Wednesday 9 September 2015

2.4 – Outline the relationship between the film industry and wider creative media sector


How is the film industry influenced by the wider creative media sector?

In recent years, the film industry has grown to become more and more influenced by the wider creative media sector. This is shown in one way by the prominence of film adaptations of books. Many wildly popular book series have inspired filmmakers and given them the vision to adapt the books into films, such as Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and The Lord of the Rings to name a few. This has been a massively lucrative way of generating a hit film or blockbuster franchise, which puts film studios and producers on the lookout constantly for new books that could have the scope to be successful films. The game industry has also been a source from which the film industry has developed many popular film adaptations such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. As the industry has become popularised with increasingly narrative-driven video games, there have even more film adaptations of games being put in production, such as Halo and Assassin's Creed.

The rise of the internet has also changed the way the film industry works substantially within the last few decades alone. Cinemas are no longer the only way for films to be distributed and seen by a mass audience which has given a voice to amateur filmmakers whose work can be heard through web based platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo. These platforms have let these amateur filmmakers rise to the forefront of the industry as a result of their popularity and is a trend that seems set to increase. These filmmakers don't even need to have funding from producers or film studios, as additional sources can be found through platforms such as crowd funding on sites like Kickstarter. The popularity of online streaming has also led to further exposure of less well-known filmmakers as people from all over the world can watch their films and help them gain enough popularity to gain more clout in the industry, creating a massive market in online streaming services such as Netflix.

Furthermore, there is also now a clear crossover between the film industry and other parts of the creative media sector, such as game design, fashion design, radio, writing and film itself. To work in all of these sectors a high degree of creativity, drive and determination is very important, as are technical skills. Skills developed in any one of these sectors could be transferable to the film industry as they all expertises that the film industry requires to make films. For example, fashion designers could design costumes for the film or even have a knack for colour that could make them a good cinematographer or editor. Additionally, as software has developed to have multiple uses, it means game design and other digital industries have more crossover with the film industry due to the increasing use of CGI and special effects in films. This kind of skill in creating special effects and manipulating images is a common thread between films and digital professions like game design that means they could be as skilled as people working on CGI in the film industry. 

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