The importance of cross media convergence to audience and institution.

With the industry of film being a large money maker by itself you would think it would be making enough profits on its own without help from a variety of other industries. But that’s not the case as the industry actually need media convergence as it greatly boosts profits by getting the name of your film and characters out into the world. Cross media convergence helps with distributing and marketing but most importantly it enlarges the audience of a film.

The British film industry is struggling to make its profits as the companies don’t have the money to distribute their films onto a range of markets such as subscription TV, cinema, and DVD. This then creates a vicious circle as they can’t make profits and therefore the same will happen to the next film they produce. Cross media convergence and synergy is vital in getting a range of viewers (four quadrants) as it can make money through the films name or contents. However this can’t be done by the companies if they don’t have the money to get the film out there in the first place. Also to get viewers you need to have the right content in your film, so without the money, technologies and actors as well as synergy, directors won’t be able to use cross media convergence in the production of the British films. This is shown by the king’s speech, a film made in Britain that cleverly used trailers in the UK and the US which were different. The British trailer just simply showed the film as it was but the American one had sound effects as they like them alongside the very stereotypical British theme.

Another way to use cross media convergence to advertise is like in the Batman poster whereas Batman is a 15, children can’t watch it but they still released a poster aimed at children to broaden the target audience. So they released a poster where he is drinking milk. Another example of this is Kick Ass where before the film which was a 12A or 15 was released they did a comic book about the characters which younger people who couldn’t spend money on seeing the film could read and still enjoy the story. As the story of Kick Ass wasn’t well known the comic also got its name out to the target market of the actual film. These are films both produced using American money which is why they can afford extra marketing and to appeal to the entire four quadrant of the audience. 

Synergy marketing is a very big part of marketing films and getting them available to the four quadrants and to people worldwide. An example I have stated already is the batman poster where he uses body by milk to get the younger audience to know the film. Body by milk has also done posters with other films and business’. To contrast this we can see a film like The Kings Speech which uses normal posters to advertise as they only have a smaller target audience that can’t be reached any better through synergy advertising than it can through the cheaper alternative of normal advertising for the film alone. 

The king’s speech uses some cross media convergence in its posters. This cross media convergence is that they have designed their posters in such a way so that the wording is set out like the keep calm and carry on posters that are very well known and very British. The reason for this poster form is to bring in a larger audience from around the world. For example like their trailers the King’s speech posters follow a stereotypically British theme which helps market and sell the film to Americans. This is not something that a film like this is England can use in its advertising to America as it is not a stereotypically British theme. 

Social media also plays a large part in this as most films have facebook and twitter accounts along with their actors and directors. They also have things such as blogs where they blog during the production stage of films. This something we have seen for a long time in things like the added features on our DVDs which show us deleted scenes and things such as how something was done. This is England also used social networking sites along with MSN to make the film such a success, so this is in a way free advertising for the film that much of the target market have frequent access to. 

This has shown how film distributors adapt their marketing techniques to suit the area of the world or part of the four quadrants so that the film is more likely to sell. Although I have focused on synergy marketing film companies also use other media like toys and clothing products to get their the product out to a variety of different people.