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Star Wars: The Force Awakens essay 1
"Successful media production depends as much upon marketing and distribution to a specific audience as they do upon good production practices"
I do agree with the statement that successful film production does
depend upon marketing and distribution equally that it depends upon good
production practices. For a film to make money and achieve a good profit,
marketing and distribution has to be done well and needs to be delivered to a
wide range of audiences to attract a large population of viewers from all areas
of the globe and all age groups as well.
Unlike the other Star Wars Films, The Force Awakens had Disney Motion
Pictures in charge of all marketing and distribution. Disney determined what
screens the film was shown on and what marketing took place. With Disney now
being the owners of LucasFilm and having all rights over the Star Wars films
this brought in larger audience than the other films had done. Disney is the
biggest film production company in the world and is very popular in many
households across the planet resulting in so many people becoming intrigued
about ‘The Force Awakens’ even more so than they were about the previous films.
An 88 second teaser trailer was released on the 28th November which
received 58.2 million views and also got critics talking which would naturally
increase views and get more people talking about the film. This gave fans the
chance to see the first glimpse of the new film without giving away the story
line or main characters which were later released on Topps trading cards on
December 11th. The official
trailer was released in the next year in October 2015 with a vast number of
views reaching 128 million views in the first 24 hours which broke box office
records. This came alongside a poster designed and created by Drew Struzan. In November 2015 the official Japanese trailer
was released gaining even more worldwide coverage.
Disney put in a lot of money to all aspects of the marketing,
especially in Japan and china where life size models of storm troopers were
built to go in shops and in shopping malls, however more marketing was spread
across the UK, The US and Canada. Vanity Fair magazine released a cover dedicated
to the new film. Disney made collaborations and tie-ins with many companies,
one being Google where fans could change their Google home screens to the
‘dark’ or ‘light’ side. This was a very clever idea as so many millions of
people use the internet every day and would see this collaboration. It would
also get fans and children/teenagers excited as they could engage in the film
and become a part of it. Disney also collaborated with Lego to created figures
of characters that children could buy and play with, further expanding the
audience variety as many children would have been too young to see the film in
the theatres. Also keen fans could have bought the figures as collectables.
Disney also paired with Hasbro to create McDonalds toys to get more and more
people viewing the merchandise. Of course Disney world had its own section
dedicated to Star Wars which would have attracted thousands alone. Force Friday
was the biggest day for the all merchandise as it is where all the
collaborations were sold and where fans could meet Rey and Finn. Madame
Tussauds introduced wax figures to their collection also.
Another major night that gained a huge amount of media attention was
the premiere for the film that was hosted to over 5000 guests in Los Angeles.
Disney Motion Pictures were also in charge of distributing the film. Disney
have been doing this since 1953 with all of their previous films. Star Wars:
The Force Awakens was shot on 35mm and 65mm film to achieve the authenticity of
the original three films however it had to be distributed digitally as there
are hardly any cinemas that are able to show film in on their screens as they
have all been converted to digital. Film is extremely expensive to distribute and
can cost up to $7.5 million to distribute a big film to America. Digital costs
90% less than film does making it more feasible to distribute the film to more countries
around the world. The Force Awakens was distributed to 44 countries across the globe;
this was more achievable as there was only a hard drive to transport over. In
the USA the film was shown on 4134 screens, 3300 of which were 3D. In the UK it
was shown on 4143 screens including 3D, premium large screens and IMAX. In the
UK, Vue cinema sold 45,000 tickets in the first 24 hours and sold £6.5 million
worth in the first week.
The film had to be shown on a large number of screens making sure
everyone of all ages could watch the film. Star Wars is a four quadrant film
covering male and female under 25s and male and female over 25. Marketing for
The Force Awakens was so complex as it is a mainstream worldwide film meaning
the marketing had to reach out to all age groups however this did increase the
profit as more people could see the film.
The new Star Wars film had a budget of £306,000,000 and also received a
government grant of £31.6 million. This meant that production practices could
afford to be the best they possibly could. Having Disney as the name behind the
film and also having JJ Abrams who is an A-list director, directing the film
this was a good basis for the film. Lawrence Kasdan helped write the scripts
for The Force Awakens, this also made links with the original films as Kasdan
had written the scripts for Empire Strikes Back. There was nostalgia with the
last film as they brought back original characters which would allow the
audience o relate to the previous films and would maintain the film’s original fan
base. There were some unknown actors that starred in the film such as Daisy Ridley
and John Bodega who didn’t have links to other films, for example, Daniel Radcliffe
always being associated with the Harry Potter Films meaning the audience didn’t
associate them with also films and really engaged with them as characters in
the film. The new actors were creating a new start to the franchise similarly
to how Harrison Ford did with the original films. Abrams cut and shortened the
film during pre production as he wanted to keep it simple after complaints had
been made about the previous films being too complicated and looking fake.
Pinewoods studio was used to shoot the film and be the set for a
majority of the film. Pinewoods is known to be the best studio in the world and
is also where many other big films franchises are filmed such as the James Bond
films. The budget allowed for the producers and cast of the film to out to different
location all around the world to create the best look for the films without
just creating sets in the studios. Deserts in Aub Dhabi was where the first
scene were shot. This allowed for a realistic set up and where life size models
could be used. Disney wanted to build as much of the sets as they could as well
as using CGI to make the sets look as real as possible instead of using SFX for
everything. The Millennium Falcon was built by hand to give it the realistic
effect they wanted. Techniques such as ILM were created by George Lucas
specifically for the film as there is not SFX like it.
Worldwide, Star Wars: The Force Awakens made a profit of £258 billion
proving that marketing and distribution is heavily relied upon equally to
production practices. The film is still making money today and has past making
a higher profit than the previous films. All of the Star Wars films have been big
films with big budgets however not all films have to have a big budget and A-
list directors to make a profit. For example, The Kings Speech had a very small
budget of $90 million dollars yet managed to make a profit of $859million. This
demonstrates what good marketing and distribution can do.
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