Draft, Assignment one

Film

Film built up by lots of companies, but some are a lot bigger than others so they are bigger parts of the film industry. The film industry is worldwide isn’t just based in the Europe for example. The main companies that take up most of this industry is companies such as universal studios, the reason they own a vast majority of the industry is because they are a conglomerate, this is one of the reasons they are such a huge part of the film industry

Universal are a cross media company, they make animated films, they make normal films and they are included in music also.

they are a cross media company because that means more money, but some parts of universal make a lot more than other parts of it, for example their film industry is a lot bigger than their music area, this is because of the audience of people who watch their films compared to music, they do not make the music, they sign contracts with artists, when they make albums and the profit, they get a certain amount per a purchase and so on, They also own theme parks.

Conglomerates is a company that owns several other companies that may be smaller than them, for example they don’t make as much revenue, then they might get purchased by a other company,  when that company gets bought, nothing changes within the company, it will still have the same staff and so on just owned by a different company,

Another reason they might sell their company to a much larger company is because they might be going bankrupt and in order to keep that company going, this is sometimes the only way they can go to keep the company up on its feet. Or simply the owner did not feel like having the company anymore.

Also for example let’s universal Studios, Bought a vast majority of the film industry, companies do this to remove competition, sometimes.

Some examples of companies which this kind of situation has happened to is

Variance and GoDigitial, two companies that were in the film industry, they came together to form a company which is called Amplify which is an all rights film distribution company, but them two companies Variance and GoDigital as a brand but under Amplify, this makes the new company ‘Amplify’ a Conglomerate because the companies GoDigital and Variance are still separate companies.

Amplify are claiming that they are planning on releasing 10 films per a year

Why did this happen?

this is what was said according to why they merged together “For the last five and a half years, Variance has had the privilege of helping everyone from first-time filmmakers to the founders of independent film release their films theatrically. Now it’s time to take the next step, and GoDigital is the perfect partner to do it with.” Reference

this deal was orchestrated by Kevin Iwashina, he is a majority shareholder of the company GoDigital, both companies decided it is the right time for them to merge as one.

TV and Radio

The BBC

The bbc own their  fair majority in the TV industry in the uk, they own TV channels and TV stations, and BBC Film,but I am going to be talking about the TV  companies that they have acquired.

They own TV channels such as BBC three,  BBC four and BBC 1extra and a lot of other companies

The reason they own other companies such as this is because they want to try and provide for more people, different audiences, such as you get BBC for a lot of comedies and animations at night such as family guy or American dad, this means more channel viewings each day and this means more money. 

The latest count of employees which I could find for the BBC that work for them is this, this was from  30th November 2011, as you can see they have a very large company with people based around the world in a way, with some working overseas,

they have such a large company because of the amount of channels they own and also they have jobs that are not based around TV, such as an corporate finance analyst, an Counter Fraud Analyst, and many others which you will be able to find with this link

Region
Number of Staff
Based at home 77
London 10206
Midlands & East 1612
No settled base 12
North 2640
Northern Ireland 711
Overseas 212
Scotland 1277
South 1749
Wales 1499
Total 19995

Reference 

Also it says on Wikipedia that they have around 23,000 employees in total, I do not trust Wikepedia much but this seems like it is around right, because if the employee count near the end of 2011 was 19995 that means they have took on around another 3,000 employees, this either means the company is growing

this is information showing what the BBC has had to spend the majority of its money on according to channels and radio stations. According to the Wikipedia over half of BBC'S money goes into BBC because

Reference

The BBC are funded by the TV licence which helps them a lot, it is £145 to cover multiple units per a a year for a coloured TV and in some cases which I will explain below you can get a discount on these.

For a black and white TV it will cost you £49 this is because you aint getting as much quality compared to a coloured TV

In some cases you can get discounts and even get it free.

Reduced TV Licence fees
Aged 74 and over	You’re entitled to a free over 75 TV Licence when you turn 75. If you‘re 74, you can apply for a short-term licence to cover you up to your 75th birthday.
Care home residents	Residents may qualify for a discounted TV Licence fee of £7.50. Residents, staff and residents’ families all need a separate licence for their own living area.
Registered as blind	You’re entitled to a 50% reduction in your TV Licence fee, if you’re certified as either blind or severely sight impaired. Reference

Understanding Publishing

Publishing is a big part of the media, its where people go if they want to get a book published or a story or something a long the lines of that.

If I wanted for example, get a book printed or something such as that and I did not have the money to publish it myself, I would go to that company and lets say the company I would be going to is Penguin Publishing company. They would read it, see what they think of it and if its good enough to be published by their company standards.

Sometimes they will accept it but they will ask you to make some changes, this is called the editorial stage, they might ask you to make some small changes for it to be at their standards.

some companies just employ their own staff for their articles, book, etc. They do this because it is a lot cheaper and they do not have to look around for that story, they can just get it done straight away,

The company staff, guy/woman who written it might get more money off it if its a well written article and so on

usually the author in most cases is the owner of the book or whatever is written but in some cases for example if it is work for hire, this means that whoever has hired that person is usually the owner of the finished work

sometimes if the work that has been done by the person who has been hired does not fit the description of what the employer/contractor asked for, this means the author owns it but can sign the copyright to the employer/contractor

there is also something called joint ownership, joint ownership is were each person owns apart of the finished project.

In order for joint ownership to be an option, each person must contribute copyrightable expression and intent at the time the work was getting done

All of these are also in a lot of the media areas, such as film, animation, TV, Games and Photo imaging.

HERE

Advertising and Marketing 

Advertising and marketing is in pretty much every single media sector, TV, Radio, everything pretty much it is either them advertising and selling their own stuff or they are advertising something else. Advertising and marketing are pretty much the same

Advertising is a big part of the media, it is essential because it lets everyone know what you are selling. For example lets go with the new fast and furious 7 trailer, that is advertising and a marketing strategy, this is because releasing this has allowed people to see what is coming, give people a peek of what is to come, then doing this has got a lot of people hyped about it and if someone watches it, they might recommend it to their friend and the audience for that gets much bigger and how does this help the company who are going to release this film? it gives them a much bigger audience, having a bigger audience means more sales and more sales means much more money in their pockets.

But when they advertise this they are also marketing it.

Say If I was going to release a trailer for a film and I had the money to back me up to advertise it, I would advertise it on Youtube, when you get them adverts before the videos, I would advertise it on TV,  Billboards in large places and also on the back of drinks for example, on the back of a cereal box, which is done a lot, you get deals for trips away, or they say there is something inside the cereal box like a toy that would appeal to little kids, this is advertising because kids will want that cereal and most persons are unlikely to say no

sometimes they offer free tickets, for example 1 free ticket or something like that and when they do that, that one ticket makes that persons friend have to buy a ticket or something such as that, so they earn profit off it in that way or if you think first you can always buy another cereal box and get another good deal.

This one offers two for one, but that two for one still mean they have to buy a ticket and this deal may grab someones attention so they buy this

Animation

Animation is another big part of the media industry, this merges into filming, you can be an animator for films with companies such as disney also you can be a Youtube Animator, or Animation TV series animator or free lance

What is a film animator?

for this you can either be a employee of the company you are animating for or you can be hired for that one project, this is called freelance. Freelance is were you work by yourself, you are never permanently attached to a company by a contract, you they just hire you for that project and when you have finished that, you are free to go, also you can just do animations yourself, your own films.

When you are an employee for a company such as disney, you just do the project and then you carry on with whatever you have to do next, but with disney,

I think a lot of companies would much rather get their own staff on the project because in some cases it can be much cheaper for them to do so and they do not have to go out of their way to find someone to do that project for them, unless you have an amazing skillset and portfolio then they might want you on that project. Here is an example of an animation

Frozen Trailer

For this animation they used hand drawn animation and they also used computer generated animation.

For this movie they actually went out and walked through deep snow so they had an idea of what they were trying to do and how to make it perfect, they had someone to help them through this by explaining how snow and ice form, from this they created a snow flake generator that created 2,000 unique snowflakes for the film.

If you would like to learn more about the animation of this film click this

Youtube Animator.

Youtube animators tend to have a certain audience they make animation for, such as gaming or short films

Why are they different?
Because they work for their self only, they don't sign a contract they just make the animation and upload it, it is a lot less hassle than being tied to a company

If you are wondering why do they do it, do they get paid?
Yes they do get paid, through the views they get on each video that they post, the more views they get, the more money you will receive, unfortunately, I can not tell you how much they earn exactly because a lot of youtubers, pretty much do not tell anyone how much they earn a year or a week or so, there is websites that may help you have an idea of how much they earn but I am not 100% they are correct,

also the adds before each video give you youtuber more views and also the ones you get at the bottom of the screen whilst watching a video which you can click off, they earn approximately 5p off each of these adds each or below, every time someone plays their video and an add pops up, but if you skip the advertisement, they will not earn anything off that.

Here is a youtube called Slamacow, he makes animations on youtube, minecraft ones and they are very popular on his channel?

you can tell they are very popular because he has only uploaded 44 videos which it states and the total anount of video views he has had is 282,711,722 and that is estimated because them viewings are always rising.

also as this site states, he is earning £2.2K- 17.7K per s month, this depends on how much he uploads and the views he gets on it, but at the same time he is also earning money off his previous videos, also that estimation will be always rising  because of his subscriber count which was around 5 minutes ago when I took this print screen at 2,243,173, I say was because that will be always rising also. YOU ALSO GET TO CHOOSE YOUR OWN WORKING HOURS!

but some youtubers may higher other youtubers who animation to make something for them this is one of the only times some kind of contract may come in order but in a lot of the casers its just a certain amount of money sent to the animator for doing the project via paypal most likely

If you wanna check this site out yourself, here it is

Animation TV series 

Animators who do series's are pretty much the same as film, you can either work by yourself as free lance and get hired or you can be an employee of a company,

Why is it the same?
 because you are still animating for the purposes of TV, the things such as free lance and being attached to a company still come into it

If I had to choose out of all of these, I would choose to be a youtube animator because of the fact you have your own working hours, you can to build what kind of animations you make from the ground up, making what kind of audience you want and its a lot less stressful than being an employee of a company

Interactive Media and Games

Interactive media is games and so on, iphone games, consoles and pc's  its everything pretty much, the world is becoming more and more interactive media wise, but one of the big parts of the interactive media is now Mobile Games, they have grew big and bigger and some reports say that in a couple of years they will out grow console games and according some such sites which I will display blow are claiming consoles games are declining

this is because of the prices of games on the consoles and the prices of apps on Mobile devices, they are so cheap, like £1 for a game.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-10-22-report-mobile-to-become-gamings-biggest-market-by-2015

They claim that mobile gaming will outgrow  console games in 2015, mobile games have now been estimated at 25 billion in 2014, it has grown 42% since 2013.

Because of this, this is making gaming companies who make games for consoles to do bundles for certain games when you buy a game, for example in the new assassins creed. There is a version of it, were you get extra weapons and missions that you would not get if you did not buy this version, but if you buy it all separately it is gonna cost you more, so they do this to get you to spend an extra £20 or so for extras, this version is varied from £60 to £65 but the stand version is varied from £40 to $50 depending on what site you check.

Photo Imaging

is a big part of the media sector, it is used for other parts of the areas in media such as TV, films and so on, this is because people need covers for movie and photos to advertising something new coming on TV such as a series.

The ownership for photography is kind of like publishing in a way, people come to you for a cover, this is if you are free lance, you work for yourself or you get hired for a project and after you have finished it, you are free to go, this is why its kind of like publishing in certain parts of it

There is a lot of jobs in the Photo imaging industry because a lot of people just work for their self and get hired for a certain amount of time for a project.

and some work for a company, for example lets say they work for the sunday gazette and they need a article done but to get that done they need a certain photo of something lets say, a riot is going on and they wanna capture the violence between the police and the rioters, they would ask them to get that shot, this is called cooperate photographer.

But being free lance is much harder because personally I think it takes more skill because you have to be able to do what your temporary employer wants, what kind of style he wants if he is making a poster for a film which is based on cars and he wants cars on the front of it going at a high speed, but that might not be your strong point. this is why could be a lot harder for you to be free lance, there will have to be a wide range of things you can do in photography, I would class this a disadvantage

This also is in other parts of media such as in films, it can be actors  and in animation, that would be like photography, but they might specialise in a certain kind of animation.

But lets not forget the advantages of this, lets say you work for yourself and you have your own working time, because some employers might not give you a schedule for each day, they will just tell you to get it done and give you a deadline for it to be finished by.

Also you have no contract holding you down permanently, you can either do projects for people or just simply work for yourself only, create your own projects.

and also, if you create your own projects and you have the money to provide for this project yourself, you will be earning so much more when you finally release it and it gets attention towards it than as if you were doing it for a company, its more of a achievement