Movie Industry's Dialogue With Itself On Variety Magazine

10 Pages 2558 Words

“Variety Magazine”
“The audience marketplace is a vital component of the U.S. economy” (Napoli 15). Perhaps no other media industry demonstrates this fact more than the motion picture industry. Multi-million dollar grossing movies, motion picture studios that have grown into media conglomerates; bringing the idea of synergy into an almost infallible efficiency and extensive merchandising to children and adults have an enormous market share among all media industries. People usually tend to have a love-hate relationship with the motion picture industry as at times the box office is vulnerable even with a previously working formula. One can usually hear the audience sigh and sneer at the previews to upcoming films if they appear to be, if you will, cheesy. The consumer is the most important factor in filmmaking, even the low budget surprise indie hits that surface once in a while. Once a movie scores points with the consumer, art takes a backseat, as can be demonstrated by the lack of art value in most summer blockbuster hits. Yes, people do tend to have a complex opinion of the motion picture industry, but, what does the industry think of itself, its accomplishments, and its prospective future as relative to its audiences?
In an attempt to answer these questions, I read numerous recent articles from the Variety magazine, an industry trade magazine that directly addresses these issues. Variety Magazine is a media industry magazine that has weekly news about the motion picture, theater and television industries. The primary emphasis is on the motion pictures, and this is where Variety stands out with interesting analyses and data about the present condition and future prospects of the industry. For this very reason, in my analysis, I will purposefully leave out those articles that pertained to theater and television audiences, as I would like my main focus in this essay to be the internal dialogue of the motion picture industry...