How is Media Convergence important for audiences and Institutions?

 

Without media convergence in some cases it is impossible for a film to succeed within the box office and towards the audience. The most important thing about media convergence is to engage the audience, and keep them up to date with the films; marketing, distribution and the exhibitions of the film. A good example of this is the production of the film Kick-Ass.

Kick Ass was extremely publicised before the film even began; there were numerous posters, which were splat around various cities which were ‘certainly an incentive for collectors excited about the movie’.

 ‘Teaser Trailers’, were released with different batches, the first batch was of the main characters such as ‘Kick Ass’, ‘Hit Girl’ and ‘Big Daddy’. By creating media convergence immediately it created a steady stream of publicity on movie blogs, that kept the movie being talked about by the audience in the time of filming and the release dates.

There was an official website of Kick-Ass which contained all of the trailers, allowing be embedding and sharing onto many social networking sites. It also suggested that you could ‘BUY TICKETS NOW’, along with many other options, such as, the list of theatres shown at, sneak peeks of filming, and to finish off a link to all reviews that have been made about the film. This makes the audience feel like they have ‘backstage’ seats, and can track and follow the films every move.

All of the characters had their own FaceBook page summing up the characters personality and some background information, which also had links to competitions and marketing websites. On some of the websites it has a ‘store’ section so you could buy some of the merchandise sold, such a t-shirts and other gimmicks.

Kick Ass only cost £30 million to make and Matthew Vaughn contributed £10 million towards the making of the film. If the budget were to be bigger, for example £150 million, bigger Hollywood actors like Leonardo Di Caprio, (instead of Aaron-Taylor Johnson) could star in the film. Possible problems that may take away the originality of the film is that the certificate rating will have to be lowered and the amount of violence and use of language will have to be cut or completely stripped out of the script, leaving the film with a plot and celebrities, not a good storyline and the main features of a film within Kick Ass being taken away. Brad Pitt also helped co produce the film, which also brings up the rating for the film making people wanting to desperately see the film as such well known celebrities and directors have been influenced with this film.

Kick-Ass the comic book and the film were written at exactly the same time 'so it was very sort of collaborative, organic process'. With the comic being a huge success, the producers chose to make and release a video game of the film kick ass. 'Unlike the comic book and movie, the video game story line introduces all three characters from the start. When Kick-Ass first tries to be a superhero, the thugs beat him. Hit Girl and Big Daddy appear and attack the thugs. The game begins after Kick-Ass is freed from the thugs. The circumstances of the storyline differ depending on which character the player selects. For instance in the film Frank D'Amico's men kidnap Kick-Ass and Big Daddy. In the game's storyline, this would not be possible if the player selects Big Daddy as his or her character, so in that event the game would instead have Hit Girl be kidnapped'

The game was released on iphone/ipod/ipad at a cost of $2.99. Although this could be be classed as expensive for a low quality game. The game was believed to be not very successful, but it still raised the Kick-Ass success level up, as most people had seen this film being advertised. On posters, trailers, comic book, and then the game.

By having all of this marketing, it gets the audience talking about the film, causing more and more people to be curious about the film, and how it will turn out once its released. The media production company have cleverly done this by already have a fan base before the release of the film.

On the other hand Attack the Block wasn’t a well known film and wasn’t a huge success with the box office, as it was extremely high in people’s expectations after the last success of ‘Hot Fuzz’ and ‘Shaun of the dead’. The film was created on a low budget, with the low key props and special effects, it almost made the film seem realistic. The production company had hardly done any marketing leaving the film to be unknown, it didn’t really help that the characters involved weren’t celebrities. By having celebrities in a film can be more successful due to the audience’s affection for a certain actor.