This past week, we had a guest lecturer on Monday, as well as discuss our upcoming paper on Wednesday. The guest lecturer from Monday provided thoughtful insight into some of the topics that we had discussed prior that I found to be really interesting.
We had talked about the concept of the Longtail graph. The longtail graph shows how products bring in revenue, and then which ones are the most profitable for the company producing that product. When applied to the media industry, it becomes unique compared to other industries.
What I found most interesting about this concept is that due to the way the movie industry works currently, movies that are far down the tail, which are ones that are not bringing in an abundance of revenue the same way Marvel movies do, now have a chance to be seen. Movies that are not coming from big-name studios and have millions of dollars behind them can be seen on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon.
For example, when I go on Netflix to find a film to watch, the businesses that are not technically good enough to be in theaters have a great chance to be seen by viewers like me and everybody else. This allows for much more diversity in the types of films being produced, and the way we can choose what we want to watch.
Another interesting factor is with the power of social media now, people who maybe only have 500 dollars to produce a film can access ways to advertise their films to the right niche audiences, thus, having a chance that they didn’t have before to get more people to access their product. This allows for again, more diversified products as well as more opportunities for filmmakers.
entertainment media 