Audience and Institutions Essay

5. In relation to the media area you have studied, discuss the ways audience consumption has changed over time.

Audience consumption has drastically changed over time. As the duration of time continues technology is becoming more advanced. The way people are consuming films went from having to leave one's home and watch it on a big screen, to enjoying it from the luxury of one’s own home. Part of the reason why there’s such a big change in the film industry specifically is because people are finding ways to make life more convenient.   

The first time a film was shown in a movie theater was in 1905, by Nickelodeon. From there cinemas popped up all around the world and the film industry really begun. However, distribution of movie theaters might not be the best option when it comes to getting the most out of one’s money. When films are distributed to movie theaters the film maker gets a portion of the revenue as well as the theater itself. The recoupment waterfall “comes in from a variety of sources and the money is then handed back to the filmmaker via a number of third parties. Along the way, these third parties can recoup the money they spent up front promoting the film and also charge a pre-agreed fee for their work” (How is a cinema’s box office income distributed, 2017) So the film maker and movie theater don’t really get an even share, it’s more of the middle man that benefits off of audience consumption in movie theaters. For the movie The Beauty and the Beast the box office alone made $1,263,521,126. One can only imagine how much of it went to the middlemen and how much really went to the producer/movie theater. An example of the middlemen in this case would be the companies used in synergy and cross promotion for the film. Kohl’s released exclusive items and carried out other merchandise that was based on the movie as well as Morgan Taylor releasing movie-themed nail polish colors.  As technology advanced things began to come easier to us, we now have smart phones. Film producers can now distribute their films to companies like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. There is of course still a middleman but the amount of them is dramatically decreased. People are switching over to these companies rather than going out to the movie theaters anyways. People want convenience in today’s world so if they can watch a movie without the hassle of getting ready and driving to it, they will take it.  According to the statistics of frequency of going to movie theaters to see a movie among adults in the United States as of June 2019, 46 percent of American adults said that they go to the movie theater very infrequently which is once a year or less. While the statistics of the number of Netflix paying streaming subscribers worldwide from 3rd quarter 2011 to 1st quarter 2020 show that the number of subscribers went from 21.5 million in 2011 to 182.86 million in 2020. The numbers show the insane increase of people that have switched over to the world of convenience over the recent years.  

Audience consumption has changed over the years as technology has changed. People watched films in movie theaters for the longest time and still do, but more people are watching them on their phones through streaming apps, so they won’t have to leave their houses. 

Sources  

Watson, Amy. “Movie Theater Attendance Statistics in U.S.” Statista, 27 Aug. 2019, www.statista.com/statistics/264396/frequency-of-going-to-the-movies-in-the-us/. 

Watson, Amy. “Number of Netflix Subscribers 2019.” Statista, 22 Apr. 2020, www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-of-netflix-streaming-subscribers-worldwide/. 

“How Is a Cinema's Box Office Income Distributed?” Stephen Follows, 31 May 2018, stephenfollows.com/how-a-cinemas-box-office-income-is-distributed/. 

Triple Threat

Here is our final task.

CCR

Here is my CCR that I filmed. For this I had my mom and sister help me. This process took a total of two days. Me and my sister filmed the scenes on monday. I went back and looked at the footage later on to start editing. When I looked at the footage I realized that I had to refilm some of the scenes. By this time it was already dark so this extended the filming process. The next day we put on the same clothing and refilmed. This process took an hour. I had my mom film some of the over shoulder shots. My sister helped film some of the medium shots. To keep the camera still we used a tripod. The tripod was only supposed to be for cameras. I had to make the best of what I had during my time. I put rubber band around the phone and tripod. This ended up working very well and there was no problems with it. For the attire me and my sister wore semi-formal attire. I wore black work pants with a dress shirt and she wore a dress shirt with a skirt. I chose this attire for us because I wanted it to be in the form of a talk show. I knew from watching shows like Ellen that the attire is semi-formal which is why I leaned toward this. I added in music and sound affects to make it seem more like a talk show as well. Here is what it turned out looking like.

Commercial

Here is our commercial that we did prior to our final task.

Music video

Here is our music video that we did before our final task.

Re-editing blog

On March 20th, 2020 we re-edited our film. Though it was very close to being done we had to add some final touches. One of the issues were the titles. We did not add all of the titles that were needed and were supposed to be in there. This was important because everything needed to be how it was supposed to be planned prior to actually executing. I am talking about the small PowerPoint that we made in which laid out how the titles would be seen. Another thing that had to be changed was the font. At first it was hard to read. Due to the fact that it was too small and not spaced out enough. We made some small adjustments and it looked better. The score was also having a bit of an issue. We wanted the score to be placed in a certain place so the song coincided with the film. This was very important because it is used as our sound effect. The whole score is something that you would probably hear in a comedy movie. So it has little jumps and sound affects in it. So for example, when Darren tripped we edited it to where there's a slight change in the tune to exaggerate him falling.  I went back and looked at our peer review sheet. We made sure that we had all of the requirements in the film. This was not done at school. This had to be done at home due to the COVID-19 issue that is still happening. Here’s a picture of what it looked like when I was re-editing the film.

Re-shooting blog

The day we re-shot our scenes was Tuesday, March the 17th. Tuesday was the day that we reviewed our film. We went over all of the footage that we had. We looked back at our peer review sheet to see what concerns there was about our film. The other group said that the lighting could be better. So we got right to work on that. After looking at the film a new times over I saw that Darrens and Ashley’s scenes could be better. I also realized one of the scenes where I am petting my dog could be better too. So we went to Darren’s house first. Darren was already there so it was me and Ashley arriving there. Like always it was a bit of a drive but we had to get it done. We reshot scenes two through five. There was no problems with the filming and everything ran smoothly. I filmed his scenes this time. Ashley filmed Darrens scenes last time so we decided to take turns. The only problem we had that was a little annoying was the script. We had to keep looking back and fourth at the shooting script to make sure we had all of the angles correct. But I’m doing this we were able to make sure our film was as precise as it could be. Here is a picture of one of the scenes that we refilmed on Tuesday. As you can see the lighting is a lot better.