1. AS Media Studies
Study Notes
Unit G322 Section B
Audiences and Institutions
The Film Industry
Part 1
General Introduction
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2. General Introduction
Preparing for the exam
The specification says…
For the exam you should be prepared to
understand and write about the processes of film
production, distribution, marketing and
exchange as they relate to contemporary media
institutions.
The nature of audience consumption and the
relationships between audiences and
institutions.
In addition, you need to know about:
• the issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media
practice;
• the importance of cross media convergence and synergy in
production, distribution and marketing;
• the new technologies that have been introduced in recent years
at the levels of production, distribution, marketing and
exchange;
• the significance of proliferation in hardware and content for
institutions and audiences;
• the importance of technological convergence for institutions and
audiences;
• the issues raised in the targeting of national and British
audiences by international or global institutions;
• the ways in which your own experiences of media consumption
illustrate wider patterns and trends of audience behaviour.
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3. General Guidance
What do you need to do to prepare for Section B of the exam?
Undertake case studies of the film industry considering their production, distribution and
consumption?
You are looking at institutional processes and audience consumption. There should be some
focus on YOUR experience of being a consumer of film yourself.
Case Studies - what do they need to include?
These need to involve the study of a specific
studio or production company within the
contemporary film industry that targets a British
audience. These can be based in the US
(Hollywood), in Britain (Film4, BBC Films), or
part of World Cinema (Bollywood).
They need to include the study of a studios
patterns of production, distribution, exhibition and
consumption by audiences.
This should also be accompanied by study of how contemporary films are distributed (digital
cinemas, DVD, HD-DVD, downloads, etc.) and how this has changed the production,
marketing and consumption of films.
What do you need to know for Section B of the exam?
You need to have a good up-to-date knowledge of the key issues involved in
production, marketing, distribution and consumption of films. You need to be able to refer to
actual examples to support your points. You also need practice at the format of the
examination in order to hone your skills.
How long should you spend on the section B question?
You should spend 45 minutes on your section B question.
What sort of questions will be asked in Section B?
You will be expected to answer the question using examples from your case studies
to support points made in the answer. The questions might ask students to consider some or
all of the following:
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•
•
•
•
How is the film industry making use of advantages in digital technology?
How do film audiences consume/receive a particular text?
How and why are changes in the consumption and production of films happening?
To what extent are film audiences the agents, beneficiaries or victims of changes in
production, distribution or exhibition?
What are the methods of distribution/exhibition for the film industry?
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4. The exam questions will resemble these in format:
What impact has digital technology had on institutions in the media industry that you have
studied?
How does the institution you have studied attempt to target the audience for its product?
Discuss the claim that ‘all media institutions will become fully digital or decline’ with
reference to the media industry you have studied.
How has your institution responded to the pace of change within the media industry you
have studied?
Describe the various strategies used by your institution to secure its survival in the
contemporary marketplace.
How has the institution you have studied attempted to target its audience across different
media, platforms and markets?
Specimen exam question
Discuss the issues raised by institutions’ need to target specific
audiences within a media industry which you have studied.
Possible essay plan:
By institutions the question is asking for you to write about a particular studio/production or
distribution company specifically. By specific audience the question is asking you to write
about a cross section of the potential film going audience – you might like to think of the
typical target audience for most mainstream films. And naturally, you are focussing on the
film industry.
You will be marked on your ability to illustrate changing patterns of production, distribution,
exchange and consumption through relevant case study examples and your own experiences.
You should cover the following in your response to the question:
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•
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How different production practices (ways of making films) allow films to be
constructed for specific audiences.
Various distribution and marketing strategies that raise audience awareness of
specific films or genres of films.
The use of new technology to enable (more accurate?) targeting of specific
audiences.
Different audience strategies (ways of connecting with an audience) that help or
challenge film industry practices.
You will be given credit for your knowledge and understanding, illustrated through case
study material, in any of these areas; there is no requirement that they should all be covered
equally. Examiners will be prepared to allow points, examples and arguments that have not
been considered if they are relevant and justified.
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5. Mark Scheme
To get a top mark (level 4 out of 50) you need to do the following:
1. Explanation/analysis/argument
(16-20 marks)
Shows excellent understanding of the task
Excellent knowledge and understanding of institutional/audience practices – factual
knowledge is relevant and accurate
A clear and developed argument, substantiated by detailed reference to case study material
Clearly relevant to set question
2. Use of examples
(16-20 marks)
Offers frequent evidence from case study material – award marks to reflect the range and
appropriateness of examples
Offers a full range of examples from case study and own experience
Offers examples which are clearly relevant to the set question
3. Use of terminology
(8-10 marks)
Use of terminology is relevant and accurate
4. Expression and coherence of argument
Complex issues have been expressed clearly and fluently using a style of writing appropriate
to the complex subject matter. Sentences and paragraphs, consistently relevant, have been
well structured, using appropriate technical terminology. There may be few, if any, errors of
spelling, punctuation and grammar.
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6. Introduction
‘Anticipated for almost as long as the second coming, the digital media era is finally upon us
and that much misused word 'convergence' has become meaningful. From Rupert Murdoch's
deal to buy MySpace to the selling of YouTube for more than a billion dollars after 18 months
of trading, we are slap back in the middle of the second dot.com boom. Don't even mention
Google, whose founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, must be crossing off the days till it's time
to become full time philanthropists and cancel third world debt. (Gibson 2007)
Media Studies is all about the contemporary, so while it is useful to have a sense of the
history of the film industry in Britain (so we know how successful the industry is at present
relative to other time periods) we are really much more concerned with how films are
currently being produced and distributed and how this is changing.
The key agent of change is convergence. This is because it makes little sense these days to
talk about the film industry without referring to other media industries like internet
distribution. The word institution refers to the companies and organisations that provide
media content – films - whether for profit or as a public service. This involves an
understanding of media as business, the relationship between film producers, distributors and
exhibitors and the public or audience.
You need to be concerned with how film companies
producing and distributing material operate within a
context of ownership, convergence, technologies and
globalisation. And you need to be very interested in
how things are changing.
You can't be expected to feel the pace of change as
you will have grown up with online media as the
norm, but for this part of your studies you need to
acquire a sense of how rapidly institutions and
audiences are being transformed by digital
technology:
The question that needs to be answered is: do new media forms
produce both distinctively different content and 'audiences'
when compared with their predecessors? The answer to this
question is a qualified yes. (Marshall 2004)
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7. Convergence
Convergence describes two phenomena: First,
technologies coming together, for example, a mobile
phone you can use as a still and moving image camera,
download and watch moving images on, use as an MP3
player and recorder and access the internet with.
Second, media industries are diversifying so they produce
and distribute across several media—for example, a
newspaper with an online version and audio podcasts or
the coming together of videogames with films e.g.
Quantum of Solace (2008).
We no longer live in a media world where television,
videogames, films, newspapers, radio, magazines and
music exist separately. For this reason it is essential that
you study the impact of convergence on the film industry
- the focus here is on the contemporary nature of film
production, distribution and exhibition.
Extracts from Why Does Convergence Matter?
UK Film Council January 2008
If, by convergence, we mean the trend for different technologies for the delivery of content
to start to resemble one another, what will this mean for us?
For example, television sets will increasingly resemble computers while computers will
increasingly resemble televisions; both will be used to download moving films from the
internet, and eventually the distinction between the separate technologies are likely to be
erased. Convergence has already led to the development of video-on-demand, which can be
delivered by a variety of different devices.
But technological convergence itself is only a means to an end; what is also being changed is
both the economics and culture of the moving image, including film. The debate about the
impact of convergence has important consequences not just for the film industry but for the
way in which we all reflect ourselves to ourselves and to others.
Why is convergence important for consumers, and the economy as a whole?
For consumers, convergence helps to ensure greater price transparency as regards watching
films in different media and makes accessing those films more convenient. Convergence also
presents us with the potential to choose from and access a far wider and more diverse range
of films in different media.
For the UK economy convergence represents an opportunity to build on its competitive
strengths internationally in respect of creative talent and content creation and thereby to
enhance growth and productivity and to develop skills. For the film industry it presents
opportunities to reach wider audiences. But it also presents large challenges in respect of
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8. rights, windows and financing models, most particularly for independently-produced British
films.
How does the UK compare internationally?
The UK is very well placed to seize the opportunities
presented by convergence provided it addresses the
challenges identified listed below. A rapid transition to the
next generation of broadband access networks is critical if
we are to remain competitive with other economies such as
those of Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore which
have invested very significant resources in advanced
broadband networks. In Hong Kong speeds of 1GB are
already available, while the highest speed on general offer
in the UK at the moment is 50Mbs.
If we want to take advantage of ‘convergence’ what are
the key challenges and opportunities it presents for the
future?
The UK Film Council believes that, going forward, there will be substantial challenges for
public policy around convergence with respect to film. There have already been tensions
around some core issues relating to new media such as Internet Piracy.
There has already been a great deal of debate trying to describe the likely impact of
convergence upon the creative industries. On one side some existing and powerful
institutions have adopted, at least until recently, a largely defensive approach to the
emergence of digital media, apparently in the belief that the status quo would prevail largely
untouched and that existing business models would remain fit for purpose.
On the other, some commentators have claimed that the impact of digital media will sweep
away all our present assumptions about the way in which the creative industries, and film in
particular, operate and that in a brave new world of digital abundance the industry will
eventually cease to exist as we know it.
These positions are mirrored, for example, in elements of the debate around copyright theft
and online copyright infringement. Some powerful interests have behaved at times as if the
only way to fight piracy is through protection and more extreme forms of enforcement. Some
others have behaved as if access to any form of intellectual property at any time for free is a
human right.
The ability to create and distribute content in a much larger variety of ways will accelerate
the segmentation of the film sector such that there will be many more different business and
cultural models, each based on different sets of aims and objectives. Just as the audience’s
ability to choose between different ways of consuming product is greatly enhanced by digital
technology (e.g. the emergence of iPlayer), so too is the ability of institutions to create
different ways to make films and to disseminate them to audiences.
The UK Film Council is clear that the history of technological innovation in the film
industry, from the arrival of sound in the 1930s to the advent of widescreen in the 1950s,
offers real benefits to audiences but can also turn against public policy and the individual.
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9. For example, the market power of the major operator of pay-television in the UK – BSkyB –
created a situation in which a series arrangements with the Hollywood studios worked to the
disadvantage of smaller independent suppliers and was thereby detrimental to audience
choice. Some independent suppliers reported that they were either unable to sell films
directly to BSkyB, despite those films having achieved commercial success, or that they
received prices which were not equitable with those achieved by the studios on a like-for-like
basis.
The UK Film Council has consistently argued that film theft and online copyright
infringement represent a major threat to all elements of the UK film industry and to film
culture. Some 5% of UK adults have downloaded a film and/or a TV show and the quantity
of titles illegally downloaded has risen to an average of between 7-15 per year. The very
rapid take-up of broadband in the UK could increase copyright infringement by means of
file-sharing.
Q1. Why is convergence both a blessing and a curse for the UK
film industry?
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10. Audience
Audience is a huge area of Media Studies with many variants and competing approaches, so
it is important to be precise about our focus which is on the relationship between audience
and institution.
For this part of your course you are more concerned with audience theory, as you will be
exploring the ways that audiences are created/constructed for different films.
You will need to analyse the more complex nature of new media audiences and how digital
media distribution and consumption has allowed consumers to become producers or at least
interactors, and thus far more active users of media. This is more difficult than simply saying
'the film industry targets teenagers’.
The new media erodes the boundary between producer and audience:
Conventional research methods are replaced—or at least supplemented—by new methods
which recognise and make use of people's own creativity, and brush aside the outmoded notions
of 'receiver' audiences and elite 'producers'.
(Gauntlett 2007a)
Audience Fragmentation
This phrase is used to describe the ways in which people engage with media, and it shows
how the idea of audience is in the digital era is changing. The ways in which convergence,
user-created content and social networking have transformed the audience are often thought
about in terms of audience fragmentation. This means that the internet - rolling
entertainment news and internet gossip sites, films downloaded in various ways - 'breaks up'
the potential audience group for any particular film. There’s less point in the UK distributors
of Quantum of Solace paying for an expensive TV ad during Coronation Street if they know
that fewer members of their target audience will be watching.
On the other hand, Csigo (2007) sees this trend as a ‘duality’ working in two ways convergence leads to the traditional mass audience fragmenting into smaller niche audiences
but also ‘falling together’ in other ways by becoming more intimate members of smaller
group. In other words there are less big-budget, blockbusters now, and more films aimed at
promoting a ‘cult’ audience.
In this new climate the film industry is desperately trying to provide 360-degree branding
for their films - to surround us with them across all the various converged media forms that
we come into contact with. Csigo suggests that media institutions like the film industry are
no longer interested in keeping the audience together, but in ‘triggering engagement’.
Converging media can lead to both control by the film industry - as the various film
companies get bigger and bigger and control more and more of the industry but also
resistance by the consumers, who now get to produce their own films and upload them onto
YouTube.
For the film industry this imposes key changes: the media world changes from a 'value
chain' where films are made and distributed to audiences - to a social network - a complex
system where producers and audiences are mixed up – think about how the music industry
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11. colonised MySpace or how big companies have populated the Internet.
Another way of describing this is the shift from 'push media' (where producers push films at
us and we receive and consume them passively) to 'pull media' (whereby we decide what
we want to do with the media and access it in ways that suit us).
This new media world in comparison to the old media world is:
... richer, more diverse and immeasurably more complex because of the number of producers,
the quantity of the interactions between them and their products, the speed with which people
in this space can communicate with one another and the pace of development made possible by
ubiquitous networking.
{Source: http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/discussion/blogging.html last accessed
September 2007}
Q2. How has the Internet allowed filmmakers to find and attract
audiences in different ways?
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12. Corporate Intrusion into Cyberspace
It is important to contextualise some of the new digital media activities that have made
convergence possible and in fact accelerated it.
During the 1990s, the shift to digital transmission of all forms of data has increased at an
accelerated pace. This shift to computer language has already redefined the music industry and
will overtake film, radio, and television production and distribution. In the future virtually all
forms of data and information will be produced and stored in interchangeable digital bits.
(Herman and McChesney 1997)
When previously 'do-it-yourself’ media institutions like YouTube and MySpace were
purchased by big media players (News Corporation bought MySpace; Google bought
YouTube), immediately the relaxed approach to copyright ceased and the sites became more
visibly 'corporate'. For example, much illegally posted material has been removed from
YouTube and MySpace is now using the Gracenote software made famous by iTunes to clear
copyright and intellectual property at the point of download.
If it seems strange that the big corporations are keen to either take over or form partnerships
with websites that threaten them by distributing material for free, then consider this. UK only
internet advertising generates around £2 billion a year - more than 50 per cent of the money
made from TV ads. This figure has increased greatly in the course of 2007. Why? More UK
homes are now equipped with broadband. This results in an increase in time spent online
compared to other media (such as TV) and this has in turn created a huge increase in money
invested in online adverts—a fairly simple equation. Currently, Google alone 'clean up'
around 45 per cent of all the revenue from online ads in the UK – about £1 billion.
How is the Internet changing things?
Web 2.0 describes a new phase of the internet, which allows us to create material, distribute
it to one another (and thus share it) and perhaps move closer to the democratic spirit of the
internet that its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, had in mind.
[There is] a growing trend in media away from established institutions and 'expert' content,
towards user-generated content and the power of virtual communities. You can't have failed to
come across the story of how The Blair Witch Project used viral marketing or how the Arctic
Monkeys used MySpace to take over the world. Even though the latter is not strictly true,
MySpace did help to generate a tremendous amount of interest in the band amongst users,
illustrating the power new media has to reach audiences. It also demonstrates why traditional
media institutions feel threatened by new media: if they don't keep up they might die. Why else
did News Corp buy MySpace, or MTV offer screen time to user-created content, or The
Guardian set up so many blogs and talk boards to encourage audience participation?
(Luhrs 2007)
There is clearly a need to look at film production, distribution and consumption in new ways.
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13. Web 2.0 is a positive, ‘democratic’ development for ordinary people who find themselves
with relatively cheap, instant access to film production and distribution – even a camera
phone or webcam, combined with a broadband connection can make you an overnight
sensation on YouTube - but we need to take a 'reality check' with regard to two issues.
1. The most popular web 2.0 sites are owned by huge companies so every moment of
democratic 'We Media' social networking makes money for the big corporations the same ones that were making billions from the web first time round are now
getting even richer.
2. Consider these statistics from (2007):
• Only 0.16 % of YouTube visitors upload video
• 0.2 % of Flickr visitors upload photos
• Wikipedia, the most web 2.0 site imaginable given that the online encyclopaedia is
written by its readers, only gets edited/expanded by 4.59 % of users.
These figures make it clear that most of us are still just using the web to read, watch, play
and listen and not to produce (create) and distribute (upload) which is how we were using
'old media'. Has anything really changed?
YouTube
YouTube is possibly the most revolutionary
example of this new approach using new media.
For many people it has become the first port of
call when seeking video material, and along with
MySpace, it enables amateur film-makers and
musicians to distribute their material to a vast
audience. A feature that is especially useful to media students is the way that users can post
comments on a video.
YouTube, like Flickr and Del.icio.us, offers social tagging, which means that the users
categorise and classify the content (as opposed to this being done by the website or through
software). YouTube is an interesting mix of DIY uploads, with some notable examples of
ordinary people achieving global recognition for their videos but it has also created a recent
moral panic.
The uploading of videos made by teenage gang members
brandishing guns is causing serious concern in the
aftermath of fatal shootings of children across the country,
and the perhaps less serious 'happy slappy' culture was
made possible by YouTube.
However, much of YouTube consists of uploads of existing
commercial material, music videos, film trailers etc which effectively act as free or 'below
the line' advertising for film and music distribution companies.
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14. MySpace
Most MySpace users are between 16 and 25, which, considered
alongside the staggering number of profiles in existence, helps
us realise why Rupert Murdoch wanted to buy the site.
This age group is one that advertisers are always desperate to
reach, as they are the major audience for a host of entertainmentrelated products and services.
MySpace has become a hub for a variety of commercial
enterprise, much of it the independent distribution of music by
bands without a record deal. It is now possible to sell music via Paypal through MySpace, so
we currently have the ironic state of play whereby small bands and independent film makers
can use a website owned by News Corporation (the most major of all the major media
institutions) to bypass the mainstream music and film industries. MySpace now has its own
music label, and many existing bands with long established recording contracts now release
some of their music on the site.
The content published on MySpace by its users varies from personal diary entries and
discussions about the latest film or television episode, to the publication of original creative
works such as digital photography and artwork or poetry. Of particular interest to News
Corporation is that prior to its purchase, the top four discussion areas on MySpace were for
content owned by NewsCorp itself: Family Guy, The OC, The Simpsons and Napoleon
Dynamite. Whatever the fate of MySpace, it's clear that media companies (both new entrants
and established players) are starting to see the value of user-generated content and the
advertising revenue that can be made from it. Murdoch may be right in his view that the
'MySpace generation' wants to consume and produce media on their own terms, but if he has
his way it will still be the one god-like figure from above who will be the one to profit.
(O'Hear 2006)
However, that was four years ago, and things move fast online:
MySpace halves UK audience
MySpace has halved its UK audience within the last 12 months…Daily Telegraph - 22 Jul
2010
The new figures reveal that MySpace’s audience numbers dropped by 49 per cent over the
last year, falling from 6.5 million visitors in May 2009, to just 3.3 million in May 2010.
The news comes hot on the heels of the site’s major rival, Facebook, hitting 500 million
registered users.
MySpace, founded in 2003, at its peak had more than 100 million registered members, but its
audience has been declining since the rise of Facebook in 2008.
The latest set of data also revealed that nine out of ten of the 38.2 million UK internet users
over the age of 15 used social media in May 2010. Twitter was found to have 4.3 million
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15. users in the UK but unlike MySpace, has grown its audience by 62 per cent over the last 12
months.
Facebook is used by 30.4 million people in the UK, which worked out as 79 per cent of the
country’s online population.
MySpace’s decline is in spite of a revamp of the site’s functionality and renewed focus on
music and entertainment content. The site also launched MySpace Music in May 2010, a
new streaming and subscription service, which has faced stiff competition from the likes of
Spotify.
The site, which was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for $580 million (£351
million) in 2005, has also lost two chiefs executives in the last six months.
Q3. Summarise how you think sites like YouTube, Spotify and
Facebook are good for film audiences. What do they let us do,
that we couldn’t before?
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