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.

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

The Lego Movie Video Game: Using Convergence and Vertical Integration to Promote Media Products

Convergence is where media products appear across different platforms and countries. For example the Lego Movie film is part computer generated imagery (CGI) and part real bricks. Lego brand designers were heavily involved in the construction of the film's content. The ideas were then used by the Australian animators who made the film.

Task 1: You need to read this article where the writers/directors talk about how they made the Lego Movie to be about the value of creativity, not selling a product, and about the toy company’s involvement in the filmmaking process. Click here to find the article and then write a summary of what the article tells you about the making of The Lego Movie product.

This convergence went further with several tied in merchandise releases. This included 17 different Lego sets based on different worlds in the movie (City, Wildest, Space and one names Wildstyle Chase. There were also 16 collectable mini figures that included The Lego Movie Game from TT Games and a range of stationery, stickers and activity books by a range of global partners.

The Lego Movie twitter site and website was launched to promote the film. There was also a Lego YouTube channel offering sneak peaks of the film ahead of the first trailers.  

WB Games is the trade name for Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment. WB Games developed a video game to release alongside the film. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainments have developed games on Apple iOS and the Lego Dimensions game. WB Games is a publisher, developer and distributor of entertainment content for the interactive space across all platforms including console, handheld, mobile and PC-based gaming for both internal and third party game titles. 

Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment is part of the larger Warner Brothers conglomerate which produces the Lego Movie and distributes it to audiences. It also uses its own subsidiary companies to release the DVDs and BluRay discs. This is known as Vertical Integration and allows a business to maximise the potential of a brand, in this case Lego. It gives the existing audience new experiences and further pleasures outside of the film while reaching new non-cinema going video game players. Today there is a successful global sub-culture of Lego thanks to vertical integration of films, games, magazines and competitions. The Lego brand can reach out to a larger market through its range of products.

Digitally convergent media is when digital/online media content, networks and technologies are interconnected. Video games consoles are an excellent example of a digitally convergent device; as well as play games you can also access social media, surf the internet, stream films and Tv content and upload content into cloud-based servers.

The video game offers 15 levels and 90 playable characters, many of which can be purchased as Minifigures, so the Lego brand benefits from this as both the game and the film also act as an advertisement for their consumer products. The Lego Movie Video Game saw everything made out of bricks. This allowed a cross-over for the plastic construction bricks within a gaming world for audiences - although it was not a game where you could use the bricks for construction like Minecraft (which Lego Worlds arguably mimics).

Cross-media products (Minifigures) were also available and this cross-media content help to maximise profits and also improve reach to new customers. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainments have developed games on Apple iOS and Lego Dimensions.

Love Lego?

There is a global sub-culture of Lego with supportive films, games (on and offline), magazines and competitions.

Read this article by clicking on the brick here.

Task: Why do you think Lego has such a fan base? Complete some research looking at how Lego is celebrated as a brand. You could look at theme parks LegoLand, TV programmes such as Channel Four's Master Builder, any popular video games and how the Lego sets themselves are branded to link to films.

Collect your research on a Word document. Print it out and stick it in your book.

Extension Task: If you have completed this task, you can start considering how the Lego Movie builds on the idea of a shared childhood experience to attract mixed-age and gender groups for the audience. This resulted in whole family viewings and purchases on the film after its theatrical release. The film was aimed at both younger children who played with Lego and their parents who had in the past.

Read this film review by clicking on the brick here:

News: Press Regulation: Who reports on the reporters?

The owners of newspapers can influence the editorial stance of a newspaper. The motives and agenda of newspaper owners and editors, and how they try to influence our understanding of certain events, is important when analysing how newspapers tell stories. Newspapers will also attempt to influence how the public vote in elections, with certain newspapers openly backing specific political parties.

With this much power, it is important that newspapers stick to a code of conduct or rules set out by independent organisations. This is known as regulation.

Regulation and Press Complaints

Sometimes it is not facts that are reported but the opinions of journalists and editors. This is known as bias. This is one of the reasons why newspapers are subject to regulation. Journalists often go to extreme lengths to find their story and news organisations are regulated to protect people from press intrusion or harassment.

Here J K Rowling complains to the regulators about press behaviour outside her home.

Case study: The Leveson Inquiry

The Leveson Inquiry was a public, judge-led inquiry. It was set up by Prime Minister David Cameron to investigate the press after journalists at The News of the World were accused of illegally accessing the voicemail messages on other people's phones, without their knowledge or consent. They were also accused of bribing police officers. Some of those who had their mobile phones 'hacked' in this way were celebrities, sports people and politicians.

The News of the World was closed down by its owner, News International, when this information became public. Lord Justice Leveson stated his recommendations on how the press should be regulated. They were:

• Newspapers should continue to be self-regulated and government should have no power over what newspapers publish.
• A new press standards organisation, with a new code of conduct should be created by the press industry. Legislation should be provided to ensure this new press standards organisation would be independent and effective in dealing with public complaints.

Who regulates newspapers now?

Newspaper editors must follow the rules of the Editor's Code of Practice. 

Before the Leveson inquiry, newspapers and their editors were regulated by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). 

After the Leveson Inquiry it was replaced by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).

The IPSO now investigate complaints about breaches of the Editor's Code of Practice.

Who regulates online news?

Click on the logo to find out more about Impress.

Newspaper funding in the age of the internet.

How are newspapers funded? When you buy a paper, you spend money purchasing the product. But what happens when people are reading the same stories for free via the internet? Why would people still pay for the product at all?

Since the internet has eroded traditional funding streams, it is vital that newspapers continue making enough profit to pay journalists and editors to generate the news product.

Task: How much does each newspaper cost? Research the cover price of the following newspapers. What do you notice about the prices and which newspapers cost the most or the least? Why do you think this is?

1. The Times
2. The Sun
3. The Daily Mail
4. The Guardian
5. The Telegraph
6. The Mirror

Circulation and readership

A major source of income is via advertisers who pay to market their own products in newspapers. Companies know it is a major part of a marketing campaign to advertise their product in a newspaper with a large readership because plenty of potential customers will see their advertisement. As a result, advertisers pay news organisations substantial costs to buy space in their publication, and how much they pay depends on how many readers they expect to buy the newspaper.

A newspaper's circulation is the number of copies that are distributed to newsagents and news stands on an average day. These numbers are recorded by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC).

The ABC's membership comes from various media organisations, traders, advertisers and agencies that provide statistics to calculate research data.

The National Readership Survey (NRS) provides audience research to newspapers and potential advertisers on estimated readership numbers, which can often be quite different from circulation figures.

A newspaper's readership is the newspaper's total circulation multiplied by the average number of people who read each copy. For example, various family members may read the same copy of a newspaper. This 'pass-along' rate is generally thought to be about 2.5 readers per publication. This relationship between readership and circulation is known as readers-per-copy.

Task: Click on the logo above to find out the ABC figures for each of the national and regional newspapers. Create a table in your book detailing the ABC figure for each newspaper's print edition and online product.

1. The Times
2. The Sun
3. The Daily Mail
4. The Guardian
5. The Telegraph
6. The Mirror
7. The Leicester Mercury

Online news

All major UK newspapers have web editions which can sometimes include more content than the printed paper. Newspapers may offer a lot of this content for free, a number place some or all of their content behind a paywall, which means readers must pay to access it. Being able to link to existing web pages allows readers access to additional content which includes archived material. 

Online newspapers enjoy a crucial advantage over print versions in that they can be updated in real-time with breaking news. This has made online newspapers more like broadcast media channels that can transmit 24 hours a day. 

In 2005, 13 million newspapers were sold daily; by 2015, this figure fell to 7 million. The availability of newspapers online is partly responsible for this decline but the popularity of blogs, vlogs and other online content areas have made an impact too. The Independent newspaper moved to an online only publication in 2016.

Homework Task: Look at the online news products offered by the different newspapers.