Ownership and Structure in the Creative Media Sector

Understanding structure and ownership in the creative media sector 

I am structuring film companies such as Universal which is owned by Comcast which is a mass media company and is the largest broadcasting and TV company in the world by revenue,Universal is a huge film conglomerate that has a value at $30 billion, (A conglomerate is a large company that hold other smaller chains of companies), with films like Jurassic World making just over $600 million and a series of other movies making over $300 million total gross. Here shows the top 10 highest grossed movies that Universal has produced...

1	Jurassic World	Uni.	$652,270,625	4,291	$208,806,270	4,274	6/12/15
2	Despicable Me 2	Uni.	$368,061,265	4,003	$83,517,315	3,997	7/3/13
3	The Secret Life of Pets	Uni.	$365,453,515	4,381	$104,352,905	4,370	7/8/16
4	E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial	Uni.	$359,197,037	1,778	$11,835,389	1,103	6/11/82
5	Jurassic Park	Uni.	$357,067,947	2,566	$47,026,828	2,404	6/11/93
6	Furious 7	Uni.	$353,007,020	4,022	$147,187,040	4,004	4/3/15
7	Minions	Uni.	$336,045,770	4,311	$115,718,405	4,301	7/10/15
8	Meet the Fockers	Uni.	$279,261,160	3,554	$46,120,980	3,518	12/22/04
9	How the Grinch Stole Christmas	Uni.	$260,044,825	3,256	$55,082,330	3,127	11/17/00
10	Jaws	Uni.	$260,000,000	675	$7,061,513	409	6/20/75

The film industry employed roughly 70,000 people in 2012 in the UK, 65% of these worked in production, 25% in exhibition and 10% in distribution. A company first to create a movie some come up with an idea for the plot for this they must think about audience and popularity if they pick a unpopular genre the chances are the movie won't make as much money for example action is a popular genre however psychological horror is no where near as popular, they also need to think about what there casting would be they would want to cast a couple of big names to attract the audiences, also crew is important so a good director, cinematographer, composer, editors are all very important to make the movie likable and good. The production company also wants to think about finances and budget, a sensible target budget needs to be set depending on the movie for example a big blockbuster action movie might want a large budget of $200 million or a low budget individual movie might want a small budget of $5 million, all this money goes towards cast, equipment, effects, props and locations. A production company needs a composer that is used with making music that suits that genre as an example Han Zimmer is a great composer and can score pretty much any genre for a movie also junkie XL who works with him is a great composer for action in particular so hiring the best composer for that movie is crucial. Probably the most important bit for a production company is to create the advertisement this is done through posters, TV adverts and trailers. A trailer really needs to show off the movie without revealing too much as it will get hate for it possibly effecting the popularity of the movie. A good trailer example is the suicide squad trailer as it made the movie look really good so the movie got a lot of hype from its viewers of the trailer however the movie was revealed to be highly hated by film critics but the film still made a lot of money by using good advertisements with its biggest achievement being the trailers. all of these steps is a movie timeline, each of these steps has to be done to create a movie and to make it profit. A short horror movie called "lights out" that was released this year in theaters was originally a short movie made by David Sandberg his short movie was entered in a festival and managed to come second this means that they got the award of being able to make there own full feature length film and would be given the budget to create it and release it in cinemas this is where James Wan a big time director came into it to help Sandberg produce it. Lights out adapted the short films idea with the same type of antagonist but tweaked it changed the characters and gave it a backstory, Sandberg used techniques such as a story board to help get his ideas across to the crew to show them how he wanted his film to look and what his ideas were. Lights out had a budget of $4.9 million which is a very low-budget for a full feature length cinema film, because of this Sandberg had to find ways to keep the cost of the production to a minimum for example the antagonists eyes glow in the movie this would of been achieved easily with CGI however the movie simply didn't have the budget to achieve this so he use practical effects by using reflective tape stuck on the actors eyes then a dim light that the camera did not pick up was shined on the eyes to give them the effect of them glowing. Lights out used advertisement techniques such as mentioning that it was being produced by James Wan who created a list of great horror movies this would make some of the audience want to see this movie more knowing that James Wan is partially behind it, a few trailers were also released for this movie that showed a few of the scares in the movie to hopefully get you to want to watch it, one of the trailers displayed scenes differently to in the movie so that it doesn't spoil the movie. Lights out was released into pretty much all cinemas across the globe including the 2 main countries the U.S.A and the U.K, lights out managed to make $148 million at the box office that is a huge profit of $143 million this is a staggering amount for a low-budget movie, Lights out will be released on Blu ray in December hopefully making even more money for the movie. Next the same director will be directing the up and coming horror movie Annabelle 2 which comes out next year.