Essay 1 - Mr Ford

"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, with in the media you have studied?

For the film Star Wars; The Force Awakens, marketing and distribution was equally as important as good film practices. The high quality of marketing and distribution was essential to the success of the film as both contributing factors worked together to influence the overall positive response from the audience. 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was predominantly distributed by Walt Disney Studios. It was available to be viewed in cinemas, through downloads,via blu-ray and DVD. Disney is a vertical integration as it owns Lucasfilm who produced the film and was also the main distributor. However there were some aspects of horizontal integration as other distribution companies were involved. The film was captured on 35 mm and 65 mm IMAX and was distributed digitally. The fact that the film was distributed digitally saved the production team a lot of money. If the movie was both filmed and distributed on film it would cost a huge amount. Film is much more expensive than digital distribution because the film its self is very fragile. After the film is run through a projector once or twice it will start to degrade - often developing scratches and blemishes which lowers the quality of the film dramatically. As well as being cheaper and more robust, digital distribution allows the film to be shown on platforms such as iTunes, aeroplanes and online streaming. This heavily influences the success of the film because a huge percentage of the audience want to view the film on many different devices and at many different times. This will encourage many more people to watch the film and those who may not be able to travel to the cinemas will be given the opportunity to watch the film before it is released on DVD.

Due to the fact that the film was predominantly integrated vertically, Disney was also in control of the marketing aspect of the films production. Walt Disney Studios is a very famous and well known institution. It has existed since the 16th of October 1923, incidentally it has developed a very positive reputation and has consumed a lot of experience in the film industry. These factors combined means that they have a lot of power, respect, influence and money. When marketing Star Wars; The Force Awakens, Disney used its knowledge and experience to create one of the most successful marketing campaigns yet - the Guardian describes it as "a true Hollywood box office triumph". As well as releasing the standard movie trailers and film posters, Disney made sure it went that extra step further. The team at Disney used social media as a main platform for marketing as well as continuing starters.com they also used the popular social media sites Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and a new tumblr blog. This was a very smart strategy due to the immense amount of people who now uses social  media. It also tackled a wide range of the audience as it became hard not to see or here anything abut the new start wars film on the media. Disney also used the fact that it is a franchise to their advantage, before the film was released Disney enabled all of the six previous Star Wars films available to stream online. Another marketing strategy that Disney adopted was to use some of their branches. For example Disney owns ABC in America, before the release of the film, the anchors from ABC cam on to 'Good Morning America' dressed as star wars characters to promote the film.

Previous to Star Wars: the force Awakens, all the other Star Wars films were produced by Lucasfilm. However after Disney took ownership of Lucasfilm on 30th October 2012, the latest film was the first to be produced by Disney. Despite the fact that this created some speculation as to how the film would turn out, it also meant that Star Wars will expand its audience. Disney has a reputation of creating films for children and families which meant that it created a wider audience for the new Star Wars film. to ensure that the marketing campaign covered everyone, Disney did a lot of brand partnerships. The team at Disney collaborated with covergirl which is a makeup brand. This worked well to capture the female section of the four quadrant. They also partnered with Duracell, a battery company, to capture the older male or adult section of the four quadrant.


However, aside from distribution and marketing, the actually production of the film was of a very high quality. As a result of the fact that the previous Star Wars films were a disappointment to fans compared to the original trilogy, those involved in the production of Star Wars; The Force Awakens felt as though they had a heavy responsibility to impress their fans. J.J. Abrams was the director and producer of the film. This gave them an advantage as Abrams had worked on other big and successful films such as such as Bad Robot and therefore will have a lot of experience in film making. In addition, Abrams is also a well known and highly respected person in the film industry. This would have been a selling point for the new film as those who recognise his name or have enjoyed his previous films, will be eager to see his latest creation. Another producer of the film was Kathleen Kennedy. Along with the producing role, Kennedy is also president of the company who produced the film, Lucasfilm. She too is very famous as she has been involved in successful films such as ET and Jurassic Park. She will have a similar advantage to Abrams when advertising the film.


Going back to the disappointment of the previous films, The production team wanted to use their failure to inspire them to introduce new and different ways of creating the film. The team also looked at why the first films in the franchise were such a success. An effective tactic the used in production practices was to return to the old way of making the Star Wars films. Due to the fact that the older successful films were created along time ago, they had very little technology to work with. Therefore as a substitution they used real explosions, created all the costumes for the characters (opposed to cartoons) and used painted sets that were created painted sets and backgrounds opposed to green screen. The old fan base loved this so much more as they were sticking to the original magic that Star Wars created.


In conclusion, I believe that this films success was equally due to the way the film was distributed and the huge marketing campaign and the successful film production practices. The previous three Star Wars films have been a disappointment to the audience, so this film had to exceed the public expectation. Although the production of the film was dramatically improved, without the marketing before hand, the final product would not have been nearly as outstanding as it was. Using Star Wars as an example, I also believe that and Media product is dependant on the marketing, distribution and production practices.