Shang-Chi distribution

 Distribution costs more than production costs.

Snow White had to be released in cinemas multiple times to be seen but now with the digitalization of cinema, it can be accessed by Disney plus. 

One in 8 people on this planet are Chinese - so Shang Chi already had a vast amount of interested fans

Movie posters often featured one actor at a time to allow people to see their favorite celebrity or actor/actress to appeal to different fans

Had a shorter theatrical window due to the pandemic but this didn't hugely impact on sales

Not hugely successful or respected in China - an interview with an ex Disney boss referred to the film as an 'experiment' which invalidated a lot of the efforts they made to be culturally sensitive - Simu Liu commented that it wasn't an acceptable thing to say

Didn't have a cinematic release in China

Shang-Chi Production

 

Started filming in in Sydney in Feb 2020.

Got delayed a year so many received less pay until filming started and caused scheduling conflicts

Australia government gave a grant to get Disney to film there - good for tourism and increased jobs for Australians - good for industry.

VFX - Visual Effects

Pushing technological limits just like Snow White

Used Skywalker sound - a company Disney owns for sound effects

Weta for their visual effects - who use layers for each scene to add their effects

Also got filmed for IMAX which allowed more ways to see the film

Simu Liu - Cast as the main protagonist in the film - 34 yrs old

• Used to be a stunt double in music videos
• directed his own short films
• won awards for his breakout on kims convenience a canadian sitcom
• then had a big part in barbie
• also voiced many characters for disney and even the simpsons
• won breakout actor of the year for Simu Liu

Awkwafina - 

• Asian American rapper actress and comedian
• breakout song ij 2012
• Co starred in craszy rich asians then hosted SNL
• Won a golden globe - first lead actress of Asian descent to win one
• Worked as Katy n Shang Chi

Sir Ben Kingsley-

• English actor most famous for his role in Ghandi
• 49 awards with 70 nominations
• Also worked in Schindler's list
• most awards and performances were in the 80s and 90s but he still finds sucvess today in films like Shang chi.

Tony Leung -

• Singer/actor
• from Hong Kong
• 61 yrs old
• one of Asias most recognisable actors
• Steven Chow convinced him to begin acting at age 16
• Shang-Chi was his first western film

Michelle Yeoh-

• Malaysian actress - 61
• Famous in the 90s in asian films where she did her own stunts
• was in  BOND FILM
• First asian to win best actress at an academy award

Magazines

Assessed on-

• Media language and representations
• Social Context 
• Cultural Context
• Political Context

5 things on magazine covers

• Name
• Price
• Date
• Celebrity

72% of adults in the UK have access to magazines (read on a monthly basis) - 39.1 million

37% print

59% digital

10 Qs about The Big Issue-

1. a street paper
2. John Bird and Gordon Roddick  inspired by street news in New York and used to help the homeless
3. 1991 and distributed and published by Dennis publisher 
4. Circulated by vendors in United Kingdom Australia Ireland Japan South Africa South Korea Namibia Kenya Taiwan Malawi
5. Sales and ad revenue
6. Offer employment and voices in the media to homeless and those living in poverty
7. It offers the typical news that many magazines and newspapers provide however also publish a wide range of inspirational stories as well as tips for the homeless whilst also advertising ways to support their vendors
8. Cam buy from their local vendors or online and costs £4
9. A hand up not a hand out
10. losing sales - focused on political journalism

The Big Issue is a niche magazine outside commercial mainstream and construct alternative representations that are maybe not seen in typical media

Some Big Issue magazines do not feature a barcode thus making them a vendor only magazine - all papers used to be like that but post Covid vendor sales dropped vastly

1. The big issues does not tend to follow the house style of magazines but its mastheads are typically in the same place
2. the masthead is positioned at the top(superscript) and bottom(subscript) of the page and features big letters and bold colors
3. There is a general theme of their covers of either showing news, rhetorical questions or interviews  with minorities, rising stars or other people promoting changes (or their vendors) - their cover images are typically less serious and they tend to use a sans serif font

72% of readers are ABC1 

43% are AB - socially and culturally aware - white collar

psychographics - reformers and explorers - care about problems in the world

it is a magazine with no political slant and will hold anyone to account

represented - The homeless and Ukrainians 

Masthead - blue and yellow like the flag 

Stories hidden under the subtext masthead

Main image - shows the damage and impact - doesn't hold back from news

Littered and dirty environment - not a photoshoot - different from the other magazines

represented - Homeless

Perfectly encapsulates the big issue - modern - up-and-coming - representative of lower classes

represented - their vendors

Big issue picks Paralympics as they like to represent minorities whenever possible and try to shine a light on those who may typically be unrepresented as they may not be as commercially viable in privatized and for profit magazines.

French colorway with Eiffel tower in background in front of a French flag - Roland Barthes semiology

cover lines ABC1 

White men

white sans serif text - cant ignore - allows the disabled to be the focus

wearing each others colors - collaboration - communal feeling - united in competition - allure of the Paralympics 

barcode shows it is also sold in selected shops such as Sainsburys - shows adaptation since Covid

masthead frames the photo

Shang-Chi

•  In the 4th phase of the MCU
• Sir Ben Kingsley has a part
• features ten powerful rings

5 Key Facts-

• Marvel have planned up to phase 6 of the MCU - 2027
• Due to complicated copyright issues - some characters can exist in the MCU but belong to another company
• MCU is a movie franchise with many features and installments of original content as well as basing many off the marvel comics - most are produced in Marvel studios
• Marvel isn't just films - books, TV specials etc. - cross media convergence
• The MCU is planned in many phases of interlinked stories

Press Freedom

 Phone Hacking Scandal

• Rupert Murdoch
• missing school girls phone hacked
• parents checked the girls voicemail and saw them to be regularly checked and they and police believed her to be alive
• turns out the news had accessed her voicemail and she was long dead
• Official papers would hack phones or voicemails
• An ex MP's affair was exposed this way
• families of terror attack victims and families of dead Afghanistan soldiers
• All happened under Rupert Murdoch's paper news of the world edited by the prime ministers communications officer
• The newspaper is now shut down
• the Leverson inquiry investigated the practices and ethics of the press

Daily Mail online publish about 2000 articles per day which equates to about 4000 pictures per day - essentially impossible to regulate. Instead, complaints and inaccuracies are raised post article - this means that the news has already reached its audience. Regulators are reactionary.

OFFCOM is the TV news regulators and news on a whole is regulated by certain rules -

Editors' Code of Practice (ipso.co.uk)

IPSO is the chosen regulator for most national papers but is not state backed. Impress however is and gets money through the government - this is a problem as any governmental stories any be covered up or reported less

The Daily Mail is regulated by IPSO and The Guardian is regulated by themselves as they don't believe IPSO is good enough

1- 2 mid market tabloids: daily mail/express

2-The Sun, the Times and sunday times

3-Right wing

4-Mirror Daily express/star

5-no bias as its supported by multiple people

6-daily mail

7-we're backing Britain

8-the heart of Britain

Case Study-

June 16th 2023 - Ethics committee investigating if there were parties during COVID lockdown

Despite being proven to have lied about it, there was still support and opposition for Boris in the press

The Daily Telegraph essentially avoided the entire story

The I condemned him as well as calling him a liar

The Daily Express called the whole situation a stitch up

The Mirror also called him a lair

The Daily Mail called it a vindictive bid against him and hired him to write for them

The Guardian reported it fairly neutrally however named his punishment and what he did

From Snow White to Shang Chi

•  The debts were paid off  until Walt spent it all on new films ,millions of profits in the bank then Walt buys a studio which grows and grows and is now the huge global conglomerate
• reduction in quality to speed up process had to occur but Walt hated this idea
• WW2 saw the Disney studios commandeered
• Walt died in 1966 making the jungle book

Places Snow White is seen outside of her film

• Sophia the First - A tv about a young princess receiving guidance from established princesses
• Shrek - DreamWorks owner used to be a boss of Disney
• Wreck it Ralph
• Disney Land
• Macey's window display
• 9 to 5 - a film
• Games
• Wandavision

Despite the films huge success, on release their was so much buzz about the actual film an dhow innovative it was that nobody stopped to think about the problems of the film such as all its blatant sexist scenes and overall messages conveyed - this could be due to how the film was made in 1937 and based off a fairy tale from the 1800's so it was very old fashioned and is not representative of todays society

Disney has had to change with the times.

Some problems Disney faced include-

• Naming characters after their flaws
• The representation of dwarfism
• Huge consent concerns over the 'true loves kiss'

Ariel (The Little Mermaid)

• Heir to the throne of Atlantica - an underwater kingdom
• 16 years old
• isolated but wants to explore (common theme in Disney)
• Rescued a prince from a shipwreck (somewhat newer theme in Disney of the female saving the prince)
• Antagonist is Ursula who wants Tritons throne however is killed by the prince

Diversity/Lack of in Hollywood-

The film industry was accused of being too white, American, narrow, straight and too male - Lack of representation and diversity.

#OscarsSoWhite - in 2020 almost every Oscar nominee was white or straight - found that 90% where white of the nomination committee - unrepresentative of America

Disney's response to this was Shang-Chi as well as more diverse casts in the remakes

Ownership and Regulation

 

Vast majority of news is consumed physically (print) however this is very dated and could soon change.

The Daily Mail is the most visited news site in the WORLD.

Shows that their is 2 diff audiences for online and print news however 55+ aged audiences are vital as statistically they vote the most.

The fourth estate - The people/organizations that produce the news have an 'unofficial' yet significant political influence

Horizontal integration - buying the competition

vertical - buying the entire process

NEED TO KNOW-

• It is important to have free press in a democratic society - fourth estate holds the powerful to account
• Viscount Rothermere owns Daily Mail group and had 30+% market share - 2nd to news corp - news Baron
• Majority newspapers have a right wing bias
• Most popular news site is the mail online - 4.5 million unique daily users
• The Guardian is considered the most popular news source for hard news
• The Mail have recently come under pressure from campaign groups seeking to influence editorial decisions by pressuring advertisers, They recently lost their editor for being too critical of Boris Johnson
• Guardian viewers are typically left - Labour or Lib Dem
• Guardian is owned by the Scott Trust charity (10% market share)
• The Daily Mail is the biggest UK selling newspaper
• Guardian only recently began to make profit after years of loosing money (almost a million per week) from subscriptions, donations and print advertising. Supportive of participatory culture.
• Considers itself the world's leading campaigning/liberal voice - internationalist aspirations