Identify
how media products from your case study make links with other media platforms.
What
are the reasons for these links?
The three
films The Hunger Games, Lesbian Vampire
Killers and Sucker Punch all make links with other media platforms in order
to promote the films, attract new audiences, and to gain new attention to the
films.
One major
link that all three of my films make is through social networking. The Hunger Games especially has used
social networking as a major form of promotion. There are 13 Facebook pages
representing each district, which Facebook members can become virtual citizens
of. According to the Uses and Gratifications (Blumler and Katz 1974) theory, this
could be seen as social interaction and diversion, as the fans becoming part of
these virtual districts are meeting new people who are also part of the
district and people could be using these forms of social networking to diverse
away from their everyday lives and problems to become part of a virtual family.
The Hunger Games also has an official
main Facebook page which has 8,000,000 likes and a Twitter account with 664,000
followers. Sucker Punch also has a
Facebook page with around 950,000 likes and a Twitter
account called ‘Sucker Punch News’ which surprisingly only has 1060 followers. Lesbian Vampire Killers, which is a far
lower budget film than The Hunger Games and
Sucker Punch, has a Facebook page
with 16,000 likes and a Twitter page which was initially used for promotion of
the film, with only 100 followers. As The
Hunger Games was such a major box office success, the use of social networking
is far greater than the other two films, as there is a much larger fan base for
the film, and more hype surrounding the film, meaning more and more social
networking websites and pages will start to appear.
The
reasons these three films make links with social networking could be due to the
internet being such a predominant way of people finding out about new films,
and a key way for fans to interact with others. It is important for the institution
to use social networking, as advertising on websites such as YouTube and Yahoo
could be major promotion of the film as so many people use these kinds of
websites for surveillance and social interaction each day, and it is likely to
spark interest in the film, and build a new, and wider audience. The Hunger Games already had an
established fan base due to the film being a film adaption of The Hunger Games
novel by Suzanne Collins. This means that to appeal to a wider audience, new
forms of advertising and promotion on websites that have an extremely open and
wide audience will attract new types of viewers for the films.
User Generated Content could be seen as an important link
between media platforms for The Hunger
Games, Lesbian Vampire Killers and Sucker
Punch.
Each of these films has User Generated Content online. For
example, on YouTube, there are a number of different fan made trailers and
edited clips of the film for Sucker
Punch. These trailers give the fans view of the film, include what they
believe to be the best parts of the film, and could be considered a way of the
institution advertising the film for free and from a different perspective to
the original adverts and trailers. For
the Hunger Games especially, there are lots and lots of fan made websites, for
example ‘www.thehungergamesfansite.com’. This website is set out in a similar layout
to a blog page, and often updates with information such as The Hunger Games
facts, shots from the film, character profiles and things you didn’t know about
The Hunger Games. This is similar to the official Australian Lesbian Vampire Killers website which
has information such as character profiles, an interactive comic strip of the
plot and downloads etc. As these websites have included pages such as character
profiles, this allows the audience who are new to the film, and have not
watched it or done any background research, get to know the characters in the
film, understand the plot, and start to build personal relationships and
personal identities due to getting to know the characters better. User
Generated Content for all three of these films ranges from e-media, broadcast
and print. As there is such a wide range of UGC on all three media platforms,
these links are important as it ensures that no matter what the audience are
researching or looking at, UGC is accessible, whether it is found on websites
such as YouTube or Google images etc.
Film reviews are beneficial to both the audience and the institution
as they provide a wide range of opinions from different types of institutions
and people. For example, The Empire gave
The Hunger Games a 4/5 star rating
and said ‘As
thrilling and smart as it is terrifying. There have been a number of big-gun
literary series brought to screen over the past decade. This slays them all.’
However, a review from Yahoo Movies describes the film as ‘simply a bad teenage
movie.’ Lesbian Vampire Killers also received
very negative reviews, with a review describing the film as ‘profoundly awful’
and an ‘instantly forgettable lads’ mag farce.’ These types of film reviews are
especially useful for the audience, as it is often important to find out other
opinions on the films before spending time and money watching them. They are
also important to the institution as they can see what the audience enjoyed
about the film, and what they weren’t so sure of, so they can understand what
the audience’s expectations are from these types of films, and what they need
to do to fulfil their expectations.
Overall, products from my case film case study, such as
social networking, user generated content and film reviews all make links with
other platforms which are beneficial to the audience and the institution in
order to ensure that the film is advertised well, attracts new and wider
audiences, and ensures that fans get the most out of the films they can, with
things such as fan websites where they can connect with other fans.
