Star Wars: The Force Awakens – The seven key areas

1.       The issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice; The primary company that made the new Star Wars is LucasFilms which is owned by Disney, being owned by Disney allows them to have access to high end equipment. For example: Best CGI in the business, access to a large amount of advertisement, access to big studios which can offer the best props and costumes and they allowed them to keep to the films which have a big budget to keep the standards high, “A headline breaking budget” at that. Also with Disney’s massive budget they are able to pay for A-List stars and this is proved by Harrison Ford when he was payed 17.6 million just for his role. As it’s a big company people will be more drawn to it because it’s a known name and people can trust certain companies to make better films than others.

2.       The importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production, distribution and marketing; LucasFilm and Bad Robot Productions were the two companies that produced Star Wars: The Force Awakens. They worked together by creating their film using their wealth so they could have costumes, CGI, actors etc. and they would both pay less because they share on how much they are paying for the film. Also, the film was distributed by Walt Disney and Motion Pictures which means they did all the advertisement and selling the film. They did this using their size and influence on the general public because everyone knows Disney so will be more attracted to the film. The roles that they undertook were just simply advertising the film and then putting them into the cinemas across the world and they would get money from it.

3.       The technologies that have been introduced in recent years at the levels of productions, distribution, marketing and exchange; Over the recent years there has been a lot of different ways to market and distribute your films. These are some of the following: You can now advertise your films on social medias, you can give teaser trailers showing parts of your film and giving the audience an idea of what your film is going to be about and this will also bring more attention to your film. Production has gotten easier with the introduction of motion capture where you use a person to create a CGI character that you move yourself. You can market easier too now that everyone uses the internet and a lot of people will see it as long as you put the advertisement on the internet.

4.       the significance of proliferation in hardware and content for institutions and audiences; The way film has been changed with the rise of technology is quite a lot when it comes to the effects of editing and the actual making of the film. When trying to sell the film, they pitch the film and advertise but now that everyone (relatively) has a web enabled device around the house, they have had to change the ways that they advertise and market their films. For example, companies now advertise the films they make via YouTube as a huge range of people and ages of people watch YouTube on a daily basis. TV is also a huge way to advertise anything, especially at the peak viewing times. As technology has risen, so has the prices of advertising as there are so many ways to advertise a film or any product in general. They now can sell the film online, people don’t have to go to a cinema to watch a film now as they can pay for it online and watch it at their own home comfort. But this also does rise up the fact that piracy is a big issue and the films can be downloaded and watched illegally without the makers of the film earning a penny.

5.       The way the film was marketed is helped by the internet and social media, the internet can be used to show rumours about what is going to happen in the film and this makes people read them and then want them to go and see the film to see what happens. Social media sites like Facebook can be used to show clips of the film or trailers and pictures of the film and when it comes out these can be shared so this can get out the releasing date for the film and also where it will be played so what cinema it will be in, all of this information can be found for free and also does not cost anything to advertise on their own page so there for it is very good value and can make a massive difference. Also posters get put up in high populated areas so that more people here about the film. And also before similar films with the same sort of audience a snippet of the film would be shown and give you the release date so people that would more than likely want to watch the film will know when the film is coming out. Also adverts on websites can be used so when people are looking at curtain sites a Star Wars advert will pop up and this makes them read it so there for gets out the message of when the film is coming out to more so the internet and social media have allowed the film industries to advertise on a much bigger scales for reasonable prices.

6.       the issues raised in the targeting of national and local audiences (specifically, British) by international or global institutions; The way that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was marketed in the world was different in different areas. In China, it was marketed aggressively in China, they used a lot of adverts and TV shows to try and gain the country's attention to the film. Which it did in fact do relatively well for an ‘Outside China’ film. Now in Europe, it was marketed by using A list stars on the adverts as people would see someone they like is in the film and then they go to see it. That was the same for the USA, they used Comicon as brought Harrison Ford which I believe must’ve impacted the number of people who went to see it. Most people thought Harrison Ford didn’t care about the film much but the appearance at Comicon and him being extremely happy about being there must’ve made people see it. They also used a lot of talk shows on TV to gain viewers’ attention towards the film.

7.       the ways in which the candidates’ own experiences of media consumption illustrate wider patterns and trends of audience behaviour. People that watch the film on the first viewing can make a big impact to how many people want to go and see the film as if loads of the people that see it first post bad reviews of it a lot of people will not want to go and see it as they don’t see the point and if it is a film like Star Wars and everyone said it is the worst one yet not many people would not want to watch it as they don’t want to ruin all of the other Star Wars films they have watched. 48 million was turned over in the first weekend on IMAX screens it was also the fastest film to get a gross of 1 billion dollars.

 By

Harri Jones, Charlee Fear, James Meadows