The Lego Movie Factsheets

Task: Read through the Factsheets before attempting the questions on your handout.

Factsheet about Industry
Factsheet about Audience and Industry

Using the correct terms to explore Media Industries in The Lego Movie exam questions.

Media Industries refers to any company that is involved in making media texts and providing them to audiences. For your exam, you need to be able to show your understanding of the companies involved in producing and selling The Lego Movie brand to audiences. To do this, you need to be confident that you know all of the key terms used when referring to the business behind the film.

Task 1: Watch the video by clicking on the image below and then take the test on the BBC Bitesize page.

Task 2: Read through the information below about film companies and answer the questions at the end on your own Word document (you will need to print out today's work as homework).

Challenge Task: Can you link this to The Lego Movie? Write a paragraph explaining what type of studio and production values The Lego Movie has and how this effects the final product. Try to use the key terms you have been revising here.

Task 3: Copy the image of the website being used to market The Lego Movie 2. How can you see which companies are behind the film from the website? Annotate your ideas about how the website appeals to the target audience, around the image on your Word document.

Film is a huge, global industry generating massive sums of money each year. Films themselves can be divided into different categories and defined according to:

Category	Description
Genre	Comedy, Thriller, Horror, Action, Fantasy etc.
Actors	Some actors are recognisable to a specific audience. For example, Jason Statham to an Action fan or Adam Sandler to a Comedy fan.
Production companies	Major Hollywood studios (Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox and Sony amongst others) and Independent ones (Film Four, BBC Films, Warp Films etc.)
Production values	Is it big budget or low budget?
Certification	What age group is the film appropriate for?

There are two main production contexts in the film industry: 

• Studio: mainstream films with big budgets made by major Hollywood studios. Studio films have high production valuesand star actors. Examples of this might be The Hunger Gamesseries, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice or a James Bond film like Spectre.
• Independent: films with smaller budgets and sometimes as a result, lower production values. They are less likely to have so called A-list actors. Examples might be Juno, Birdman or Brooklyn.

Studio films

^{Hollywood studios dominate the film market}

This is the industry model for a 'Hollywood' or ‘Blockbuster’ movie. They are usually made by big Hollywood studios and follow a formula:

• Obvious characters, usually stereotypical, such as the action-hero.
• An easy-to-follow narrative with universal themes, which can be described in one sentence and can be used as a tagline to promote the film.
• High production values, expensive costumes and locations. These films often use special effects and/or CGI.
• The film may be promoted and marketed via merchandise such as tie-in deals with food chains. In some instances, pop stars will produce songs for the soundtrack which will help market the film to a wider audience. 
• High profile celebrity actors. These actors can often be related to the film genre, such as Jason Statham in the action movie genre.
• The main roles in the film are 'larger than life' characters rather than ordinary or real people.
• The visual appeal of events or situations you would not see in everyday life, such as explosions, car chases, fantasy worlds and historical settings.
• High drama and exciting, easy to understand plots.

These films are usually distributed by the studios that make them. The studios are often multinational media conglomeratesthat own companies across a range of various media platforms. 

This means that these conglomerates can use all the companies they own to promote and market a film.

This use of all a media conglomerate's companies to produce, promote, market, and distribute a film and its official merchandise is called vertical integration.

Horizontal integration is when a conglomerate uses smaller independent companies to help with marketing, distribution or even the exhibition of a film.

Questions:

Film

1

Which of these descriptions best defines a ‘mainstream’ film?

A) A film with lots of special effects

B) A film where a famous actor plays the protagonist

C) A film produced by a large production company, such as a Hollywood studio

2

What are the two main production contexts in the film industry?

A) Big budget and small budget

B) Studio and independent

C) Starring well-known actors and starring unknown actors

3

What are the main defining features of a studio film?

A) Recognisable actors, a large budget, excellent production values, appeals to a wide audience

B) Unknown actors, a small budget, excellent production values

C) Established actors, a large budget, a niche theme likely to appeal to a small audience

4

Which of these best defines vertical integration?

A) When a conglomerate relies on crowdfunding to pay for promotion and marketing materials

B) When all of a media conglomerate's different companies are used to produce, promote, market, distribute and exhibit a film and its official merchandise

C) When a conglomerate uses smaller independent companies to help with marketing, distribution or exhibition of a film

The Lego Movie Video Game

Lego Video Game Factsheet

Computer Games Revision

Lego Movie Audiences

The Lego Movie: Audience

Learning Objective: To understand how the media operates as a commercial industry on a global scale and reach both large and specialised audiences.

The Lego Movie was an extremely successful production for Warner Brothers and Lin Films. The film was produced for $60,000,000 which it made back in its first weekend of release in the USA alone! Not bad for three days... Overall, it made a gross of over $311,000,000 according to BoxOfficeMojo. You will be expected to know the reasons for this success in the exam and therefore you should answer the following questions in as much detail as you can.

TASK 1: Copy down the key terms and their definitions into your book.
Keywords:
Intertextuality: the relationship between texts.

Genre: a style or category of art, music, or literature.

Convergence: The interlinking of computing and other information technologies, media content, media companies and communication networks.

Conglomerate: a thing consisting of a number of different and distinct parts or items that are grouped together.

Vertical Integration: the combination in one firm of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate firms.

TASK 2: Answer the following questions in your books.
1. Which organisation in the UK provides film with 'age-ratings'? (1 mark)

2. Explain why you think the age rating of The Lego Movie was important in terms of its success? (2 marks)

3. Explain the significance of creating a film around a product (Lego). How does this help it to gain an audience? (2 marks)

4. Watch this advert break. It was extremely successful in generating interest in the film. Six million people saw it live on ITV and a further one million saw it online. What word is used when one media text refers to another and how does this help a film to be successful? (1 mark)

5. Analyse how genre codes (action/adventure) have been used in The Lego Movie poster campaign below to appeal to a family audience. Refer to specific textual details. (5 marks)


*If the posters below are offline; find and select FIVE different promotional posters, print them out (small) and stick them in your book and then analyse the posters.

Marketing the Lego Movie

Click here to read how the marketing campaign was so successful

Intertexuality in The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie Factsheet

Click on the image or the link below to find the factsheet for The Lego Movie: Industry. You need to read it through ahead of our next lesson.

https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/429646-the-lego-movie-industry-factsheet.pdf