The death of the cinema?

As our technology is increasing, we are also losing things throughout the way, the outdated, old and forgotten media which are now only remembered as stepping stones to what we have now.

Due to the whole media convergence, nowadays everyday people can create their own media content and share it to millions of different people through websites such as YouTube.

Not only that but technology has allowed us to bring the old unique experiences into our own homes. We now have the ability to bring the Cinema experience into our everyday lives through HD televisions, surround sound and Blu-Ray DVDS.

Despite being this more convenient for us, this is effectively killing the market for Cinemas. The cinema used to be a unique place where friends would gather for a social and immersive experience, and now almost all the qualities found in a cinema can be brought back to your home.

The reason why Cinemas used to be so successful is because there was nowhere else where people could immerse themselves so well into a movie, even when they started mass producing them on VCR to allow people to own their individual copies. They had problems which put off some of the audiences. This was due to the scale of the movies in comparison to the user’s television. Televisions those days could not fit the entire clip into the television screens, resulting in large sections being cropped off. The producer’s came up with a simple method called “pan and scan” which panned the camera around the movie to focus on important sections while leaving out the less important parts. It worked well but some people were still not satisfied.

Now that all these problems have been resolved, the cinema’s are struggling too keep up with today’s market. You can tell they are now relying more and more on the food and drink as the prices of them keep rising. There have been attempts at reviving the market through 3D films and classic movies (Toy Story! Lion King!). But even now Television companies have successfully implemented the 3D effect into their televisions. This could be the end of the cinema!

Convergence

Convergence culture is a new mixture of new and old technology, solely based on the idea of new and old media, on how they were noticed, labelled by age and then combined to create a new potential medium for everyone to use.

By combining the two different types of media it allows a whole new set of media to be created; allowing even the audience to become the creator. An example of this is Web series which are programs which are only available to view through a pc, giving the user a new way to watch programs; it also allows communication and feedback which can go back to the creators through emails, forums and much more. Another example of this is the traditional television shows, but streamed online, this sometimes even containing old videos which are no longer aired on TV. This allows more choice in television as it gives them the freedom to watch any show anytime compared to some TV digital boxes allowing only some content to be re-watched.

A strange but good example of this is a television show, is called “Rudetube.” It’s a television series which completely relies on online videos as its content. The show combines the two media types by finding the most popular videos on the internet, and showing the audience on television, increasing its’ view count and popularity further.

Other ways which convergence culture can be used is for advertisements for companies; they can advertise their products online through videos and gaining popularity unique videos becoming viral. This different method can potentially save a lot of money and time; it also gives them different methods of presentation allowing their products to be shown in a whole new light.