Media Essay

How does Hollywood produce, distribute and exhibit films to ensure success?

Introduction

Hollywood is vertically, horizontally and laterally integrated and are now part of massive media conglomerates which has created an 'Oligopoly' in the film industry, the so called 'big six', these are Universal, Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th century fox and RKO. Big blockbusters follow the 'high concept' model in order to appeal to mass audience. The Hollywood films are often sequels, prequels and remakes or based on successful books, TV programmes or video games to minimise financial risk and to increase the profit. Studios are powerful and efficient with nearly a century of profitable experience. In many cases vertical integration is back e.g. Universal make films and distribute them and own multiplexes in Europe and beyond. These well established studios mean massive budgets.

The Hollywood studio system was a tightly controlled industry maximising profits and minimised risks, it developed a classical narrative system and genre production which audiences liked and came to expect. High concept was where studios made few films and production is organised around a small number of very expensive blockbusters, which if successful can keep the studio going on. A high concept film is organised around a simple narrative moving from one spectacular set piece to another. The genre is often action based allowing for the visceral excitement of high speed chases and stunts. High concept film rarely appears as a single entity and studios member of conglomerate involved in music production, computer games, TV studios and other merchandising opportunities.

High production values are when movies are produced they have a high cost and are very expensive films to be made; usually these are big blockbuster films and are very popular when in the cinema.

Production

In production the movie is created and shot. More crew is required such as the script editors, assistant directors, still photographer and sound editors. Films like 'Kickass' had a production budget of $28 million. This film used lots of different technology such as focusing on special effects. Double negative did just over 835 visual effects for the movie, using mostly CGI through green screens and other methods. Between $8-9 million was spent on just special effects alone. The script and development cost was $3 million just for Mark Miller and Jane Goldmen to be paid to edit and develop the script more these writers were also known for helping develop and edit the script for Stardust. The director Matthew Vaughn invested his own money into making this film, therefore took the largest revenue, him and Brad Pitt alongside others as well helped produced the film. The above the line costs for this movie was $7.7 million and below the line costs was $7.8 million. The Sell for this film was extremely high in price, the prints and advertising costs were up to $10.5 million and Lions gate distributed the film which took in a large percentage of the final box office figures. All the costing’s and money spent on the film Kickass is a final total box office figure of $96, 188, 903. This was $10 million over the original budget and this was mostly because of the advertising costs, but it paid off with success in the end.

Another movie example would be 'Zombie land', the budget for this film was $23.6 million and the total box office was $102, 391, 542. This film is a 2009 American zombie comedy film which was directed by Ruben Fleischer from a screen play which was written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The film stars are Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenburg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. This film was distributed by Columbia pictures; zombie land was released on October 2nd, 2009 which was a week earlier than originally advertised. It was filmed in digital using the Panavision genesis digital camera and had a 41 digital shooting schedule. The film park themes for the films climax, pacific play land were mostly shot in Valdosta, Georgia's local theme park wild adventures water and theme park. There were many different special effects teams that worked to create several visual elements. one of these elements is 'the rule for survival' which appear on-screen as they are related to the audience by Columbus 'do cardio', 'beware of bathrooms', 'check the back seat', and so forth. The texts are rendered in 3D. 'When a previously stated rule becomes relevant-when nature calls, for instance- the relevant text pops up, occasionally getting splattered with blood.' Special effects makeup designer Tony Gardner, who helped Rick Baker create the signature look of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video and has contributed to other Hollywood films such as 127 hours, hairspray and there’s something about Mary was brought on to design the look of the films zombies.

A 3D movie is a motion picture that enhances an illusion. Derived from stereoscopic photography, a regular motion picture camera system is used to record the images as seen from two perspectives, and special projection or eyewear are used to provide the illusion of depth when watching the movie. 3D films are not limited to feature film theatrical releases; television broadcasts and direct-to-video films have also incorporated similar methods, primarily for marketing purposes.
3D films have existed in some form since the 1950s. 3D films were prominently featured in the 1950s in American cinema, and later experienced a worldwide viewing in the 1980s and '90s driven by IMAX's most popular theatres and Disney themed-venues. 3D films became more and more successful throughout the 2000s.

Distribution

The main reason marketing is the main function in making a film is because it raises awareness off what the company is offering to the consumer. It also gives people the first impression of what the company is offering to incise the consumer to buy the product in this case a cinema ticket.

The film 'Kickass!' was marketed by firstly releasing posters out which had each of the individual characters on the front, displaying the name of the movie and also presenting which character played which. After this a second batch of posters was released which was more focused on each individual 'hero', this was shown by using more bright and appealing colours to it's audience. Also each poster showed a URL which was a website for each of its own individual character on the official kick ass website. They finished off the posters by having one last final theatrical poster 2 weeks before the first screening and this showed the letters large and the characters jumping through them. It was then a teaser trailer was released which introduced the hero which had no super powers, after this kickass released there extended movie trailer soon before the first screening and this time it involved many more scenes from the movie which incised the audience already interested. To add to the media marketing the producers leaked out short clips about the individual character 'Hit Girl' which showed parts of the main scenes and plot lines which presented the audience with some of the action involved.

Another example of marketing we did is on the film 'Zombie land' this had amazing amount of social media buzz going for it leading up to the release date. Tons of twitter campaigns and natural word of mouth got people interested. Sony pictures teamed up with IPC media’s men and music magazine division, IPC ignite to launch an integrated campaign for the comedy horror film, zombie land. It combined a series of integrated advertorials on and offline across IPC ignites nuts and NME magazines in a bit to target its core male audience. An online game was released to raise awareness of the film premiere and the first trailer was released on June 23rd. The premiere was on September 14th and raised more awareness about the film and the stars that appear in it. To celebrate the release of this film on October 2nd street teams started pushing the idea of dressing up to go to the first late evening show on that opening Friday. Sony's marketing machine marched on: 'Zombie land' opened number one at the weekend box office, giving the studio it's sixth first place debut of the year.

In media, synergy is the promotion and sale of a product throughout the various subsidiaries of a media conglomerate for example films, soundtracks and video games. Walt Disney pioneered synergistic marketing techniques in the 1930s by granting lots of firms the right to use his Mickey Mouse character in products and adverts, and continued to market Disney media through licensing arrangements. These products can help advertise the film itself and thus help to increase the film's sales.

Exhibition

There are many different methods and ways in which a film can be viewed such as, cinema, theatres, illegally watching, DVD, internet downloads, rental, video tapes and many more. In 2006 nearly 4 million tickets were bought to watch a film at the cinema every week, nearly all of these tickets were cinemas which are owned by Hollywood studios. The main ticket distributors of these tickets include Vue, cineworld, Odeon and showcase these all show the most popular films in Hollywood.

The other ways of viewing films just apart from the cinema and that is since the 1920s it has developed massively how you view your film. Films are now moved from the cinema to DVD within 6 months which is much quicker than when the cinema first started. By have technological convergence audiences are now able to view movies in a variety of different ways.

A big method to watch a film is through internet download, the internet is very powerful and can spread the word of films for example Clover field was a very good example of this way. It is also very good in ways of promoting films on social networking websites for example Facebook and MySpace these websites help let people know about the film and market it better to get around. Batman: The Dark Knight was the first film to be broadcasted on Facebook for a price of 30 credits the film was then available for 48 after purchase to watch. This type of service picked up in 2008 but never fully took off and stayed. Even though the internet can have a positive effect on the exhibition, many films are illegally recorded whilst they are cinema and put up on the internet which can majorly effect the distribution of the film. This can be because people are more likely to see a film which they wouldn't have had to pay money for if it wasn't very good. The downsides of this way can have very good quality sound, image and people interrupting it for example going to the loo during the film and standing in the way of the camera, also there is a risk of a fine if you are caught watching a film illegally.

A final example of exhibition is TV broadcasts and this is good as the audience are able to see which they may not have been able to see in the cinema at that time from when it was out and are able to watch it without distractions from others which they are able to enjoy the film more. This way can boost the success of a film as it gives people the word of mouth to go away and tell others which spreads the word of the film.