema systems providing an optimum service for extra revenue.

Industry Overview:

Media institutions include Hollywood studios primarily, hence signifying why the Classic Hollywood narrative structure is such a dominant and common narrative that is used, because it creates the most money conventionally. Smaller budget films, typically British films will generally make modest returns, and this means that without sufficient funding, a massive gross profit is never reached. B films are known as low-budget commercial films that may not look fantastic graphically, but produce a decent job, and are usually innovative and different to the general expensive made film, due to the low budget. There is ambiguity in the sense that good films can still be created without much money, but storylines are lot more original and creative, but they are flawed in the sense that they are not necessarily pleasing on the eye.