LO1 - Task 1: Ownership of 20th Century Fox

Introduction

Intro: (SAM) (Music starts playing) Hi, my name’s Sam; and no you haven’t just clicked onto one of those over-dramatised news reports with their over the top graphics and presenters that have no idea what on Earth the technology does, that’s right I’m going to be talking to you plain and simply about the corporation 20^th Century Fox and its owner, Mr Rupert Murdoch.

Ownership

(SAM) First I’m going to be talking to you about the ownership. 20^th Century Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch, (Music stops) who would’ve guessed, (Music starts) and also 21^st Century Fox (Music stops) (which he also owns). (Music starts) He is the head of a bi------g commercial corporation called NewsCorp. NewsCorp owns lots of big companies like The Times, The Sun and the list goes on. All of these companies working under the watchful eye of NewsCorp are part of a conglomerate. (Music stops) Yes I have said that right. (Music starts) An easy definition for this word is that it’s a company made up of other companies. Simple as that. For example, the BBC is a conglomerate. It has TV channels like BBC 1 and BBC 2, it has Radio Channels such as BBC Radio 1, 2,3,4,5 and 6. It also produces films, under the name of BBC Films, like Jane Eyre starring big names such as Judie Dench and Jamie Bell. All of these separate organisations are part of the BBC.

Let’s move onto some simpler stuff. Independence. 20^th Century Fox is NOT an independent company. There are two main reasons for this. A) The company is still owned by 20th Century Fox and Rupert Murdoch and B) it doesn’t make, edit, and produce the films all on its own. 20^th Century Fox and most other big name production companies usually collaborate on projects. For example 20^th Century Fox recently collaborated on a joint vernture project with DreamWorks Studios on the “critically acclaimed film” (Music stops) Penguins of Madagascar; a spin-off of the mildly popular Madagascar franchise. (Music starts) Now all credit to them both for making the films but seriously (Music stops) that zebra will be applying for his pension soon. (Music starts) Collaboration projects on films are normally a repeating pattern. Other companies 20^th Century Fox have collaborated with in the past are Marvel, on X-Men, and Lightstorm Entertainment on Avatar. In fact, from 2010 to the present day (September 2015 flashes up on screen), Rupert Murdoch’s subsidiary (I’ll come onto that in a moment) has collaborated on every single film that it has made in that time. If you were listening you will have heard me mention yet another ridiculous word, subsidiary. A subsidiary is one of the companies in a conglomerate. So The Times and The Sun are subsidiaries of NewsCorp, the conglomerate. Still with me? Good, let's continue.

(Music starts) Cross Media Ownership? (Music stops) Nope, ok that’s another thing for me to talk about then. (Music starts) 20^th Century Fox is actually a Cross Media Company as it produces Film and TV. Now, they can really take advantage of the fact that they produce so many different products. For example, in the video games that they produce they can advertise the films they produce and in the comics/books they can put a reference to any other books/comics that are available from them thanks to NewsCorp. This is called Cross Promotion (a.k.a Synergy).     

Operating Model

Now, you’ll be wondering how a film by the likes of 20^th Century Fox is actually made. Right? Well, here you are. It all starts off with pre-production. This idea is then developed by brainstorming ideas and developing the script. However, this will require money, so the producer has to pitch their idea to the managers to have any chance of gaining financial support. The co-ordinator would then hire some script writers to write the script. While they are writing the script, other roles will be given out like director, editor, grip, etc. For the more important roles, people will be commissioned to do their jobs. Now all the equipment must be organised, the final budget must be set, the actors and actresses will be cast for the roles in the film, a storyboard must be planned and the locations for filming must be booked and organised. Now all the organisation has been done, the filming can commence. The scenes must be filmed; any props, costumes, make-up and sets required must be brought in for this, any prosthetics in case a horror film is being filmed, any pyrotechnics if explosions are needed, lighting must be applied where necessary, chaperones are required to look after the children/extras in a movie, lots of food and drink is a must as there’s never a crew that doesn’t require lots of breaks! If Special FX are needed, a green/blue screen could be used to provide an animated location and microphones must be worn by all actors and actresses so that maximum audio quality can be guaranteed. Now, some say that the Post-Production stage is the most vital in a film’s success and to a degree, they are certainly not wrong. Any transitions must be applied in the editing software like a Jump Cut, Fade and Glow, any CGI (Computer Generated Images to you and I) must be applied to characters or visual characters that aren’t played by a human, any overlays or colours can be applied, scenes can be cut and cropped, any audio recorded by the mics must be synced to the camera footage and if a green/blue screen was used, any backgrounds must be applied.

A big corporation like 20th Century Fox usually work in horizontal integration. This is where the main company is promoted by other companies (in this case in the form of 20th Century Fox's subsidiaries; FOX TV, Sky, The Sun Newspaper and the list goes on). An example of this would be The Sun having maybe a single or double page poster of 20th Century's latest film.

Vertical Integration also occurs in this company. Vertical Integration is where a company produces, distributes and owns companies that can help earn "extra dollar" by cross promoting, they can therefore control The Film Production Cycle.

Products

As 20^th Century Fox has lots of subsidiaries, they can help promote the film or TV Show that has been produced. Different sectors can help promote different products.

These subsidiaries do in fact produce their own media. National Geographic are famous for their documentaries that give a deep and impactful insight into life from around the world. “Explorer”, the company’s award-winning and longest-running show has provided some of the most iconic scenes in documentary history like when a chimpanzee tenderly reached out for renowned primatologist Jane Goodall. National Geographic specialise in three main types of Media; they are Photography, TV, and magazines and books since they were formed 127 years ago in 1888. The main target audience of National Geographic is adults but over the past couple of years they have opened their eyes to the younger audience by making shows such as “Science of Stupid”, which is where Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond takes a look at all the ludicrous clips of people falling, driving or just being darn right stupid from the Internet and depicts the "sciency" side of them. (Insert clip of waterslide guy) For example, this man will travel down this waterslide at 22.7 mph. The ramp is 150.62m long so the little paddling pool has to be X distance away from the end of the ramp. Unfortunately no-one will be able to work out the exact distance the man travelled as this video is in fact fake and is actually an ad for Microsoft Germany, believe it or not. 

One more subsidiary of 20^th Century Fox I’ll be talking about is Blue Sky Studios. (Tweet sound effect). Blue Sky Studios was founded in 1987 by a guy named Chris Wedge (Wheezing guy). I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you, he's won Academy Awards for his films . He’s also produced shorts such as No Time for Nuts (Shorter clip of Wheezing guy),  films like Rio, Rio 2, the Ice Age Saga and is currently producing the next Ice Age movie, Collision Course (explosion), set to be released in 2016. Aside from Films, Blue Sky Studios also produce TV Specials (1 off shows) for their films. Their best known shorts include Bunny and Gone Nutty, both were nominated for the Best Animated Short at the Academy Awards. Blue Sky Studios have collaborated on film projects, for example Rio and Rio 2 were made and produced with 20th Century Fox. The Films and TV Shows are generally aimed at a younger audience as Blue Sky Studios specialise in movies for kids.

Market Position and Competitors

20th Century Fox are a very successful company. We can see this from the list of awards that they have won; including the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture for 'Walk the Line' and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama for 'Alvin and the Chipmunks'.

They acquire Big Name stars for their movies such as Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman (Music Stops) (Insert MF Quote), (Music Starts). 20th Century Fox produce a variety of films of a variety of genres for a mass variety of audiences. They produce films for kids like the Ice Age and How to Train Your Dragon sagas, films like The Fault in our Stars, for teenagers, horror films like Poltergeist, for fans that like to be (Music Stops) scared by moving pictures (Music Starts) and more family orientated films like The Three Stooges. They have built themselves up as one of the most well-known production companies in the world and continue to produce content for audiences of all ages and show no sign of stopping.

However, 20^th Century Fox has many rivals in the film industry; these include the likes of Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures and NBC Universal. The products that are made by these other companies are very similar to those of 20^th Century Fox as they all produce films, merchandise and all the other regular items that a movie company produces. However, Disney produce animation films such as Toy Story and Frozen which are aimed at children. Universal produce more films to suit a wider ranged younger audience (5-30 year olds) like Despicable Me, Ted and The Purge. Sony Pictures are only innovating films for two specific markets (Children and Young Adults) with films like Hotel Transylvania and The Interview (Screen goes Black) I never thought I'd be putting those 2 films next to each other when I started writing this, (Normal Pictures resume) and 20th Century produce films for audiences of all ages. 

With Walt Disney Studios earning a Net Profit of over $8 Billion in 2014, NBC Universal possibly overtaking Time Warner in value and Sony Pictures growing on the ever more populated market, 20^th Century Fox is in no position to relax. That’s why they’ve been working hard by releasing 83 feature-length films from 2010-2014 including the very popular ‘The Fault in our Stars’, ‘The Maze Runner’ and ‘The Kung-Fu Panda’ series. 

21^st Century Fox, is a very charitable company; they are raising money for Cancer Research UK by running the ‘corporate challenge’ which is where companies from across the UK compete against each other and raise money for charity in the process. 18 of their employees also took part in the 2015 London Marathon. So far the company have raised over £103,000 for the cause.

I hope you learned a thing or two in the time that you spent watching this video. Maybe it was the definition of a conglomerate or maybe it was who’s going to replace that Zebra from Madagascar… (Thank you for watching appears on screen)