Essay!

AS Level Media G322: Section B:
Institutions and Audiences


Media Production Is Dominated By Global Institution, Which Sell Their Products And Services To National Audiences. To What Extent Do You Agree With This Statement?



In this essay I'm going to evaluate the global media institution, and if they sell their Products and services to national audiences.
I agree with the statement that media production is dominated by global institutions, which sell their products and services to national audiences.
They influence and preside over what film audiences go to see at the cinema. The most films we see on the cinema are American films, sometimes with British input, and rarely are they British.

I remember the last film I watched. It was a nice one. Or the last time I was with my friends in the cinema. We all did like the movie. But actually they both are American, and neither British, nor German, which is my home country. When I go through the list of my favorite films, it doesn’t surprise me that they all have one thing in common: they are American.
Only that makes me already see, that media production is most dominated by American companies.
If you look for the companies that producted your favorite films, you might find film production companies such as DreamWorks, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures or Warner Bros. Pictures.
They have displaced other film production companies like the British or German one for a long time in the most cinemas. Because of the big amount of money, American companies can spend in their movies, the quality is better than British companies can afford. So the most people, just like me, started to watch American movies. This made the chance for other film industries even smaller: they don't earn enough money any more to put in their movies, so the average person decides to watch American movies.
What a lot of people overlook is the art that is often present in British movies, other to the American ones, which are average so that everyone will like them. British movies have a lot of artistic small details and often a more unique storyline than the adjusted American ones. Examples for these movies bring companies like Film4, Working Title or HandMade Films.
For example Film4, which was a successful company in the past had to cut its budget and staff significantly in 2002, due to mounting losses. It was re-integrated into the drama department of channel4.
Anyway, Film4 produced some of the most famous British movies of our time, for example "This is England", that won the Special Jury Award on the Rome Film Festival, or "Slumdog Millionaire", that made $377,910,544 worldwide. But even Slumdog Millionaire isn't a totally 'British movie, it is a co-production with Fox Searchlight Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Pathé and Celador Films.
Working Title was also a British Company. But now it is one of the biggest examples that the American companies disrupt the British film industry. Working Title had to distribute and is now also partly American. It is also known for having a limited number of employees. Working Title Films did produce famous British or partly British films like "Four Weddings and a Funeral", that was a big success in the USA and made $250 million, and "Shaun of the Dead", that made $3.3 million.
The third company I named here is HandMade Films. It’s one of the rare examples of a still completely British film company. Through a series of sales, and acquisitions, the company now known as Handmade Plc owns all the rights and assets of the original HandMade Films Ltd. HandMade Films produced films like "Monty Python's Life of Brian", "Time Bandits", "Withnail" and "I and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels".



Despite these wonderful British movies, even the most British people still prefer American movies. The wide storylines of American movies are well known to have something in theirselfs that attracts every kind of audience, unaffected to which age group, gender, time area, taste, lifestyle or location. In contrast to these "everyone-films", the most British movies address only one kind of audience per movie, because they are still very inimitable and focus only on one style per movie.
This causes that the amount of audiences becomes smaller and smaller. The most British people don't even think about how bad this influences the British film industry and that we have to hope that it won't get erasured by the dominating global institutions.

Another threat, but for all film institutions, also the global ones is the digital cinema. The internet is growing with it's possibilities for downloading, live streaming, file sharing, enabled through piracy. You can find the most movies at least one week after they started in cinema in the internet for free. Causing not enough checking, people all over the world watch films in which the film industry invested a lot of money what they hoped to get back, for free. The DVD sales are on decrease, only one person has to buy a film and can share it with the whole world. Less people go to the cinema. If this won't be stopped in future, film institutions won't earn enough money anymore to produce movies. What will happen with the film industry then, is still written in the stars, all we know is that it will influence the British as well as the American Film institutions.
I think, if the British film industry wants to survive, they have to change and start work as, as well as with the American Film industries. Me and my friends, we will never went to the cinema to watch a British film as they are, just because we all have a different taste of films, and British Films don’t accord to all our expectations the same time.
Another thing is that we, as audiences should try to save the film industries through actually paying for movies and also trying to watch British films.

Jil Nitsche