Larry Hama was the senior editor of Marvel comics and has had vast experience developing concepts in characters in the industry. He helped develop such popular characters as Wolverine from the X-Men and Captain Bucky O'hare. Hama started as a shoe illustrator for Sears and talked to our class about a number of different variables that have effected the landscape of media. One of the things he highlighted is how the Star Wars franchise missed out on a lot of toy licensing. Although Star Wars was a very marketable movie, many of the toy items such as model space ships and lightsabers were hard to manufacture and there could not be advertised. Toys had to be designed so that they could be easily manufactured, and so he took another look at how to tackle this problem. Eventually many characters were adapted so that they could be easily manufactured. He also talked about how the intellectual property and ancillary rights is how the comic companies make money and that demographic segmentation is how these companies compete in the marketplace of ideas.
Another aspect of media that was discussed is the different aspects of motion pictures. Production companies must ensure that they recover their first-copy costs and this can have an effect on what movies get made and what don't. I think Mr. Hama made an interesting point when he talked about the fact that most of the heads of the production and major film studios do not read scripts. So there are a lot of movies that do not get made that have the potential to become great cinema, however they do not have the likelihood of being profitable. To me this shows how arbitrary the movie selection process is, and the fact that it is a business. That is why so often you see movies these days becoming franchises, like Transformers. We also talked about the CGI that was involved in making Tranformers and other movies, and whether they dilute the movie experience or enhance it. In essence I feel overall movies are made to serve pop culture, with exceptions along the way. Because after you recoup your first copy costs, there are no marginal costs in producing more copies of that movie. This extends the life cycle through DVD and Blu-ray. Overall I really enjoyed Mr. Hama and the discussion he had with us. It was interesting to see his take on the direction of media as well as the history of different aspects of the comic book and film industries.
