1. Institutions
George Mckillop

2. Institutions and Audiences
In Media purposes, the producer and director always
needs to be aware of the aspects that will affect the
money that the film will make. The main industry
practices that need to be thought about are:
• Production
• Distribution
• Marketing
• Ownership
• Synergy
• Proliferation
• Technology

3. Media Institutions:
Media will use the ideas of institution very
carefully, and this is for specific reasons.
Main, dominating companies all have media
conglomerates, and this is effectively the
combination of two or more companies of
different types, and they will involve
subsidiaries.

4. Conglomerates:
By looking at subsidiary examples of media
institutions, it is seen that conglomerates are clear
examples of cross-media ownership, due to the fact
that one company will own media outlets that
produce different types of media. Rupert Murdoch
is a strong example of how he can owns several
different companies in different areas, but he has a
strong influence on important asepcts of
media, due to the way that he is able to mediate his
outlets in order to effectively convey a specific
opinion and bias.

5. Independents:
Producers will sometimes work outside of major
studies, with smaller companies trying to get
funding from larger companies in order to help
with distribution for the film. At times when
directors and companies will fail to gain large
budgets in order to create a film, they will gain
extra funding in order to create a better product
that ultimately will gain more revenue and gross
profit.

6. Synergy:
An example of synergy is:
• Vivendi Universal make a film in Universal Studios.
• It releases the film’s soundtrack on Polygram, one of its
record labels.
• The tracks can be bought online at MP3.com, one of its
internet companies.
• The film can be downloaded on Vivendi Telecom phones.
• The film is then shown in its Odeon cinema chain.
Owning all of the different assets makes it cheaper for a
company to make a large production without having to spend
as much money but the product ultimately will be of a good
quality. Distributing the film and marketing is a much cheaper
process subsequently, enabling companies to make more
money than they originally would anyway.

8. Influence of Technology:
People are now able to watch films in a number of new
ways, with mobile phones, mp4 players, portable
consoles and also laptops. This means that multimedia
is a lot more important, and is another thing
considered when institutions come together to create a
production. Games consoles are able to view films, as
well as personal computers and home cinema systems
providing an optimum service for extra revenue.

9. Industry Overview:
Media institutions include Hollywood studios primarily, hence
signifying why the Classic Hollywood narrative structure is such a
dominant and common narrative that is used, because it creates the
most money conventionally. Smaller budget films, typically British films
will generally make modest returns, and this means that without
sufficient funding, a massive gross profit is never reached. B films are
known as low-budget commercial films that may not look fantastic
graphically, but produce a decent job, and are usually innovative and
different to the general expensive made film, due to the low budget.
There is ambiguity in the sense that good films can still be created
without much money, but storylines are lot more original and
creative, but they are flawed in the sense that they are not necessarily
pleasing on the eye.