Announcing the launch of MEDIA INDUSTRIES! A new international Open Access Journal

After a hiatus due to some rather pressing research deadlines (and a little holiday), Film Studies For Free pokes its head fleetingly above the e-parapet to announce the exciting launch of a wonderful new open access journal: Media Industries online at http://mediaindustriesjournal.org.

Media Industries is a new peer-reviewed, multi-media, open-access online journal that supports critical studies of media industries and institutions worldwide. The first issue is now online and the journal is also now accepting submissions for future issues.

Issue 1 is the first in a series of three issues to be published over the summer that features essays authored by the journal's highly esteemed editorial board. Each of the board essays discusses the state of the field of media industries studies.


FSFF wishes Media Industries all the very best for a highly industrious open access future.

1.1 Table of Contents (visit the journal for live links)

• “Welcome to Media Industries” - written by the Editorial Collective: Amelia Arsenault, Stuart Cunningham, Michael Curtin, Terry Flew, Anthony Fung, Jennifer Holt, Paul McDonald, Brian McNair, Alisa Perren, and Kevin Sanson.
• “Dirt Research For Media Industries” - Charles R. Acland
• “Media Policy Research and the Media Industries” - Des Freedman
• “The Value of Ethnography” - Tejaswini Ganti
• “The Menace of Instrumentalism in Media Industries Research and Education” – David Hesmondhalgh
• “Placing International Media Production” - Aphra Kerr
• “On Automation in Media Industries: Integrating Algorithmic Media Production Into Media Industries Scholarship” - Philip Napoli
• “Film Studies, Cultural Studies, and Media Industry Studies” - Thomas Schatz
• “Selling Television: Addressing Transformations in the International Distribution of Television Content” - Jeanette Steemers
• “There Is No Music Industry” – Jonathan Sterne
• “Globalization Through the Eyes of Runners: Student Interns as Ethnographers on Runaway Productions in Prague” – Petr Szczepanik
• “The Case for Studying In-Store Media” - Joseph Turow
• “Industry Proximity” – Patrick Vonderau

Call for Papers
Media Industries invites contributions that range across the full spectrum of media industries, including film, television, internet, radio, music, publishing, electronic games, advertising, and mobile communications. Submissions may explore these industries individually or examine inter-medial relations between industrial sectors. We encourage both contemporary and historical studies, and are especially interested in contributions that draw attention to global and international perspectives, and use innovative methodologies, imaginative theoretical approaches, and new research directions.

More About Media Industries
The journal is maintained by a managing Editorial Collective and Editorial Board comprised of an international group of media industries scholars. For additional information about the Board and Collective, as well as a list of forthcoming essays from Board members, please visit:
Media Industries

Website: http://mediaindustriesjournal.org
Email: mediaindjournal@gmail.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/mediaindustriesjournal
Twitter: http://twitter.com/mediaindjournal

The Future of Cinema: Discussion with David Bordwell, Simon Field, Andréa Picard and Alan Franey

Future of Cinema - Looking Forward After 30 Years

A very quick post at Film Studies For Free today to bring you a fascinating futurological film and film studies resource: the video of a very well informed panel discussion on where cinema is going.

It features, among others, film scholar extraordinaire David Bordwell, who, as a phenomenal researcher of (practically) the entirety of cinema's past and present, is definitely one of the best qualified people in the world to comment on cinema's future.

The video is a must see if you're interested in the future of film technologies of production and especially of distribution and exhibition. It is part of the 2011 Vancouver International Film Festival collection at Vimeo.

Future of Cinema - Looking Forward After 30 Years
Event description:

The first few chapter headings in a film we did not program at this year's [Vancouver International Film Festival] VIFF are: “Technology Is Great”, “The Industry Is Dead”, “Artists Have the Power”, and “The Craft Is Gone.” To which celluloid-loving film festival organizers might ask: Is it? Do they? Where on earth are we headed? And why?

VIFF has come a long way in its 30 years and never has the future of cinema--and VIFF's future--been more uncertain. Will it be bright and splendid and fair or will it move so quickly that a great deal of what is valuable will be lost before we know it? There are now dramatically more “film festivals” and “films” being made than ever, yet some fear that the industry may be dead. Filmmakers are acutely worried for funding, yet need to operate on a growing number of fronts. Given that the numbers of hours in a day and the numbers of days in a life remain fixed, what limits should we council for our own appetites? Why might we miss the Hollywood Theatre and Videomatica? Given that cultural agencies seemingly have shrinking resources but more new media and film festival applicants every year, will the centres hold or is babble ascendant? Will VIFF's function as an annual international universalist festival be superseded by myriad niche events?

Technology is indeed great in that it has put the means of creative motion picture production in almost everyone's hands, but will the best artists be the ones to be recognized? The entrepreneurial spirit tends to favour change in hopes that it may profit from it, but will artists have the power? When entrepreneurs benefit, will consumers benefit? Will cultural institutions that have taken years to build remain viable? Will cinema, metrics of quality and craftsmanship and, ultimately, quality of life be improved or even be sustainable? What do you personally care about for the future of cinema to offer? What should VIFF 2020 aim to be?

Here to wrestle with these sorts of questions—and yours—will be a distinguished group of panellists including: David Bordwell, film critic, academic and author of numerous books on cinema; Simon Field, film producer and former Director, International Film Festival Rotterdam; Andréa Picard, film critic and programmer, formerly of the Toronto International Film Festival and the Cinémathèque Ontario; Tom Charity, film critic and Vancity Theatre program coordinator; and Alan Franey, director, Vancouver International Film Festival.

Media Fields Journal on Video Stores

Melonie Diaz, Jack Black, and  Mos Def  in Be Kind, Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008 - See FSFF's post on Gondry for some reading on this film)



Film Studies For Free is thrilled to be able to pass on news of the launch of MEDIA FIELDS JOURNAL: Critical Explorations in Media and Space, a new graduate online journal based in the University of California, Santa Barbara's Department of Film and Media Studies.

The first issue (1.1, 2010) on VIDEO STORES, edited by Joshua Neves and Jeff Scheible, is now available at http://www.mediafieldsjournal.org/.

Neves and Scheible introduce their special issue as follows:

This new online journal represents the latest development in a research initiative launched in UCSB’s Department of Film and Media Studies in 2007. The goal of Media Fields is to provide a forum focused on the critical study of media and space, where we can dynamically present and openly debate the latest work from established and emerging scholars and practitioners. Each issue will have a theme—whether it is a topic of contemporary relevance; an exploration of a particular concept, media form, genre, or practice; or, as in this issue, a specific media space: the video rental store.
     We were compelled to focus on the space of the video store in this issue because it is a “media field” that at once allows for the kind of tangible, site-specific fieldwork that is at the heart of Media Fields and, at the same time, is a site where a range of important issues intersect: “new” media’s consequences for “old” media; uses, developments, and failures of media technologies; the cultivation of knowledge about cinema and television; global media distribution; piracy and the law; the circulation of pornography; configurations of cultural communities; relations between public and private space; and contemporary media reception. [read more]

The issue contents are linked to below. Also see the following great site mentioned by the special issue: Video Cultures.
Issue Contents:

• "Video Stores: Introduction" by Jeff Scheible and Joshua Neves
• "Home, Home (Video) on the Range: Reflections on Small-Town Video
• Stores in 2010" by Daniel Herbert
• "Things and Movies: DVD Store Culture in Fiji" by Nicole Starosielski
• "Exchange and Circulation: An Anthropological Perspective on Video
• Stores in Kinshasa" by Katrien Pype
• "A Business without a Future? The Parisian Vidéo-Club, Past and Present" by Brian R. Jacobson and Joshua Neves
• "The Death and Life of the Back Room" by Peter Alilunas
• "Mapping Hardcore Space" by J. Steven Witkowski
• "Riviera Adult Superstore" by Constance Penley
• "Pedagogical Spaces, or, What We’ve Lost in the Post-Video-Store Era" by Roger Beebe
• "Browsing for Dissonance: Paratexts, Box-Art Iconography, and Genre" by Kevin M. Flanagan
• "EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! An Interview with Future Schlock" by Jeff Scheible
• "Video Stores, Media Technologies, and Memory" by Rowan Wilken
• "Video Rental Store: An Interview with Suzanne Carte-Blanchenot and Su-Ying Lee" by Mél Hogan
• "The Long Tail of the Video Store" by Frederick Wasser
• "Free Lifetime Membership" by Matt Kaelin

Please also note that a call for submissions for an issue on DOCUMENTARY AND SPACE is now open and can be viewed here.

Coming at you! 3-D Studies

Stereo Wiggle by Kieff

Film Studies For Free brings you a very rounded links list today on the terribly topical subject of 3-D cinema and other media.

It's a big subject area, encompassing debates on and research about film realism, media industry history, film technology (practice and theory), film spectatorship and reception, and human/media interactivity. If you want a good place to begin before you start dipping into the list below, check out the following, excellent, Wikipedia entries on 3-D film, stereoscopy and 3D audio effect.

• Jay David Bolter, 'Digital Media and Cinematic Point of View',Telepolis (14.02.1997)

• David Bordwell, 'Coraline, cornered', Observations on Film Art, February 23, 2009

• David Cairns, ''Excelsior! [on Up]', Shadowplay, October 19, 2009

• Tobey Crockett, 'Building a Bridge to the Aesthetic Experience: Artistic Virtual Environments and Other Interactive Digital Art', Intelligent Agent, 5.1., 2005
  

• Glorianna Davenport and Brian Bradley, 'Everyone's Cinema: Towards the Future of Cinematics', Oberhausen Film Festival - April 28, 1997
  

• Roger Ebert, 'D-Minus for 3-D', Chicago Sun-TImes, August 16, 2008

• Dana Goodyear, 'Man of Extremes: The Return of James Cameron', The New Yorker, October 2009

• John Hayes, '“You see them WITH glasses!”… A Short History of 3D Movies', Wide Screen Movies Magazine, Part One: The 1800s to the 1950s, February 1, 2009

• Jan Holmberg, 'Ideals of Immersion in Early Cinema, Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 14, n° 1, 2003, p. 129- 147
  

• Mike Jones, 'Composing Space: Cinema and Computer Gaming - The Macro-Mise en Scene and Spatial Composition', Imaginary Worlds: Image and Space International Symposium, Sydney, 14 October 2005

• Pete Kozachik, '2 Worlds in 3 Dimensions [on Coraline]', The American Cinematographer, February 2009
  

• Harold A. Layer, 'Stereoscopy: Where Did It Come From? Where Will It Lead?', updated version published originally in: EXPOSURE: 17:3 Fall 1979
  

• Lenny Lipton, 'The Last Great Innovation: The Stereoscopic Cinema', SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, November/December 2007

• María Lorenzo Hernández, 'The Double Sense of Animated Images. A View on the Paradoxes of Animation as a Visual Language', Animation Studies, January 27, 2008
  

• Lev Manovich, 'Global Algorithm 1.3: The Aesthetics of Virtual Worlds: Report From Los Angeles', CTheory.net, May 1996

• Lev Manovich, 'Assembling Reality: Myths of Computer Graphics', manovich.net, 1992

• Lev Manovich, 'Synthetic Realism and its Discontents', manovich.net, 1992, revised 1999

• Mekado Murphy, ''Buzz and Woody add a dimension', The New York Times, October 4, 2009 (plus related audio interview with Toy Story director Jon Lasseter here)

• Angela Ndalianis, 'Architectures of Vision: Neo-Baroque Optical Regimes and Contemporary Entertainment Media', MIT Communications Forum, December 19, 1999
  

• Michael Nitsche, 'Games, Montage, and the First Person Point of View', Digital Games Research Association, 2007

• Dan North, 'Toy Story 3D', Spectacular Attractions, October 9, 2009

• Dan North, 'Magnificent Bodyguards: Jackie Chan in 3D, 1978', Spectacular Attractions, July 20, 2009

• Per Persson, 'Chapter 1: Understanding and Dispositions', Understanding Cinema: A Psychological Theory of Moving Imagery (Cambridge University Press, 2003

• Seth Porges, 'Are 3D Movies Finally Ready for Their High-Tech Close-up?', Popular Mechanics, July 21, 2008

• Bob Rehak, 'Titles on the Fringe', Graphic Engine, September 12, 2008

• Paolo Teobaldelli, 'Cinema and Special Effects Seen From a Non- Dual Based Approach to Communication', Applied Semiotics, No. 14, 2004
  

• Kristin Thompson, 'Has 3-D already failed?', Observations on Film Art, September 17, 2009

• HarryTuttle, ‘You’ve Never Seen Anything Like This on Television!’ CNN’s Election Night Hologram', Rouge, 13, April 2007
  

• Todd VanDerWeff, 'A Pixar Week Compendium', The House Next Door, October 11, 2009

• Gary De Wan, '3D', originally published Motion Picture Projectionist, February 1954, republished Wide Screen Movies Magazine, October 7, 2007
  

• Ke Colin Zheng et al, 'Parallax Photography: Creating 3D Cinematic Effects from Stills', Graphics Interface 2009
  

• Ray Zone's The 3-D Zone website

• Ray Zone, Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952 (University Press of Kentucky, 2007: Google Books - Limited Preview)

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