P1(a) Ownership

Ownership.

Media ownership

This is basically who owns the company, no matter if it is private or public. In this case, Pixar is a subsidiary of Walt Disney. It is a process that gradually reduce the individual or organization to control the increase of shares for the mass market media, and it is separated into the ownership of private property and public services.

The purpose of media ownership is to promote freedom of expression, a real opportunity to express their views which are comprehensive and contain a wide range of media.

Meaning and purpose: 
Pixar is an American computer animation film studio producing feature and short films, and software products. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm before it was acquired by Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs in 1986. The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion; the transaction made Jobs the largest shareholder in Disney.

"It is best known for its CGI-animated feature films created with PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Computer Division of  Lucas-film before it was acquired by Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs in 1986. The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion; the transaction made Jobs the largest shareholder in Disney."

This information is referenced in http://home.iitk.ac.in/~umraos/pixar.html.

In that information, it stated the amount of money that Walt disney Company brought Pixar in 2006, and it is the evidence that ownership of Pixar in belong to Disney.

Subsidiary
It is a business that is wholly or partially owned by another business, sometimes this is called parent company or holding company. In this case, Pixar as the daughter company controlled by Walt Disney is the parent company.

Advantage
The holding company provides the subsidiary company with buying power, research and development funds, marketing money, knowledge, employees, which can give their daughter company a big support. It does have the ability to offset profits and losses of one part of a business with another. 

Disadvantage
Pixar has limited freedom in management, and get control as a daughter company, which is partially owned by another outside organisation.


Multinational
It means that the company has either investments or operations in two or more countries.

Advantage

One of the main advantage is to increase the market shares. The companies may find they are at saturation point in the domestic market and need a new outlet. They are able to start by exporting to other countries but eventually they will want to being production overseas. 
Disadvantage
However, Multinationals' profits are not usually kept in the host country. For example, the money that they have made and saved by General Motors moving car assembly production to Mexico would still go back to HQ in Michigan.

Since Disney had bought Pixar, which means that they are working together, and Disney does have businesses in different countries, no matter film, games, or clothing.

Synergy
It means that the concept that the value and performance of two companies combined will be greater than the sum of It is where on corporation will branch into different fields of business in order to make profit for example Disney they have filmed TV, books, games, toys and even hotels.

Advantage
It can be increase the profit of each separate medium and enhance the company's image through doing different areas in the market. Following that, everyone do know about them. 

Disadvantage
All the profit will be group into one combined company which means that disney will have all the profits in this case. 

Since Disney had brought Pixar, which means that Pixar was one of the sector of business of Disney by doing animation film.


Conglomerate

It is where a company is made up of other companies that all specialize in a certain field.

Advantages 

Advantages of this is that all companies are likely to boost their own profits from the business

Disadvantages 

The disadvantages of this is that the company will eventually go into a new area of business as the company will be that large meaning that there is a higher risk of the company failing 

Pixar follow this by selling their products to the companies and retailing shops in Disney like Amazon/ Ebay or HMV.

This is how the office of Pixar looks like.

P1(b) Operating model

Operating model.
Below you can see from the annual report, it mentioned about how Pixar/Disney have restructured their organisation.

Meaning and purpose - Changes have met that the company is focused more on their television production and consumer products (merchandising ) and they conbined clasic media with this other departments. How the department work together by their own management knowledge.

Management Overview
" This picture represent the Pixar operating model:
During the year ended December 31, 2013, we reorganized our internal management structure to align with changes in how we operate the business and evaluate financial performance of each of our
individual business units. The changes in our operational structure resulted from, among other things, our growing television production business, an increased emphasis on our consumer products business and the ongoing integration of our Classic Media business into our operating segments. We evaluate the performance of each of our segments based on gross profit, and accordingly, the discussion of our revenues and costs of revenues for the years ended December 31, 2013, 2012 and 2011 reflects our new segment categories. A description of each of our segments is discussed in the section entitled “Our Revenues and Costs.” "

They are the main staff in Pixar Inc.

LEE UNKRICH is an American director, film editor and screenwriter. He is a longtime member of the creative team at Pixar, where he started in 1994 as a film editor. He later began directing, first as co-director of Toy Story 2. After co-directing Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo, Unkrich made his solo directorial debut with Toy Story 3, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film in 2011.

JOHN ALAN LASSETER is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, producer and the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and DisneyToon Studios. He is also the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering. He also in charge of the 

The followings are the key executives for Pixar Inc:

Edwin E. Catmull (Co-Founder, Director and President of Walt Disney & Animation Studios)

Simon Tristan Bax (Chief Financial Officer, Principal Accounting Officer, Executive Vice President and Secretary)

Lois J. Scali (Executive Vice President and General Counsel)

Jim Morris (General Manager)

P1(c) Products

Products

Meaning and purpose: 

As you can see from the Disney annual report 2015 below, Pixar is one of their company, a company which produces feature animated films and short films. In addition to this, they have thriving merchandising business producing related products. Their appeal is a mass market audience. According to their mission statement inovation and creativity is that the heart of their core values.

The Company distributes films primarily under the Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Touchstone banners. The Company produces and distributes Indian movies through its UTV banner. In Pixar, they have released 16 animated feature films and 5 short films. 

( This information have been taken from this website page 11: https://ditm-twdc-us.storage.googleapis.com/2015-Annual-Report.pdf )

This image is from Pixar's Prezi in 2011.

Pixar Animation - is a huge media company which under Disney, however Disney's films are also using their own software that they invented themselves. They only produce animated films and the products about the films, which is a massive difference compare to Disney. Here are the most famous films that everyone should remember its names:

• Toy Story 1-3
• Monster INC. and Monster University
• Finding Nemo
• Cars 1-2
• Wall E
• Brave

Toy Story

Toy story 2

Toy story 3

The Incredible

Monster Company 

Monster University

Finding the Nemo

Cars

Cars 2

WALL-E

Brave

There are also toys and clothes selling online, http://www.disneystore.co.uk/disney-pixar/mn/1001073/. This is a store only for Pixar to sell products in DisneyStore.

P1(d) Market position

Meaning and Purpose: Due to a business comparison  between Pixar movies and DreamWorks movies in the beginning of 2016. Below is a link to a post to compare two movies by their rankings, profits. There are even tables and comments to discuss about them. 

Market Position:

The competitive standing of a company or its product measured by by the units that they sold, revenue, distribution coverage, product usage, consumer perceptions. However, companies can improve their market position through the pricing competition, advertising, quality of products. It is important to know their target audiences and customer needs to meet their goals and have a higher market position, therefore there are more customers to purchase their products. 

http://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/pixar-movies-vs-dreamworks-movies/

The Walt Disney Company will buy Pixar in an all-stock transaction that makes Pixar CEO Steve Jobs Disney's largest shareholder. Disney said it would exchange 2.3 of its shares for each Pixar share, valuing Pixarat $59.77 a share, an almost 4 percent premium based on closing shareprices today.

The information is taken from this website: 
www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/business/24cnd-disney.html

This screenshot shows the current Pixar's position of the market

P1(e) Competitors

Meaning and Purpose: Pixar, the animated company which under Disney Studio, is concern about their competitors which are the same market, and doing the similar entertainment to the audiences. 

The Company produces and acquires live-action and animated motion pictures for worldwide distribution to the theatrical, home entertainment and television markets. The Company distributes these products through its own distribution and marketing companies in the U.S. and both directly and through independent companies and joint ventures in foreign markets primarily under the Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Touchstone and UTV banners. We distribute certain motion pictures for DreamWorks Studios under our Touchstone Pictures banner. The Company also produces stage plays and musical recordings, licenses and produces live entertainment events and provides visual and audio effects and other post-production services. 

( The information is from page68, the part of Studio Entertainment in Pixar Annual Report 2015: https://ditm-twdc-us.storage.googleapis.com/2015-Annual-Report.pdf)

The main competitors to against Disney Television

Disney faces a number of competitors across its various markets, with Viacom (VIA), Time Warner (TWC), 21st Century Fox (FOX), CBS (CBS) and Comcast (CMCSA) being its main competitors. These companies compete with Disney's products mainly through TV, cable and other media markets such as DVD/Blue-ray, video games and the Internet. The growth of multichannel video programming network distributors and cable networks has increased the competitive pressure for Disney. Contracts are renegotiated at certain points in these markets, and the rise of competition puts increased difficulty on Disney to renew the contracts with such favorable conditions as it has in the past.

(This information is from http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052115/who-are-disneys-dis-main-competitors.asp )


The main competitors to against Pixar 

This is obviously DreamWorks Animation in this case, they are choosing the similar animated films to be their style. 

From the passage it mentioned about the competitors' name, they are including:

• Viacom (VIA)
• Time Warner (TWC)
• 21st Century (FOX)
• CBS
• Corncast (CMCSA)
• DreamWorks Animation

DreamWorks, is an American film production label of Amblin Partners. It was also a former film distributor for its own and third-party films. It has produced or distributed more than ten films with box-office grosses of more than $100 million each. Currently, DreamWorks' films are marketed and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures under its Touchstone Pictures-banner, with their contract set to expire in 2016. They are also the main competitor against Pixar as they are having the same market as Pixar by doing animation films.

P2(a-g) Analysis of a Media Product

Meaning & Purpose
In this section, I am going to analysis a media company with its products and audiences. I will analysis with their purpose, form, content, meaning, genre and intended audience after I have chosen a media company.

Pixar Animation Studios 

It located in Emeryville, California, it has created acclaimed feature and short films for over 25 years. It is also home to RenderMan line of software products. It is an animation film company that creates famous media products such as Toy Story 1-3, The Incredibles, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, etc. However, I am going to talk about the film that I have choose.

Monster University - 2013

Purpose
The purpose of this movie is to entertain the viewers and give a response to the lovers of monster company. The movie Monster Company was the first episode, it published in 2002. It is been over ten years, and there are lots of people hoping to watch the casts of Mike and Sullivan again. Furthermore, the people who watched Monster Company as their young age fantasy/adventure movie, it was their memories as a young age kid, they grown and began to study in University. In the movie, they presented the life in University by making narrative interesting stories.

Form & Genre
The genre of this movie is about Animation, Fantasy, Comedy, Adventure Film. The colourful and interesting look of the monster changes the children's imagination of monster by their minds. Children also liked to think about University, and what they are like.

Content
The content of this movie is about one of the main character Mike Wazowski, when he was young, he visited the Monsters University in a tour of his primary school. A senior student gave his hat to Mike, and he planned to become the best scary monster in the college. Yeas passed, Mike joined the Monsters University, and he received a flier of the Scare Games that toke place soon in the campus. He met Sully who had the best scary record in the college, however he was lazy to scare everyone already and felt tired about it. Mike wanted him to attend the event, and become the friends and enemies in the six months... 

Meaning
It is going to appeal more to children and adults to have fun about it. Especially, the the ones who watched Monster Company in their past, and really looking forward to watch the next episode. The director and Pixar are hoping the people will say "It is a great movie and have lots of fun about it" after they have watched the movie. In the movie, it gives the readers an idea of what monsters are by not only the scary looking, and what they are thinking about. Since it is an animation movie, they make the monster looks cute and colourful, furthermore they designed them into human look with different colours on them and characteristics. It also gives an idea to the kids that monsters need to go university and have their life with friends there.

Intended audience
In this film they have used a huge amount of different shots like wide angle, medium close-up, high angle and low angle, however I think they used the most are medium shots and shoulder shots.

Main Characters

• James P. Sullivan - In the movie of Monster University, Sulley appears in his look in teen in the prequel, he looked shorter, skinnier and shaggier. According to official sources, he is 7'6" (228 cm), weighs 768 pounds (348 kg), and was born on August 17. 

• He makes a ferocious debut by interrupting his first Scaring class with a roar, apologising, saying he heard someone say "roar" and just went for it. Here, he reveals himself to be the son of Bill Sullivan, a famous Scarer, and asks a fellow student for a pencil since he forgot his stuff, but he just uses it as a toothpick. Sulley hardly put in any work in his classes and instead relied on his family legacy and natural skills, preferring to spend his time goofing off and playing pranks, such as kidnapping the mascot of rival college Fear Tech. Hiding the mascot, he accidentally sneaks into the room of a fellow scare student, Mike Wazowski, leading to a mad chase when the pig runs off. His skills and legacy get him recognised by and accepted into ROR, the premiere campus fraternity.

• Mike Wazowski - He is a proud and confident monster, partly defined by his friendship with, James P. Sullivan, whom he works with as his Scaring Assistant, and drives him through an exercise regimen like a strict coach. They're best friends, room-mates, incredibly devoted to each other, although Mike seeks to improve their careers, partly because of the hard work and everything they've ever put into their jobs.

• In the movie Monster University, his lifelong dream is to become a Scarer at Monsters, Inc.—and he's sure he knows just how to do it. Ever since he was a young monster, Mike's had his eye on Monsters University, home of the world's top Scare Program. Now a freshman and hopeful Scare student, he's well versed in the rich history, theory and technique required to reach his goal, and the little green one-eyed monster has more confidence, enthusiasm, determination and heart than all of his classmates combined. But unexpected roadblocks derail Mike's plans and he's forced to team up with a group of misfit monsters and an unlikely ally to try and pull off the biggest coup in the University's history.

• Randy Boggs - Monsters University freshman Randy Boggs has big aspirations for college life. The peculiar lizard-like monster with his host of gangly arms and legs plans to major in Scaring and lead an active social life filled with fun, friends and fraternity parties. Although he has ability of invisible, he has an embarrassing disappearing habit. However, he solved his problem in his college life, and being a great scary monster after college. That has been shown on the first eposide Monster Company.

Production Process
In the first video, Dan Scanlon, the director of Monster University, he was a fan of Monster Inc. and just get the idea of telling a college story and the story is about a character that doesn't get exactly what they want was really appealing to him. He likes to try out new ideas and felt excited when there were new pics idea coming out.

Production Designer, Ricky Nierva, he said that they liked to do the background characters later in the process of Pixar's normally.

 This picture shows how Pixar create a new character by using 3D animation software. Every single of her hair have its own unique way of moving and interacting with the hair. Then, they have set up a lot of simulation week so the hair can be very nicely within any kind of motion from very slow to very active sequence.

They mentioned about the lookup hair is one of the most difficult part to get it right in computer graphics, because of its complex scattered transmission of light. The colour shadows can help to achieve the fits of translucency.

They have to do a character that needs to remain beautiful but have a broad range of motion  and able to match with the character itself, mind the shadow of hair.

This is the final production.

From sketchbook to screen

I am going to show how Pixar make scenes from sketchbook to the screen, they must run through stages of process to a scene based on their idea/thinking. 

 12 years after Monster Inc, Pixar has finally released the prequel: Monster University, which the characters back to college, and looking back to their college life. Pixar has offered a glimpse into the animation and design process that went into the film. We can see how they follow the characters from the initial sketch to a final animated images from these images.

 This is the image of the initial storyboard sketch, the animation process begins with a basic sketched storyboard for visualising the elements and the way their fit into the narratives. Pixar said that: "This storyboard was drawn by "Monster University" story artist Dean Kelly and is from the sequence "Pig Chase". The storyboards are drawn by the story artists for the purpose of pre-visualising the film. They are placed side by side in sequence, so that they convey scenes and deliver a rough sense of how the story unfolds. 

 This is image is about the Concept art. The ideas of artists with concept art, provides a glimpse of what the film's completed visuals will look like. "Once the storyline for a sequence is completed, concept art is created by the Production Designer and artists to determine the look and feel of the film," Pixar writes. "This concept art piece was drawn by artist Shelly Wan and showcases the exploration of colour and the design of new characters and new environments."

 This image is about Computer modelling, it shows how the characters and environment begin to take a digital space. Pixar writes: "Characters and set environments are created in a process known as Modeling in the computer by technical directors. Shading will be applied to the characters and sets to fill in the textures, colours, patterns and material properties that will add dimension to the scene when lit by the Lighting department."

The next stage of the process is known as layout. "Once the storyline for a sequence is completed, the scene is created in the computer," Pixar writes. "This frame shows the beginning phase known as Layout, in which a virtual camera is placed into a shot. The characters and set are “staged” or placed into positions that work visually within the chosen camera angle. Layout precedes character animation. Sets are simplified during this phase, but are seen fully built in the next stage of production."

As everyone knows, Pixar is an animation film making company. The next stage of the process obviously is about animation and simulation. They bring the characters from their mid come to life, as the animation and simulation departments add movement to the scene. The company explains the process: "When Layout is complete, the primary and secondary characters are animated into poses by the Animation department. In addition, hundreds of background characters are populated into the scene. These characters are animated by the Crowds department. The Simulation department adds movement to the hair and garments through computer simulation. This allows the hair and garments to move naturally with the characters' actions. Final character shading is also completed by the Characters department to add textures and colours to the garments and props."

The last but not least, the final stage, Lighting and Final image. Lighting is essential to final effect. Pixar writes: "The Lighting department is responsible for integrating all of the elements - characters, set pieces, cloth and hair, shading - into a final image. The lighting is achieved in the computer by placing virtual light sources into the scene to illuminate the characters and the set. In a scene, many dozens of lights are often required. “Monsters University” is the first Pixar film to implement Global Illumination, a new lighting technology that allows for ultra-complex lighting set-ups where light bounces in a physically realistic way."

 The beginning of the movie was taken place in season of autumn, it showed there was a bird with two heads which told us that there were all monster in that world even a normal bird. After that, there was a school went into the gate of University. 

 This is one of the main character in this movie, Mike Wazowski. Since this is the second episode, everyone knows his face after he has grown up, which means that everyone are noticed that this is talking his about past and the first time to visit the Monster University. As you can see from the images, he had no friends who wants to walk with him in the past. He looks disappointed, because the other classmates are walking with their friends and looking forward to visit the university happily, and he needs to walk with the teacher with no friends walk along with him. 

Behind the scenes at Disney Pixar - Monster University

P3(a-d) Demographics of the target audience

In this section I would like to talk about these points:

• Gender
• Age 
• Lifestyle
• Spending power

Gender

The target audience for this film is the massive market and family viewing. Teenagers/children of both genders enjoy on this film as they are talking about friendships, and target goal. Since the monster are having attractive colors on their hairs and skin, it caught children' eyes and wanting to watch this film, no matters boys or girls. As we all know girls like love stories and the theme of relationship but boys would prefer battles, fights, action and a hero, which they would want to look at ( For example some Marvels most famous films like Spiderman, Batman, Green-light and others ). In Monster university, it is about the relationship of friendship of Mike and Sulley first met, it also included some of the fighting scene. It can attracts to the boys. 

Age

The target audience has a mass - market appeal because the movie is classified into "U" symbol, the symbol which stands for Universal. A U film should be suitable for audiences aged four years an d over. However, it is impossible to predict what might upset a particular child, especially at this lower end f the category range. In the other words, it is targeted at children 4 to 12, teenagers 12 to 18 and adults 18 to 60. As it is involved a huge turget audience, it is the biggest market in media. The movie seems to be for children more than for other age groups but adults and teenagers may find it interesting to watch too as there are huge amount of different scenes segmented on the specific audience. Furthermore, the first episode Monster Inc. was 12 years ago, this may the main weapon to attract teenagers or young adults, because that movie was their childhood memories.

Lifestyle
Different kinds of people are having different kinds of lifestyle and having their own selection during their free-time. However, there are a huge amount of people who like to spent their time and have a rest at home by playing games, or watching movies. Furthermore, some people may want to socaialising with their friends by shopping or dining, or even go to cinema together and watch a movie there. Monster University is a great movie which suits a family to watch. This film provides everything what the viewer wants : An amazing narrative animated story with colourful and funny looking characters, interesting laugh scenes, good filming length (104 minutes) which is amount to spent a good evening and relax, a laugh for a film. Those components are meeting every customer need.

Spending power
Every film is aimed on people, which average income and spending facility allows then to buy a ticket in the cinema which is around £7-14 in UK, depends on the age and student or not. Furthermore, they also wish viewers like to buy the DVD disc of this film on the disk which costs around £15-25 in UK's stores or £20 in Apple store which allow them to watch the film anytime as they want with their friends or families in their private place. Also, there are products which related to this film, such as Monster University's T-shirt, hoodies, water bottles, etc. The image below is the cover of the film, it is profitable for Pixar to show the cover of the disc to help them sell DVDs, some of the DVDs even attached with a poster with the disc. This may makes the customers think its worth or purchasing the disc because they want to have the limited poster in their house.

Furthermore, there are posters to attract people to watch the film no matter on sale or seeing on street or cinema.

Selling in different kind of movie or games by their Disney Apps or iTunes for Mobile phones and tables in one of the merger softwares in the world's called Apple Store which provides every app for an Apple brand technology: