Unit 1A.4 Multimedia Technolgy and Consumption

Convergence: Give a definition of this.  What form did early convergence take? And give some examples of present day technological convergence.

Convergence is the merging of mass communication outlets – print, television, radio, the Internet along with portable and interactive technologies through various digital media platforms.

2.       Interactivity: In what ways is digital technology interactive? Can you give some examples? How has this changed the way we consume the media?

Digital technology is interactive by 2 communication with media.

3.       Personalisation: How do we personalise our technology and what is the reason for this? 

Personalising our technology personalises digital products for your consumption e.g. on demand TV.

4.       Fill in the table:

	Definition	Advantages	Disadvantages
Immediacy	The quality that makes something seem important or interesting because it may be happening now (present).	Would draw the attention of the people because of what is happening.	It depends on the circumstances.
Access	Someone who has access to the media through smartphones, laptops or even the radio.	Everything you need is in one place.	Some websites may be blocked so there won’t be any access.
convenience	Something that you do to make things easier for yourself or that is intended to make things easier for you.	It is simple and easy.	If we do things the easy way when we have to do it the more difficult way we will mostly unable to do it.
portability	Something that is easily kept on a person and is able to move from one place to another with ease e.g. mobile phone.	Everything you need is in one place which is a small device that can be kept on you easily.	A portable device can get lost or stolen easily and when it’s gone it is expensive to replace.
connectivity	Constantly being connected to the media through the internet.	You have the opportunity to socialise even more with friends or family that you may not have really good connections with.

Explain what a public broadcast company is?

Explain what a public broadcast company is?

·        Public broadcasting includes radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. This means that everyone has the opportunity to see it, watch it or listen to it. Whether its radio programmes such as BBC radio 1, BBC radio2 or television channels such as ITV1, 2 or even film 4 as it’s in the favour of their choice. Furthermore, it’s paid by the government.

2) Explain what a private broadcast company is?

·        Commercial broadcasting: for-profit, usually privately owned stations, channels, networks, or services providing programming to the public, supported by the sale of time to advertisers for radio or television advertisements during or in breaks between programs, often in combination with cable or pay cable subscription fees.

3) Who is OFCOM and what they do?

·         Ofcom is the communications regulator (control) in the UK. What Ofcom is regulate the TV and radio sectors, fixed line telecoms, mobiles, postal services, plus the airwaves over which wireless devices operate.

Unit 8 Media Industies

Unit 8 Media Industries- Scott Goldsmith

Structure of media organisation

• Horizontal integration is a business strategy.  This means two companies which have similar operations and fairly any differences combing together to form a strong bond company. An example of this is Disney's acquisition of Pixar and the merger of Exxon and Mobil. The benefits of this strategic business move is that market power increases and other synergies increases as well. There are also lower reduction costs and a decrease of competition. This leads to the company being able to diverse its products or services meaning selling to a larger market and the decrease of external competition.  Although of these positives there are consequences that may occur while this procedure examples like legalities, antirust issues. This could lead to damage for the company as they will be in threat of reduction in overall value.
   
• Vertical integration is also a business strategy. This means one company operating at more than one level in the distribution channel. The advantages are it increases its potential over competition and to block competitors from gaining access to scarce resources or important markets. A manufacturing company may enter distribution or retailing to gain direct access to customer in a highly competitive market before its manufacturing competitors do.  The disadvantages is that there are capacity balancing problems, flexibility decreases and barriers are made to market entry
   
• Co-operatives is an organisation controlled and used by individuals or groups of individuals that use it services. The advantages is that individual members can take a profit out of and they also have greater buying power. Co-operatives can obtain discounts on supplies and services for their members by using the large size as leverage. Also takes advantage of government grants. There are also some disadvantages for example is that it depends on members and if members do not participate the power of cooperative suffers.  Also, the one member one vote structure also may discourage large investors, who don’t get a bigger say in decisions even though they make a larger investment.
   
• Codes of practice

Shots- Establishing shot, CU, XCU, MS, POV, OTS

Angles- Low, High, Aerial, Canteed

Movement- Panning, Tracking, Zoom reverse, Slow motion, Hand held

Colour- Contrast, Brightness, B and W, Filters, Use of symbolic colour

Composition- Rule of thirds, Layout, Text to image ratio,

Mise en scene- Dress, Costume, Hair, Make-up, Props, Setting, Body language

Lighting- Directional, Natural, Shadows, Low key, High key

Editing- Cuts (Cutaway , Jump, match) Transitions, fade to black pace

Sounding- Diegetic, Non- diegetic, Voiceover, Sound effects, dialogue, Music

• Unlawful practice 

 People do this to access money much quicker than they would and this is mostly done by small media industries.

Its saves an awful lot of time going through documents

They can recruit family members meaning they need no documentary work

Hiring illegal people meaning they pay lower wages to them meaning they save and gain a lot of money.

• Censorship

This is the block of speech said in public communication which could be considered harmful or sensitive for example swearing.

 

• Working Independently

 

Game Industry

Game industry

Characteristics of mainstream productions/Independent and Niche  

Production

• The way game are manufactured is certainly very complex and similar to how a Hollywood film would be made. The first thing is coming up of a storyline and the best planned way to get that is creating a storyboard.  You would need to know the type of game for example the platform is going to be on like PlayStation or Xbox and whether it is a sport or shooter.
• You will need to be aware of the budget (costs) and the variety of the game meaning whether it is long or short and also of the plot meaning what is going to happen in the game and also the level of skill required e.g. rookie-world class

Distribution

• Games can be accessed from, Game, HMV, Xbox Marketplace, Play.com, Amazon, games station, PlayStation Store, ITunes, Stream, IPhone apps store, Miniclips.com and EBay
• Distribution method have changed over a period of time. Before you could only access game in local stores with a limited amount of stock. Today you can now access games online on platforms like PlayStation network, Xbox store and App store IPhone/Android.
   

Audience

• Statistics- 82% of 8-65 year olds play games
• Over 27.6 million adults play games
• Over 5 million8-15 year old play games
• Games are appealing to all sorts of audiences and it is not just male dominant as 49% of gamers are Female and 51% of gamers are male, fairly even.
   

Exhibition

• The art of video games is one of the first exhibitions to be part of the phenomenal 40 year evolution of gaming.
• This involves the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling.

Marketing

• There is a variety of different ways of video marketing, print advertisements, merchandise, large posters/bill boards, and trailers.
• When gaming was at its starting points, it was not really eye catching in the market as its graphics wasn’t really looked at.
• Today gaming is very eye catching in its trailers as it graphics are looked at more now in this day and age. Games are usually distributed through viral marketing and guerrilla marketing.