Media ownership is dominated by 6 conglomerates, the largest of these being Disney. Walt Disney use vertical integration and synergy in order to promote their films, partnering with many other companies in order to increase cinema revenue which has decreased over the years as a result of streaming using Amazon, Sky and Netflix.
The first step of vertical integration is production. Walt Disney produce their own films, including pre-visualisation and post production. Before 2006, Disney only animated films aimed at children, however another company known as Pixar specialised in creating films which used CGI to include older audiences in their productions, and had huge success in a recent film using new technology. As a result of this, Disney used horizontal integration and partnered with Pixar in order to develop new technology in their films and create blockbusters similar to that of Avatar.
One example of a technology used in the film Avatar by James Cameron was performance capture. This is a technique that allows the skill and interpretation of the actor to be shown despite the actor not being seen. Special equipment meant that a digital skeleton of the character could be created which imitated the actor's essence and expressions, however the appearance of this character could be easily edited along with everything around it through the use of chroma capture. Advancements such as this are used throughout the 2016 adaptation of the Jungle Book, as very little of the film was real yet verisimilitude was created through performance and chroma capture. Parts of the set were only built when Mowgli needed to interact with something, and therefore most of the set was not real and created using chroma capture. These technologies can also make production easier as they are able to create any setting from an American Studio, without the need to travel to another place. Although Disney mainly uses vertical integration within its own company, they outsourced for the creation of the Jungle Book and partnered with the company known as MPC, who have previously been successful (and received awards) for their success in films and advertisements. MCP specialise in Computer Generated Images, which is something that has created large amounts of progress in the film industry. The use of CGI has greatly impacted the film industry as audiences are often unsure about whether what they are seeing is real or not, which not only intrigues them further but creates more tension. A large budget was spent on the production, being roughly $175,000,000. However it was shown to be worth it, as they made a profit of almost $200,000,000. The film was extremely successful not only through the use of new technologies, but also due to the smart techniques of advertising.
Disney distributes and markets its own films, meaning that they can save money and use synergy to create cross-media advertising. Disney Motion Pictures distributes the films nationally, which ensures that the company can make a larger sum of money. Technology has also meant that it is now much easier for films to be distributed because of digitisation. Since it doesn't take as much time as it used to, film companies now have more time to develop their marketing strategies. The director of the Jungle Book, Favreau, advertised the use of technology to promote the film to a larger audience than the previous adaptation. Not only was it advertised at the Superbowl, but it was also presented in an ESPN commercial (owned by Disney) to not be brought by the studio of Cinderella, but instead by the studio of Pirates and the Caribbean. Many trailers presented the scary moments and hid the musical numbers in order to appeal to elder siblings, and effectively showed how these digitally created characters were not light-hearted or animated for children.
Use of technology has also impacted film productions in terms of exhibition as the introduction of iMAX made cinematic productions much more appealing to audiences. A typical film uses 35mm film limited to 6k lines of horizontal resolution, however iMAX format produces approximately 18k lines of horizontal resolution. This means that the quality at the cinema has drastically improved and therefore caused an increase in cinema revenue, despite it still being voted the least favourite method of media consumption.
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