Cinema

June 15, 2011

C3 White Paper: Learning to Share - The Relational Logics of Media Franchising by Derek Johnson

This summer, select 2010/2011 C3 research memos and white papers willl be made publicly available.

Now available for download from the C3/FOE website:

Learning To Share: The Relational Logics of Media Franchising

Derek Johnson (University of North Texas)
Consulting Researcher for the Convergence Culture Consortium

franchising image

Download the executive summary or the entire research memo.

Executive Summary

In the contemporary media environment, it has become increasingly commonplace—and commonsense—to refer to successful, long-running intellectual properties as “franchises.” In May 2010, for example, Advertising Age made sense of the sale of Snoopy, Woodstock, and the rest of Charles Shultz’s Peanuts gang to the Iconix Brand Group in these terms, valuating the history of the property and its continuing potential in the global media marketplace by exclaiming “It’s a Great Franchise, Charlie Brown” (Bulik 2010). This metaphor for making sense of media properties extends beyond trade discourse, with popular blogs also participating in the franchise conversation. In a recent post later picked up by Yahoo! News, Life’s Little Mysteries blogger Mike Avila meditates on the media franchise by trying to determine “the most successful movie franchise of all time.” Having decided to make box office revenue the deciding factor, Avila awards the crown to the Harry Potter series and its $5.4 billion in ticket sales—but with the caveat that Star Wars would gain an advantage if merchandising were to be considered, while the James Bond films exceed both in terms of overall longevity.

Such posts contribute to an overall popular understanding of the media franchise as the result of ongoing management of a property across time and various markets, corroborating the perceptions of industry insiders like Disney’s Robert Iger, who similarly defines franchise as “something that creates value across multiple businesses and across multiple territories over a long period of time” (Siklos 2009). The economic meanings carried by this metaphor, however, have also been negotiated by those working creatively with these properties, whose individual interests and energies must be asserted in the face of all this successful brand maintenance. Reflecting on the conclusion of the TV series Lost in 2010, producer Carlton Cuse notes: “We certainly understand and absolutely respect that ABC and Disney has an incredibly valuable franchise and they want to do more things with Lost, but the story we're telling ends in May” (Chozick 2010). Because Lost is understood in this way as one of the most successful television franchises of the early twenty-first century, Cuse finds it necessary as a stakeholder to reassert the role of creative individuality within the perpetual corporate management of the shared property.

This notion of media franchising, therefore, shapes how analysts, executives, creators, and popular audiences each imagine the media industries of the contemporary moment. And as Cuse’s attempt to position his work outside perceptions of franchising demonstrates, this metaphor is a particularly loaded one, often negatively connoting corporate control and exploitation of a cash cow at the expense of independence and artistry. Without a doubt, many of these connotations come from the wider cultural history of franchising. Prior to the industrial revolution, a franchise was conceived primarily in the political terms of enfranchisement. Derived from the French franchir (to free), the word “franchise” conveyed one’s right to participate and pursue one’s interests free of constraint. Within a collective system such as electoral politics, the franchise was, by and large, a freely determined individual vote. However, as historians of marketing such as Harry Kursh argue, this free right to participate took on more economic—and more sinister—connotations by the nineteenth century, as emerging tycoons “slit each other’s corporate throats” in fierce competition to be awarded “franchise” rights over utilities, railroads, and other elements of public infrastructure (1968: 194). According to scholar T.S. Dicke, the term acquired an additional use around 1959, newly deployed to describe business systems in which corporate franchisors operating on a national level develop a trademarked system of doing business enter into contractual relations with franchisees who pay a fee to independently operate outlets on the local level (1992: 2).

It is from this usage that most consumers understand global business operations such as McDonald’s restaurants, Meineke auto shops, or Best Western hotels. Thus, as industry analysts in Variety, Hollywood Reporter, and other sites of trade discourse began in the early 1990s to make sense of media content and its production as “franchising” (moving the term beyond existing usage to describe the assignment of broadcasting licenses and municipal cable monopolies as franchise rights to infrastructure), the term brought with it a great deal of historical and cultural baggage. To think about media culture as franchise is to think about it in the same terms that make sense of fast food. And in the same way that critics like George Ritzer (2000) have lamented the increasing standardization and rationalized control of culture as what he calls the “McDonaldization” of society, the articulation of media to fast food reflects allows the latter to act as cultural shorthand for the inadequacies of the former.

So while media franchising has been frequently invoked in industrial, popular, and scholarly discourse, perceptions of its economic determinism and its lack of cultural value have at least partially sidelined specific attempts to understand what the franchising of media culture actually means. In most accounts, the media franchise is a rather simple effect, figured most often as a product of increasing corporate power and conglomeration or as the endgame for intellectual property management strategies. Even as Henry Jenkins (2006), for one potentially divergent example, considers the franchised intellectual property more productively as a site where new forms of narrative practice and cultural collaboration have emerged, the media franchise is positioned and understood in relation to the larger patterns of convergence culture and transmedia storytelling. Nevertheless, media franchising is a phenomenon in its own right, not confined to specifically transmedia considerations, as properties like Law & Order and CSI have become understood as franchises for their multiplication within the single medium of television. Similarly, in The Frodo Franchise, scholar Kristin Thompson (2007) offers a detailed picture of the Lord of the Rings franchise, but in arguing about its exceptional character, her book offers only a limited perspective on the phenomenon of media franchising at large.

But what can we learn from the logic of franchising itself? What does it tell us about how cultural production and creative collaboration might work? How can we make use of this understanding? With much of this phenomenon remaining to be explored by media researchers, this project aims to directly confront and deconstruct the cultural logics of franchising in order to understand it not as the effected product of other issues and forces, but as a process and set of relationships that have historically produced culture. Though the notion of the franchise carries with it much cultural baggage, those entrenched meanings and values accompany a very specific logic for organizing and making sense of cultural production sustained over time and across multiple market sectors. By developing a detailed, historical portrait of what franchising is and how it has worked, we will deepen our understanding of how culture has been collaboratively produced and consumed across decentralized networks of “enfranchised” stakeholders. To that end, this inquiry combines current research trajectories in media and cultural studies with conceptual models drawn from the fields of marketing and organizational communication to make sense of media franchising as a social practice. This approach demands we consider franchising not solely in terms of texts, products, brands, or properties, but also through power-laden, networked relationships between franchisors and franchisees with distinct interests in the shared cultural resources of the franchise. By combining analysis of trade press with archival research and original interviews with media professionals, this project examines how these shared resources have been deployed, managed, and sustained in specific historical instances by media institutions, creative personnel, and even consumers invested in them.

Key Findings

Ultimately, this study recognizes that any attempt to define the media franchise once and for all is an exercise in futility, as its slippery cultural meanings are perhaps what make it such a versatile means of understanding a wide variety of media practices. Nonetheless, by arguing that franchising offers a cultural structure through which media content, media institutions, and media audiences have been put into productive relations, this study helps point to the relational, collaborative logic that defines a franchised culture. From this perspective, five key findings will be delivered to demonstrate the value of comprehending franchising as a structure for organizing collaborative cultural production:

The Cultural Logic of Franchising is Relational: franchising must be understood as relational given its dependence on sustained, strategic relationships between stakeholders with unequal interest in shared cultural resources; franchises are not reflective of intellectual property monopolies, but instead negotiation of imperfectly aligned interests.

Franchising Drives Institutional Relationships: the cultural networks constituted by franchising have not merely bolstered the power of “big media” institutions, but rather, in driving institutional relationships, have created tensions, cleavages and challenges to be negotiated by conglomerates and upstarts alike. The franchise strategies of companies like Marvel Comics, when most successful, have depended upon institutional partnerships.

Franchising Supports Creative Relationships: franchising must also be understood with respect to creative relationships, in that it has enabled co-creation and collaboration through decentralized, emergent uses of shared story worlds. Users of properties like Battlestar Galactica must negotiate not only the structure of a shared set of narrative resources, but also hierarchies of creative power that encourage and constrain creative uses of them.

Franchising Generates Consumer-Constituent Relationships: as shared cultural resources, franchised worlds have supported what can be described as consumer-constituent relationships. Invited to invest at a variety of productive, affective, and even civic levels, consumers act as defacto franchisees, pursuing their own economic and political interests in the institutional and creative management of programs like 24.

Franchising Extends Transnational and Transgenerational Relationships: franchises support transnational and transgenerational relations through ongoing exchange, transformation, and reinvestment. Franchises like Transformers can be most productively understood not as globally traded products, but as cultural processes in which local innovations feed cross-cultural networks of production over long periods of time.

From these findings, this project theorizes the culture of media franchising to uncover an established tradition of collaborative production in the entertainment industries. As a cultural logic structuring production in relational terms, the media franchise might therefore be considered, despite its more historical, less cutting-edge character, a crucial corollary to any attempt to understand emerging “social media.”

Recommendations

By reflecting on the heterogeneous interests in a shared set of resources implied by the term “franchise,” we gain a much clearer insight into the social, institutional, and creative relationships by which culture has been produced and reproduced in the media industries. To be sure, media franchises are not reducible to the franchise relationships that have structured the retail and service industries over the past sixty to seventy years. Relationships geared toward the expansion of distribution channels and marketing reach function much differently from those aimed at multiplying the production of media culture.

Moreover, the degree to which the cultural logic of franchises (as it has been described in this white paper) is consciously and strategically recognized in the media industries remains to be seen. Many of the executives and creative professionals interviewed for this project disavowed or distanced themselves from the very notion of franchising, claiming ignorance of the term or explaining that such considerations were outside their job description. This likely means that relatively few producers are actually thinking in any real depth about media franchises. While the practices and relationships described here may be in place, a firm structural and strategic logic may not actually underlie them in practice.

Thinking more strategically in terms of franchising—and the cultural logic it implies—has some distinct advantages, and it is here that some initial recommendations can be synthesized:

1. Practitioners should consider franchising in terms of its instructive potential as a historical precedent.

2. The relational logic of media franchising challenges industry insiders to reconsider any strategic logics structured around singular control over the use of intellectual properties.

3. In contrast to prohibitive top-down controls, open and heterogeneous creative experimentation can be relied upon to renew and regenerate existing intellectual property production resources.

4. In developing collaborative productive models, industry professionals should develop greater appreciation of contributions that emerge from outside the top echelons of power. By thinking of licensed creators and fans alike as “franchisees,” license holders can recognize vital stakeholders in the ongoing production of media properties.

Bio

Derek Johnson is an Assistant Professor, University of North Texas, Department of Radio, Television, and Film. His dissertation examined the historical development of the media "franchise" as a form based on shared intellectual property networks, as a specific set of production and consumption practices, and as a discourse used to make sense of media culture. Interested in the organization of culture across media platforms, his research spans a wide range of industries (including film, television, video games, comics, and licensed merchandising) and encompasses issues of narrative theory, audience reception, public sphere discourse, as well as media economics and policy. His recent publications include "Inviting Audiences In: The Spatial Reorganization of Production and Consumption in 'TVIII'" (New Review of Film and Television, 2007), "Fan-tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive Hegemonies of Fandom" (Fandom: Identities and Communities in Mediated Culture, edited by Gray, Harrington, and Sandvoss, 2007), and "Will the Real Wolverine Please Stand Up?: Marvel's Mutation from Monthlies to Movies" (Film and Comic Books, edited by Gordon, Jancovich, and McAllister, 2007). Derek can be reached directly at Derek.Johnson@unt.edu.

April 29, 2011

Piracy: Turning Threats into Profit

At CinemaCon few weeks ago Chris Dodd, former US Senator and current head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), called movie theft "perhaps the single biggest threat we face as an industry." The film industry--from studio execs to ticket takers--employs millions, and their jobs are in fact dependent on people going into theaters and paying, sometimes exorbitantly, to see movies.

I love movies, and I don't want to see anyone lose a job, but I have a problem with Dodd's assertion that "movie theft" is the biggest threat to the movie industry. Perhaps the fact that people are choosing to illegally acquire and watch feature films in the comfort of their own homes is partially responsible for the decline in movie attendance, but even if it is, Dodd is missing the point. It's not movie theft that's the problem--it's the opportunities moviegoers have to watch content when, how, and where they want to. People have grown accustomed to getting all kinds of content on-demand, and they're probably not going to change their behavior on moral grounds. Instead of seeing piracy as a threat, we have to learn how to use what we know about file sharing to drive business innovation.

Continue reading "Piracy: Turning Threats into Profit " »

April 7, 2011

Transmedia Hollywood 2 - Registration Still Open!

Transmedia Hollywood 2: Visual Culture and Design can takes place tomorrow (Friday, April 8th). Prof. Jenkins is hosting and moderating the event - along with Denise Mann of UCLA - and many CMS C3 alumni, consulting researchers, practitioners and affiliates will be in attendance.

It promises to be an important event as "Transmedia' fights its way out of its early adoption/evangelist stage - into a broader discourse on what works, what doesn't, what the future language of the medium is and will be - as well as an exploration of the artistic, creative and market-driven pros and cons of transmedia narrative structures.

Registration is still open and is available through:

http://www.ticketmaster.com/Transmedia-Hollywood-2-Visual-Culture-and-Design-tickets/artist/1559777


TRANSMEDIA, HOLLYWOOD 2:
Visual Culture and Design

A UCLA/USC/Industry Symposium
Co-sponsored by
UCLA Producers Program,
UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television
and
USC School of Cinematic Arts

Friday, April 8, 2011
James Bridges Theater, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television
9:45 AM - 7 PM

Event Co-Directors:
Denise Mann, Associate Professor, Producers Program, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television

Henry Jenkins, Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts, USC Annenberg School of Communication

Overview

Transmedia, Hollywood 2: Visual Culture and Design is a one-day public symposium exploring the role of transmedia franchises in today's entertainment industries. Transmedia, Hollywood 2 turns the spotlight on media creators, producers and executives and places them in critical dialogue with top researchers from across a wide spectrum of film, media and cultural studies to provide an interdisciplinary summit for the free interchange of insights about how transmedia works and what it means.

Co-hosted by Denise Mann and Henry Jenkins, from UCLA and USC, two of the most prominent film schools and media research centers in the nation, Transmedia, Hollywood 2 builds on the foundations established at last year's Transmedia, Hollywood: S/Telling the Story. This year's topic: Transmedia, Hollywood: Visual Culture and Design is meant to move from an abstract discussion of transmedia storytelling in all its permutations to a more concrete consideration of what is involved in designing for transmedia.

The past year has seen the Producer's Guild of America (PGA) embrace the concept of the transmedia producer. The other Guilds have begun discussing the implications of these developments for their membership. A growing number of small production units are springing up across the film, games, web, and television sectors to try to create and distribute transmedia content. Many of today's new transmedia producers are helmed by one-time studio or network insiders who are eager to "reinvent" themselves. Inside the studios, the executives tasked with top-down management of large media franchises are partnering with once marginalized film directors, comic book creators, game designers, and other creative personnel.

The underlying premise of this conference is that while the traditional studios and networks are hanging onto many of their outdated practices, they are also starting to engage creative personnel who are working outside the system to help them re-imagine their business. With crisis and change comes the opportunity for the next generation of maverick, independent-minded producers--the next Walt Disney and George Lucas-- to significantly challenge the old and to make way for the new. So, now, it is time to start examining lessons learned from these early experiments. Each of the issues outlined below impact the day-to-day design decisions that go into developing transmedia franchises. We hope to break down the project of developing transmedia content into four basic design challenges:



  • What does it mean to structure a franchise around the exploration of a world rather than a narrative? How are these worlds moving from the film and television screen into other media, such as comics, games, and location based entertainment?

  • What does it mean to design a character that will play well across a range of different media platforms? How might transmedia content re-center familiar stories around compelling secondary characters, adding depth to our understanding of the depicted events and relationships?

  • What does it mean to develop a sequence of events across a range of different media? How do we make sure that the spectator understands the relationship between events when they are piecing together information from different platforms and trying to make sense of a mythology that may span multiple epochs?

  • What does it take to motivate consumers to invest deeply enough into a transmedia franchise that they are eager to track down new installments and create buzz around a new property? How is transmedia linked to a push towards interactivity and participatory culture?


As with the first event, Transmedia, Hollywood: Visual Culture & Design will bring together comic book writers, game designers, "imagineers," filmmakers, television show runners, and other media professionals in a conversation with leading academic thinkers on these topics. Each of our speakers will be asked to focus on the unique challenges they faced while working on a specific production and detail how their understanding of transmedia helped them resolve those issues. From there, we will ask all our speakers to compare notes across projects and platforms with the hopes of starting to develop some basic design principles that will help us translate theories of transmedia entertainment into pragmatic reality.

The creative personnel we have assembled include many of the key individuals responsible for masterminding the fundamental changes in the way traditional media operates and engages audiences by altering the way stories are told temporally, by exploring how graphic design translates from one medium to another, and by explaining how these visually-stunning worlds are being conceived in today's "connected" entertainment arena.


Conference Schedule

Friday, April 8, 2011

9:15--9:45 am
Registration


9:45--10:00 am
Welcome and Opening Remarks

  • Teri Schwartz, Dean, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television
  • Denise Mann, Associate Professor/Head, Producers Program, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
  • Henry Jenkins, Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts, Annenberg School of Communication, USC


10:00--11:50 AM
Panel 1: "Come Out 2 Play": Designing Virtual Worlds--From Screens to Theme Parks and Beyond
Hollywood has come a long way since Walt Disney, circa 1955, invited families to come out and play in the first cross-platform, totally merchandised sandbox--Disneyland. Cut to today and most entertainment corporations are still focused on creating intellectual properties to exploit across all divisions of the Company. However, as the studios and networks move away from the concrete spaces of movie and TV screens and start to embrace the seemingly limitless "virtual spaces" of the Web as well as the real-world spaces of theme parks, museums, and comic book conventions, the demands on creative personnel and their studio counterparts have expanded exponentially.

Rather than rely on old-fashioned merchandising and licensing departments to oversee vendors, which too often results in uninspired computer games, novelizations, and label T-shirts, several studios have brought these activities in-house, creating divisions like Disney Imagineering and Disney Interactive to oversee the design and implementation of these vast, virtual worlds. In other instances, studios are turning to a new generation of independent producers--aka "transmedia producers"--charged with creating vast, interlocking brand extensions that make use of a never-ending cycle of technological future shock and Web 2.0 capabilities.

The results of these partnerships have been a number of extraordinarily inventive, interactive, and immersive experiences that create a "you are there" effect. These include the King Kong 360 3D theme park ride, which incorporates the sight, smell, and thunderous footsteps of the iconic gorilla as he appears to toss the audience's tram car into a pit. Universal Studios and Warner Bros. have joined forces to create the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a new $200 million-plus attraction at the Islands of Adventure in Florida.

Today's panel focuses on the unique challenges associated with turning traditional media franchises into 3D interactive worlds, inviting you to come out 2 play in the studios' virtual sandboxes.

Moderator: Denise Mann
Panelists will include:


  • Alex McDowell, Production Designer for Tim Burton and Zack Snyder (Corpse Bride, Watchmen)

  • Thierry Coup, Art Designer, Wizarding World of Harry Potter

  • Angela Ndalianis, Associate Professor and Head of the Cinema Studies Program at the University of Melbourne, Australia (Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment)

  • Bruce Vaughn, Chief Creative Executive, Disney Imagineering

12:00--1:50 PM
Panel 2: "We're Looking For Characters": Designing Personalities Who Play Across Platforms

How is our notion of what constitutes a good character changing as more and more decisions get made on the basis of a transmedia logic? Does it matter that James Bond originated in a book, Spider-Man in comics, Luke Skywalker on screen, and Homer Simpson on television, if each of these figures is going to eventually appear across a range of media platforms?

Do designers and writers conceive of characters differently when they know that they need to be recognizable in a variety of media? Why does transmedia often require a shift in focus as the protagonist aboard the "mothership" often moves off stage as extensions foreground the perspective and actions of once secondary figures?

How might we understand the process by which people on reality television series get packaged as characters who can drive audience identification and interest or by which performers get reframed as characters as they enter into the popular imagination?

Why have so few characters from games attracted a broader following while characters from comics seem to be gaining growing popularity even among those who have never read their graphic adventures?

Moderator: Henry Jenkins
Panelists will include:


  • Joseph Ferencz, Strategy and Marketing Manager, Ubisoft

  • Geoff Johns, Chief Creative Officer of DC Entertainment

  • Alisa Perren, Assistant Professor, Georgia State University

  • Kelly Souders and Brian Peterson, Executive Producers of Smallville

2:00--3:00 PM
Lunch Break


3:00--4:50 PM
Panel 3: Fan Interfaces: Intelligent Designs or Fan Aggregators?

Once relegated to the margins of society, today's media fans are often considered the "advance guard" that studio and network marketers eagerly pursue at Comi-Con and elsewhere to help launch virtual word-of-mouth campaigns around a favorite film, TV series, computer game, or comic book. Since tech-savvy fans are often the first to access Web 2.0 sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, and Second Life in search of a like-minded community, it was only a matter of time before corporate marketers followed suit. After all, these social networking sites provide media companies with powerful tools to manage fans and commit them to crowd-sourcing activities on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.

Given the complexities and contradictions involved in negotiating between industry and audience interests, we will ask the game designers to explain their philosophy about the intended and unintended outcomes of their fan interfaces. Marketers clearly love it when fans become willing billboards for the brand either by wearing logo T-shirts or by dressing a favorite Madman avatar in the 1960s clothing, accessories and backgrounds on display on the AMCTV.com "Madmen Yourself" and then spreading the content through Facebook and Twitter.

What is the design philosophy behind a video game like Spore, which allows fans free range to create their own creatures and worlds but then limits their rights over this digital content? Who owns these virtual creations once they appear for sale on E-bay? These and other intriguing questions will be posed to the creative individuals responsible for designing many of these imaginative and engaging fan interfaces.

Moderator: Denise Mann
Panelists include:


  • Matt Wolf, Double 2.0, ARG/Game Designer

  • Avi Santos, Assistant Professor, Dominican College and Co-editor, FlowTV.com and In Media Res.com

5:00--6:50 PM
Panel 4: "It's About Time!" Structuring Transmedia Narratives

The rules for how to structure a Hollywood movie were established more than a century ago and even then, were inspired by ideas from earlier media -- the four-act structure of theater, the hero's quest in mythology. Yet, audiences and creators alike are still trying to make sense of how to fit together the chunks of a transmedia narrative. Industry insiders use terms such as mythology or saga to describe stories which may expand across many different epochs, involve many generations of characters, expand across many different corners of the fictional world, and explore a range of different goals and missions.

We might think of such stories as hyperserials, in so far as serials involved the chunking and dispersal of narrative information into compelling units. The old style serials on film and television expanded in time; these new style serials also expand across media platforms.

So, how do the creators of these stories handle challenges of exposition and plot development, managing the audience's attention so that they have the pieces they need to put together the puzzle? What principles do they use to indicate which chunks of a franchise are connected to each other and which represent different moments in the imaginary history they are recounting? Do certain genres -- science fiction and fantasy -- embrace this expansive understanding of story time, while others seem to require something closer to the Aristoltelian unities of time and space?

Moderator: Henry Jenkins
Panelists include:


  • Caitlin Burns, Transmedia Producer, Starlight Runner Entertainment

  • Abigail DeKosnik, Assistant Professor, University of California-Berkeley (Co-Editor, The Survival of the Soap Opera: Strategies for a New Media Era; Illegitimate Media: Discourse and Censorship of Digital Remix)

  • Jane Espensen, Writer/Producer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Torchwood.

  • John Platt, Co-Executive Producer, Big Brother, The Surreal Life

  • Tracey Robertson, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Hoodlum

  • Lance Weiler, Founder, Wordbook Project

  • Justin Wyatt, Executive Director, Research at at NBCUniversal, Inc (High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood).

7:00 PM
Reception
Lobby, James Bridges Theater

Location
James Bridges Theater, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television


Registration
Faculty/Students:
Tickets are $5 for faculty and students of accredited institutions and will only be sold at the box-office of the UCLA Central Ticket Office and at the door on the day of the event (prior registration required). Valid university I.D. is required. Registration includes admission to conference and reception.

General Public:
Tickets for the general public are $30. Registration includes admission to conference and reception. Please register: http://www2.tft.ucla.edu/RSVP/index.cfm?action=rsvp_form


Directions
Directions to UCLA:
http://www.ucla.edu/map/

Campus Map:
http://www.ucla.edu/map/ucla-campus-map.pdf

Parking Info:
http://map.ais.ucla.edu/go/1002187
http://www.transportation.ucla.edu/portal/maps/parkingmap/0206UCLAParkingMap.htm

Bus Info:
http://www.metro.net/
http://www.bigbluebus.com/home/index.asp

Contact
UCLA Producers Program
UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media
203 East Melnitz
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Phone: (310) 206-3761
Fax: (310) 825-3383
Email: producers@tft.ucla.edu
Web: www.tft.ucla.edu/producers

March 3, 2011

"Tony" Screening from Invisible Children

"Tony" Screening from Invisible Children

Thursday March 3, 2011 | 7:00pm | 34-101

On the whole, Invisible Children looks to provide humanitarian aid to displaced persons in northern, war-torn Uganda who have suffered from Africa's longest-running civil war. Moreover, they aim to provide shelter, safety, and education to children who were or would otherwise be child soldiers in the rebel army (the LRA, or the Lord's Resistance Army.)

This next chapter of Invisible Children's Bracelet Campaign is about Tony, and the struggles he faces as a child in this harsh region of the world.

The trailer for the film is embedded below.

For more information, visit the Invisible Children website.

This event is sponsored by the MIT UA funding board.


Tony Bracelet: Trailer from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

Jedidiah Jenkins--Director of Public & Media Relations, Invisible Children-- is a panelist on the following "Transmedia and Social Change" panel from FOE4.

MIT Tech TV

March 1, 2011

Announcing Transmedia, Hollywood 2: Visual Culture and Design

Transmedia registration can now be done through

http://www.ticketmaster.com/Transmedia-Hollywood-2-Visual-Culture-and-Design-tickets/artist/1559777


TRANSMEDIA, HOLLYWOOD 2:
Visual Culture and Design

A UCLA/USC/Industry Symposium
Co-sponsored by
UCLA Producers Program,
UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television
and
USC School of Cinematic Arts

Friday, April 8, 2011
James Bridges Theater, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television
9:45 AM - 7 PM

Event Co-Directors:
Denise Mann, Associate Professor, Producers Program, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television

Henry Jenkins, Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts, USC Annenberg School of Communication

Overview

Transmedia, Hollywood 2: Visual Culture and Design is a one-day public symposium exploring the role of transmedia franchises in today's entertainment industries. Transmedia, Hollywood 2 turns the spotlight on media creators, producers and executives and places them in critical dialogue with top researchers from across a wide spectrum of film, media and cultural studies to provide an interdisciplinary summit for the free interchange of insights about how transmedia works and what it means.

Co-hosted by Denise Mann and Henry Jenkins, from UCLA and USC, two of the most prominent film schools and media research centers in the nation, Transmedia, Hollywood 2 builds on the foundations established at last year's Transmedia, Hollywood: S/Telling the Story. This year's topic: Transmedia, Hollywood: Visual Culture and Design is meant to move from an abstract discussion of transmedia storytelling in all its permutations to a more concrete consideration of what is involved in designing for transmedia.

The past year has seen the Producer's Guild of America (PGA) embrace the concept of the transmedia producer. The other Guilds have begun discussing the implications of these developments for their membership. A growing number of small production units are springing up across the film, games, web, and television sectors to try to create and distribute transmedia content. Many of today's new transmedia producers are helmed by one-time studio or network insiders who are eager to "reinvent" themselves. Inside the studios, the executives tasked with top-down management of large media franchises are partnering with once marginalized film directors, comic book creators, game designers, and other creative personnel.

The underlying premise of this conference is that while the traditional studios and networks are hanging onto many of their outdated practices, they are also starting to engage creative personnel who are working outside the system to help them re-imagine their business. With crisis and change comes the opportunity for the next generation of maverick, independent-minded producers--the next Walt Disney and George Lucas-- to significantly challenge the old and to make way for the new. So, now, it is time to start examining lessons learned from these early experiments. Each of the issues outlined below impact the day-to-day design decisions that go into developing transmedia franchises. We hope to break down the project of developing transmedia content into four basic design challenges:



  • What does it mean to structure a franchise around the exploration of a world rather than a narrative? How are these worlds moving from the film and television screen into other media, such as comics, games, and location based entertainment?

  • What does it mean to design a character that will play well across a range of different media platforms? How might transmedia content re-center familiar stories around compelling secondary characters, adding depth to our understanding of the depicted events and relationships?

  • What does it mean to develop a sequence of events across a range of different media? How do we make sure that the spectator understands the relationship between events when they are piecing together information from different platforms and trying to make sense of a mythology that may span multiple epochs?

  • What does it take to motivate consumers to invest deeply enough into a transmedia franchise that they are eager to track down new installments and create buzz around a new property? How is transmedia linked to a push towards interactivity and participatory culture?


As with the first event, Transmedia, Hollywood: Visual Culture & Design will bring together comic book writers, game designers, "imagineers," filmmakers, television show runners, and other media professionals in a conversation with leading academic thinkers on these topics. Each of our speakers will be asked to focus on the unique challenges they faced while working on a specific production and detail how their understanding of transmedia helped them resolve those issues. From there, we will ask all our speakers to compare notes across projects and platforms with the hopes of starting to develop some basic design principles that will help us translate theories of transmedia entertainment into pragmatic reality.

The creative personnel we have assembled include many of the key individuals responsible for masterminding the fundamental changes in the way traditional media operates and engages audiences by altering the way stories are told temporally, by exploring how graphic design translates from one medium to another, and by explaining how these visually-stunning worlds are being conceived in today's "connected" entertainment arena.


Conference Schedule

Friday, April 8, 2011

9:15--9:45 am
Registration


9:45--10:00 am
Welcome and Opening Remarks

  • Teri Schwartz, Dean, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television
  • Denise Mann, Associate Professor/Head, Producers Program, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
  • Henry Jenkins, Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts, Annenberg School of Communication, USC


10:00--11:50 AM
Panel 1: "Come Out 2 Play": Designing Virtual Worlds--From Screens to Theme Parks and Beyond
Hollywood has come a long way since Walt Disney, circa 1955, invited families to come out and play in the first cross-platform, totally merchandised sandbox--Disneyland. Cut to today and most entertainment corporations are still focused on creating intellectual properties to exploit across all divisions of the Company. However, as the studios and networks move away from the concrete spaces of movie and TV screens and start to embrace the seemingly limitless "virtual spaces" of the Web as well as the real-world spaces of theme parks, museums, and comic book conventions, the demands on creative personnel and their studio counterparts have expanded exponentially.

Rather than rely on old-fashioned merchandising and licensing departments to oversee vendors, which too often results in uninspired computer games, novelizations, and label T-shirts, several studios have brought these activities in-house, creating divisions like Disney Imagineering and Disney Interactive to oversee the design and implementation of these vast, virtual worlds. In other instances, studios are turning to a new generation of independent producers--aka "transmedia producers"--charged with creating vast, interlocking brand extensions that make use of a never-ending cycle of technological future shock and Web 2.0 capabilities.

The results of these partnerships have been a number of extraordinarily inventive, interactive, and immersive experiences that create a "you are there" effect. These include the King Kong 360 3D theme park ride, which incorporates the sight, smell, and thunderous footsteps of the iconic gorilla as he appears to toss the audience's tram car into a pit. Universal Studios and Warner Bros. have joined forces to create the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a new $200 million-plus attraction at the Islands of Adventure in Florida.

Today's panel focuses on the unique challenges associated with turning traditional media franchises into 3D interactive worlds, inviting you to come out 2 play in the studios' virtual sandboxes.

Moderator: Denise Mann
Panelists will include:


  • Alex McDowell, Production Designer for Tim Burton and Zack Snyder (Corpse Bride, Watchmen)

  • Thierry Coup, Art Designer, Wizarding World of Harry Potter

  • Angela Ndalianis, Associate Professor and Head of the Cinema Studies Program at the University of Melbourne, Australia (Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment)

  • Bruce Vaughn, Chief Creative Executive, Disney Imagineering

12:00--1:50 PM
Panel 2: "We're Looking For Characters": Designing Personalities Who Play Across Platforms

How is our notion of what constitutes a good character changing as more and more decisions get made on the basis of a transmedia logic? Does it matter that James Bond originated in a book, Spider-Man in comics, Luke Skywalker on screen, and Homer Simpson on television, if each of these figures is going to eventually appear across a range of media platforms?

Do designers and writers conceive of characters differently when they know that they need to be recognizable in a variety of media? Why does transmedia often require a shift in focus as the protagonist aboard the "mothership" often moves off stage as extensions foreground the perspective and actions of once secondary figures?

How might we understand the process by which people on reality television series get packaged as characters who can drive audience identification and interest or by which performers get reframed as characters as they enter into the popular imagination?

Why have so few characters from games attracted a broader following while characters from comics seem to be gaining growing popularity even among those who have never read their graphic adventures?

Moderator: Henry Jenkins
Panelists will include:


  • Joseph Ferencz, Strategy and Marketing Manager, Ubisoft

  • Geoff Johns, Chief Creative Officer of DC Entertainment

  • Alisa Perren, Assistant Professor, Georgia State University

  • Kelly Souders and Brian Peterson, Executive Producers of Smallville

2:00--3:00 PM
Lunch Break


3:00--4:50 PM
Panel 3: Fan Interfaces: Intelligent Designs or Fan Aggregators?

Once relegated to the margins of society, today's media fans are often considered the "advance guard" that studio and network marketers eagerly pursue at Comi-Con and elsewhere to help launch virtual word-of-mouth campaigns around a favorite film, TV series, computer game, or comic book. Since tech-savvy fans are often the first to access Web 2.0 sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, and Second Life in search of a like-minded community, it was only a matter of time before corporate marketers followed suit. After all, these social networking sites provide media companies with powerful tools to manage fans and commit them to crowd-sourcing activities on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.

Given the complexities and contradictions involved in negotiating between industry and audience interests, we will ask the game designers to explain their philosophy about the intended and unintended outcomes of their fan interfaces. Marketers clearly love it when fans become willing billboards for the brand either by wearing logo T-shirts or by dressing a favorite Madman avatar in the 1960s clothing, accessories and backgrounds on display on the AMCTV.com "Madmen Yourself" and then spreading the content through Facebook and Twitter.

What is the design philosophy behind a video game like Spore, which allows fans free range to create their own creatures and worlds but then limits their rights over this digital content? Who owns these virtual creations once they appear for sale on E-bay? These and other intriguing questions will be posed to the creative individuals responsible for designing many of these imaginative and engaging fan interfaces.

Moderator: Denise Mann
Panelists include:


  • Matt Wolf, Double 2.0, ARG/Game Designer

  • Avi Santos, Assistant Professor, Dominican College and Co-editor, FlowTV.com and In Media Res.com

5:00--6:50 PM
Panel 4: "It's About Time!" Structuring Transmedia Narratives

The rules for how to structure a Hollywood movie were established more than a century ago and even then, were inspired by ideas from earlier media -- the four-act structure of theater, the hero's quest in mythology. Yet, audiences and creators alike are still trying to make sense of how to fit together the chunks of a transmedia narrative. Industry insiders use terms such as mythology or saga to describe stories which may expand across many different epochs, involve many generations of characters, expand across many different corners of the fictional world, and explore a range of different goals and missions.

We might think of such stories as hyperserials, in so far as serials involved the chunking and dispersal of narrative information into compelling units. The old style serials on film and television expanded in time; these new style serials also expand across media platforms.

So, how do the creators of these stories handle challenges of exposition and plot development, managing the audience's attention so that they have the pieces they need to put together the puzzle? What principles do they use to indicate which chunks of a franchise are connected to each other and which represent different moments in the imaginary history they are recounting? Do certain genres -- science fiction and fantasy -- embrace this expansive understanding of story time, while others seem to require something closer to the Aristoltelian unities of time and space?

Moderator: Henry Jenkins
Panelists include:


  • Caitlin Burns, Transmedia Producer, Starlight Runner Entertainment

  • Abigail DeKosnik, Assistant Professor, University of California-Berkeley (Co-Editor, The Survival of the Soap Opera: Strategies for a New Media Era; Illegitimate Media: Discourse and Censorship of Digital Remix)

  • Jane Espensen, Writer/Producer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Torchwood.

  • John Platt, Co-Executive Producer, Big Brother, The Surreal Life

  • Tracey Robertson, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Hoodlum

  • Lance Weiler, Founder, Wordbook Project

  • Justin Wyatt, Executive Director, Research at at NBCUniversal, Inc (High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood).

7:00 PM
Reception
Lobby, James Bridges Theater

Location
James Bridges Theater, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television


Registration
Faculty/Students:
Tickets are $5 for faculty and students of accredited institutions and will only be sold at the box-office of the UCLA Central Ticket Office and at the door on the day of the event (prior registration required). Valid university I.D. is required. Registration includes admission to conference and reception.

General Public:
Tickets for the general public are $30. Registration includes admission to conference and reception. Please register: http://www2.tft.ucla.edu/RSVP/index.cfm?action=rsvp_form


Directions
Directions to UCLA:
http://www.ucla.edu/map/

Campus Map:
http://www.ucla.edu/map/ucla-campus-map.pdf

Parking Info:
http://map.ais.ucla.edu/go/1002187
http://www.transportation.ucla.edu/portal/maps/parkingmap/0206UCLAParkingMap.htm

Bus Info:
http://www.metro.net/
http://www.bigbluebus.com/home/index.asp

Contact
UCLA Producers Program
UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media
203 East Melnitz
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Phone: (310) 206-3761
Fax: (310) 825-3383
Email: producers@tft.ucla.edu
Web: www.tft.ucla.edu/producers

September 22, 2010

C3 Thinking, Transmedia Worldbuilding and The Deep World of Avatar


Many media studies scholars and creative professionals depend on the C3 blog (as well as Prof. Jenkins' blog, the CMS Program website and the blogs of our fellow CMS research projects) for the ideas which they can then apply to the intellectual, creative or market problem they are trying to get to the "next level". As I think everyone who has been on the team of this research project would agree, Prof. Jenkins' "framing and naming" of otherwise complex concepts into remarkably accessible written language and his always inspiring and engaging speaking style are at the core of his pedagogical style and intellectual modeling of how we do what we do here at C3 and CMS.


It is this C3 early warning system and pattern recognition of emergent cultural patterns, logics and phenomenology (in our case surrounding the circulation and distribution of old and new media) on which the success of the C3 research project is built.


Of course, because we frame it or name it, that does not mean we own it. In his opening remarks at last year's FOE4, Prof. Jenkins was quick to make this very point, specifically regarding the discourse on Transmedia:


"Transmedia seems to be a word that means lots of different things to lots of different people...so we may refer to "cross-platform entertainment" or... "Deep Media" which is Frank Rose's term. As far as I am concerned, I don't care what you call it. What we're involved in is a shift in the way entertainment operates in our culture, but a shift that's been long term and I'll explain that it has a deeper history and I think the focus on newness maybe misleads us. But I am interested in the phenomenon and each of these words talks about different aspects of the phenomenon in different ways. They get at it in different ways. Maybe we should have a discussion about what those differences are. But I am not invested in a vocabulary war about what we christen this thing. I think it's much more interesting that we talk about it and try to figure out what is going on."


We know there is a remarkably passionate and loyal C3 blog community who is very appreciative of the way "C3 Thinking" inspires them, assists them and moves forward their media industries scholarship and creative projects to a whole new level. Call it what you want - brainstorming, ideation, praxis, pre-production, concept phase, theory and practice, research, outlining, strategic design, storyboarding, index card/post-it note hell, development or pre-visualization - "C3 Thinking" intervenes on and contributes to all of these early-stage project design processes (books, films, games, television programming, etc).


This blog entry is an effort to embrace Prof. Jenkins' most recent framing and naming endeavor - now known as the Seven Core Principles of Transmedia Storytelling. I thought it would be helpful to our readership to organize occasional blog entries in a very specific fashion around each of these core principles (Spreadability vs. Drillability; Continuity vs. Multiplicity; Immersion vs. Extractability; Worldbuilding; Seriality; Subjectivity; and Performance). I will also try to strike a balance in presenting the information for those who are internalizing core concepts surrounding transmedia for the first time and seasoned transmedia veterans.


I begin here with Worldbuilding (back story, story development, production design or concept development - again, call it what you will): it is easy when writing a script, designing a film or conceiving of a game to flinch on a true commitment to the design of and deployment of a deeply textured world filled with detail that does not directly service the core narrative or primary narrative objectives. Time and budget are usually the biggest elements working against building a deep world.


The reality is great worldbuilding must precede the storytelling. An early commitment to detail will communicate information beyond the purely functional elements required for the primary narrative - allowing entries points for transmediated narrative extensions of the primary media text and for the other core principles of transmedia to take further root.


With this primacy of a commitment to worldbuilding in mind, the following worldbuilding discussion is in the form of a video case study. First, two Charlie Rose interviews with James Cameron: Dec. 17, 2009 and Feb 10, 2010 where he discusses in detail the challenges of worldbuilding and a CBS 60 Minutes video segment (embedded below) about James Cameron and the production of Avatar - which depicts what was done with the unlimited creative, time, fiscal and human resources to build the deep, textured, detailed world of the primary cinematic text that is the 3D Film Avatar.


After this video piece, find two streaming videos of a conversation between Prof. Jenkins and Tron creator Steve Lisberger from back in February 2010. We include these 2 videos (of a total of 21) in this case study because the first video sets up a discussion of worldbuilding. The next video follows up with a discussion of the basic functions of transmedia extensions, what they might add to the upcoming Disney release Tron Legacy and ends with why Avatar is less successful at deploying transmedia than, say, District 9.


The hope here is that this overall discussion of the mode of production of Hollywood motion pictures at the level of the 'big tent pole' production will inform narrative best practices and economies of scale for other transmedia project in various other creative industries.


Most importantly, there are some interesting missed opportunities contextualized in this discussion which should be seized upon by transmedia theorists and producers both for further theoretical exploration and creative deployment.


For further brainstorming, see:

Prof. Jenkins' FOE4 Keynote entitled "The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Seven Principles of Transmedia Storytelling", along with Henry's essay explaining each principle.



All 21 Videos, produced by Mike Bonifer, of Prof. Jenkins conversation with Tron creator Steve Lisberger:


Talking TronsMedia with Steven Lisberger


More Talk of TRONSmedia




May 14, 2010

Fan Edits: Improving the Original (Without Changing the Original?)

A fan edit is a production in which (what would have been considered) an ordinary viewer makes changes to an original film (or films) to create "a new interpretation of the source material" (Wikipedia; link above).

Edits of films ("cuts") have been around for decades, and director's cuts have long been an additional supplement to many film releases (or releases unto themselves). But as digital production technology became more widespread, cheaper, and easier to use, ordinary consumers began to take commercially-distributed films (which also became cheaper and of higher quality for consumer purchase) and edit them in their own homes: essentially creating "director's critic's edits."

One of the most popular early fan edits (and still to this day one of the most popular) is The Phantom Edit, which took George Lucas's fourth Star Wars film, The Phantom Menace, and reorganized the footage to create a different, "better" film (the story of which is chronicled in this Salon.com article).

There are vibrant politics around fan edits, from issues of fair use to questions of aesthetics and vision. More on these issues follow after the jump.

Continue reading "Fan Edits: Improving the Original (Without Changing the Original?)" »

April 16, 2010

The Now and Future of Games in Hollywood

Today, I'm sitting at Microsoft NERD attending the MIT Business in Games conference. This morning, I attended a presentation called Hollywood, Music, & Games (which skewed toward just "Hollywood & Games"). The panel included:

Chris Weaver (MIT & Consulting Researcher for C3)

Mike Dornbrook (Harmonix)
Paul Neurath (Floodgate Entertainment)
Mark Blecher (Hasbro Digital Media & Gaming)
Ian Davis (Rockstar Games)

The panel talked about cross-platform narratives, how franchises span games and movies, and the problems that game creators have faced dealing with Hollywood executives and movie producers (as well as the implications that these problems have had on "good games").

My notes follow after the jump!

Continue reading "The Now and Future of Games in Hollywood" »

March 18, 2010

What the Chinese Are Making of Avatar

Several years ago, I met a remarkable young man named Lucifer Chu in Shanghai. Chu had been the person who first translated the works of J.R.R. Tolkien into Chinese, after a considerable push to convince publishers that there was a market for fantasy and science fiction in China. He took the proceeds from the sales of the Lord of the Rings to launch a fantasy foundation, which promoted fantastical literature in Taiwan and mainland China, and he translated more than 30 fantasy novels for the Chinese market. As of a few years ago, almost all of the fantasy novels and role playing games available in Taiwan were translated by Chu and he was making in roads into getting these same works published for the mainland. He argued that the fantastic played crucial roles in Chinese folk and literary traditions but the genre had largely been eradicated there as a consequence of Maoist policies during the Cultural Revolution which promoted socialist realism and saw fantasy as western and decadent. Chu argued that bringing fantasy literature back into China was a way of helping his people rediscover their dreams and reimagine their future.

As I have been speaking with my USC student Lifang He about her work on the fan cultures which have quickly grown up around Avatar in China, I've wondered what connections, if any, exist between these two efforts to promote the fantastical imagination in that country. Are the young men and women we read about here the offspring of Chu's efforts? Are they connecting with western fan culture on line? This piece offers us some tantalizing glimpses into the many different ways Chinese fans have mobilized around and fantasized about James Cameron's blockbuster.

The American press has been following the commercial success of Avatar in China primarily as a business issue -- exploring what it might tell us about other opportunities for selling media in this country, using it to shadow Google's turmoil in the country, and marginally exploring why China was pushing the film from many of the nation's movie theaters. Yet, this piece takes us inside the world of Chinese Avatar fans, helping us to better understand what the film looks like from their perspective.

Continue reading "What the Chinese Are Making of Avatar" »

March 16, 2010

Vidding Kung Fu Panda in China

From time to time, I use this space to showcase the global dimensions of the kinds of participatory culture which so often concern us here. When I first started to write about fan culture, for example, the circuit along which fan produced works traveled did not extend much beyond the borders of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and perhaps Australia. American fans knew little about fan culture in other parts of the world and indeed, there was often speculation about why fandom was such a distinctly American phenomenon.

Now, fans online connect with others all over the world, often responding in real time to the same texts, conspiring to spread compelling media content from one culture to the other, and we are seeing a corresponding globalization of fan studies. Yet, some countries remain largely outside of field of view, because of language barriers, cultural differences, political policies, and alternative tech platforms.

Consequently, most of us know very little about how fan production practices have spread to China -- which is too often described in terms of its piracy of American content and too little discussed in terms of its creative repurposing of that content to reflect their own cultural interests. So, I am really excited over these next two installments to share some glimpses into fan culture in China -- specifically focusing on the vidding community there (but also discussing other forms of fan participation.)

These two posts were created by Lifang He, an Annenberg student who took my transmedia entertainment class in the fall and who is doing an independent study with me this term to expand her understanding of the concept of participatory culture. Here, she talks about how Kung Fu Panda got read in relation to the economic crisis in China, and next time, she will tackle the array of different fan responses to Avatar.

Continue reading "Vidding Kung Fu Panda in China" »

March 4, 2010

5 Reasons to Watch The Oscars

The Oscars are on ABC this Sunday. I love award shows, I love complaining about award shows, and I love blogging about award shows. In the past, I've written a few diatribes about why TV networks and award-giving entities should make shows as participatory as possible, but this time, I think ABC and the Academy have tried very hard to create a strong social media presence. We'll see how it works out during the ceremony. And for the record, I'm still not sure if you'll be able to watch the entire Oscar telecast online, but you can catch the red carpet.

In case you're still ambivalent about the fashion, fabulousness, and boredom that is the Oscars, here are my top five reasons to watch the Oscars this year.
oscar.jpeg.jpg

Continue reading "5 Reasons to Watch The Oscars" »

December 24, 2009

A Pop Culture Christmas Top 10

It's that time of year. Festive lights cover windows and lawns. People buy trees to put in their living rooms and unpack fake versions from boxes in their basements. Holiday specials are on TV. Lists are made for Santa. Family visits and travel plans start to take shape.

Popular culture often provides a secular interpretation of the meaning and celebration of Christmas, emphasizing its significance as a time of peace, goodwill, friends and consumption. Whether in the form of movies or malls, these interpretations have made Christmas more accessible to people by not requiring a connection to Christianity.

In that spirit, I've compiled my top 10 list of representations of Christmas in popular culture. Read on, then leave a comment and tell us what's on your pop culture Christmas Top 10.

Continue reading "A Pop Culture Christmas Top 10" »

December 22, 2009

Up in the Air: Product placement done right

A few weeks ago I saw Up in the Air, the new film directed by Jason Reitman. It's a great movie, worthy of the hype it's been getting, but I was most intrigued not by the acting or the topical themes, but by the very obvious product placement from Hilton hotels and American Airlines.

In fact, Hilton and American are more than just product placements in Up in the Air. According to a recent article in Advertising Age, Hilton and American Airlines are integrated-marketing partners for the film. This allows the film to promote the brands and vice versa: both Hilton and American are currently running sweepstakes related to the film and Up in the Air's website has a prominent section devoted to its partners.

Continue reading "Up in the Air: Product placement done right" »

December 3, 2008

"The Canon" Goes 2.0

I've always had a love/hate relationship with the Criterion Collection, the same goes for the lesser known blog, The Auteurs, which has now grown into a full fledged site and recently developed a partnership with Criterion and with Celluloid Dreams. This post is probably a bit excessive on both extremes. On one hand, I can't help but drool every time I visit the Criterion site, on the other, I usually can't afford their DVDs, and mostly I'm disturbed by the notion that someone out there is defining "the canon". It's unfair, I know someone has to do it in order to restore and make available all those wonderful films, but this process of inclusion/exclusion is still problematic. So, while it extends the life (and in some cases resuscitates) many films, it also ghettoizes them into this fabricated Olympus of the cinema.

Having said all this, I am very happy to announce that Criterion has discovered Web 2.0, and is cautiously entering this domain. You can now rent Criterion movies on their site for $5 that count towards the DVD should you decide to purchase it, but more importantly, through their partnership with The Auteurs they provide a monthly selection of free movies streams under the Festival section. This month we can enjoy the "cruel stories of youth", including Sweetie and Lord of the Flies.

Continue reading ""The Canon" Goes 2.0" »

November 23, 2008

FOE3 Liveblog: Session 4 - When Comics Converge: Making Watchmen

For the first panel of Day 2, we opened with a case study of the making of The Watchmen film, based on the foundational Alan Moore graphic novel with Henry Jenkins, production designer Alex McDowell, and Alisa Perren from Georgia State University.

Liveblogging services this time around were provided by CMS grad student Lan Le.


Comics are now reaching us through multiple channels. We aren't just going to comic book stores to get our comic stories anymore. They're coming to us through movies, bookstores, online. So too has the image of the comics consumer changed to include larger, general audiences in addition to the core comics fans.

We began the talk by screen two different trailers for Watchmen, which is Alex McDowell's latest project. The first trailer was screened at Comic-Con, which was aimed at the fans of the comic book. The second trailer was constructed with a larger, general audience in mind. These trailers were to help us begin thinking about how the movie visually adapted the comic book material.

Alex: The movie is remarkably visually faithful to the book. Snyder is definitely a fan of genre and comic books first. Watchmen spent 20 years in development at various studios. The film has finally come into existance at time when, coincidentally or not, the satirical parallels have cycled back into political existance. While time has elapsed between the writing of Watchmen and it's film, Snyder has updated the film through layers of cultural reference and art design. Examples of the film's awareness of other pieces of science-fiction stories are echoed in the set design, referencing films such as Dr. Strangeglove and The Man That Fell to Earth. Working on the world of Watchmen was a great opportunity to "rip off every movie you ever liked."

Henry: It's no accident that the film is coming out now with the explosive of revival of the superhero genre in film.

Alisa: The film was greenlit October 2001, a month after 9/11. Cultural factors did exist to propel comic books into the cultural mainstream, yes, but industrial issues also shaped this revival. At first, it seemed that the growth of comic books in movies must have been due to a prior growth of comics. It's actually the opposite. Comic book sales declined or stayed very low during this period. The sales, it turns out, were driven by studios - not the reverse. Horizontal integration factors into this scenario. But there are also a new generation of exectives, writers, and artists who came of age in an era where sophisticated or literary comic books were the rage. These creative producers had greater appreciation for the source text and insisted on a greater fidelity to the source material. They tapped into an interactive fan culture that appreciates this too.

Alex: Hollywood is often a fan of the material.

Continue reading "FOE3 Liveblog: Session 4 - When Comics Converge: Making Watchmen" »

October 24, 2008

Looking at Distribution in The Americas (Part II)

The way governments are involved in the promotion of national film industries in Ibero-America, as opposed to the US's market driven strategy, set the tone for the First Ibero-American Culture Conference. The conference was organized by the Mexican government with support from the Spanish government and Ibermedia, the Ibero-American film fund. The objective of this meeting was not quite clear, but the attendee list was impressive. Everybody was there, from intellectuals like Nestor García Canclini and Carlos Monsivais to filmmakers like Antonio Banderas and Lucrecia Martel, as well as policy makers from all over the region. What IFP lacked in global awareness, Mexico had in abundance. Cultural policy integration and co-productions were some of the main issues being discussed.

Continue reading "Looking at Distribution in The Americas (Part II)" »

October 23, 2008

Looking at Distribution in The Americas (Part I)


We seem to be in an indie cinema kick over at C3 (see posts here , here and here); can't say I'm one to complain. With the appropriation of emerging technologies and an increasingly participatory audience, independent film is uniquely positioned to ask itself hard questions and come up with innovative answers. It's no wonder that in studying convergence culture we'd be inclined to look towards that field.

For me this past month has been unusually filled with conferences, first the Independent Feature Project Conference in New York, then I headed south to Mexico for the First Ibero-American Culture Conference (dedicated to film), and at last I arrived in Cambridge just in time to present our spreadability research over at DIY DAYS Boston with Xiaochang. I took these events to listen and think about the evolving film distribution landscape.

Continue reading "Looking at Distribution in The Americas (Part I)" »

October 20, 2008

Rounding Up DIY DAYS Boston

As the C3 research on Spreadable Media moves forward from the somewhat abstract, but nonetheless foundational work of our white paper from this summer, we are entering into conversation with people across both industry and academia to explore how these theories of spreadability function across industries and national boundaries.

And as part of the effort to drill down from the broad-stroke theory of the paper, Ana and I recently presented a streamlined version of the Spreadability work specially-tailored to independent film marketing and distribution at DIY Days Boston. I was unable to stay for the whole conference, but it seemed very much like the independent film community is engaged with many of the same concerns of large media corporations: how to attract audiences, how to provide the value they want, what that value might be, and what value they would see in return.

Continue reading "Rounding Up DIY DAYS Boston" »

October 17, 2008

Looking a Gift Economy in the Mouth: Michael Moore's SLACKER UPRISING

A few weeks ago, I got an email from Michael Moore with the subject "'Slacker Uprising' Now Belongs to You (Down/Load, Rise/Up!)." I've spent my first month with the Consortium examining the principles of spreadable media with a special focus on internet distribution of TV and film, so I was more than a little excited to see that Moore made his latest film, Slacker Uprising available to download for free without advertising.

Moore's email goes on to espouse some of the most important tenets of spreadable media--gifting and sharing: "[Slacker Uprising] is available for free as a gift from me to all of you. And you have my permission to share it or show it in any way you see fit." This seems like quite a boon for spreadable media, especially considering the film is available in a variety of formats including streaming video, iTunes download, Amazon VoD, and even BitTorrent.

The film itself is a joint venture between Moore's production company, Dog Eat Dog Films; independent internet TV site, blip.tv; and Robert Greenwald's activist film site, Brave New Films. Slacker Uprising chronicles Moore's 62-city tour to get out the vote before the 2004 presidential election. While Moore's efforts in this campaign are certainly noble, Slacker Uprising has none of Moore's signature liberal message hidden beneath man-on-the-street folksiness. This film meanders through long segments of Moore and various celebrities taking the stage before stadiums of screaming fans; I doubt it has the power to change anyone's mind about politics, but that's not Moore's aim.

Continue reading "Looking a Gift Economy in the Mouth: Michael Moore's SLACKER UPRISING" »

September 29, 2008

"Who needs Dubai when we have Florida!"


Last week I went to the Independent Feature Project Conference in New York. To have this event happen early on in my thesis research was a treat. (Thanks to Dan Pereira for convincing me to go!). The event did a great job at getting different parts of the independent circuit together and talking about the issues that concern them right now. Over the next few days, I'll try to post a few more pieces on different aspects of the conference.

The first panel I attended was called "US Independents Going Global", part of their Global Marketplace-themed day. Yael Taqqu, from Mckinsey and Co., moderated the panel; Charlotte Mickie (Maximum Films), Peter Saraf (Big Beach Films) and filmmakers Brad Rust Grey and So Yong Kim participated in it. Mickie and Saraf along with Taqqu set the tone for the conversation.

The panel was not exactly upbeat. There are a lot of reasons for this, mainly that the market was falling apart and it was early enough in the morning that many of us hadn't had our coffee yet. Add to this the film and music industry's taste for a doomsday discourse, and this was not what you'd call a celebratory conversation.

Ten minutes into the discussion, the general consensus was that there are no real opportunities abroad. The only territory on the table was the US. At this point, just for the sake of honesty, I wanted to rename the panel "We are the World".

Here are some of the "takeaway points":

Continue reading ""Who needs Dubai when we have Florida!"" »

June 5, 2008

Jonathan Gray: Promising a Sequel, and Myths of the Hero's Becoming

Today we're featuring a piece C3 Consulting Researcher Jonathan Gray posted recently on his own blog (where Ivan Askwith and Derek Johnson also write) about sequels.

Recently, I saw both Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (funny how a sequel allows you the right to such a long title, eh?) and Iron Man. I was interested by how both dealt with the prospect of a sequel, and it got me thinking about how films announce a forthcoming sequel, and how sequels work. (NO SPOILERS YET, BUT I'LL WARN YOU LATER OF A COUPLE, IN CAPS).

To start, I'd argue that if sequels so often stink, or are at least very silly and fluffy, it's because many sequels aren't really about the hero who supposedly started the franchise.

More after the fold

Continue reading "Jonathan Gray: Promising a Sequel, and Myths of the Hero's Becoming" »

April 24, 2008

The Appropriation of Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones is back, well, he probable never left, but right now he's generating much buzz with The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which will be in theaters on May 22. But as old and new fans get ready to enjoy the latest installment of this 27 year-old saga, Xiaochang Li, my colleague here at C3 reminded me of one of the greatest Indiana Jones fan stories that is as current today as when it was produced.

In 1982, after seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark, three 12 year-olds set on a mission that would last all of their teenage years: a shot-by-shot reenactment of the first Indiana Jones movie. Seven years and $5000 later, Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb finished their movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation.

J.D. Lasica's book Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation retells the boys' adventure in a lively and intelligent manner. 'In the teenagers' version of Raiders, the actors grow older in the span of a few minutes. Voices deepen. Chris sprouts chin whiskers and grows six inches. He gets his first-ever kiss by a girl, captured onscreen.' he describes, but later on he also gets at the heart of why this is still a tremendously current story: the tension between creativity, collaboration and current applications of copyright law.

Continue reading "The Appropriation of Indiana Jones" »

April 23, 2008

"It's Just a Trailer"

Is all publicity good publicity? This is the question on that is probably tormenting the members of Outsider Productions who launched a stealth viral campaign to promote their film A Beautiful Day.

The horror short was scheduled to debut at the Bare Bones International Film Festival in Muskogee, Oklahoma and, as a way to promote their film, the producers decided to put up a video on YouTube warning the people of Muskogee that "... the end is coming. The wicked of this world will be separated from the chosen. I will not be on your doorstep to convince you of this. You either see or you do not see."

When Outsider Productions realized that the clip was becoming increasingly popular, they added a screen that clarified, "This is in no way a threat to do harm on anyone. This is a lame attempt at publicity for a movie." However, they quickly decided to pull it from the web.

Continue reading ""It's Just a Trailer"" »

April 6, 2008

PCA/ACA: Michael Duffy and Regionally Digital Filmmaking

As most of the academic readers of this blog would likely agree, the intellectual curiosities of many media studies researchers far outweighs the time and resources one has to spend on writing and research projects, especially for those tenure-track academics who have courses, peer-reviewed publications, and a variety of institutional obligations to contend with. That's the great thing about a venue like a blog, though; it gives you the chance to briefly explore and think about issues that you might not have time to design a more rigorous project around.

Such was the case with my interest in regional cinema. In the summer of 2006, between my first and second year as a Master's student in the Program in Comparative Media Studies, I returned back to Kentucky to spend the summer working for several local weekly newspapers, in addition to continuing my work for the Consortium. In the process, I was assigned the task of covering a film being shot locally in Hartford, Ky., called Red Velvet Cake.

When I attended the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference last month, I had the chance to meet up with Michael Duffy, an emerging scholar whose dissertation reminded me of that interest.

Continue reading "PCA/ACA: Michael Duffy and Regionally Digital Filmmaking" »

March 21, 2008

SCMS: Ted Hovet on Framing Motion

Our approach here at the Program in Comparative Media Studies in general, and in the Consortium in particular, is that, often, the best way to understand the present moment and where the media industries are headed is to look at where they have been. That is one of the foundational principles, for instance, of our bi-annual Media in Transition conference, and it explains why the Consortium is built on the type of work, for instance, that C3 Principal Investigator William Uricchio has done on early conceptions of new media forms in the past, such as the telephone, phonograph, cinema, television, etc. Questions currently arising about mobile media, online video, virtual worlds, and the Internet more broadly can often be better understood by looking at how similar questions were tackled and what mistakes were made in previous eras of media transition.

That approach is a staple of CMS curricula, and it explains in part our association with scholars like Dr. Ted Hovet of Western Kentucky University. I've been fortunate enough to know and work under and with Ted for six years or so now. We've had the pleasure of presenting workshops at conferences together in the past (the 2006 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in particular, where--along with my wife Amanda Ford and WKU's Dale Rigby--we discussed the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to curriculum and academic research), and I was glad to be able to hear him present his latest work at this year's SCMS. His presentation on Friday morning was entitled "Framing Motion: Early Cinema's Conservative Methods of Display."

Continue reading "SCMS: Ted Hovet on Framing Motion" »

March 17, 2008

Self-Distribution and Me

About an hour ago, I was able to articulate what I wanted my thesis topic to be, and I'm writing this blog post to celebrate. My aim is to study the self-distribution models that are currently being developed here in the US and figure out how that can translate into Latin-American and international distribution.

All the guys that lead the From Here to Awesome Festival have innovated in that realm. They created spaces of dialogue with their audience that enabled them to show and monetize their films. It seems that there is space to be innovative within the US market, but, even for them, once films begin crossing borders, it's back to traditional distribution paradigms, sales agents and a total disconnect from their audiences. So my first question would be, how could these self-distribution approaches be expanded upon?

Continue reading "Self-Distribution and Me" »

February 28, 2008

Bringing "Awesome" to Self-Distribution

As you might have noticed, I've been on the film distribution beat lately. It's a subject that interests me well beyond the extent of this blog.

For a long time, I considered distribution concerns to be a kind of luxury, having worked for various years in enabling a more abundant and empowered Central American and Caribbean film production. Then, the subject of distribution seemed important, yet a distant second to the immense hurdles that production entailed all over the region.

After being here for six months, I'm allowing myself to think about this very pressing issue to which we haven't found satisfactory answers, not only in Latin America, but in all sorts of independent/low-budget films worldwide as well.

While I find it essential to understand existing industry paradigms, reinforcing them is not going to bring about substantial change in distributing independent and low budget films; at most, it will open the doors to a wider audience for one or two films. The vast majority of films produced will continue to remain invisible when working completely within the system.

Luckily, both for mainstream and independent production, there are some who are questioning the current models and, more importantly, proposing potentially successful alternatives.

This is when "awesome" comes into the picture.

Continue reading "Bringing "Awesome" to Self-Distribution" »

February 22, 2008

Board Game Franchises Come to Film

Seems that board games based on media properties have been more prevalent than media properties based on board games. After all, it's easy to create a fairly low-maintenance ancillary product by replacing the names of various streets with venues associated with The Simpsons or Star Wars. It's a bit more challenging to turn the very brief narratives of most board games into film.

Now, news has come from Hasbro that a major deal has been signed to do just that, however, and many of the world's favorite board games are set to come to life through a partnership with Universal Pictures.

Continue reading "Board Game Franchises Come to Film" »

February 13, 2008

Honeydripper: The Challenges of Self-Distribution

With 16 feature films under his belt and a few Oscar and Palme d'Or nominations, John Sayles is a well-established figure in the U.S. film industry. He also has a reputation for being politically consistent and outspoken. In the majority of his movies he writes, directs and edits; his partner, Maggie Renzi, has produced most of them. For their last feature, Honeydripper, Renzi and Sayles chose to give up on the perks of being able to work within the mainstream industry, for the control that self-distribution and self-financing affords them.

Set in the Deep South during the 50s, the movie was made with 5 million dollars and Danny Glover's full support and participation. Honeydripper is a fable about the birth of rock and roll; more importantly it manages to depict the rich and complex lives led by African-Americans during a time of oppression, without making oppression central to the storyline.

Continue reading "Honeydripper: The Challenges of Self-Distribution" »

February 10, 2008

Be Kind Rewind: Between Participation and Control

One of the great pleasures of living in Cambridge is that we regularly have access to sneak previews. About a month ago, I got to see John Sayles' latest opus Honeydripper, and just last week Michel Gondry came to the MIT campus with Be Kind Rewind. Both push different boundaries and deliver an honest, dare I say "authentic," authorial gaze. (See recent C3 posts about authenticity here and here.)

Be Kind Rewind is an unpretentious movie. Its plot, as it's accurately described onIMDB is about Jerry (Jack Black), a junkyard worker who attempts to sabotage a power plant he suspects of causing his headaches. But he inadvertently causes his brain to become magnetized, leading to the unintentional destruction of all the movies in the family store of his friend (played by Mos Def).

Continue reading "Be Kind Rewind: Between Participation and Control" »

November 3, 2007

The Future of Niche Cinema

Is it time to explore alternate forms of distribution a little bit more heavily? We have all come to generally agree to some of the principles for Long Tail economics; particularly, that there is room for marketing to niche interests. Hollywood has been met with increasing skepticism, however, as to what this means for film distribution, which leaves me to question whether savvy forms of direct-to-DVD distribution or online distribution or VOD distribution may be the answer to the problems currently facing some films in the theater.

Perhaps several of you read or heard about the New York Times article a few days ago by Michael Cieply dealing with the lack of money derived from the theater release of several films. Of course, these films may end up being more profitable over time, but it's likely that the amount of cost put into promoting them for theater release will make turning a profit even less likely. Maybe it's not just the fat middles in danger anymore, to steal a line from Grant McCracken.

Continue reading "The Future of Niche Cinema" »

October 27, 2007

Exploring "Cine Latino" (2 of 2)

In my previous post, I detailed some thoughts about my introduction to the Latin-American filmmaking community through a recent panel called "Challenges for Latinas in the Media and Cross-Cultural Filmmaking" at the Boston Latino International Film Festival last week. In this post, I wanted to provide some more thoughts I had coming out of the festival.

One thing I became more aware of during the panel was that Latina filmmakers here also encounter the challenge of working in cross-cultural environments.

Continue reading "Exploring "Cine Latino" (2 of 2)" »

Exploring "Cine Latino" (1 of 2)

The Boston Latino International Film Festival (BLIFF) wrapped up its 6th edition last week. During the festival, I had a chance to attend the panel called "Challenges for Latinas in the Media and Cross-Cultural Filmmaking".

I have worked for the past five years with Central American film but only arrived in the United States two months ago, so this was a very interesting opportunity for me to start understanding the issues that surround Latino and independent film production here in this country.

Panel participants included: Angelica Allende Brisk (Editor/producer, Cartoneros); Diane Lake (Emerson professor and scriptwriter of Frida); Lisa Mattei (Interactive media designer and film festival producer for the Plymouth Film Festival); and Monika Navarro (Emerging filmmaker and ITVS grant recipient, Animas Perdidas). The panel was moderated by Mary Ann Dougherty, professor of film at Boston University.

Continue reading "Exploring "Cine Latino" (1 of 2)" »

October 7, 2007

DOCTV IB: Documentary Production and Regional Public Policy

In March 2006, the Brazilian-lead project, DOCTV Iberoamerica, was launched. By creating a documentary filmmaking contest for all of Ibero-America, DOCTV planned to do some pretty extraordinary things: it would strengthen the public broadcasting system, empower each country allowing them to decide what content they wanted to produce, assure the distribution of local content throughout the region, trigger creative processes, promote an attractive model for regional advertisers, generate local and regional cultural public policy, and, in the medium term, be self-financed.

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September 26, 2007

The "Cluttered" TV Screen in the Context of Screen History

A recent article in the New York Times reports on the concern about snipes, bugs, and crawls that increasingly appear on TV screens and the degree to which they compete for attention with "primary" content

At stake is the industry's effort to shape the expectations of viewers and to test their tolerance of multiple areas of content on a single screen. At what point does promotion become distraction, and at what point does distraction generate backlash? How many different points of content can exist comfortably on the same screen? How effective is multiple layers of content in generating attention?

A historical consideration of screen entertainment can help sort out some of the issues at stake. As this article emphasizes, the first and most obvious comparison of the cluttered TV screen is to a newer medium, that of the computer. This implies, of course, that TV is attempting, perhaps a bit desperately and clumsily, to catch up to a newer and slicker way to display content on a screen. However a more productive comparison might be to older media, especially those that thrived before the dominance of the screen.

Continue reading "The "Cluttered" TV Screen in the Context of Screen History" »

September 16, 2007

Streaming Cinema: Contemplating Hollywood and the New VOD

If the stories about Apple's recent talks with Hollywood studios around providing streaming video "rentals" are accurate, the industry seems to be taking another step toward models of temporary access over ownership of digital film. Does this signal an end (or abatement) of the digital distribution-related fears of the film industry? Will digital video-on-demand become a widespread reality, given the recent series of deals and acquisitions?

Beyond the much ballyhooed need to "do something" in digital distribution channels, particularly in streaming movies over the internet lately, it's already proven to be a profitable way to make money on films post-theatrical release. According to the Wall Street Journal, the DVD sale market is worth about $16B, but it is in decline. Meanwhile, margins on cable VOD are 60-70%, compared to 15-20% on video store rentals. If one assumes that going through iTunes carries a similar per unit cost, likewise without the unease about unauthorized copying, it seems like a very worthwhile route.

Continue reading "Streaming Cinema: Contemplating Hollywood and the New VOD" »

Recent Study Focuses on Swedish Viewing Behaviors

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Pontus Bergdahi, the CEO of Swedish television measurement company MMS. Pontus, a regular reader of the C3 blog, wrote to say that his company had produced a study that might be of interest to our focus here at the Consortium. Unfortunately, the 100-pp. study is not available in English, but I got a chance to look through a summary of the findings, which revealed a few interesting trends.

For instance, the study emphasized above all else that viewers today are watching more television than ever, but it is complicated by the fact that there are a variety of new channels in which they are viewing. In a media environment which values views equally, without bias to which platform they are viewed on, the television industry is stronger than ever, then. As examples like the CBS/Jericho situation reveal, however, the system is not equipped to deal with views on video-on-demand, DVRs, online streaming, downloading or other sources equally, meaning that a viewer really does "count more" when watching on television at the regular time, than they do otherwise...Well, let me amend that: as long as they have a Nielsen box, that is.

Continue reading "Recent Study Focuses on Swedish Viewing Behaviors" »

August 20, 2007

The West Side: An Interview with the Creators (2 of 4)

Here is the second part of the inteview with The West Side creators Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Lieberman that ran in our internal C3 Weekly Update newsletter last weekend. I am posting the interview sections here on the C3 blog a week after they run in our newsletter. You can see the first part of this interview here.

JM: So why an "urban western?" What brought you to that genre mixture, and where there specific films, programs, or other media that inspired you to try to create such a fictional world? The threads of influence that I see weaving through the project are The Wire (in part because I know Ryan's devotion to the series), early Spike Lee, Firefly, and of course classic John Ford/Howard Hawks/spaghetti Western films. What else helped shape your aesthetic?

RBK: Zack had been talking about writing a Western--I'll let him talk about his influences there--and I'd had an idea in college for a thesis on "hip-hop as the new American Western." In terms of ownership of property, personal freedom, living by the gun, disregard of the law, etc., I felt that hip-hop's relationship with American culture today was very similar to that of the Western fifty years ago (or thirty years ago with the Spaghetti Western). I never wrote that thesis--I wasn't alive during either of those eras anyway, so I couldn't really speak to the cultural climate--but once Zack and I started talking about internet video and Westerns, the idea came right back.

Continue reading "The West Side: An Interview with the Creators (2 of 4)" »

August 17, 2007

The West Side: An Interview with the Creators (1 of 4)

This July, Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Lieberman launched an ambitious online serialized film called The West Side here. Rather than trying to generate attention on YouTube, these two young filmmakers, who met at their day jobs at MTV, are trying to offer something distinctive on their own terms, creating a visually rich and leisurely-paced genre mixture of the urban Western. The first episode has been up for around a month, and due to some technical challenges of no-budget filmmaking, the next episode won't be out for a few weeks.

To fill the gap, I conducted an online interview with Ryan, who is a former student of mine, and Zack, discussing how they see their project fitting into the online video moment and broader possibilities of independent filmmaking. The filmmakers speak to many of the issues surrounding convergent media--serialized storytelling, innovative distribution strategies, viral promotion--but places them within the context of ambitious creators trying to make something new rather than make a quick splash. Be sure watch the first episode to get a sense of the project and their combination of ambition and imagination - and keep an eye on these emerging filmmakers!

I am running four weekly installments of the interview in the Consortium's C3 Weekly Update, but I thought I would put the interview segments here after they appear in the newsletter as well.

Continue reading "The West Side: An Interview with the Creators (1 of 4)" »

July 31, 2007

Enlightened Hollywood Returns to Fandom Marketing

Marketing movies was never much of a "long term" activity for movie studios, and most historically have used broadcast to quickly hype an upcoming release. It's just how things typically worked, particularly when the financial success of a film is all about the opening weekend. As the years have passed though, this approach hasn't yielded the kind of box office receipts that a studio craves. With their young, key audience harder to reach, it's interesting to see how these marketers are getting much more inventive.

This "inventiveness", in keeping with Henry's observations of fan culture, was arguably first tinkered with when Hollywood took a mediocre, kitschy movie like Snakes on a Plane and decided to work slowly on building a fan base before the movie's release. Not all agree that this movie was truly a success and it's doubtful that it will become a cult classic. But this type of fan marketing hasn't been jettisoned, and recent activity to promote The Dark Knight demonstrates what appears to be a great case study of how to apply fan marketing to the film business.

Of course it's easier with a property as perfect as this, particularly with its enormous cult following. But kudos to Warner Brothers as they incorporate unique fan marketing, and engaging alternate reality gaming techniques into its promotional mix.

Continue reading "Enlightened Hollywood Returns to Fandom Marketing" »

July 17, 2007

How Much Have Industry Developments Changed in the Past Year?

While thinking today about how this issue between the Writer's Guild of America and television producers seems to have been stretching on for quite a while now, I began to realize that a lot of the issues I've been covering for the Consortium since we started our blog a little under two years ago, and especially since I've been the primary contributor to the blog since last summer have not changed that much.

So, while people talk sometimes about how fast change happens, it is important to realize that the falsity that nothing is ever going to change is often countered by an equally tall tale, that things are changing extremely quickly. The truth is that industry practices, corporate infrastructure, technological lagtime, and an endless variety of factors causes everything to move slowly.

I was told by an industry executive not too long ago that the upfronts this year didn't feel that much different, as if this person were somehow disappointed. I think that's how we all feel when we realize that the new environment feels only slightly removed from yesterday's...and that's because we as human beings can only move in steps. The first cars really did resemble horseless carriages, and the first mobile phones looked quite like landline phones. Change necessarily comes one step at a time.

That being the case, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the stories that were posted here on the blog during this same week last year. You'll see a few stories that have fallen by the wayside but a few more that could quite possibly be easily plugged into this week's headlines and still seem right at home.

Continue reading "How Much Have Industry Developments Changed in the Past Year?" »

July 9, 2007

Digital Cinema and HD DVDs Expected to Experience Significant Growth by 2011

A new study from PricewaterhouseCoopers examines high-definition DVDs and digital cinema, finding that digital and HD filmed content will reach $103.3 billion, up from $81.2 billion in 2006. The study, entitled "Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2007-2011," emphasizes Asia Pacific as the fastest growing market and finds that download-to-own services will remain a niche market but one that will grow tremendously over the next few years.

One of the most interesting predictions is that digital cinema will "reinvigorate the box office to the tune of $11.7 billion by 2011," according to Reuters' Gina Keating in her article on the report.

There are still a lot of controversies, particularly in the length of time given to release for DVD, which digital cinema encourages. However, theater owners are adamantly opposed to such a move because, while it will benefit the production companies, it may very well be detrimental to the box office, especially due to the fact that one can own a movie on DVD for about the cost of a couple viewing it once at a theater, not counting the costs for snacks and beverages.

Continue reading "Digital Cinema and HD DVDs Expected to Experience Significant Growth by 2011" »

January 20, 2007

"The Museum as Outdoor Movie Screen" or, What IS Cinema?

The January 18, 2007, online edition of the New York Times features a review of a new film by Doug Aitken called Sleepwalkers.

The reviewer, Roberta Smith, discusses the film's content to a degree, but keeps shifting her attention back to something ordinarily overlooked in a movie review: its circumstances of exhibition. This is perfectly understandable, since exhibition involves eight projectors showing the film on three different exterior surfaces of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Smith asserts this event as a prominent example of an interesting convergence: "archivedio or "videotecture." She points out that the buildings in Times Square already feature "commercial versions of the form" and wonders if "private homes may soon glow with a self-taught variety."

Continue reading ""The Museum as Outdoor Movie Screen" or, What IS Cinema?" »

June 29, 2006

Do Snakes or Fireflies Have Longer Tails?

The following entry by Henry Jenkins was originally posted on Henry's blog, Confessions of an Aca/Fan:

Reader Skwid compares the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon with what happened to Serenity. He notes:

I'm looking forward to this movie as much as the next net.geek, but I don't expect as much of a box-office surprise as many seem to be anticipating, because I've seen it before.

What am I referring to? Serenity. It would be hard to beat the online buzz Serenity was getting, and sometimes it seems like it's difficult to find a blogger who isn't a fan of the prematurely cancelled series Firefly, but all of that buzz and a good deal of critical acclaim still couldn't get people into the theaters.

He may well be right--it is very easy living at the hub of digital culture to imagine that all of the buzz we are hearing is generalizable across the population as a whole. But let's look for a moment at what happened with Firefly/Serenity and then, I will try to explain why I think Snakes on a Plane is in a somewhat different situation.

Praise Be the Whedon

Let's be clear that I am a big fan of Firefly and of Joss Whedon's other work in television and in comics. I think he's one of the smartest and most creative people operating within the media industry today. He has enormous respect for his fans and he has earned our respect in return. He had constructed a television series he really believed in.

He was watching a very dedicated, very resourceful fan community form around a television series which either got canceled because a)the ratings were low and it was not seen as having a broad general appeal or b)the ratings were low because the network had not successfully targeted its most likely audiences and given it a chance to develop the word of mouth needed to expand its core viewership. We may never know which of these explanations is the correct one--I suspect some combination of the two.

Whedon still wanted to produce the content; there was a group of people clammering for the content; but the networks didn't think there's a large enough audience to sustain a prime time broadcast series. This is a situation we've seen again and again in the history of broadcast media. I think it's about time we rewrote the rules.

Continue reading "Do Snakes or Fireflies Have Longer Tails?" »

June 11, 2006

Netflix: The World's Best Idea with the World's Worst Distribution System?

There's a thought-provoking piece about Netflix in Wednesday's The New York Times about DVD distribution company Netflix, written by David Leonhardt.

The piece doesn't really say anything that most of us don't already realize to some degree: that Netflix has the right idea and the worst distribution system. For those of you who have dealt with our illustrious postal system that much, you know that it's not the most reliable way to transfer information in the world--the Internet provides a much better way to send data reliably (that is, unless network neutrality is out the window).

Since I'm always bringing personal anecdotes to the blog, here's another: I moved out of my Boston apartment and forwarded my mail to Kentucky on May 1. Now, it's June 8, and I've only gotten about three pieces of forwarded mail, and the postal system isn't entirely sure where that other mail ended up.

So, while Netflix has the right idea with making every DVD out there available for rental in its system, the distribution system is far from the best. Leonhardt chastises Hollywood, who have an online downloadable option available to them that could rival or eventually overturn Netflix but which is currently blocked due to the outmoded thinking of current deals with television distributors, which would allow DVD distribution but not online downloads of movies that cable and broadcast networks have exclusive rights to.

I was still shocked, though, that of the 60,000 titles available on DVD in NetFlix's inventory, 35,000 to 40,000 of them are rented every day. As Netflix's Chief Executive Reed Hastings said, "Americans' tastes are really broad." But it's still a shame that today's most forward-thinking distributor, that is helping to instill this Long Tail effect in the media industry and to create what Leonhardt calls a "meritocracy" for content, is doing so using one of the most disorganized distribution systems around (the postal service being a great example of how terrible a government-owned business becomes when it is allowed a monopoly on most mail delivery services).

Netflix already realizes that, if digital streaming of movies becomes prevalent, its current DVD-through-mail system could become obsolete, and the company is already considering ways to shift its distribution to stay on top of the market. In the meantime, though, Netflix is the best we've got, considering that Hollywood exclusivity rights only allows about 1,500 of the 60,000 DVD releases available through Netflix to be distributed digitally through the studios' Movielink. Oh, and I can't look at Movielink, anyway, because they don't support Macs.

Yet another reminder of how old thought patterns restrict the ways in which the industry can respond to new technologies and new viewer demands.

June 7, 2006

Fan-Generated Promotion for Snakes on a Plane

The newest craze in fan-created content circulating on YouTube goes even further the the pieces I've noted over the past several days, in that this involves a parody performance of Bono from U2 that makes the piece even more amazing.

The video editing that transforms this fairly accurate impersonation of Bono singing a tribute to actor Samuel L. Jackson makes what looks very much like a legitimate music video, aside from its obviously comedic aspect.

The video is entitled "Someone Tell Sam Jackson He's My Bro" and features tributes, both in lyric and in visual flashbacks, to Jackson's performances and particularly to his upcoming role in Snakes on a Plane.

Jackie Huba at the Church of the Customer blog calls the piece "citizen marketing." Indeed, with such ardent fan support, the producers should realize the powerful marketing opportunities that fans present at no cost. Sure, creator David Coyne has broken some substantial copyright laws with his parody performance of Bono because of all the images of Jackson in the background. However, the producers of Snakes on a Plane and Jackson himself should celebrate such marketing. Even though the piece is clearly parody, it also draws attention to and celebrates Jackson and the upcoming film.

More than almost any other film in recent memory, Snakes on a Plane has a lot of cult buzz behind it. The show's producers capitalized on this through the very title, adopting what became an underground title for the project as the film's public name as well. Further, check out the film's site, particularly the "Fan Site of the Week" option, to see how well the show has integrated the grassroots marketing of the fan community with official marketing.

How much profit will all this cult grassroots marketing have on the film? Time will tell, but the even harder question is how long we have to wait with a cult film to determine its success--will audiences turn out to see it in droves on theatrical release, will DVD sales be substantially higher, or will the film's potential cult status lead to its continued success in DVD sales for years to come?

Thanks to Siddiq Bello with Turner for bringing this piece of fan promotion to my attention.

June 1, 2006

The Ten Commandments: A Teenage Love Story?!?

After posting about The Skeletor Show last week, here comes the latest example of a YouTube-distributed piece of fan-generated content.

Geoffrey Long, a co-conspirator here in the Convergence Culture Consortium, brought to my attention this movie trailer spoof of Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 film The Ten Commandments.

The piece, called 10 Things I Hate About Commandments, is a trailer for a teen drama featuring Moses and Ramses fighting over the same girl. While a parody of sorts for both the older film and the teen drama form, as well as a parody of movie trailers in general, the piece is more a celebration and send-up spoof than a biting critique and is an example of the ways that fan-generated content can bring new excitement to long-existing pieces of work. When I first watched the trailer early this morning, the trailer already had over 600,000 views. While some Christians may be offended by Samuel L. Jackson's language in his version of The Burning Bush, I don't read this as a criticism of the original film or the biblical story, save its the camp value of some of the acting and costuming.

More than anything else, though, this trailer demonstrates the tremendous power of fans to generate "poached" content in ways that look as professional as a real movie trailer, for the most part. The use of quotes from the actual Ten Commandments shows the time and energy put into conceiving, piecing together, and executing a trailer like this. I can't help but be continually amazed at the expertise and dedication of fans.

May 31, 2006

Turner Classic Movies Reaching for Younger Audience

Turner Classic Movies will be reaching out to a younger audience with an attempt to refine its brand. According to announcements last week, the network will begin airing programming including a cult movie feature that will come on late at night, hosted by Rob Zombie.

Zombie's show will be called "TCM Underground," according to The Television Forum.

Zombie's show is one of several recent ventures by TCM to reach out to younger viewers. I personally don't see any conflicts with these types of projects, as long as they retain the overall intent of TCM. When brands try to stretch themselves so far that they lose any sense of their raison d'etre, they run the risk of losing their key constituency.

While some of their other original projects may be taking some of the focus away from the "classic" part of Turner Classic Movies, the idea of using current cult stars to look into former cult film favorites is perfect, especially considering that Zombie's own films have been greatly influenced by cult classics of the past. The project should attract new and younger viewers while not straying so far from the focus of TCM that it would anger the fans of classic movies that support the network.

It will be interesting to see how well the show is received by new fans and by the existing TCM fan base.

April 19, 2006

Target Marketing--Fox Faith

The weekend edition of USA Today had an intriguing front-page article about the resurgence of faith-based films specifically targeted at the Christian community in America.

The article, written by Scott Bowles, touches on some of the aspects of grassroots marketing in Christian communities that I have posted about before in relation to Christian marketing and debate surrounding C.S. Lewis, which was utilized effectively in marketing the recent Narnia film.

Christian communities have powerful methods for word-of-mouth, with preachers and outspoken church members spreading the word about products. Christian bookstores are another powerful way to target the Christian community, and products from the Left Behind series to Veggie Tales have had strong support from Christian consumers, not to mention The Passion of the Christ.

The article details moves by companies such as Fox, who have created Fox Faith as a division of the company marketing to the Christian consumer. The site even includes materials for church disucssion on Fox Faith films, serving the all-important Christian literature market that bible bookstores are run on.

Fox Faith serves as an important reminder not to forget about the power of concentrated marketing and the unaparalleled grassroots power of American Christianity.

February 20, 2006

Pop Secret Indie Commercials

Pop Secret, the General Mills popcorn brand, is sponsoring commercials for their popcorn made by independent directors, as a way to indirectly promote their sponsorship of the The Independent Feature Project Independent Spirit Awards. Pop Secret even sponsored a pullout "The Great American Indie Quiz" in last week's Entertainment Weekly, with the Web address to their site featuring the commercials.

It seems that this is the perfect fusion of commercialism and content, where independent directors are given a chance to produce content that is distributed by the company to help the director develop a name and film fans to get to see the work of unknowns, while also directly promoting the company. It's hardly an act of goodwill but is one step closer to a model of direct sponsorship. At this point, it seems to be a win-win situation.

Check out the Pop Secret page, and tell me what you think...

Brand Reinforcement or "Too Much"?

Has anyone witnessed the new advertising campaign by Chrysler, whose Chrysler 300C is used in Harrison Ford's upcoming thriller Firewall (Richard Loncraine, Warner Brothers)? The company has a Web site dedicated to the film and has taken full-page ads in entertainment magazines telling viewers to "See the Crysler 300C in Firewall, in theaters now. Go for the ride of your life with the Chrysler 300C."

Is this a good example of getting the most bang for your advertising buck by building on product placements with advertising for that product placement, or is this bordering on going too far?

February 6, 2006

Adaptation Across Media--EW's take

A quick note about a really interesting little read in this week's Entertainment Weekly. Lisa Schwarzbaum writes, in the issue's large section on the Oscars, about adapted screenplays taken from novels. In Dr. Karen Schneider's "Literature and Film" class back at Western Kentucky University a few years ago, we discussed the inevitable bias people seem to show toward the book--the book always being "better," of course. And, as any good discussion of adaptation goes, the question eventually becomes what is "the story." If the "original" work is the story, than there could never be one better at telling it, could there be? Or, as my MIT Comparative Media Studies classmate Peter Rauch might question, is it possible for an adaptation to capture more of the essence of "the original" than the actual original work?

That's the sort of question posed here, except in much more concrete terms that most college classes would probably allow for and certainly more than Peter would. She tackles ten cases in which films picked up on the subtleties of a novel and ended up expressing the stories much better than the novelist, utilizing the filmic language much more eloquently than the authors did the written language. Her examples include The Godfather, Ordinary People and Sideways...

During this time of Oscar fever, I just thought it was an interesting argument to bring up and one that is very relevant to transmedia storytelling...Any other regular EW readers have a chance to check it out?

January 25, 2006

The Potential Effect of Soderbergh's Bubble on Film Distribution

While the entertainment business keeps its focus on the announcement of the CW Network I mentioned here late last night/early this morning, Ty Burr covers out another story with a potential effect on the entertainment industry, in particular film distributors, in today's Boston Globe.

Steven Soderbergh's new film Bubble will be released in theaters, on cable, and in video stores simultaneously on Friday.

What does this mean? Bubble isn't going to be that big of a film, but everyone is going to have their eyes on what this means for it. Will it garner more total interest by being available in so many media forms simultanously? How much will this damage theater distribution? At this point, it seems that the company may not have much to lose, but theater distributors will most definitely be hurt by it.

What is your all's take?

Be sure to check out the excellent article on Bubble here.

December 18, 2005

Product placement, branding, and Kong

The talk of product placement this past week has been centered around Peter Jackson's King Kong.

Last Wednesday's Metro featured an editorial from Dan Dunn that captures the complications of product placement in feature films.

Dunn's starting point is an e-mail from Chase requesting that he take out a Kong-themed MasterCard. He then finds that he can't escape the Kong crossover, from Toshiba to Burger King to Nestle Crunch to Kellogg's to Volkswagen to clothes and all types of merchandise.

We can sympathize with Dunn as he sarcastically makes a pitch for Trojan to launch the "Kongdom" or for Survivor: Skull Island because product tie-ins and crossovers shouldn't work along the lines of thinking the more, the better.

There is an emotional backlash that the audience feels when they start to realize that King Kong's face is stuck on products everywhere they go. Instead of clever tie-in or creative synergy, it starts to feel like...well...overbearing corporate propaganda that viewers can't get away from. That's not to criticize Universal in particular, but it seems to me that quality is much more valued than quantity when it comes to product tie-ins like this and that too much of a good thing can even make ardent supporters cringe at the sight of your brand on yet another box.

The editorial was placed across the page from of King Kong written by Dunn as well that calls the film "one of those extremely rare works of art powerful enough to change the way people view a medium," so it proves that the relationships are complicated and that annoyance on one side of the page is coupled with complete admiration on the other.

In Steve Daly's "Lexikong" in this week's Entertainment Weekly, though, he reveals that Peter Jackson wanted to recreate Times Square as accurately as possible for 1933, including a Columbia Pictures sign. However, Sony Pictures refused to allow the Columbia logo in the film without getting paid for it, so Universal just replaced it with their own logo.

So, imagine this...The producers of King Kong, a film getting massive amounts of hype and guaranteed to be seen by a huge audience, want to put a big sign for Columbia Pictures in their film, despite being competiton, but Sony refuses this prominent product placement because they want to get paid?

Am I missing something? Or are they?

December 14, 2005

Troma Entertainment: Long Tail benefits for small-time companies?

All of our talk about convergence and major transmedia crossover can sometimes overshadow the fact that there are still plenty of small-time players out there content with a smaller piece of the pie, that may not have the resources of a major conglomerate to tell their stories but also have less to lose in being experimental.

Case in point: Troma Entertainment. In this month's edition of Look Magazine from Entertainment Weekly, Dalton Ross enters the world of B-movie house Troma, the company headed by Yale graduate Lloyd Kaufman that has released classics like The Toxic Avenger and has inspired filmmakers such as the creators of South Park and horror film Cabin Fever.

The piece is well worth a read and serves as a reminder of those companies who could benefit not from the big-business potential of The Long Tail and transmedia storytelling but from the alternative distribution methods such new theories of media distribution and storytelling allow that could benefit these smaller players.

What do you think these potential shifts in media distribution models could have for B-horror producers like Troma?

December 12, 2005

The Writer's Guild on Product Placement

An article on Wired today documents the frustration of television writers who are tired of mandated product placement and want additional compensation for writing commercial messages into their work.

Last month, the Writer's Guild of America, along with the Screen Actors Guild, called for a "Code of Conduct" for product placement in television and film, citing "the public's right to be informed of such advertising." Statistics provided by the Writer's Guild press release indicate the rising rate of product placements in television and film:

"Last year, the use of products in filmed entertainment increased 44 percent and generated revenues in excess of $1 billion. In television alone, product-related revenues skyrocketed a whopping 84 percent."

The proposed Code of Conduct would include rules about disclosure of product integration deals and restrictions on product placement in children's media; but also at issue is compensation for writers and actors. Guild members believe that incorporating products into their stories is beyond their job description: "...along with being asked to create memorable stories and characters, our writers are being told to perform the function of ad copywriter." The whitepaper available with the press release calls for negotiation between producers and writers about additional compensation.

If their demands are not met, the Writer's Guild threatens to involve the FCC because broadcasters are bound by law to make sponsors public.

December 9, 2005

Major Shakeups for VNU and DreamWorks?

Today's Wall Street Journal published two potential major stories that are developing for 2006--the potential change in ownership for both DreamWorks.

Henry Sender reports that Dutch company VNU, the media powerhouse that owns Nielsen Media Research, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Editor and Publisher, AdWeek, MediaWeek and BrandWeek, among other properties, is currently under consideration for buyout by two separate consortiums of international buyers.

Because of some recent frustration in company performance, some feel this will at least be the most successful attempt at a buyout in VNU's history.

Several of us from the consortium recently participated in VNU's "The Next Big Idea" conference in NYC. Seeing the power that VNU holds in the media industry through its various partners, it's still unclear as to what effect a buyout might have on the media industry as a whole. I'm sure, though, that everyone will have their eye on what's happening here as we enter 2006.

On the same page in today's WSJ, Merissa Marr reports that Viacom's Paramount Pictures is preparing to make a bid to buy DreamWorks, competing with General Electric's NBC Universal. DreamWorks, of course, is Steven Spielberg's company and has been part of many major films over the past several years.

What do you think are the implications if VNU is bought out or DreamWorks becomes part of yet another major media conglomerate, whether it joins the NBC camp or the Viacom camp?

Film-VG Convergence On The Horizon... Again.

From the same article as the previous entry: for those following the convergence of films and video games -- it seems that we can look forward to more Year-of-the-Matrix style transmedia experiments, as the industries begin to comprehend the logic of games that are complements, rather than adaptations, of their cinematic counterparts:

Said Bruce Friend, executive vp and managing director of OTX Research: "The boxoffice has been weak, so studios will look to get more creative in their advertising."

Stocks said he also expects another form of creativity to become more important in the Hollywood-gaming relationship. Over time, video game developers will likely start working more closely with film studios when it comes to creating games tied to movies, a move that would benefit both sides, he said.

Said Stocks: "If there is more interaction between the film and the game, and the game offers expanded stories and more character development," gamers will be happier and enjoy both products more.

December 7, 2005

C.S. Lewis Spurs Discussion in Christian Community

Yesterday, the conservative Christian community and specifically popped up regarding the boycotting of Ford for their ads targeting the gay community.

Today's Christian Science Monitor covers the Christian community at large and their reaction to the legendary C.S. Lewis, who has once again become a major name in the news due to the upcoming release of the first Narnia film.

Lewis, in addition to being a well-known novelist, was an Oxford professor who wrote on English literary history and Christianity. Christian denominations across the spectrum are competing over visions of Lewis, each trying to claim him, while some want Lewis to be viewed as someone who defies differences amongst the various denominations and encourages looking at the Christian community as a whole.

The article serves as a reminder that Christian groups, with their grassroots marketing efforts, have become an incredible area for studying the ways in which fans care about and define themselves by writers, performers, and texts.

Check out the text of the article, "Christians Battle Over Narnia," by G. Jeffrey MacDonald.

Promoting the Geisha

This week's Entertainment Weekly included a short interesting study of Banana Republic's promition of the Sony Pictures production Memoirs of a Geisha.

Banana Republic has released a line of Asian-inspired clothes to help promote the upcoming film.

Sony has also entered into tie-ins "with cosmetics company Fresh, luxury candle brand D.L. & Co., and the Republic of Tea, among others," according to Missy Schwartz, author of "Asia Miner," the EW article.

This marketing ploy, coupled with the traditional media spots to air versions of the trailer or print ads, brings to question what the value of these loose tie-ins might be, as the measuring system for such things still remains largely speculative.

Any thoughts?

November 17, 2005

Extended Previews Hit iTunes Tomorrow

Cinematical reports that IFC Films is collaborating with the iTunes Music Store to make the first 10 minutes of Lars Von Trier's upcoming film Mandalay available for free download. I'd expect to see a lot more of this in the near future, but I'm glad that IFC was the first one to make this move.

October 28, 2005

Star Wars and the Director's Cut

There's a short article on CNN.com today (presumably inspired by the release of Revenge of the Sith DVD on Tuesday) about the changes Lucas has made to the original trilogy.

The article touches upon what we discussed in class yesterday - Lucas alters his movies because he wants them to conform to his vision, but fans may like the old interpretation or their own interpretations better. And now modern creative tools allow dissenting fans to do the same as Lucas and alter the movies to make them conform with their own idea of what Star Wars should be.

The end of the article discusses Star Wars as a transmedia property, saying

In fact, some of those stories may not be his, anyway. One of the charms of video games is that the player becomes a character in the story, and technology being what it is, the permutations are becoming endless. So, perhaps, "Star Wars" has become a classic sci-fi multiverse conundrum, with alternate histories and varied points of view.

...Of course, my cynical side is convinced that in 10 years Lucas will make the old versions available for an extra charge. Star Wars Classic, anyone?

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