La participación como bien de consumo: una aproximación conceptual a las formas de implicación de los usuarios en proyectos audiovisuales colaborativos
This paper focuses on the concept of participation, widely used —and also contested— in relation to the engagement of... more This paper focuses on the concept of participation, widely used —and also contested— in relation to the engagement of users in the creation of media content.on the internet. particularly, our interest lies in the participation of publics in the design, development and diffusion of complex media products, such as feature films, webseries or transmedia projects. even if most of the academic debates on user agency, in terms of participation, are connected to content sharing platforms —which rely heavily on user–generated content—, or the so–called social media, the engagement of individuals in participatory–related media projects becomes an important contribution to the delimitation and reevaluation of key concepts around the engagement of users in cultural production processes.
DownloadLeft out in the cold: Wildlife Documentary
Wildlife documentary, documentary study, draft only, 2010
Why are nature films and wildlife films often excluded from the academy's study of documentary film?
“Animals are born, are sentient, are mortal. In these things they resemble man. In their superficial anatomy—less in their deep anatomy---in their habits, in their time, in their physical capacities, they differ from man. They are both like and unlike”
John Berger
“It is because man originally felt himself identical to all those like him that he came to acquire the capacity to distinguish himself as he distinguishes them—ie, to use the diversity of species for conceptual support for social differentiation.”
Levi-Strauss commenting on Rousseau’s reasoning for the Origins of Language
“and he cursed the automobile, said this no place for a hombre like I am in this new world of asphalt and steel […] all that’s left of the old days are damned old coyotes and me.” Don Edwards, “Coyote” theme song of Grizzly Man
Despite their influence on the arts and their importance to our survival, animals have received secondary status in our society and films focusing solely on them, and nature, are more often than not excluded in theoretical discussions of documentary film. Their voice is not debated, because they do not speak the language of humans.
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“Private Sch♥♥l … For Girls: Young Female Theatergoes, Early-80s Teen Sex Comedies, and the "Make-out Movie”
Forthcoming
This essay counters the prevailing notions that teenaged males were targeted at the expense of other audiences during... more This essay counters the prevailing notions that teenaged males were targeted at the expense of other audiences during the "New Hollywood" years of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and that the commercial potential of young female Americans was only fully recognized by the culture industries in the mid-90s, by showing that, in terms of production, content, and promotion, the New Hollywood youth market was so heavily underwritten by a date-movie mentality that even the period's sexually explicit R-rated teenpics - notably raucious teen sex comedies and melodramatic tales of adolescent sexual awakening - were conceived for and pitched aggressively at teenage girls and young women.
Lighting (Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film)
Published in Barry Keith Grant (ed.), Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film (New York: Thomson Gale, 2006), pp. 93-101.
Crew (Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film)
Co-authored with Joseph Lampel.
Published in Barry Keith Grant (ed.), Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film (New York: Thomson Gale, 2006), pp. 391-7.
Production Process (Schirmer Encyclopdia of Film)
Co-authored with Joseph Lampel.
Published in Barry Keith Grant (ed.), Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film (New York: Thomson Gale, 2006), pp. 329-38.
Erickson, Mary. (2011, May 2). The hidden face of the adult film industry. In Media Res. May 2-6, 2011. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/
The mainstream Hollywood film industry has been very publicly fighting against movie piracy for years, but in April... more The mainstream Hollywood film industry has been very publicly fighting against movie piracy for years, but in April 2010, the adult film industry released its own PSA, pleading with audiences to respect copyrighted material and pay for adult online content. The labor involved with the production of this content, usually relatively invisible as a seedy sub-segment of independent filmmaking, is brought to the forefront as the adult film industry struggles to adapt to new economic models.
Chapter Ten: The Mysterious Case of the House-breaker, the Thief-Taker General, and the National Lottery
IN: Sights Unseen: Unfinished British Films
Editor: Dan North
Date Of Publication: Jan 2008
Isbn13: 9781847184269
Many British films never make it to the screen. Obstacles of finance, censorship, distribution or creative breakdown... more Many British films never make it to the screen. Obstacles of finance, censorship, distribution or creative breakdown can appear in their way, and they might even fail to get beyond the script stage. This book collects new essays by leading scholars that use archival resources to reconstruct the stories behind a range of films by prominent film-makers. These thwarted productions are all too often excluded from histories of British cinema, but the accounts of their unmaking contained in Sights Unseen provides an illuminating insight into the factors which have served to undermine the stability of the film industry in Britain.
Above the Bottom Line; Producer Survey Results
Co-authored with Alan Cameron, Lumina (Australian Journal of Screen Arts and Business) No. 6, pp40-61
“‘The Ambitions of Most Independent Filmmakers’: Indie Production, the Majors and Friday the 13th (1980)”,
Journal of Film and Video, vol. 63, no. 2 (Summer 2011), pp. 28-44.
Whereas scholars and commentators invariably contrast the practices and products of the "New" Hollywood and... more Whereas scholars and commentators invariably contrast the practices and products of the "New" Hollywood and the American Independent sector of the 1970s, this article argues that the period's "outsiders" (independent entrepreneurs who were unable to distriubute their films themselves) complicate such distinctions by virtue of their efforts to sell major Hollywood distributors new films which had been modelled on a range of Hollywood's contemporaneous hits and potentially lucrative production trends.
“Between Dreams and Reality”: Genre Personae, Brand Elm Street, and Repackaging the American Teen Slasher Film
Iluminace: The Journal of Film Theory, History, and Aesthetics, vol. 25, no. 3 (Forthcoming, 2012)
This essay calls for the marrying of the hitherto distinct production/content and discourse/reception approaches to... more This essay calls for the marrying of the hitherto distinct production/content and discourse/reception approaches to genre studies by suggesting that only when these approaches are mobilized in combination can scholars reveal the extent to which, and the ways in which, the re-writing of genre history shapes persuasive claims of innovative practice during the promotion and publicity of films; claims which often come to shape and therefore to problematize both popular histories and scholarly historiography alike.
Proposal for Dissertation, Selling Independent New Media
In the spirit of deepening our understanding of new media, the dissertation will focus on the production of an object... more In the spirit of deepening our understanding of new media, the dissertation will focus on the production of an object – “web series” – and its practitioners – producers/filmmakers, marketers, entrepreneurs – to uncover what “digital” technology promises, what it forecloses and what value new media offers scholars seeking to understand how power, agency, markets and industries operate in periods when new media emerge. The market for web series introduces a critical perspective in the debate over whether regular users or big corporations will control and structure the future of media industries: neither unskilled amateurs nor well-endowed corporations, the independent producers and practitioners in the web series market do not clearly fit into the boundaries of the current scholarly debate over structure and agency in media systems. Instead, participants in the independent web series market must navigate competing discourses, grapple with industrial imperatives and improvise new cultural understandings for what they produce and distribute. Far from a user-generated utopia or a corporate-controlled dystopia, the world of web series suggests possibilities and illuminates the challenges new media.
Cinema by Design: Hollywood as a Network Neighbourhood
This is a chapter for Guy Julier and Liz Moor's anthology Design and Creativity: Management, Policy, Practice (2010).
This paper uses recent theories of capital equivalence and social agency to help understand how contemporary design... more
This paper uses recent theories of capital equivalence and social agency to help understand how contemporary design companies react to and exist within the new economies of film production and the industry of cinema. Furthermore the paper suggests that cinema production as a whole - from concept to merchandise - is better understood in terms more appropriate to the design or architecture office. Where cinema is normally discussed in terms of ‘art’ and ‘authorship’, this approach helps understand the creative effects of interference and delegation that its naturally heterogeneous processes entail.
The paper considers, by example of Alex McDowell’s independent company MATTER, ART AND SCIENCE (MINORITY REPORT, BREAKING AND ENTERING), how research and development methods normally associated with a design office are employed in the visual realisation of cinematic worlds. The design office relies on the creative atmosphere epitomised in the conference table, whereby people from differing backgrounds and with different responsibilities share ideas and collaborate on creative decisions. Yet whilst this approach has been developed by McDowell as a response to the demands of an industry reliant upon information technology and the rapid exchange of specialised knowledge, it reflects a wider pattern of cinema production as it has emerged as a formalised industrial practice.
As Bruno Latour has suggested, the office itself is the point of articulation, interference and delegation in industrial networks. In the film industry, we might offer the office as the site of creative decisions developed by creative and ‘non-creative’ people responding to economic, social, cultural as well as artistic imperatives. Added to this is the equivalence of capital accelerated by information technology, connecting the studio production to the merchandising account. As McDowell argues, this makes the design/realisation office of a film - once simply the production design office - now the central production office for the whole project.
The paper combines research into contemporary production practices with contemporary social theory to argue that studies of both the industry and aesthetic product of cinema are best served by an approach that takes into account the roles of interference and delegation that are fundamental to creativity in design.
The Dream Works effect: the case for studying the ideology of production design
This paper is about the central paradox facing big-budget history productions – how to combine a credible historical... more This paper is about the central paradox facing big-budget history productions – how to combine a credible historical image with the obvious elements of mythic or spectacular narrative central to each productions’ success.
Film, video, DVD and online delivery
in Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner (eds) Media and Communications in Australia, 5th edition, Allen & Unwin, Sydney
Above the Bottom Line: Understanding Australian Screen Content Producers
Co-authored with Allan Cameron and David Court, Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy, Issue 136 (Aug 2010), pp. 90-102.
The recently completed Australian Screen Producer Survey provides the most current and detailed picture of the... more
The recently completed Australian Screen Producer Survey provides the most current and detailed picture of the culture, motivations and aspirations of a highly influential sector of the content production industries. Drawing upon the results of the survey, this article reflects on the historical and theoretical difficulties entailed in defining the producer as a professional category, before outlining some of the survey's key findings. In particular, it examines producers' demographic and sectoral profile, analyses their attitudes towards the relative importance of education and experience, and explores their underlying motivations.
Amongst other findings, the survey reveals a tendency towards idealism among Australian producers that would appear to be at odds with the financial realities of the business. It therefore offers a variety of stakeholders (including government and educational institutions, as well as producers themselves) with the opportunity to reflect upon the future shape and direction of the Australian media industry.
Projects, Paths, and Practices: Sustaining and Leveraging Project-Based Relationships
Full Source: Manning, S., Sydow, J. 2011. "Projects, paths, and practices: Sustaining and leveraging project-based relationships", Industrial and Corporate Change, 20 (5), 1369-1402.
In this paper, we examine how project entrepreneurs maintain and leverage longer-term project-based relationships in... more In this paper, we examine how project entrepreneurs maintain and leverage longer-term project-based relationships in highly uncertain and volatile project businesses with clients and key service providers across ever changing collaborative contexts. Based on a thorough analysis of TV project networks, using both quantitative and qualitative data, we find that project entrepreneurs form core teams with particular clients and service providers, and establish sequences of related projects thereby forming collaborative paths. These paths allow partners to exploit and stretch existing, and explore new capabilities and partner resources across time and contexts of collaboration. Paths are promoted by connecting practices partners apply to establish task and team linkages between past, present and potential future projects. Our findings promote a more processual understanding of project-based organizing and learning, and tie formation in dynamic industry contexts.
Exile, Identity, Cinéma des copines: Women Filmmakers in Switzerland
Published in Senses of Cinema, Issue No. 22, September-October 2002 SPECIAL WOMEN'S ISSUE. An earlier version of this article appeared in Women Filmmakers: Refocusing, copyright UBC Press 2002, reproduced by permission of UBC Press.
A critical analysis of the position of female filmmakers, past and present, in the small, historically male-dominated,... more
A critical analysis of the position of female filmmakers, past and present, in the small, historically male-dominated, Swiss national cinema.
The essay is not an attempt to write about an entire nation of women filmmakers – it has been done, and well, elsewhere (Blöchlinger et al, 1995). Instead, it looks at filmmaking in Switzerland through considering aspects of its history and how these have affected two contemporary women directors. A basic understanding of any film industry, no matter how small, is reliant on statistics and film politics that affect both men and women, but it is often the filmmakers themselves, and their experiences, both personal and professional, that can give us an insight into how they work. In light of these and other developments, we will consider first of all, pertinent socio-political and cultural aspects that have influenced filmmaking in Switzerland. The spotlight is then on two fiction film directors: Tania Stöcklin and Sabina Boss – in terms of their working methods and professional developments, and their views on feminist politics and film culture in the larger picture of Swiss film production.