1. COURSE INTRODUCTION: WHY DO WE STUDY MEDIA LANDSCAPE?
POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE SCREEN INDUSTRIES
• Media literacy as the most important skill in the 21st century.
• The components of media literacy include skills of textual analysis, understanding of media’s place in
society/history and also knowledge of the political economy of the media industries.
• “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” – A.J. Liebling
• The two most ubiquitous screen media are very expensive to make and distribute to audiences
(increasingly) Large corporations are central to doing both.
• Demystifying the Screen Industries: How are things made? How do they circulate? Who owns/controls
what?
• Understanding global and various local conditions. The ongoing march of globalization and the
persistence of the regional, national and local.
• Governments and their role in media regulation, fostering diversity in the screen industries.
• Regulation and/versus global neo-liberalism.
• Neo-liberalism and the “free market”
• The “Welfare State” and Media Regulation
• Diversity and access
• Cultural, linguistic diversity vs. Global monoculture
HOW MOVIES ARE MADE
• Many people are involved in making movies, and it costs a lot of money just to develop an idea into a
script.
• A common scenario:
- Writer has idea, pitches it to a producer. (Or vice versa)
- Producer finds money to pay writer to write a script.
- Producer convinces a financier to pay for the movie to be made.
- Financiers usually want to be sure a distributor and a sales agent are on board.
- Producer hires director, cast. Movie is made.
- Sales agent sells film to distributors. Distributors sell movie to theaters
At all points, lots of money, long hours of labour are involved. Process is very precarious, 5% of the
ideas get made in Hollywood, 16% in Europe.
• At every point, partners (financiers, producers, creative talent, distributors, etc.) make creative inputs.
Idea changes a great deal over the course of the process.
• Once a film is complete, it enters the value chain, passing through several windows.
- Theatrical window (several months) – Most expensive for consumer.
- DVD/Blu-Ray/Pay per view(several months)
- Pay-television/streamers
- Broadcast television several years later – Least expensive for consumers
FILM CIRCULATION
• Management of the film’s path through the value chain is controlled by the distributor within certain
national limits. Territoriality is key to this kind of distribution.
• Producer depends on sales agent to collect money from distributors, unless the film is financed by
multinational distributor (i.e. a Hollywood studio).
