What is a tentpole film?

A tentpole is a large-budget release that a studio expects to earn a great deal and to support the rest of its year's output.

Why can a franchise film succeed without an established star in the lead role?

The franchise itself is the attraction, so audiences come for the brand and the connected story rather than for a particular actor.

Distinguish between above-the-line and below-the-line costs.

Above-the-line costs are the payments to writers, directors, producers and principal cast, while below-the-line costs cover the crew, equipment, locations and post-production.

Why can the marketing spend on a blockbuster approach its production budget?

A wide release only works if almost everyone hears about the film within the same few weeks, and advertising on that scale is extremely expensive.

OCR A-Level Media Studies H409

Contexts of Media

Topic overview The five media contexts: social, cultural, political, economic and historical Social context: attitudes, norms and social issues Cultural context, taste and the global circulation of media Political context, ideology and public service broadcasting Historical context and the reflection of past events Economic context: funding, ownership and financial constraint Technological context: production, distribution and audience devices Reflecting attitudes and constructing attitudes Media products as agents of social and political change Intertextuality as a trace of context

Media Language

Topic overview Signs, codes and conventions in media language Audio-visual media language: camera, mise-en-scène, editing and sound Print media language: layout, typography and image Audio and online media language Combination and selection: how elements work together to make meaning Developing technologies and the changing language of the media Barthes, semiotics and the making of myth Todorov, narratology and narrative structure Neale, genre theory and the intertextual relay Genre as dynamic and historically relative Hybridity and the subversion of genre conventions Lévi-Strauss, structuralism and binary opposition Intertextuality: pastiche, parody and the varieties of reference Baudrillard, postmodernism and hyperreality Media language, viewpoints and ideology How audiences interpret media language

Media Representations

Topic overview Selection, combination and the construction of reality Mediation, verisimilitude and claims about realism Stereotypes, countertypes and their uses Under-representation and misrepresentation of social groups Producers' choices and the process of representation Industry context and the economics of representation Social and cultural context in representation Historical context and changing representations Values, attitudes and beliefs, and their reinforcement Discourse, ideology and the positioning of audiences Audience response and interpretation of representations Self-representation, social identity and the curated self Hall and the constructionist approach to representation Gauntlett, identity and the pick-and-mix audience van Zoonen, the patriarchal gaze and gender as performance bell hooks, intersectionality and the oppositional gaze Butler, gender performativity and gender trouble Gilroy, the Black Atlantic and postcolonial melancholia

Media Industries

Topic overview Production, distribution and circulation in a global context The specialised and institutionalised nature of media production Conglomerate ownership and vertical integration Horizontal integration, diversification and synergy Curran and Seaton: concentration of ownership and plurality Curran and Seaton on the internet and the news oligarchy Hesmondhalgh: risk, public goods and the reliance on big hits Hesmondhalgh: repetition, copyright and digital labour Commercial funding: advertising, subscription and freemium models Public service broadcasting and not-for-profit funding Marketing and the maintenance of national and global audiences Technological change and the shift to digital distribution Ofcom and the UK regulatory framework Press, advertising and age classification in the UK Livingstone and Lunt: the citizen and the consumer Individual producers, convergence and the limits of regulation

Media Audiences

Topic overview Demographics, social grade and audience profiling Psychographics, lifestyle and taste categories Targeting, mode of address and the constructed audience Marketing, distribution and circulation as routes to the audience Mass and specialised audiences, nationally and globally Niche and fan audiences and their value to media organisations Media technologies and changing patterns of consumption Uses and gratifications, identity and cultural capital The effects tradition, the hypodermic model and moral panics Bandura, social learning and media modelling Gerbner, cultivation and mean world syndrome Hall, encoding, decoding and the three reader positions Jenkins, textual poaching and participatory culture Shirky, the end of audience and cognitive surplus Different readings and their social, cultural and historical circumstances User-generated content, citizen journalism and the audience as producer

News, Online and Participatory Media

Topic overview The Daily Mail as a mid-market tabloid The Guardian, the Scott Trust and the liberal broadsheet tradition Front page construction and the language of the printed news page News values, gatekeeping and the setting of the agenda Ideology, discourse and the positioning of the news reader Representation of social groups in news coverage Mail Online and the Guardian website as digital products Social and participatory media feeds Digital convergence and the changing newsroom Ownership, plurality and the concentration of the press Paywalls, subscriptions and online monetisation News audiences: targeting, reception and interpretation Press regulation from the PCC to IPSO and the online challenge

Advertising, Marketing and Magazines

Topic overview Codes and conventions of print advertising Dove, Real Beauty and the Beautifully Real Moms campaign Media language in the Dove advert Representations of motherhood and the maternal body in the Dove advert River Island and the Labels are for Clothes campaign Media language in the River Island advert Representations of diversity, disability and self-expression at River Island Shelter, charity advertising and the direct call to action Media language in the Shelter advert Representations of homelessness and housing insecurity in the Shelter advert Social and cultural contexts of the three advertising campaigns The Big Issue, the street paper model and its market position Media language of a Big Issue front cover Alternative representations in The Big Issue Social, cultural and political contexts of The Big Issue

Music Video

Topic overview Music video as a form: performance, narrative and concept Promotion, platforms and the star image Media language in music video: camera, mise-en-scène, editing and sound Representation in music video: stereotypes, countertypes and self-representation Artist-present and artist-absent music video Corinne Bailey Rae – Stop Where You Are Lil Nas X – SUN GOES DOWN Emeli Sandé – Heaven Sufjan Stevens – Sugar Radiohead – Burn the Witch David Guetta ft. Sia – Titanium

Film, Radio and Video Games

Topic overview Disney from Snow White to global conglomerate Vertical integration and the structure of the film industry Financing, risk and the franchise model in film Technological change in film production and exhibition Distribution, release windows and home entertainment Marketing a global blockbuster Film certification and regulation Public service broadcasting and the Radio 1 Breakfast Show Funding, ownership and competition in the radio industry Radio technology, platforms and convergent distribution Reaching and constructing the Radio 1 Breakfast Show audience Nintendo, ownership and the global games industry Producing and distributing Animal Crossing: New Horizons The Animal Crossing audience: targeting, play and participation Regulation and the social context of video games

Long Form Television Drama

Topic overview Mr Robot and the unreliable narrator Killing Eve and the gendered spy thriller Atypical and the representation of neurodiversity Stranger Things, nostalgia and the Netflix franchise Lupin, disguise and postcolonial Paris Money Heist and the second life of a national drama Trapped, Nordic noir and the Icelandic industry Deutschland 83, the Cold War and the export of German drama The streaming economy and the funding of long form drama Global distribution and the travel of non-English language drama Genre hybridity, intertextuality and multiple narrative strands Media language and representation in long form television drama Audiences, fandom and the regulation of on-demand drama

Film, Radio and Video Games

Financing, risk and the franchise model in film

3 things to know
Component 02

Overview

Recall questions on film slates and tentpoles, shared universes and franchise stars, above-the-line and below-the-line costs, blockbuster marketing spend, co-productions and tax reliefs, why Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was shot in Australia, break-even, box office shares and greenlighting.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started

Process

What drives the cost of a blockbuster, and how do studios reduce that cost and its risk?

Key term

Why does a studio spread its investment across a slate of films rather than one?

Process

How does a shared universe of connected films work as a business strategy?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1
Why does a studio spread its investment across a slate of films rather than one?
Model answer
Most films lose money or barely break even, so the profits of a few large successes have to cover the losses on the rest.
2
What is a tentpole film?
Model answer
A tentpole is a large-budget release that a studio expects to earn a great deal and to support the rest of its year's output.
3
How does a shared universe of connected films work as a business strategy?
Model answer
Each film advertises the next by carrying characters and story threads across the series, so audiences keep returning and the whole is worth more than any single title.
4
Why can a franchise film succeed without an established star in the lead role?
Model answer
The franchise itself is the attraction, so audiences come for the brand and the connected story rather than for a particular actor.
5
Distinguish between above-the-line and below-the-line costs.
Model answer
Above-the-line costs are the payments to writers, directors, producers and principal cast, while below-the-line costs cover the crew, equipment, locations and post-production.
6
Why can the marketing spend on a blockbuster approach its production budget?
Model answer
A wide release only works if almost everyone hears about the film within the same few weeks, and advertising on that scale is extremely expensive.

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Contexts of Media

Media Language

Media Representations

Media Industries

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Sort every topic into what you know and what you do not, then drill only the weak ones.

The Video Recordings Act .

198419741994

Blank Blitz consolidates the facts

Rapid timed gap-fills on the terms and numbers you need to recall without thinking.

AAudiences inside the country judge it against lived knowledge.

BAudiences elsewhere may take it as information.

CThe same portrayal informs one group and irritates the other.

Build It trains answer structure

Assemble a full-mark answer from its marking points, in the order an examiner wants them.

The Big Issue was founded in 1991.

TrueFalse

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Spot the fault in a statement. The traps are the mistakes students actually make.

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