Prosumers, Proliferated Hardware and Content and Converged Devices
What Is A Prosumer?
A prosumer is a consumer who uses technology, which is becoming more and more easily accessible, to produce their own content and share via platforms such as Youtube.
What are the benefits and negatives of a proliferation of hardware and content?
The proliferation of hardware and content has led to benefits such as; lowering prices for high quality hardware, making it easier for smaller, independent projects to get made; as more members of the audience can make films themselves, the quality of professional films is driven up, since they have to seem better than products made by prosumers in order to appear worth paying for.
In the film industry, how has one media conglomerate used synergy successfully?
Disney
Disney owns a number smaller companies such as Pixar, Marvel Entertainment and Lucasfilm. Through these subsidiaries many films have been created, or are in development, these in include animated films from Pixar such as the Toy Story films, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles; superhero films from Marvel, including the Avengers and the films that tie-in to the Avengers and the upcoming seventh Star Wars film from Lucasfilm.
Crowd Funding Example – Kung Fury
How have films challenged traditional funding and filming methods?
Films like Kung Fury have challenged traditional distribution and filming methods by using new methods such as crowd crowd funding. This is when they producers of the film set up an online fund for strangers to invest money into the film. As you can see the film tripled its target funding to $600,000 and is currently being made into a full length movie.
Audience Construction – 3 Films
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Age:
Because of the comic-book origins of the film, action and teenage protagonist, this film would be mainly distributed towards young adults and teenagers. As the films contains swearing, heavy amounts of violence and hints of the sexual nature, however, it would be probably marketed towards the 16-18 age range, to avoid BBFC issues and other legal issues related with unethical distribution.
3D
What are the benefits of 3D films for audiences and producers?
For producers, 3D films make more money, as it costs more for an audience member to see a film in 3D. 3D films, supposedly, give a more immersive experience for the viewer, giving greater depth to the images on screen. 3D films can also help towards preventing piracy, as people may want the spectacle of seeing a film in 3D, which they can’t get at home.
What are the negatives?
During a film, 3D glasses can be quite irritating for audience members, and make the picture darker, giving a worse experience of the film. It also costs more for consumers, which also might put them off seeing a film in 3D. 3D can also promote a mentality in film makers where they value spectacle over story. Furthermore, converting a film into the 3D can often be done poorly, giving a worse product for consumers, and costing the studio money.
Russo Brothers to Direct Both ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Movies
Audience Task 1 – Statistical Yearbook
Summarise the audience information provided to gain an understanding of the state of UK cinema audiences
Age
This graph makes it clear that in the UK the 15-24 age group was the largest, making up a third of audiences in 2013. while all other age groups were around 20%. This shows that young people are, by far, the most active film goers, in the UK, this means that films that have a particular appeal for that age group will likely be successful.
The most popular films with the 15-24 age group in 2013
Gender
Convergence on the Age of Ultron Official Website
Explain how the websites have used convergence to increase audience awareness and participation in order to promote and sustain interest in the film and/or its franchise. On this site, convergence is seen. 
The homepage of the site is, simply, a landscape of the teaser poster. This helps to create a sense of intrigue and builds on the iconography of the first film as that had a very similar teaser image. The site plays dramatic music in order to immerse users in the experience of using the site (this is easily mutable as many users may be put off by this). The site also features a global navigation bar that links to pages about other Marvel products, thus helping to join all Marvel brands into one converged brand. 
This small banner appears near the top of the page, showing news about the film, this helps to get people excited as they can see how others are talking about the film. This banner also features links to the film’s official social media pages, which can be used to keep the film in the users’ minds as the film’s release approaches.
How has the Avengers franchise benefited from multi-media Convergence?
This franchise uses a multitude of cross-media convergence methods for both business and artistic reason.
Comics
These films are based on the Marvel comicbooks, Marvel exploit this fact to promote their films amongst comicbook readers as well as using the films to make comicbooks more accessible to new readers.
This comicbook was released in conjunction with the first Avengers film. This was designed to milk the success of the Avengers film by giving readers more of the flavour of those films.
Edward Haynes AS Media 