Audience and Institution Practice Essay

Question: In relation to the media area you have studied, discuss the ways audience consumption has changed over time.

Media Area: Film

Everybody watches movies in their own way. Some people watch it the old fashioned way through movie theaters. I like to watch movies at home. Due to new technologies, there are so many popular, different, and new ways to consume films. The three ways that most people have watched films over time are through movie theaters, DVDs, and digital services.

Watching films at movie theaters has been around since 1905. While it is very old it has stayed around for a long time. This is mostly due to the fact that going to the movies is the only way to see the movie right when it comes out. I believe that if streaming services got movies as fast as movie theaters did then everybody would just watch the movie at home. In the 1940s the percentage of the US that went to the movie theater on a weekly basis is approximately 80%. The percentage of people who watch movies in the theater in 2018 is 13%. We can see here that through about a 70 year period the percentage of people who attend movie theaters dropped about 67%. This is due to the technological advances made in film consumption. Since there are newer, better, and easier ways to watch movies people go to the theaters less and less. We can see this again by an even more recent statistic. In 2002 approximately 1.5 billion tickets were sold in the US and Canada. Compared to in 2019 where only 1.2 billion tickets were sold in the US and Canada. With an ever-increasing population, you would expect that number to go up, but it doesn’t due to better alternatives to movie theaters. What should be taken from all of this information is that because of new technologies more and more people are straying away from movie theaters.

The first ways of home movies were made available in the US starting in the ’80s. At this time it was mostly VHS or video home system that was being distributed. In 1997 the DVD player and discs became available and people saw how much better it is than VHS. In 2003 the DVD made VHS almost obsolete. A notable company that saw the ability to make money off of video rental was Blockbuster. They first emerged in 1985 around when VHS first came out and the founder, David Cook, saw an ability to make money off of renting videos and he used his money to invest in a business that would be very successful for a long time. We can see that once the DVD became famous in 2003, by 2004 blockbuster peaked as a company with over 9,000 stores in the US. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and the business announced that they were closing down in 2010. This happened due to the number of competitors in the streaming service world. People realized that it is easier for them to watch the movie from home instead of having to go out and buy it. One DVD service that is still around today is Redbox. Redbox acts as a sort of movie vending machine. It is very simple, you select a movie, put in your money, then the machine gives you the movie, easy as that. This type of service is very successful because of its convenience. These DVD services fell behind in the movie industry due to new technologies taking over the industry.

The new technologies talked about above include online streaming services, illegal downloading, and pretty much anything that isn’t disc-based. Most people love digital movie services due to the fact that this is the easiest way to watch a movie. As of 2018, a total of 54% of people enjoy watching a movie at their home rather than at a movie theater. While only 13% of people prefer watching a movie at the movie theater. Online streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, and Disney+ are very famous and most people use at least one of them. All that’s needed is a monthly subscription and you have access to hundreds of different movies and TV shows. Another way people watch movies these days is through illegal downloading or pirating movies. I myself have even watched movies this way. If a movie looks interesting, and it is not in theaters anymore but not on streaming services yet, I try and find it online for free. Today’s technology has made it very easy for almost anyone to access any movie you want for free. An example of how streaming services are making DVD obsolete is from a case study done on Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. The movie was released onto streaming services like amazon video before it was released on DVD. In another case study done on Spiderman: Homecoming while the movie was released in theaters the movie was also released to Xfinity Stream. This shows that the digital services are not only competing with DVD but even with the actual movie theaters. In an additional case study done on The Lego Movie Part 2, on black Friday, Warner Bros. released the first Lego Movie on YouTube in its entirety for one day only, with a trailer for The Lego Movie 2. This shows that digital services are also being used not only to distribute media but also to advertise for it. Overall, technology has made way for digital services and these services have made it easy for almost anyone to watch their favorite movie anywhere.

All in all, the different ways to watch movies over time have evolved from only going to the theaters now to an extremely wide variety of options. In my opinion, watching a movie at home on streaming services is the easiest way to do it. However, my favorite way to watch a movie is to go to the theaters because it is the most fun. Media consumption has changed over time and will change in the future, only time will tell what those changes will bring.

Extract Practice-24

The vision of the author was to show that you can’t be too careful with the people you trust. The woman has vital information that the man wants. He is trying to get the truthful information because he thinks she is lying. He believes this because he knows that the woman wants to get something out of this transaction of secrets so she very well could be lying for her own benefit. The director wants to show the thriller genre in the show so that is probably why the part where he gets mad and pins her down is added to this scene. All in all, the extracts follows suit of the thriller genre and shows a theme that can be interpreted in many different ways. 
In scene 1 of the extract, the main male character is seen trying to get the information about a bomb out of another woman. The scene starts off by the man walking in and handing the woman a piece of paper while they say no words and the room is completely silent. While this is happening the people in scene 2 are watching the people in scene 1 through a camera. The man finally starts to speak and he starts to ask her questions about the bomb. He thinks that she is lying about the information she is giving him so he starts to get mad and flips the table. She is not fazed by his action because she knows he can’t touch her. He continues to try and get the information out of her but fails and finally, he snaps and pins her against the wall this is when scenes 1 and 2 merge, and the people from scene 2 go to get the man to stop. Scene 1 also shows the viewers many camera angles and movements. One example of this would be the close-up on the woman’s face. This was used to let the viewers see close up to show how the woman is really feeling adding suspense to the story. The editing in scene 1 was mostly a shot-reverse-shot between the two people. This was used to build the characters as well as to build suspense. The sound in scene 1 was mostly dialogue between the man and the woman. This dialogue shows how calm the woman is and how angry the man is because he wants to defuse the bomb before it goes off. This adds suspense to the film because it shows how they are on a time constraint. The mis en scene was the specific type of lighting that they used. They used something called low lighting. This low lighting is a common convention in movies with genres such as this. This leads the viewers to believe that it is in the thriller genre. All together, scene 1 was used to build suspense and show the genre of the extract.
Now we will talk about scene 2 of the extract. We see the start of scene 2 where a man and a woman are watching the people in scene 1 through the camera in the room where scene 1 takes place. We see that the people in scene 2 are getting more on edge the angrier that the man in scene 1 gets. We also see that when the man in scene 1 is calm the people in scene 2 are also calm. They are emulating his emotions in a way. Once the man in scene 1 finally snaps they see this and start to run to the room to stop the man from hurting the woman. Scene 2 is shorter than scene 1 but still contains different camera angles, movements, edits, sounds, and mis en scene. To start off we have a two-shot and medium shot. Pretty much all of scene 2 was shot with these to show the two people watching the camera very intently. This was used to show the viewers that they are on edge and want to see how scene 1 unfolds. The editing in scene 2 was the split-screen. This was shown when the man in scene 1 snaps on the woman and the people from scene 2 run into the room to try and break it up. This adds suspense because it has fast-moving camera movements as well as people which contributes to the thriller aspect. The sounds used in scene 2 was mostly non-diegetic. It used eerie and suspenseful music to embellish the fact that the extract is in the genre of thriller and to keep viewers scared and interested on the edge of their seats. The mis en scene used are lighting and costumes. The lighting used was low lighting and as mentioned before is used in many thrillers. The costumes used were suits and this was to show that they are important people who are probably high up. All in all, scene 2 was used to add suspense as well as to give more information about the plot.
The director’s vision was very obvious. In this extract, his goal was to represent the thriller genre, build suspense about the storyline, and all-around to entertain the viewer. The normal conventions of the thriller genre are shown in many different examples in the extract. The different sounds, camera angles, movements, and even editing helps show how the suspense builds all the way through the extract. In conclusion, the extract is extremely entertaining for the viewer due to the different filming elements that they put into the extract that add suspense and make you curious about the story.

Final Task and CCR

In this blog, I have presented my Final Task Project as well as The Reflection questions as an interview.

Music Video and CCR

In this blog, I have presented my Music Video as well as the Reflection questions for the music video as a PowerPoint.

Re-editing

The process of re-editing has been difficult because of our situation. The main factors of change were to lower our amount of takes and to try and decrease the choppiness of the film. Unluckily, because of our circumstances and our inability to go to school, we failed to recognize how this was going to work. We made the choice to buy pinnacle studios on Kathy's computer. This was about $45 so we all paid $15. Since Kathy was the person with the editing software so she is obviously the editor for the time being. Although this situation is not ideal, we are doing our best to work it out. Amy and I obviously cannot be there to edit, so we are informing Kathy of our editing ideas so she can apply them. If Kathy needs our input on anything with the editing process she can either call or text us. In the meantime, while we wait for her to finish we will give her our honest opinions so she knows exactly how to make it better. We are very thankful that we had a personal SD card because that meant we had all of our footage. Luckily, since we found a solution for editing we did not need to be stressed about it. We also had the problem of not having an SD card reader but Kathy's computer has an SD card reader in it so that was solved easily. We by no means anticipated this situation to arise and for the world to go on lockdown, however, it has and we have to deal with the cards that were dealt to us. Although it is annoying to edit and no longer be able to do things at school, I think we are managing matters as well as we possibly can. I'm so grateful for the people I got to work with as well as my instructors for being so beneficial to our learning. Without the help of our teacher, we would not know how to do anything and would be very confused. The people that I am working with are very smart and know exactly what do do in hard times such as these. Even though this whole situation is very random and unexpected it has turned into a good learning experience. All in all, I believe that our final task is going to come out amazing and I cannot wait to see how it looks.

Summing Up Editing

In this blog, I will be talking about my journey through editing. Before the final task, my knowledge about filming was very limited. Throughout the final task, I slowly understood and learned more and more about editing. I gained this information in a couple different ways. One of them being through my groupmate's teachings. The second one being through personal experience and messing around with the software until I understood it. During our editing journey, we ran into many problems. We were unsuccessful even on our first day of editing. For some unknown reason our editing software, pinnacle studios, would not open. We tried it on multiple computers and multiple accounts but had no luck. We went through that class waiting for it to startup but it never did which led to us being very unproductive throughout the class period. After being in the class for an hour and trying almost everything the problem solved itself. The computer finally loaded up pinnacle studios. Unfortunately, it took so long for it to load we only had about 1/3 of the class left to edit. We started off right away in an attempt to get the most work done possible. Class after class this kept happening to us so we did not get a lot of editing done. We then ran into problems with the coronavirus and needing to leave school. Due to the coronavirus, we were forced to not come to school. This was a big problem for us because all of the editing materials we had were the ones the school provided us with. With the fact that we had no way to edit we had to purchase all of the editing materials ourselves. In the end, we are going to finish our editing and our final task even though we ran into many problems.

Summing Up Filming

During the filming process for our final task, we have learned and done many things. At the beginning of the process, I would say my filming skills were mediocre at best. Now my filming skills have greatly improved. I would say that I could do this again with a lot less difficulty. While we were filming, my part in the movie did not need me to be in the scenes a whole bunch. Due to this, I filmed in the movie more than I acted. This helped me develop more skills through experience. In the few scenes that I did act in, I believe I did very well. In the film, I was the kidnapper so I had to put on a very solemn and scary act. It took me a few tries at first to get into character. However, I believe that once I got into character I played my role very well. I am very excited to see how it will turn out after editing. My job was also to set up the camera and tripod before filming because I was the only one who knew how to do it correctly. What I enjoyed most about filming was learning about how real companies film and emulating them in certain ways. We emulate them by making up scenes, storyboarding, acting, filming, editing, and much more. It is really like we are creating a movie for everyone to see even though that is not the case. I also had to carry and sign out the camera and tripod at times. We ran into a few problems with people forgetting these items but in the end, we sorted it out. I truly enjoyed all the time spent filming for the final task. All in all, I believe that we were truly successful in our filming and I am excited to see the final product of our film.