First Essay (Improvements) Successful media products depend as much upon marketing, distribution to a specific audience as they do upon good production practices.

Successful media products depend as much upon marketing, distribution to a specific audience as they do upon good production practices.
To what extent would you agree with this statement, within the media area you have studied?




I believe that a successful film must have lots of things; including a specific target audience, a good marketing campaign and good production practices, I believe that a film shouldn't be classed as successful based on only the amount of money it makes, but also on the number of awards the film wins such as Oscars or Grammys. I also believe that they number of awards is important, not just the quality of them, Mad Max Fury Road got 3 awards, where as ExMachina only got 2 however the awards Mad Max got where more impressive as they where Hollywood film awards for Production Designer of the Year and Make-Up of the Year. which are harder to win because there are lots of films made in Hollywood with a larger budget.




The latest Mad Max film (Mad Max: Fury Road) included all of these features, where as ExMachina had some but not all of them this could be down to the huge budget gap between the films, Mad Max had a Hollywood sized budget of $150 million where as ExMachina had a smaller budget of only $15 million. Mad Max also had big stars in it such as Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron, who can draw people to the film, if they liked their previous work or know their name from the media. To contrast this the British stand-alone film ExMachina stared only two less-well know actors (Domnhall Gleeson and Alice Vikenda) who are going to be staring in the new Disney's new Star Wars film so will soon be massive stars as they will be in one of the biggest films of 2015, this could mean that they where chosen for the Star Wars cast because ExMachina was a successful film and they enjoyed their acting within the film.






Both Mad Max and ExMachina had a script, however Mad Max started by story boarding the whole movie before creating a script so they where thinking about how the movie was going to look and feel before they even came up with the dialog this shows that they wanted the movie to be visually appealing from the start which ensured that the movie had good stunts and was targeted at people who like to see lots of action. ExMachina on the other hand used the traditional script method, to make sure it included everything it needed.


The idea for Mad Max: Fury road came from the previous three Mad Max films and continued the story onwards, this made it so that people who had seen the other films could see what happned next which attracts lots of people who have seen/enjoyed the other three movies. The concept of ExMachina came from a book called "the beach" which was written by Alex Garland the director of ExMachina. The beach is about isolation and despair, which could explain why the film is set in such an isolated area of the world and why certain characters are so isolated.




Both Mad Max and ExMachina where filmed in 2D however Mad Max was also originally shot in 3D which was cancelled and the 3D was added after shooting using new technology. ExMachina was only available in 2D so didn't offer cinema goers a choice to see it in 2D or 3D, where as MadMax offered them to see it in either 2D or 3D broadening their market in an unconventional way.




Mad Max was directed by George Miller who is known for several other films containing lots of action including 28 days later, 28 weeks later and the other Mad Max movies because he is well known as a good director people who liked his previous work might want to come and see his latest movie. ExMachina on the other hand was directed by Alex Garland, this is unconventional as this is his first time directing a movie so he isn't known by the public so wont really attract people to the film. A well know director can attract a large audience of people because they liked their previous films or because they are well known in the media.




ExMachina used a very clever marketing campaign to stir up attention and excitement about the film, they used social media in a controversial way to get free marketing as they post it online then people share it and then people who see that share it and it spreads all over the world quickly. The main marketing tool they used was they put a picture of the robot from the film on tinder a dating website and then continued to trick people to think they where talking to a person when it was really a robot, this was done at the south by south east festival in Texas which is a well known for lots of cool bands and attracts a large audiences. Although this marketing campaign was unconventional it was a success because it made a profit at the box office and spent very little of their budget on advertising and marketing.