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.
Minor Post #3 - Josh Martin
I've been thinking a little bit lately about the intersection between personalized algorithms and the broader excesses of the streaming age. The review embargo broke today for Citadel, a new Amazon Prime show with Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden; I only knew of its existence thanks to a handful of ads when I saw John Wick at the AMC Century City theater. Other than that, I had encountered no ads, no promos -- it was completely out of the loop of my streaming algorithm. Suddenly, my Twitter timeline was flooded with reviews -- almost all negative. Amazon apparently spent $300 million on that show. At what point does that become unsustainable? Are we already at a breaking point? Will the Writer's Guild Strike change this even further?
Core Post # 4 by Kate Hanson
Shanti Kumar’s chapter Is There Anything Called Global Television Studies? discusses the idea of the East-West discourse and the cross-demographic communication that is happening in television. Specifically, Kumar refers to Raimundo Panikkar’s argument that “the main difficulty in comparative studies of East-West discourse is that one always starts – consciously or unconsciously – from an initial philosophical position, or a stance, influenced by the images and the myths of one’s own culture and location.” Panikkar goes on to describe a thesis (subjective ideas of a scholar) with the antithesis (which is “judged in terms of the theories and practices of the guiding thesis”). Kumar further applies Panikkar’s ideas to Albert Moran’s theories about “copycat television:”
“The radio game show What’s My Line? Moves from the NBC Radio Network in the US to BBC Radio and later becomes a popular television program; the British sitcom Men Behaving Badly is adapted as a US television series It’s A Man’s World while the Australian soap The Restless Years gives rise to Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden in the Netherlands and Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten in Fermany. It is indeed a copycat world in the international broadcasting industries.
Upon reading this I had to stop and laugh as one show immediately came to mind: Making It. Have you ever heard of this show? No? Let me tell you all about it… Making It is the NBC knock-off version of the The Great British Baking Show except sugar, flour, and butter are replaced with wood, screws, and nails. It is quite literally the Home Depot version of Bake Off.
Don’t believe me yet? Here are a few of the many ridiculous similarities between the two shows:
1. Bake Off takes place in a perfectly decorated, colorful tent in the middle of a field. Making It takes place in a perfectly decorated, colorful barn in the middle of the woods.
2. Both shows are hosted by two comedians and have two expert judges
3. Both shows have a few challenges, where contestants must make something within a certain number of hours
4. Each week the shows crown a Star Maker (or Star Baker) and send someone home
5. For every challenge, the hosts count down and say “3, 2, 1, BAKE” or “3, 2, 1, MAKE IT”
6. I could go on forever
Still don’t believe me? Look at the trailers and the photos on the IMDB pages, it’s wildly similar
· Making It: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6874206/
· Bake Off: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1877368/
Moran and Kumar raise an excellent point about cross-demographic communication taking place in the form of “copycat television.” And this of course makes me think further about the idea of recycled stories. I’ve been told by many professors that every story has been told, the difference between them is the angle from which the story is told. Everyone in the industry these days is looking for something they haven’t seen before. But if every story has been told, how do we tell new stories?
While Making It could be viewed as a fresh perspective on British Bake Off, in my head it is essentially a form of plagiarism where the entire idea for the show was copied and pasted with wood slapped across it to replace the cake. And I have to wonder how they’ve gotten away with it for three seasons. How is Bake Off letting it happen? Or do they have to let it happen because the shows are just barely different enough, after all one is about carpenters and one is about bakers. Again I don’t have an answer, but it makes me think about the stories I want to tell: stories that are new and have not been seen. How do I use the films that I’ve watched and loved to be without creating the copycat version of my favorite films?
core response 05_jacqueline maldonado
Lotz does well to recount the evolving technologies of television in her chapter, moreover their relationships and how that impacted eventual growth and change. I found it interesting to consider the finite ending of 2007 as the mobile television combating the quality programming on it, and the very iPod Lotz refers to from an airplane passenger aside her as she writes (78). Mobility and technologies have become second nature; I recount the start of the semester where I was itching for a monitor just to have another screen as a specified viewing-screen distinct from my working-screen of my laptop, because a laptop is unfit to watch in the context of home for some distorted reason but is totally fine outside of the house. Meanwhile buying movies and shows from iTunes for the screen of an iPod Classic was always meant to be a travel plan, whether that travel was a short car ride to the grocery store or a plane ride to the grandparents. Different screens meant different things which we are well versed in applying to modern programming (save for Quibi, rip).
So how do we get from 2007 to 2023? The streaming wars is clearly at the forefront of minds with mergers galore, but what sets this apart other than adding to sources on our ever moving screen experiences? Even the change in ‘the box’ as what once was a cable box can now be reduced to an actual stick you just pop in the TV input and, again, select from sources galore. While we arguably remain in the post network era (unless she said something different in We Now Disrupt This Broadcast I cannot remember that is on me) but refined, maybe all that’s left is to somehow jam television straight into our brains to maximize mobility.
I hate that I actually like that idea. But it isn’t so much about the spaces themselves that Lotz, or this week entirely, has to leave us reevaluating: it’s the ways in which this constant crave for new content can be satiated next. As Lotz speaks to the HD television in the home in the early 2000’s, emphasis is given to the “required shifts in production techniques and technologies” done to provide for them (72). As viewers begin to take a larger role in determining the space television will occupy it is the industry itself that has to react and provide, and now just as ever, fight to get ahead of the curve.
jackie non core nonsense_05
As I’m sure I brought up at many times this semester I keep a spreadsheet tracking everything I watch in a year. At the end of our semester, I figured I’d provide the update to my television-specific sheet I know you all are dying to hear.
As of this evening, I have listed 26 unique series that I have begun watching between January 1st and now, and of those 26 I completed 15. 3 of those completes are highlighted as rewatches (Bob’s Burgers, 30 Rock, Nikita), the rest are a collection of reality television (The Bachelor, Joe Millionaire), comedy (Mythic Quest, Romantic Killer), and Netflix (You, The Sandman).
Needless to say I am drastically behind on my goal to watch, and complete, 100 distinct series this year. I have attempted to watch 100 shows every year since 2020 and have only just nearly succeeded last year by reaching 107 distinct titles, yet I failed to hit the mark after only managing to complete 86. By now, I’m sure we all know my answer on how to solve this: more screens.
Thursday, April 27, 2023
Minor Post #5.5 or possibly just 5 because I’m not sure there was ever a #4
I have one follow-up thought about reality dating TV since I previously expressed doubts about my intentions to continue watching such shows. One thing that stuck out to me apart from the fact that everyone was so dressed up throughout the entirety of the show, and maybe this stuck out to me precisely because it’s a blind dating show, was the gender expression seen throughout. I’m sure this observation could be situated in the post-feminism discussions from earlier in the semester, but it’s past my bedtime so I’ll keep this short. I found it interesting how hyper-feminine presenting ALL the female participants were. It made me think back to that trad woman blog we saw in class. The show is definitely pushing a very specific version of sex and gender roles as they translate to the ideals of a successful heterosexual marriage. All of that to say that my ACTUAL favorite part of the season was the trailer at the end of the final reunion episode. The trailer was for a forthcoming show called Ultimatum: Queer Love. I will definitely be tuning in for that kind of reality television gold. Goodnight!
Minor Post #2 -- Alexandra Lavin
So yes I was on top of my core responses but completely forgot about the existence of minor posts, so I am doing my best to throw in some thoughts. I wanted to speak a little of my experience in this class as a non-CAMS student, because I've found this peak into critical studies to be really illuminating. All of us screenwriters have a CAMS requirement, so I chose this one because I like to talk about television. I definitely was not anticipating what this class ended up being, but I am very glad I ended up choosing it. As a writing student I think it's easy to get so bogged down in the constant introspection, the emotional mining, the sitting in front of your laptop trying desperately to finish your second act, that you forget that your goal is to get this work out into the world, that with any luck your work will stop being about you and be under the care of the general public. A complete screenplay is never really complete until its made, but being a student it's difficult to fully grasp that. This class has been a great reminder that becoming a television writer is becoming a part of a long history that is highly linked to the social, political, and economic state of our society. It's helped me understand the history of the medium (television did not, in fact, only get interesting in the 90's) and put me in touch with the economic decisions that dictate what gets made. Basically, it helped me pull my head out of my ass a little and understand the industry I aspire to be a part of. Yes, I was and still am super intimidated by the long, dense academic texts. I am continually impressed by everybody in the CAMS program and their ability to understand them. But I was delighted to be introduced to the unfamiliar way of dissecting television, and appreciate the interesting discussions every week.
Core Post #5 - Abby
In the chapter, “Thinking Globally: From Media Imperialism to Media Capital”, Curtin discusses the principles of media capital that shape media. One of these principles emphasizes trajectories of creative migration. The demand for constant creative innovation “requires maintaining access to reservoirs of specialized labor that replenish themselves on a regular basis.” It is interesting to think about Los Angeles as one such reservoir, especially in the current context of the impending writer’s strike. Curtin’s assertion that artists are drawn to co-locate with fellow creatives who are often mutually influenced by a sense of “spiritual inspiration” to migrate to creative centers is of course ideal for an industry looking to pull employees from a seemingly endless sea of talent. For employees, however, being one small fish in an endless sea of talent can mean stiff competition for jobs and lower wages, often without benefits. The centralization of a pool of talent also brought to mind Marez’s piece we read several weeks ago. As local tax incentives entice productions out of Hollywood and into states like New Mexico and Georgia, what effect does this have on the emerging trajectories of creative migration? Do these states become new centers for creative migration? The reality is complex. Some productions traveling to these states to take advantage of tax incentives travel with their own crew rather than hiring locally. Marez points out what he calls “racial capitalism in place,” which “combines systems of racialized theft and labor exploitation with the production and dissemination of the racist representations that support them.” Furthermore, the wealth generated by the tax incentives and labor exploitation is redistributed back to Hollywood, rather than benefitting the local area where these productions are taking place. It is also interesting to consider how emerging technologies will affect both global and local flows of media capital. Returning to the impending writer’s strike in Los Angeles, one of the issues on the table is the threat AI technology could pose to writers in the near future. What are the spatial logics of this type of technology and what repercussions would it have for capital, creativity, and culture overall?
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