To what extent does digital distribution affect the marketing and consumption of media products in the area of media you have studied? 


Digital distribution has a large effect on the marketing and consumption of movies. Distribution has become far cheaper because they no longer have to print out the standard 35mm film which is expensive and then needs to be transported to the location, digital distribution is far cheaper as you don't need to print it onto film, to distribute a non-digital film to 5000 cinemas would cost around $1.7 million where as a digital film would cost around 90% less, which makes it far cheaper and better for global releases such as large block busters as cinemas from around the world will be able to gain access to it at the same time. an example of this would be a new transformer movie being released, they can distribute it very cheaply as it would be shot in digital, the film would be available world wide in thousands of cinemas so distribution costs are much cheaper than if it was shot with film.


Although 35mm films are still watched, 9 out of 10 US cinemas have switched to digital projectors which are far more expensive costing around $60,00 to $150,000 which many smaller business simply cannot afford. Many people believe that using film is becoming outdated and unreliable, an example of this would be that during a screening of "titanic" the film fell apart and become unusable, if the film had been digital then this would not of happened because no matter how many times the film is shown it will not lose quality. Paramount pictures was the first large studio to announce that all of its future films will be shot digitally and no longer use film, the last film they shot on film was Anchor man 2 - the legend continues, this film was a success however the first film to be shot entirely on digital was star wars episode 2 - attack of the clones which was also a success, this tells me that the way in which the film is shot and distributed has little effect on the success of the film, however digital films are far cheaper to distribute so this might affect how much money the film makes, or smaller independent movies might benefit massively from using digital methods.


The number of films produced on film has decreased as they have become outdated, however digital isn't perfect either, as technology advances storing the films becomes more difficult as hard drives don't last nearly as long as digital film, this is because recordings can become corrupted or the hard drive could crash, film doesn't have these problems if it is stored correctly. As well as this, digital films need to be updated to newer formats which can be seriously expensive at about $10,000 to $20,000 per film. Another problem with using digital is that it can become corrupted or be deleted easily, because of this studios still make analogue copy's of the film even if the film will never be shown to the general public o a 35mm camera. Digital cameras are much cheaper to buy as the camera used to film parts of marvels avengers assemble was only £900 and fit into he palm of a hand.


The films I have studied are ExMachine and Madmax - fury roads which where both shot in digital.