‘Media institutions are essentially profit driven’
Evaluate how commercial pressures have had an impact on the products in your cross media study.
Support your answer with reference to a range of examples from three media platforms.
In this piece of writing I will evaluate the commercial pressures that are put on films for them to make a profit. My case study involves the texts, Hunger, Shame and 12 Years a Slave.
Due to film making becoming more of a business than about the art, companies are not willing to take as many risks as they do not want to lose money investing in an unknown film story when they can easily release a known product that they know will make them money, therefore it is important for independent films to make
The Searchlight President said that the rating was “A badge of honour” so as you can see the commercial implications of film making did not have an impact on the film as even the man who was funding agreed that it was okay for it to have such a high age rating.
When we look at my other case study 12 Years a Slave we can see the full use of every aspect of advertising, this is because it was McQueen’s first major Hollywood film, it had a humungous budget put behind it compared to his other films and because of this we can see there were more advertising options used for the film. Firstly the film was freely advertised with a broadcast manner, as because of the films topic, Slavery, it gained a lot of free press from famous black celebrities such as Oprah who was 26.3 million followers, Kanye West 11.1 million Twitter followers and Sean Combs with 10.2 million Twitter followers. 12 Years a Slave also gained notoriety within the film community as it won an Oscar which is probably the most publicised and marketable award, we can see that the publisher of the film was profit-driven in this scenario as the films international release was heavily delayed