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.