What is the benefit of synergy for audiences and institutions?

Synergy is when a company owns another company, or is a conglomerate business. By being able to have different businesses it has more money and therefore can make films with a bigger budget which is beneficial as more people can see it.

As a conglomerate business has a lot of money, it allows them to make films which can be blanket released, therefore hopefully getting a bigger revenue. Disney is a very good example of how synergy is beneficial. They produce films and then can market them through subsidiaries such as NBC. They own NBC and ESPN therefore they do not need to pay for this advertising. Once the film has been released, the institution continues to gain marketing from their other subsidiaries, for example their theme parks.

However, this is only beneficial for the big institutions such as Disney as the independent UK institutions such as Vertigo Films can not afford to compete along side these films. Therefore audiences fail to see a wide variety of films as the film industry is arguably dominated by the conglomerate businesses. Although synergy in fact can be beneficial for small UK film institutions if a big institution finances them. An example of this is Working Title Films, who are financially backed by Universal Studios. They can afford to make big budget films because of this now, such as The Boat That Rocked which had a £50million budget. Working Title has made well known films which have been blanket released and have been received very well, such as Love Actually. These films have also been received well in America as the people who live there like the see a very British England which contrasts to the films of Vertigo Films.

Yet, do audiences have the freedom to choose the films they want to see or are the films they think they want to see imposed upon them due to synergy. 50% of a film’s budget is spent on advertising, which is arguably the most important stage of the process as the audiences must watch the film in order for the film to be successful. If an institution has synergy they can afford to spend a lot of money on advertising their film above the line. Therefore audiences choose these bigger films over smaller institution’s films as they have seen more about it. This of course is very beneficial to the institutions and also in a way beneficial to audiences. If the institutions could not afford to market their film the audience would not be aware of it, thus loosing the potential experience of seeing this film at the exhibition stage.

Overall, synergy is very beneficial to institutions as they can produce higher budget films, therefore being able to blanket release there film so more people see it. However, audiences enjoy these films but they also may enjoy films which are of smaller UK institutions but due to their lack of synergy they are not received by as many people. Therefore synergy is only beneficial to those who have it.