Dracula Untold (2014)

1 – Issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice

A films success often depends on which production company produces the film in the first place. The bigger production companies such as the big six (Warner Bros. Pictures, Paramount pictures, Walt Disney, Columbia pictures, Universal Studios, 20th Century Fox) will often have an unfair advantage over the other, smaller film production companies in terms of what budget they are given and their access to all of the best technologies and stars.

This is relative to Mark Kermode’s rules that will determine whether it is impossible for a film to lose money or not. Kermode says that it is impossible for a film to lose money if it complies within four rules, these rules are: newsworthy budget, spectacular visuals, not to be a comedy and to include an ‘A list’ star. A larger film company stands a better chance when creating a film that complies within these rules as they will have the newsworthy budget to be able to have the spectacular visuals and the ‘A-list’ star and because their company is so well known anyway, the film won’t have to be of a genre that is simply there to attract attention such as a comedy.

For example, Warner Bros. pictures released ‘The Green Lantern’ in 2011. The film itself was a complete flop, receiving bad reviews (especially from fans of the comic books) and losing out on an estimated $90,074,414 after only grossing $219,851,172 worldwide when their films original budget cost $200,000,000. However, the film still had an A list star, (Ryan Reynolds), spectacular visuals and special effects due to the company being able to afford the newest technologies that were available at the time. This film was not intended to be a comedy, although parts of it did come across as slightly comedic. Whilst this film wasn’t great, it was still popular as it was produced by a very well-known company that had the budget, the technology and the stars to attract some attention. This shows the issues within media ownership as the bigger companies will almost always have a larger hand over the small film companies as they have the fame

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and the money to attract attention anyway, whereas a smaller company could produce a very well made film which would gain more interest but they simply do not have a large enough audience or enough of a reputation to gain a larger audience.

‘Dracula Untold’ was made by Universal Pictures along with Legendary Pictures in 2014. This movie gained a huge audience before the movie was even released as it was made by well-known production companies that are renowned for having produced some of cinemas greatest movies such as ‘Jurassic Park’ (1993), ‘Jaws’ (1975) and more recently ‘Les Miserable’ (2013). ‘Dracula Untold’ complies within Kermode’s rules as it includes A list stars such as Luke Evans and Charles Dance, it has spectacular visual effects as well as having a newsworthy budget of an estimated $70,000,000. This film is classed as an action/drama/fantasy; therefore, it is not a comedy. According to Mark Kermode’s rules, it is impossible for this film to lose money. On its opening weekend in the USA, it made $23,514,615 on the 10th of October 2014. By the 21st of November, it had grossed around $55,942,830.

2 – The importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production, distribution and marketing

This movie was made in collaboration by Universal Studios, Legendary pictures and Michael De Luca productions. Universal and Legendary pictures are very well known, especially with Universal being one of the big six production companies in Hollywood. This tells us that his film will automatically have a very high budget and popularity/success rate as it is expected of a film that has been produced by one of the big six. Dracula Untold almost made back its entire budget in its opening weekend in the USA, bringing back $23,514,614 to the box office. This is quite good considering the estimated budget for this film was $70,000,000.

Legendary Pictures are not one of the big six, but they are still a very reputable film company and have produced massive blockbuster movies such as ‘Jurassic World’ (2015), ‘Godzilla’ (2014) and ‘Interstellar’ (2014). Similarly, Michael de Luca Productions has worked on movies such as: ‘Fright Night’ (2011), ‘Ghost rider’ (2007) and ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ (2015). This makes it easier for the film to be marketed as the audience will see the film companies that have produced it and will therefore have a pre-determined idea of what kind of quality the film will be. Because Universal and Legendary are both extremely well known, the fact that they are working together will reinforce the audience’s confidence in the quality of the film.

Multiple smaller companies worked with the three main production companies in order to produce the posters/trailers/marketing campaigns etc. However they are not really credited as they worked in collaboration with main production companies.

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This cross media convergence is very important as it allows multiple companies to work together to produce something that is really important throughout each stage of a films production, marketing and distribution.

3 - Technologies introduced in recent years at the levels of production, distribution, marketing and exchange

Blu Ray:

Blu Ray is a more enhanced version of a movie which shows the footage in high definition. In a film with so many special effects and visual creativity, blu ray is a must in order to experience the extent of the effects.

Internet streaming:

After this film had been released, it was then made available on internet sites such as Netflix, Lovefilm and the Sky Box Office.

Downloadable content:

The soundtrack for this film was very popular, especially as the main theme, ‘Everybody wants to rule the world’ was sung by Lorde, a very popular face within the music industry currently.

4 – Proliferation in hardware and content for institutions and audience

Cameras:

Witness cameras were used to capture the action when the actors weren’t wearing markers, eg: Canon 5Ds, GoPros for reference photos, etc.

Visual Effects:

Framestore in London was used to supply most of the VFX in terms of CGI. Multiple scans were made of Luke Evans to in order to create his transformation scenes during the movie. They used various facial action coding system poses which allowed the VFX team to make Luke look like a vampire. Reference photos were used in order to digitally create the exterior locations such as the castles and valleys. The production department used an extensive version of Google Sketchup to come up with the designs

Marketing:

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This movie was advertised using clips from the movie in the trailers as well as using posters. The posters were digitally edited using elements of Photoshop along with stills from the movie.

5 - Importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production, distribution and marketing

This is a stand-alone movie, meaning it has no sequel or prequel and it is not a spin off from another movie. On the one hand, this makes it easier to advertise and market the film as you have a chance to make a good first impression with the movie as opposed to having an unsuccessful prequel which would affect the way the audience would respond to the second movie. However, on the other hand this makes it harder to market the film as you have to get the audience interested in something they’ve never seen before.

This movie was advertised mainly through posters and film trailers; however, a recurring theme was present throughout each advertisement. They all featured Luke Evans with the use of bat motifs and symbolism of his vampirism. This created an iconic image which the audience already associated with vampires. I think that what partly drew the audience in to see this film was the fact that it starred Luke Evans who had recently become A list because of his role as Bard in the Hobbit movies and because it was released in October, which is near the time of Halloween. Around this time of year, people are looking for scary films, and what’s more iconic than Dracula when it comes to Halloween?

6 – Issues raised in the targeting of national and local audiences (specifically British) by international or global institutions

The marketing stage usually occurs within the distribution phase of a film’s release and will usually be dealt with and organised by the exhibitors and distributing companies. In a way, the marketing and distributing of a movie is just as if not more important than the movie itself – especially as the marketing

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budget can come up to around half of the movies overall budget, giving it a considerable amount of money to make sure that this vital stage is successful.

Dracula Untold was marketed in the USA, UK and Japan as they are its main target audiences. In the UK and the USA, marketing was slightly easier as the A list stars Charles Dance and Luke Evans are very well known and popular. Also, the song used in the teaser trailer is sung by Lorde, a current, popular singer whose presence in the marketing of the movie helped the film to gain early publicity and make more money back from the sale of the song. There are two official sites for this movie, one of which is a UK/US (English) site, whereas the other is a Japanese site, which caters for the eastern audiences.

This movie was marketed mainly throughout the use of teaser trailers, posters/billboards and the publicity of the song sung by Lorde, which peaked at position 65 in the UK charts, 27th in the USA and 14th in New Zealand (where Lorde comes from). The official trailer on YouTube has reached around 9,224,473 views online. This doesn’t even take into account the amount of views that it received when advertised on TV. The popularity of the Dracula story in its many different versions had a massive impact on the success of this films marketing

campaign.

Because this movie was advertised to a global audience, it was mainly advertised over TV and online trailers as you can access everything online from almost anywhere in the world and it is a very popular media source. As the movie is spoken in English, an issue would be that the movie would have to have sufficient subtitles for non-English speaking audience which would take lots of time and money. However, given the newsworthy budget and global audience, the film would have been translated and given substantial subtitles for the majority of countries that received it.

7 – The ways in which the candidates’ own experiences of media consumption illustrate wider patterns and trends of audience behaviour

I agree that the bigger, more renowned film companies such as the big six do stand a better chance of producing, marketing and distributing movies as I myself will partly judge whether I want to see a movie based on what company logo I see at the beginning of a trailer. This is because we associate the success of a movie and its expected quality based on what the company has produced previously. Smaller film companies will start to advertise and market movies before they have even finished being made because they need the extra time for it to become known and popular as their target audience won’t have heard of the

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movie company. By the time the film has become known to the mainstream audience, it will have already been advertised for around a year whereas a larger audience could bring out an advert for a film a couple of months before its release date and still generate a huge audience that often outnumbers the audiences that a film produced by a smaller company will ever gain. For example, the ‘How to train your Dragon’ film have been one of DreamWorks’s recent successes over the last few years, however they took a lot of marketing through toys, spin off TV shows and multiple trailers/posters to gain an audience – even though the books were successful, it still needed more. The third of the ‘How to train your Dragon’ series comes out in 2016, but advertising campaigns have already started now, a year early, as DreamWorks knows that it has a lot to compete with such as the new James Bond movie ‘Spectre’ which only released its trailers and official song a couple of months ago and has already received a huge audience and publicity.

Dracula Untold was bound to be successful in the box office as it gained instant publicity due to it being produced by Universal along with Legendary Pictures and Michael De Luca productions. And was advertised mainly around the time of its release (October 2014) as it was linked to the fact that October is the month of Halloween and the film is related to the supernatural.

Personally, I think that going to see a movie at the cinema is the best way to see a new release as they are shown in good quality in a good atmosphere where you can witness the special effects such as 3D and in some case 4D experiences. The appearance of Blu-Ray however has meant that a lot of people have decided to wait for the film to be released on DVD so that they can see it in the comfort of their own home whilst still having the high resolution experience. Online streaming/downloading has also become more prominent, especially with today’s young adult audiences as there are now more ways in which illegal copies of movies can be accessed and not much can be done about it – therefore the companies lose out on money as people aren’t going to the cinema to see it. However, a lot of the time people decide to illegally download a film because it takes too long to come out on DVD and the audience gets impatient. Whilst Blu-Ray, 3D TV’s and the addition of special features have made it more tempting and easier to get the same level of experience when watching a film at home, I still believe that going to the cinema is the best way to watch a new release as you get to see it sooner, there is a better atmosphere of a whole audiences anticipation, you can witness effects such as 3/4D which you otherwise wouldn’t be able to witness at home and you can see trailers for other films that you might want to see in the future.

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