Snow White Distribution

How films were released in 1937 - 

Films would be rereleased as it was a physical item - was rereleased 8 times - not popular nowadays due to streaming service/physical copies 

• Soundtrack - vinyl

The first film to have a released soundtrack

• VHS

Disney store VHS came with a Dopey toy

• DVD

Some had bonus content/interviews/deleted scenes

• 4kultra HD
• soundtrack CD
• laserdisc

Early rival to DVD and lost the battle - Disney released a laser disc and DVD

• Blu-Ray
• Streaming Services

Snow White

 The film industry is dominated by - 

• Franchises
• technology
• global developments
• vertical/horizontal integration of companies

Steamboat Willie - 

No voices

black and white

recycled backgrounds

played before films in the cinema

Snow White animation - 

• 3 years to make
• Colored
• Voiced
• Characters are named
• narrated
• Accompanied by a soundtrack
• Much longer
• higher FPS
• many characters on screen at once

Key ideas-

• Important for the whole film industry
• hugely ahead of its time
• laughed at as it was the first feature length animated film
• We study this and Shang Chi to study the advancements in Disney
• 'Dated' ideas and representations (old fashioned ideas that aren't accepted/represented by society)
• Critical and commercial success 
• OSCAR award in 1939 with a full sized and 7 mini statuettes (for the7 dwarfs)
• Bazar last year voted it best animated film OAT
• First Disney musical in NY 1940
• 1 hr 23 mins
• 1.5 million $ budget
• 6 million $ in the first weekend
• 186 million $ worldwide 418 million $ when modernized
• Walt was very strict on his workers - made the Snow White voice actor not work on ANY other film in cinema EVER
• Merchandise released on day 1

Disney

Changes over the past 100 years of Disney - 

• Animation to live action
• logo
• bought other franchises
• CGI and tech improvements
• remade old films
• more representation
• expanded across different forms of media - games/theme parks etc.

Disney Timeline-

• Walt arrived in California at age 23 - made one cartoon in the past and got a 3 film deal in 1923 and partnered with his brother Roy
• Walt's first character was called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and made 26 cartoons but found his distributor went behind his back and signed up all his animators and lost rights to Oswald
• Made a new character named steamboat willie - this lead to mickey mouse
• Produced another series called silly symphony to accompany mickey and focused more on stories not quick laughs - first full color cartoon
• In 1934, they created the animated 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' It was originally met with skepticism however people quickly caught on - Took 3 years to film and debuted on Dec 21 1937. Quickly became the highest grossing film OAT . Gave the company a firm footing
• Unsatisfied with his success he ventured to create a theme park - built and opened on July 17 1955
• Died in 1966 and by the 80's Disney had a wide range of companies which got separated over many shares - lowered Disney value however now all of these sub parts of the business are all ran in an interconnected manor

                                 

News Context/Case Studies

•  News brands want exclusivity!!
• Continuity(over multiple days)
• editors oversee all stories and make sure info is true
• Newspapers have regulators - if you see false news you can contact regulators to take it down
• sources are vital to newspapers and they typically try to protect their sources so they can keep receiving stories

Echo chambers - only listening to news you are targeted to see - like social media feeds run by algorithms that show what they think you'll like

Fake news is essentially poison to news brands and they try to completely eradicate it from their companies by editors and regulators investigating their sources

'If the product is free, you are the product'

3 parts to making news

Production -  how its made - media source/content/location - print is always 24 hrs. behind internet

Distribution - expensive for newspapers however internet is essentially free or very cheap

Marketing - How news brands tell potential customers about their product.

Media Barons - Wealthy individuals who own one or more newspapers

Trusts - Legal arrangements where finances from the owner are sent to trustees to manage control - no editorial input

Cross Media Conglomerates - huge global institutions who own numerous media outlets - owned by individuals or groups

The guardian only has under 3% of the market share despite being a fairly popular newspaper. This is due to the sheer size of the top 3 news companies

Role of the Editor - 

• Sifting the info
• Select and omit stories based on what will appeal to their audiences
• Protective coverage - Withholding info on grounds of harming powerful people/the public or could impede a current criminal investigation

Find the editor of - The Guardian and The Daily Mail

Guardian - Katharine Viner

The Daily Mail - Ted Verity(since 2021) and Gerrard Greaves (the online paper)

The Daily Mail online publishes 3000+ articles daily

On average, the Daily Mail outsells the Guardian by 10 times

4 Ways Newspapers Make Money

1. Physical sales
2. Adverts
3. Digital subscriptions
4. User data sales
5. paid articles
6. Donations - common in left wing papers (guardian relies on these heavily)
7. Paywalls - need to spend money to view digital articles(more right wing)

News Values

• Negativity
• Recency
• Exclusivity
• Size/amount of people involved/affected
• Proximity to audience
• Continuity
• Uniqueness
• Simplicity
• Expectedness - audience essentially
• Elite nations/people
• Personalization

Negativity - dead children

Recency - new bodies found

Size - somewhat local so many affected

Proximity - in the UK

Elite people - politicians

Personalization - could look like someone you know

 

Steve Neale - 

-Genres are not fixed but constantly evolved

-Genres influence each other and sometimes hybridize

-Products that link to the genre, share the genre conventions creating an intertextual relay

Tabloidization - 

Some papers have reduced sheet size to save money - no longer broadsheet

Some broadsheets follow tabloid conventions and present their news differently

called dual convergence

Paul Gilroy

• Believes the past British colonialization still affects Britain today
• People see others (non British white cis) as essentially inferior
• Shown in newspapers today (migrant crisis)

Levi Strauss

• Binary Opposites - represented completely different despite having similar meanings
• Creates conflict/drama or communicate meaning
• Present in the news
• Makes viewer believe what they have/are is BETTER 

Roland Barthes

• Semiology - symbolism
• How ideologies are so widely accepted
• repurposed popular culture to create 'myths' with new and diff meanings
• across media - if you strip an image from media/context it has NO MEANING

Cognitive Dissonance

Disconnected thinking - knowing something to be right and doing the opposite - fake news/smoking

 

Film Industry

The last film I watched was Rio - an animated film. I watched it at home on Disney +.

Odeon now showing - patterns

• huge range of audiences
• sequels/prequels
• cross media convergence - music and film/games and film
• big studio dominance

News

 Soft news- tabloids - gossip/scandal

Hard news- broadsheets- informative

newspapers - primitive  compared to modern 24/7 news channels/radio/social media etc

Animal Crossing The Pandemic Context

 Pandemic, Protest and identity-

pandemic had huge economic impacts across many industries in the UK - catering and hospitality suffered the most

however the videogame industry experienced great success (gaming population increased 63% in COVID in the UK 2020)

2 statistics about this that surprised me the most were -

-18% of current gamers began in the pandemic

-13% of ex gamers returned during COVID

Nintendo stocks actually originally declined in 2019 due to ACNH delay in release however the game was so well made, it was very much worth the wait and its sales show that!

This delay was a risk as the delay was to ensure the game was perfect so if the quality on release wasn't up to consumers standards, it would be a further hit to Nintendo.

Reasons for ACNH success in lockdown - 

-boredom

-routine-structured set up of the game

-escapism-social simulation

-social-can interact with villagers or real people

-identity-through interactions, users can find things out about themselves

David Gauntlett-

 

Applications to ACNH- 

Instead of looking to influencers, the ACNH audience could explore how they interact and begin building up a personality through how they play the game. Furthermore being a part of a fanbase could introduce real human interaction.

Anthropomorphized villagers reduces gender pressures - furthermore the game has openly gay characters (Flick and CJ) - this made the game more appropriate for people to find their identity due to the lack of stereotypes or preferred meanings.

This inclusivity was further pushed by the actual audience- In COVID pride month was celebrated heavily in animal crossing as it was a platform that allowed individuals to do that.

There were also BLM protests on ACNH