“Successful media products depend as much upon marketing and 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 agree with this statement as the majority of films that make a large, successful profit, have good distribution companies working with their films. A film needs distribution to make a decent profit as the largest films take advantage of the wide variety of formats that films are now available on. Large, successful distribution companies such as Twentieth Century Pictures, work alongside big blockbuster films so that both are able to make the most amount of money possible. For example 'The Avengers' was released in 2012, directed by Joss Whedon, the film was distributed by Walt Disney and Paramount Pictures. The films all A List star cast and the fact that the two distributors are some of the largest in Hollywood and in the world meant that The Avengers was able to gross over $1.5 billion. The equally as large budget of $220 million was completely overtaken. Films with smaller distribution companies, directors, budgets and actors regularly make less money than others. An example of film that didn’t make its money back is Dredd, the 2012 the remake of the British comic series only made $41 million at the worldwide box office. The film was distributed by Entertainment Film Distributors, which, in comparison to Paramount, is a small distribution company. The film was released on fewer formats and didn’t manage to make any of its $45 million budget back. As well as the distribution of the film the media productions helped in the failure of this movie. The films low budget only allowed for limited special effects, meaning visually the film wasn’t very impressive. The cast wasn’t A list and the niche audience all contributed to the low gross this film made. This goes to prove that if a film wants to make a profit, or come close to making any of its money back then it needs to get distribution from a large, famous company and allow a big enough budget to create good special effects and get an appearance rom at least one big name. An exception to the rule of fancy media productions and high budgets is the Grand Budapest Hotel. Wes Anderson’s 2014 comedy had a budget of $31 million and managed to get a gross of $59,076,019. This film succeeded due to the nature of the actors starring in the film. Wes Anderson is a renowned Hollywood director and managed to get many A list stars to feature in his film, because of this the film managed to gain a larger audience. This low budget film goes against the rules of a film having to have large special effects to gain a large gross.

The use of marketing of films works in the same ways as distribution does. A film needs to have a good marketing campaign if it wants to be able to do well at the world box office.  Films spend a lot of money on marketing to ensure that their film can do the best it possibly can and create the largest total gross possible. For example, the entire budget of the Avengers was $220 million, over $100 million of this large budget was spent purely on marketing. This is a good example of how marketing is a key factor in the success of a blockbuster movie. Even lower budget films are helped by a successful marketing scheme. For example The Grand Budapest created a very successful marketing campaign. Including extras included with the DVD and Blu Ray disks. The films trailers, posters and other marketing features were created to help sell the film to different audiences worldwide. Different forms of marketing are used by different films to attempt to draw large crowds to see the film. Social media is commonly used by marketing schemes to further advertise the movie. Sites such as twitter and Facebook are used to spread the word and share clips or trailers from the film. Marketing is a crucial part of creating a large gross for the production. If the marketing of a film is unsuccessful then the film is likely to be also. How much a film is marketed or spread around allows the film to become more successful.

I agree that distribution and the use of different media productions is a crucial part in the success of a film as without these two factors, a film would be less  advertised and less developed, meaning less people would go and see the movie.