Section B exam question

Section B exam question

The platform that media products are consumed affect their overall construction in quite a huge way. In this case with the film industry, productions such as Ill Manors, A Field In England and Spectre all stand out as clear examples as to why this is.

The Ill Manors Tag London campaign using the e-media platform, is another example of how platform can affect the construction of media products, this time with it specifically targeting social media through user-generated content (UGC). With the Tag London campaign, people were requested to make/posts tweets with the hashtag #ILLMANORS regarding their feelings on the current state of Britain - linking up particularly to the anti-establishment aspects of the brand with things like scenes from the London Riots being displayed in the Ill Manors music video. What this actually helped the record label (Atlantic Records) do was promote the album for the film in a way that was both cheap for them and more likely to generate attention for the product, with user generated content (UGC) being something more easy for people to associate themselves with rather than things from an institution. What's quite notable here though, is that with social media being a primary platform or base for promotion for this campaign, the target audience of young people for the film is already made quite clear with them being the predominant users of the platform making it easier for them to reach. This said though, older and more niche audiences as seen with products like A Field In England would be likely to be more difficult to reach through these means, showing how important platform can be in terms of construction.

While the print platform has been an increasingly dying media as the significance of technology has arisen over time, it is still a platform that is delved into as seen with films like Ill Manors. Examples of how print has been used in this is with the billboards for it, posters and also features in magazines such as NME and Men's Health. Generally across these, particularly the billboard and poster, the same title is used with the 'ill' appearing to be a trio of council flats. And while it can be said that a lot of these different examples can be viewed online, which they can be (adding to this sense of a dying media), the sense of consistency and synergy that can be seen between these products and other ones such as the album cover for the film score all help unify different aspects of the film together rather than just making them appear as different standalone things.