32 mark essay

How far does the platform on which they are consumed determine the construction of media products in your cross media study? Support your answer with reference to the three media products you researched?

In my cross media study I researched three products, Ill Manors, A field in England and The Inbetweeners. In this essay I will cover how these films were constructed based on the platform they were consumed on. This involves looking at the main three platforms, Print, E-media and Broadcast. It will also be beneficial for me to look over the audiences of these platforms and link them to different media theory.

In my opinion I think that to a certain extent the construction of Ill Manors products was largely influenced by the E-media platform. This is because Ill Manors core target audience is roughly between the ages 15-21 (the youth) and because the main consumers of E-media are part of this demographic it makes it easier to promote their content. Examples of media products that have been constructed from the large use of E-media is the Ill Manors tag London campaign which used Twitter, a social networking site based online, to ask its audience to give their opinions and views on how they felt about issues raised in the film; this included the conservative governments ideologies. They would then take some of these tweets and display them around famous landmarks around London using projectors. This allowed their voices to be heard and at the same time created some synergy as this method was also used to promote the film Ill Manors. The tag London campaign is an example of user generated content and this allows an audience of a media text to become actively involved in the creation of media products. However, social networking campaigns like the Tag London one won’t always work for every film such as a Field In England, this is because of the codes and conventions of the genre of the film and its target audience. Although, different media platforms attract different audiences so a Field in England’s target audience may be more active in consuming print media 

rather than E-media.

In E-media I believe that various different people are active consumers of it but not all people take it in, in the same way, for example it would depend on demographics and psychographics. For example, if people that are part of the struggler category may just consume any media which links to the hypodermic needle model but people part of the succeeder category  may view specific types of media which is specifically aimed at them and have conscious opinions about it and not just believe everything they see. This is why A Field in England’s E-media products were constructed differently because they had a specific target in mind and knew it wouldn’t reach everyone and that not everyone would be interested in It as it more creative like an Art house production. A field in England had a website in which they included exclusive interviews and behind the scenes footage you could only view online. Audiences that this would attract would be people in socio-economic category of the ABC1s and would allow them to interact with the website leaving comments and feedback exclaiming their opinions about the film.

A film that is similar to A field in England in an institutional way, The Inbetweeners, likewise had a weak E-media campaign even though their core target audience are avid consumer of media online. However, The Inbetweeners generated a lot more box office revenue then Ill Manors and a Field in England combined as the Inbetweeners franchise was already a well-established franchise. But this does lead us on to question the effectiveness of using E-media to help construct media products as although it is cheaper for the institution they must successfully be able to reach and interact with their audiences.

E-media is a much more modern and new platform on which audiences consume media and this effects the type of audiences using the platform. Print is probably one of the more traditional media platforms so you expect a film such as a Field in England to dominate this section, however Ill Manors had a strong presence in the Print platform even though most of its core target audience wouldn’t be involved or interested in this side of the media. However, the film Ill Manors wasn’t only just promoting the films purely for the entertainment side of things, the director Plan B (Ben Drew) did have other, more political intentions for the film and wanted to portray his community he grew up in and how like many others had been neglected. Plan B featured in many magazines and articles including The Daily Mail which is a very left wing newspaper so would be very against Plan B and is ideologies, however The metro which is mainly available for people using public transport and is aimed at people that fall into the struggler psychographic, they would be the ones who are more supportive of Plan B and his views. On the same media platform we can again see that there are many different viewpoints and a binary opposition has been created, this links to the theory from Levi Strauss, this is because we can see a clear conflict of ideas from people who are left wing and right wing (politically).

Another example of print which was consumed was the film posters for each of the films. Film posters show us a lot and include distinct features that help attract it to the its respective target audience. They use generic codes and conventions to do this. On the Ill Manors film poster it uses a number of generic codes and conventions, here are some of them, includes a ; Central image, slogan/catchphrase, director credits and partners/sponsors. What makes it unique is the directors name/ brand Plan B (Ben drew) being pasted all around the poster. This reinforces his name causing constant branding and this important for Plan B as that is his brand he is in a way selling himself. This, however creates synergy as Plan B the brand can help sell this film alone because of this established fan base. A field in England similarly follows the generic codes and conventions which film posters usually contain. But just like Ill Manors poster included the name of the director, A Field in England also did, the director’s name is Ben Wheatley and he is an award winning director who as himself could also sell the film because of his popularity. Also audiences who are interested in the type of genre A field in England is similar to may recognise and be drawn to the film poster if they were to see this directors name.  On the other hand, as The Inbetweeners is an already well established brand it doesn’t  need to base this sort of print around their director as he isn’t the one that would be selling the movie the brand can create synergy in itself to do so.

Finally, we come on to the broadcast section to see if this platform is in any what successful in influencing the creation of media products. It Is important to mention that Broadcast is also a traditional media platform like print. Ill Manors was very successful here as it appealed to its core target audience very well by conducting interviews with popular youth channels like SBTV but they also branched out and looked at lectures such as the Tedx ones. This enabled Plan B to reach a new audience demographic including people in the ABC1 demographic which include people who are not educated in his world. The construction of this media product can be linked to the uses and gratifications theory by blumler and Katz who stated that different audiences perceive different readings of text in their own ways. This Tedx audience who could be part of the succeder and explorer psychographic would get receive a totally different experience to that of which Plan B’s core target audience of strugglers as they would want more education and knowledge that’s why Plan B would need to think carefully about his speech and how he tells his story so that he can make it somewhat un/relatable to his new audience.   

In conclusion, I think that to a large extent the platform on which media is consumed determines the construction of its products as looking at the evidence above you can see that its audience have a big part to play in determining how the institution targets them and how they want to receive it.