“Successful media products depend as much upon marketing
and distribution to a specific audience as they do upon good production practices”.
To what extent would you agree
with this statement, within the media area you have studied?
In many ways
Star Wars The Force Awakens needed there to be equally as good marketing and
distribution campaigns as the production. Both of these factors are massive
influences on the film’s success and wouldn’t have worked without the other.
Star Wars The
Force Awakens was able to be viewed in cinemas, and also released by download,
Blu-ray and DVD. The film was mainly distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motions
Pictures which is vertical integration as Disney produced the film and own
Lucasfilm the other major production company for the film. There were also some
other distribution companies such as Starz! for USA TV and Columbia Pictures
for theatrical in the Philippines, this
is horizontal integration. The film was filmed on 35mm film and 65 mm IMAX and
distributed digitally. This helped the success of the film as it meant that it
was considerably cheaper than if the entire film had been filmed on film and
not distributed digitally. As it was cheaper it meant the overall success of
the film increases as the profit made would be a lot higher. This also enabled
the film to not just be shown and be successful in cinemas but also be easily
accessible online with opportunities like iTunes, Google Play, X-Box and
Netflix available. This massively helped increase the success of the film as
the specific market of today’s audiences wants to be able to view films
whenever, wherever and on what device they want; distributing digitally allows
this which increases the success of the film as more people will be more inclined
and encourage to watch/download it. This also increased the success of The
Force Awakens in cinemas as cinemas more has easier access to it as shown by
North America having 4,134 cinemas showing the film in December and from December
18th playing on every IMAX
cinema in North America. This massively increased the success of the film as
being able to watch it on IMAX would excited and appeal to modern day
audiences.
The film
itself was marketed extremely well by Disney. Disney has the power, influence
and money to create very effective marketing campaigns like the one for The
Force Awakens. As well as the usual trailers and posters, which were insanely
successful themselves, breaking viewing records, Disney also used the power of
social media, merchandise and other companies to market The Force Awakes. A
whole day was created on 30th September 2016 which was named Force
Friday and this consisted of a 24 hour live streaming event of fans un-boxing
the merchandise. Not only did this increase interest for the merchandise but
massively racked up success for the film from the dedicated fans. Star Wars is
a franchise that quite unique in the amount of very interested and passionate
fans particularly in the UK and USA for the franchise so individual marketing
opportunities like this really increased the hype and overall success of the
film. Disney also involved other companies in the marketing to enable The Force
Awakens to become a familiar sight for particularly the American and British
public. By using household brands like Tesco in the UK and Hot Wheels in the
USA plus many more the public would be surrounded The Force Awakens which would
massively increase the film’s success. This blanket marketing helps ensure success
for the film as it increases the excitement and amount of people viewing the
film.
The
marketing also helped the film be known to all audience demographics that
Disney has the advantage of promoting too such as children and families. The
Force Awakens would attract massive Star Wars fans however with Disney now
producing, distributing and marketing the film it increases the excitement and
prosperity of the film for much wider audiences which will help make the film
more successful. The wide range of marketing used for the film also massively
helped increase its success as it reached and engaged many audience types. This
can be shown by how Disney worked with brands like Cover Girl and Max Factor to
engage a female audience and also the success of the film in China. The Force
Awakens set a new record for the best box office for a weekend release in China
for $33 million. This is a particular achievement for the Force Awakens as
unlike in the USA and UK there are not many passionate fans in China due to the
political climate when the original Star Wars trilogy was released. Star Wars
(the first Star Wars film) was released in 1977 when China was under a very
strict Communist role which meant that Western, American, Hollywood
blockbusters were not widely accepted or even prohibited. This meant that there
was a very small Chinese fan base as not many people had grown up with the
movies like British and American audiences had. To combat this Disney launched
a massive marketing campaign in China to raise awareness, excitement and
overall successfulness for the film; this included 500 Stormtroopers on the
Great Wall of China and using famous Chinese stars like Lu Han to introduce
trailers and create promotional songs. The success of the film in China really
shows how important marketing is to have a successful film; Star Wars went from
being almost non-existent to breaking records in China mostly due to the
marketing.
Production
is also important for the success of a film. Again Star Wars in very unique in
the fact that there have already been six successful films previously. As the
first trilogy was most successful the director J.J. Abrams wanted The Force
Awakens to be as similar to those films as possible, as it would satisfy fans
and audiences the most. Firstly having J.J. Abrams as the director, and part of
the screenwriting and producing teams was a good production practice as J.J.
Abrams is very well experienced in producing Sci-Fi Action films like The Force
Awakens. He has directed all of the Star Trek films which not only familiarised
him with Star Wars fans (as often these franchises go hand in hand with fans)
but also shows how he is a successful director, perfect for The Force Awakens.
This production practice helped the success of the film as fans knew they could
trust this director and would be more inclined to watch the film. Another production
practice unique to Star Wars that helped the success of the film was using the
same key people and companies in the production. In 2012 Disney brought
Lucasfilm for the main aim of producing more Star Wars, they could not do this
successfully without the help of Lucasfilm as having produced the other six
films they have the very best knowledge and expertise to create a successful
seventh film. In many cases the same people were used for example Harrison Ford
for Han Solo and John Williams to create the film score like he did for the
previous six films. This carried on continuity for the fans and also enabled
the best acting and composing as these individuals knew their roles very well,
knew the characters and knew what worked; without this idea of continuity mixed
with the new the famous line “Chewey we’re home” would never have made the
screen and delighted fans globally. Likewise introducing new characters like
Daisy Ridley as Rey and John Boyega as Finn helped attract new audiences and
fans to create a new era for this Star Wars trilogy. These two leads in
particular would help attract and increase success in modern audiences of 14-30
years olds as having a female and “black” lead would excite them, as often not
portrayed in Hollywood, this audience would be more than happy to watch a
female and “black” lead. This helped the
success of the film as the mix of old and new attracted old and new audience
which would just keep the success of the film rolling through many audience
demographics.
The next
production practice of sticking to the original methods and practical
techniques as much as possible also helped the success of the film. Going back
to the older ways of filming and creating a film like: using 35 mm Kodak film to
film many parts of the film, less green screens and using models, sets and
paintings instead, using real explosions and having characters like the
Luggabeast fully practical, linked The Force Awakens back to the original trilogy
which helped the film succeed. This production practice helped the success of
the film as it would attract fans back to the franchise and would also impress
audiences that weren’t already fans leading them to be more interested to see
the film. However a film as fantasy based as Star Wars could not be done
without the aid of some CGI and special effects especially with all the amazing
technology available; here Disney can really help the success of the film as
they have the access, knowledge, money and influence to this technology. The
character of Maz Kanata (based on Abrams high school teacher) was created and
filmed entirely digitally. A motion-capture suit was used to allow the actress
Lupita Nyong’o’s character to come alive which is a very modern and state of the
art technology. This production practice helped the success of the film as it
added the wow factor for audiences. The quality of this character and other CGI
and special effects technology enhanced the whole experience of the film
especially for modern day viewers who have become accustomed to great levels of
technology in films.
Overall I
believe the marketing and distribution and production practices are equally as
important to create a successful film. I completely agree with this statement
and do not believe you can have one without the other; as a great film not
marketed or distributed well will not reach audiences as shown by the success
in China (had The Force Awakens not had such a impactful marketing campaign the
film would be less of a success) and a awful film marketed and distributed well
would have had much less success in merchandise sales, home media sales or
repeat viewing in the cinema that Star Wars massively gained success from.
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