Following up on our discussion in class about Norwegian slow TV with some quick thoughts. I think the question of attention is of paramount importance here. Especially with some of the longer videos (the 10-hour train rides), I wonder how the audience is engaging with this media. Are they leaving this on as background noise? Do they use it to fall asleep, making it something like a quasi-ASMR video? Does form matter here? I think the argument that this genre counters capitalist productivity paradigms is fascinating, but it may be less straight-forward. Nonetheless, as someone who has written a lot about slow cinema, this is a fascinating phenomenon to me.
Sunday, April 30, 2023
Friday, April 28, 2023
Links final two weeks
Global TV:
David Morley:
https://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/staff/morley/
Slow TV: Watch first clip on page:
https://www.nrk.no/presse/slow-tv-1.12057032
Watch from 6:00 to around 8:00:
https://tv.nrk.no/program/DVFJ64001010
Norwegian Slow TV: 1:30-3:30
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/norways-slow-tv-fascinating-viewers-for-hours-or-days-at-a-time/
Shanti Kumar:
https://rtf.utexas.edu/faculty/shanti-kumar
Michael Curtin
https://www.filmandmedia.ucsb.edu/person/michael-curtin/
Ji Hoon Park (Kristin April Kim is a grad student in his lab)
https://winterof93.wixsite.com/jihoonpark/cv-english
Kingdom: Season 1 trailer:
https://www.netflix.com/title/80180171
All of Us Are Dead:
https://www.netflix.com/title/81237994
https://www.webtoons.com/en/thriller/all-of-us-are-dead/list?title_no=2810&page=1
Post-TV:Amanda Lotz:
Lisa Parks:
https://www.filmandmedia.ucsb.edu/person/lisa-parks/
Sonia Livingstone:
https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/people/academic-staff/sonia-livingstone
A J Christian:
ATT AD: 7:00-10:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFWCoeZjx8A
2nd ATT AD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OVjVDf-Uto
Blockchain + Brock Pierce of DEN: Early TV on the internethttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lMvo0PPxjQWalking Dead ‘Interactive’ expansions:
https://www.genvidtech.com/example-miles/the-walking-dead-last-mile/
Suzanne Scott on Star Wars + Transmedia
https://rtf.utexas.edu/news/transmedia-storytelling-star-wars
Open TV
https://www.weareo.tv/community//introducing-building-otv-quarter-1-2021
Adrienne Maree Brown:
Minor Post #5 - Kiera
The Strange Meta-Parasocial Parody of Jury Duty and the Semi-Return to Traditional TV
I'm not sure I can connect the subject to either of the topics of the last two weeks, but I binged all of Amazon FreeVee's Jury Duty over these last week's of the semester, and I have to talk about it.
It really has more of a place in the discussion of liveness, but perhaps there is something to be said for it as a new medium in post-TV. After all it is one of the products of a purely online streaming service (Amazon) and their new-old subsidiary FreeVee, an ironic name playing with the concept of changing "TeeVee", especially ironic because of it's backslid nature of TV with ads for revenue instead of streaming subscription.
I believe FreeVee has used the tactic of early Netflix up until recently, buying distribution licenses for older properties to fill its ranks, and now has begun dipping its toe into original content. It is likely that should the products prove popular, Amazon may make more off of its FreeVee content than its Amazon Prime Originals, due to the renewed ability to sell ad time. It is interesting to see way that streaming has been developing to create a new financial system to support both television production to meet demand and the carefully balanced financing economy that must support it.
Meanwhile, Jury Duty was a good initial foray into original content for FreeVee or any smaller (and especially ad-based) streaming app. The benefit of these channels is that they do not need to uphold a reputation and can gamble on experimental media and still get paid. Jury Duty, as a mix of Punk'd and some kind of reality role-playing show, reminiscent perhaps of Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal, or perhaps The Truman Show plays with and questions much of the concept of "live tv." Of it's constructed nature and the potential dangers of blurring reality. It cannot be said that we see much of a darkside in watching it. The central figure being hoodwinked is let in on it in the end and full transparency becomes the object of the final episode. Unexpectedly, Ronald, the victim juror, wins a cash prize for good behavior, an out of court settlement to act positive and not lose it over the two-week "mindfuck" he has just been through. The whole production is framed as genuinely heartwarming, as Ronald has charmed all of the cast and crew with his down-to-earth wholesome goodness.
It was strange. But much like Ronald the part of me that seeks a neat wrap-up to her media consumption, I found myself smiling and nodding along, as I too questioned the nature of reality.
Core Post #5 Kiera
Semiotics and the Global Media Discourse
A point once made to me in my first screenwriting class what that all (American) film and television writers should seek to communicate their narratives on the level of the universal. Find a story and a point which any given audience can relate to and value. Or else create a world and establish a system of relations that allows audiences to value the narrative. The underlying assumption on this latter being that there is already a recognizable set of communicable universal laws of the human experience that can be hit upon like a piano key to get the same note in every corner of the world.
The point, and a quite relevant one, that our authors variously make this week is that to relegate any analysis of televisual media and/or audience spectatorship and participation to any singular global social position is an incalculable misstep. However any dismissal of a global cultural study as being self-negating is just as great a miscalculation.
David Morley’s nuanced article on the “third option” between localized and geopolitical analysis of cultural TV studies as being one of careful, acknowledged balance between these supposed opposites acknowledges the obvious: that while the discipline may have floundered in its conception, the current world lives a reality of this carefully navigated and self-determined politics of both immediate and global identity.
Put simply, if Korea, Nigeria, and Britain can figure out how to watch American television and still retain both an understanding of their independent cultural identity and their sociopolitical position in the world, surely highly educated scholars can learn how too.
From a purely personal perspective I can be aware of both my personal taste in television genres (crime shows), recognize the ethically questionable practices of these commercial products (as in “ripped from the headlines” episodes, inherent hegemonic nationalism), and also understand that the reason this season was shorter than others was because the writers are on strike as they have the right to unionize in order to protect their personal quality of life, a right backed by the federal government (if grudgingly.)
That this understanding has value seems to me to be the next step in a holistic examination of spectatorship and audience studies. At this point, the structure of production is changing rapidly, the dominance of streaming places revenue power in the hands of the audience directly. Seeking international audiences expands your consumer base and therefore your profit margin, and taking advantage of multi-national partnerships and country-specific tax incentives or other subsidies all helps to alleviate costs and bring in returns. Whether we academics like it or not, American studios at least are globalizing commercially, and the effect this new structure has might be worth studying. The nature of TV is in flux and where it ends up and how it ends up there has a very real chance of upheaving social formation centered around media worldwide.
That said, Kumar makes a fair point in the fallibility of the ethnographer. Since there remains for the foreseeable future an irreducible bias in the skew of media studies towards Western practice, any attempt at global perspective will be lacking the perspective of interiority. However, contrary to Kumar’s conclusion – or perhaps only reopening the subject – I wonder if we should not meet this reasonable criticism with the same solution Morley uses. Active recognition of one’s own predetermined place in a system of constructed world powers with a traceable and visible history can alleviate some of the unconscious bias – though reasonably not all of it. That said, the point of research is constant review and revision. Every reading this week at some point countered or refuted the author of another. Dissent has, perhaps paradoxically, allowed for more diversity of opinion and inspired further research. Despite what victors have languished to have us believe, we can, in fact, take it back – and have, over millennia.
“Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” - Babe Ruth
Final Minor Post by Kate Hanson
Yesterday one of my classes had guest speakers come in and talk about the revelations in AI technology and how AI is one of the most rapidly growing fields that we all need to start learning and figuring out how to use. Filmmakers are starting to use AI to come up with pitch decks, loglines, taglines, summaries of their films, and even to completely previsualize a film based on the script and shot list. Basically, AI will make your film for you if you give it a script.
They went on to say that if you compliment the AI and tell it it’s doing a great job, it will be more likely to give you better content… Now he may have been joking when he said this (I hope he was), but if he wasn’t how crazy is that. Apparently Adobe Premiere as a new FREE plug-in where you can insert your script and it will completely visualize and create the film concept for you… WHAT? It’s honestly mind-blowing, and I have to try it just to see what happens. Stay tuned…
Core Post #5 by Kate Hanson
In her writing from Television Outside the Box, Amanda Lotz discusses the way in which television has changed and evolved over the years in conjunction with the rapidly changing technology of the industry. While there were many points in the article that I found fascinating, I want to focus on her idea of “convenience technologies” and how they have changed when, why, and how we watch television (and pretty much any other content).
“Viewers use mobile television when they access live television out of the home, as opposed to the time-and-place-shifting characteristic of portable television… In sum, mobile television technologies allow out-of-the-home live viewing, while portable technologies expand viewers’ control by enabling them to take once domestic-bound content anywhere to view at any time.”
Lotz goes on to then explain this idea of convenience technologies and how they allow us to watch more television that is more specifically geared towards our taste, but that it requires more preplanning. Once upon a time people would turn the tv on and then they would choose from the limited options that were broadcasting at that time. Now we can take our tablets anywhere, but we have to know what we want to watch ahead of time so we can download it on the app or make sure it will work on the wifi, etc. Of course many viewers prefer this mode of television consumption because it gives them power to choose what they want to watch when they want to watch it and it eliminates commercials in many instances.
But Lotz also points out that in the development of convenience technology, pieces of the art of television have been lost. And not only is she right, but she is pointing out something that has become a factor in a lot of newly developing television shows. The way we structured episodes for broadcast television is incredibly different than the way shows are now being written specifically for streaming. Commercial breaks used to be an easy way to show passage of time, transition from on act to the next, or create tension with a cliffhanger. How many cop shows have we seen where the police burst through the door, weapons aimed at the criminal, only to find that the criminal has a hostage. And then we cut to commercial and the audience is left hanging for 3 minutes. But no one wants to change because as annoying as those ads are, we don’t want to miss what’s going to happen next, we want to see the police take down the criminal and rescue the hostage.
In a similar way, when episodes end with a cliff hanger, it doesn’t have quite the impact that it once did in broadcast tv where we had to wait a week or two to see what happens next. Now we have access to the entire season (or all the seasons), so when a cliffhanger happens, we move right on to the next episode. And while the immediate gratification feels nice to the audience, I wonder if the ability to move right along to the next episode forces us to lose some of the communication and thought that would happen between episodes. We used to talk about shows when they aired on tv. “Did you see last night’s episode of NCIS? Can you believe he did that? What do you think will happen?” In the weeks between episodes airing, fans had the opportunity to discuss the show with other audience members. They could guess what they thought characters would do next, or how they thought the writers would arc the story. We had creative conversation about tv shows because we couldn’t immediately watch them.
This is something my mom and I still do to this day. She is a massive fan of the Chicago shows (especially Chicago Fire and Chicago PD). I used to watch them with her when I lived at home, but of course now that I live in LA (my family is in NC), we don’t watch them together anymore. But at the end of every week when the new episodes air, my mother never fails to text me and ask if I saw the newest episode. And then of course we dive into a lengthy conversation about how one character is acting like an idiot and “there’s no way they’d kill of this character” etc, etc. It’s one of our favorite things to do and we’ve done it for years.
Today, I feel that this conversation is becoming lost amongst others, especially those who no longer subscribe to cable with it’s increasing prices and it’s lack of mobility. People still talk about television, but it’s no longer episode to episode, it’s season to season. As fans anxiously await the new Euphoria or Stranger Things season, they may talk about what they think the writers will do in the next season. But it’s nowhere near the same level of conversation we used to have; the conversations my mom and I still have. And so while I love convenience television, and development in technology is exciting and new. I still sit in the camp of people who love to watch tv when it airs, and sit through the commercials, and see what re-runs are playing right now. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to pre-plan what show I’m going to watch. I love to turn on cable just to “see what’s on right now.” And if you ask me, nothing beats the next day “did you see last night’s episode” deep diving conversation.
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