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Book From Betamax to Blockbuster

Download or read book From Betamax to Blockbuster written by Joshua M. Greenberg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-09-24 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the VCR was transformed from a machine that records television into a medium for movies. The first video cassette recorders were promoted in the 1970s as an extension of broadcast television technology—a time-shifting device, a way to tape TV shows. Early advertising for Sony's Betamax told potential purchasers “You don't have to miss Kojak because you're watching Columbo.” But within a few years, the VCR had been transformed from a machine that recorded television into an extension of the movie theater into the home. This was less a physical transformation than a change in perception, but one that relied on the very tangible construction of a network of social institutions to support this new marketplace for movies. In From Betamax to Blockbuster, Joshua Greenberg explains how the combination of neighborhood video stores and the VCR created a world in which movies became tangible consumer goods. Greenberg charts a trajectory from early “videophile” communities to the rise of the video store—complete with theater marquee lights, movie posters, popcorn, and clerks who offered expert advice on which movies to rent. The result was more than a new industry; by placing movies on cassette in the hands (and control) of consumers, video rental and sale led to a renegotiation of the boundary between medium and message, and ultimately a new relationship between audiences and movies. Eventually, Blockbuster's top-down franchise store model crowded local video stores out of the market, but the recent rise of Netflix, iTunes, and other technologies have reopened old questions about what a movie is and how (and where) it ought to be watched. By focusing on the “spaces in between” manufacturers and consumers, Greenberg's account offers a fresh perspective on consumer technology, illustrating how the initial transformation of movies from experience into commodity began not from the top down or the bottom up, but from the middle of the burgeoning industry out.

Book From Betamax to Blockbuster

Download or read book From Betamax to Blockbuster written by Joshua M. Greenberg and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Poetics of the Paranormal

Download or read book Poetics of the Paranormal written by Kevin Chabot and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The appearance of ghosts in art and popular culture has transformed throughout history. From the undead corpse of the medieval tradition to the transparent forms of photographic film, to the infrared and thermal images that now populate reality television, the paranormal has literally changed shape over the centuries. In Poetics of the Paranormal Kevin Chabot articulates the idea of spectrality, demonstrating how the paranormal is far from a stable, metaphysical category: it is a dynamic and historically contingent discourse, the contours of which shift over time. Specific media, Chabot argues, present the ghost in distinct ways that emphasize the ghostly qualities of the medium and, conversely, the technological qualities of the ghost. Through detailed analyses of nineteenth-century spirit photography, horror films, ghost-hunting reality television, and the viral internet phenomenon Slender Man, Chabot shows how the paranormal both shapes and is shaped by media. Exploring key historical shifts in contemporary media while providing a rich and novel theoretical framework, Poetics of the Paranormal addresses with renewed rigour the relationships between media, perception, temporality, and the elusive concept of the evidential.

Book Japanese Film and the Challenge of Video

Download or read book Japanese Film and the Challenge of Video written by Tom Mes and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-19 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the phenomenon of V-Cinema, founded in Japan in 1989 as a distribution system for direct-to-video movies which film companies began making having failed to recoup their investment in big budget films. It examines how studios and directors worked quickly to capitalize on niche markets or upcoming and current trends, and how as a result this period of history in Japanese cinema was an exceptionally diverse and vibrant film scene. It highlights how, although the V-Cinema industry declined from around 1995, the explosion in quantity and variety of such movies established and cemented many specific genres of Japanese film. Importantly the book argues that film scholars who have long looked down on video as a substandard medium without scholarly interest have been wrong to do so, and that V-Cinema challenges accepted notions of cultural value, providing insight into the formation of cinematic canons and inviting us to rethink what is meant by "Japanese cinema".

Book Video Revolutions

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Z. Newman
  • Publisher : Columbia University Press
  • Release : 2014-04-01
  • ISBN : 0231537751
  • Pages : 159 pages

Download or read book Video Revolutions written by Michael Z. Newman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the days of early television, video has been an indispensable part of culture, society, and moving-image media industries. Over the decades, it has been an avant-garde artistic medium, a high-tech consumer gadget, a format for watching movies at home, a force for democracy, and the ultimate, ubiquitous means of documenting reality. In the twenty-first century, video is the name we give all kinds of moving images. We know it as an adaptable medium that bridges analog and digital, amateur and professional, broadcasting and recording, television and cinema, art and commercial culture, and old media and new digital networks. In this history, Michael Z. Newman casts video as a medium of shifting value and legitimacy in relation to other media and technologies, particularly film and television. Video has been imagined as more or less authentic or artistic than movies or television, as more or less democratic and participatory, as more or less capable of capturing the real. Techno-utopian rhetoric has repeatedly represented video as a revolutionary medium, promising to solve the problems of the past and the present—often the very problems associated with television and the society shaped by it—and to deliver a better future. Video has also been seen more negatively, particularly as a threat to movies and their culture. This study considers video as an object of these hopes and fears and builds an approach to thinking about the concept of the medium in terms of cultural status.

Book Videoland

    Book Details:
  • Author : Daniel Herbert
  • Publisher : Univ of California Press
  • Release : 2014-01-24
  • ISBN : 0520958020
  • Pages : 333 pages

Download or read book Videoland written by Daniel Herbert and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-01-24 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Videoland offers a comprehensive view of the "tangible phase" of consumer video, when Americans largely accessed movies as material commodities at video rental stores. Video stores served as a vital locus of movie culture from the early 1980s until the early 2000s, changing the way Americans socialized around movies and collectively made movies meaningful. When films became tangible as magnetic tapes and plastic discs, movie culture flowed out from the theater and the living room, entered the public retail space, and became conflated with shopping and salesmanship. In this process, video stores served as a crucial embodiment of movie culture’s historical move toward increased flexibility, adaptability, and customization. In addition to charting the historical rise and fall of the rental industry, Herbert explores the architectural design of video stores, the social dynamics of retail encounters, the video distribution industry, the proliferation of video recommendation guides, and the often surprising persistence of the video store as an adaptable social space of consumer culture. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, cultural geography, and archival research, Videoland provides a wide-ranging exploration of the pivotal role video stores played in the history of motion pictures, and is a must-read for students and scholars of media history.

Book Immortal Films

    Book Details:
  • Author : Barbara Klinger
  • Publisher : Univ of California Press
  • Release : 2022-11-15
  • ISBN : 0520296478
  • Pages : 368 pages

Download or read book Immortal Films written by Barbara Klinger and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction : the cultural biography of a film -- Listening to Casablanca : radio adaptations and sonic Hollywood -- Back in theaters : postwar repertory houses and cult cinema -- Everyday films : broadcast television, reruns, and canonizing old Hollywood -- Movie valentines : holiday cult and the romantic canon in VHS video culture -- Happy anniversaries : classic cinema on DVD/Blu-ray in the conglomerate age -- Epilogue : streaming Casablanca and afterthoughts -- Appendix one : Casablanca's first appearances on US platforms/formats -- Appendix two : Casablanca's physical format video rereleases.

Book Indie Cinema Online

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sarah E.S. Sinwell
  • Publisher : Rutgers University Press
  • Release : 2020-08-14
  • ISBN : 1978814690
  • Pages : 204 pages

Download or read book Indie Cinema Online written by Sarah E.S. Sinwell and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-14 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indie Cinema Online maps out a cultural history of American independent cinema online from 1999 to the present, from Netflix and its use of online streaming to the first feature film released on YouTube to Sundance's creation of digital shorts and web series intended for cell phone viewing.

Book On Demand Culture

    Book Details:
  • Author : Chuck Tryon
  • Publisher : Rutgers University Press
  • Release : 2013-07-18
  • ISBN : 0813561116
  • Pages : 226 pages

Download or read book On Demand Culture written by Chuck Tryon and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The movie industry is changing rapidly, due in part to the adoption of digital technologies. Distributors now send films to theaters electronically. Consumers can purchase or rent movies instantly online and then watch them on their high-definition televisions, their laptops, or even their cell phones. Meanwhile, social media technologies allow independent filmmakers to raise money and sell their movies directly to the public. All of these changes contribute to an “on-demand culture,” a shift that is radically altering film culture and contributing to a much more personalized viewing experience. Chuck Tryon offers a compelling introduction to a world in which movies have become digital files. He navigates the complexities of digital delivery to show how new modes of access—online streaming services like YouTube or Netflix, digital downloads at iTunes, the popular Redbox DVD kiosks in grocery stores, and movie theaters offering digital projection of such 3-D movies as Avatar—are redefining how audiences obtain and consume motion picture entertainment. Tryon also tracks the reinvention of independent movies and film festivals by enterprising artists who have built their own fundraising and distribution models online. Unique in its focus on the effects of digital technologies on movie distribution, On-Demand Culture offers a corrective to address the rapid changes in the film industry now that movies are available at the click of a button.

Book Smutty Little Movies

Download or read book Smutty Little Movies written by Peter Alilunas and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-08-23 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1970s, the adult film industry began the transition from celluloid to home video. Smutty Little Movies traces this change and examines the cultural and legal efforts to regulate, contain, limit, or eradicate pornography. Drawing on a wide variety of materials, Smutty Little Movies de-centers the film text in favor of industry histories and contexts. In so doing, the book argues that the struggles to contain and regulate pleasure represent a primary starting point for situating adult video’s place in a larger history, not just of pornography, but of media history as a whole.

Book Grindhouse Nostalgia

Download or read book Grindhouse Nostalgia written by David Church and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-13 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Too often dismissed as nothing more than 'trash cinema', exploitation films have become both earnestly appreciated cult objects and home video items that are more accessible than ever. In this wide-ranging new study, David Church explores how the history of drive-in theatres and urban grind houses has descended to the home video formats that keep these lurid movies fondly alive today. Arguing for the importance of cultural memory in contemporary fan practices, Church focuses on both the re-release of archival exploitation films on DVD and the recent cycle of retrosploitation films like Grindhouse, Machete, Viva, The Devils Rejects, and Black Dynamite. At a time when older ideas of subcultural belonging have become increasingly subject to nostalgia, Grindhouse Nostalgia presents an indispensable study of exploitation cinemas continuing allure, and is a bold contribution to our understanding of fandom, taste politics, film distribution, and home video.

Book The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema written by Ernest Mathijs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-22 with total page 976 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema offers an overview of the field of cult cinema – films at the margin of popular culture and art that have received exceptional cultural visibility and status mostly because they break rules, offend, and challenge understandings of achievement (some are so bad they’re good, others so good they remain inaccessible). Cult cinema is no longer only comprised of the midnight movie or the extreme genre film. Its range has widened and the issues it broaches have become battlegrounds in cultural debates that typify the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Sections are introduced with the major theoretical frameworks, philosophical inspirations, and methodologies for studying cult films, with individual chapters excavating the most salient criticism of how the field impacts cultural discourse at large. Case studies include the worst films ever; exploitation films; genre cinema; multiple media formats cult cinema is expressed through; issues of cultural, national, and gender representations; elements of the production culture of cult cinema; and, throughout, aspects of the aesthetics of cult cinema – its genre, style, look, impact, and ability to yank viewers out of their comfort zones. The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema goes beyond the traditional scope of Anglophone and North American cinema by including case studies of East and South Asia, continental Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America, making it an innovative and important resource for researchers and students alike.

Book Seeing Things

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kartik Nair
  • Publisher : Univ of California Press
  • Release : 2024
  • ISBN : 0520392272
  • Pages : 300 pages

Download or read book Seeing Things written by Kartik Nair and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1980s India, the Ramsay Brothers and other filmmakers produced a wave of horror movies about soul-sucking witches, knife-wielding psychopaths, and dark-caped vampires. Seeing Things is about the sudden cuts, botched prosthetic effects, continuity errors, and celluloid damage in these movies. Such moments may very well be "failures" of various kinds, but in this book Kartik Nair reads them as clues to the conditions in which the films were once made, censored, and seen, offering a view from below of the world's largest film culture. Combining extensive archival research and original interviews with close readings of landmark films including Purana Mandir, Veerana, and Jaani Dushman, this book tracks the material coordinates of horror cinema's spectral images. In the process, Seeing Things discovers a spectral materiality-one that informs Bombay horror's haunted houses, grotesque bodies, and graphic violence and gives visceral force to our experience of the genre's globally familiar conventions"--

Book The Synchronized Society

Download or read book The Synchronized Society written by Randall Patnode and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-17 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Synchronized Society traces the history of the synchronous broadcast experience of the twentieth century and the transition to the asynchronous media that dominate today. Broadcasting grew out of the latent desire by nineteenth-century industrialists, political thinkers, and social reformers to tame an unruly society by controlling how people used their time. The idea manifested itself in the form of the broadcast schedule, a managed flow of information and entertainment that required audiences to be in a particular place – usually the home – at a particular time and helped to create “water cooler” moments, as audiences reflected on their shared media texts. Audiences began disconnecting from the broadcast schedule at the end of the twentieth century, but promoters of social media and television services still kept audiences under control, replacing the schedule with surveillance of media use. Author Randall Patnode offers compelling new insights into the intermingled roles of broadcasting and industrial/post-industrial work and how Americans spend their time.

Book American   Australian Cinema

Download or read book American Australian Cinema written by Adrian Danks and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-01-29 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection assesses the complex historical and contemporary relationships between US and Australian cinema by tapping directly into discussions of national cinema, transnationalism and global Hollywood. While most equivalent studies aim to define national cinema as independent from or in competition with Hollywood, this collection explores a more porous set of relationships through the varied production, distribution and exhibition associations between Australia and the US. To explore this idea, the book investigates the influence that Australia has had on US cinema through the exportation of its stars, directors and other production personnel to Hollywood, while also charting the sustained influence of US cinema on Australia over the last hundred years. It takes two key points in time—the 1920s and 1930s and the last twenty years—to explore how particular patterns of localism, nationalism, colonialism, transnationalism and globalisation have shaped its course over the last century. The contributors re-examine the concept and definition of Australian cinema in regard to a range of local, international and global practices and trends that blur neat categorisations of national cinema. Although this concentration on US production, or influence, is particularly acute in relation to developments such as the opening of international film studios in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and the Gold Coast over the last thirty years, the book also examines a range of Hollywood financed and/or conceived films shot in Australia since the 1920s.

Book Television at Work

Download or read book Television at Work written by Kit Hughes and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-01-06 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book explores how work, television, and waged labor come to have meaning in our everyday lives. However, it is not an analysis of workplace sitcoms or quality dramas. Instead, it explores the forgotten history of how American private sector workplaces used television in the twentieth century. In traces how, at the hands of employers, television physically and psychically managed workers and attempted to make work meaningful under the sign of capitalism. It also shows how the so-called domestic medium helped businesses shape labor relations and information architectures foundational to the twinned rise of the technologically mediated corporation and a globalizing information economy. Among other things, business and industry built extensive private television networks to distribute live and taped programming, leased satellite time for global 'meetings' and program distribution, created complex CCTV data search and retrieval systems, encouraged the use of videotape for worker self-evaluation, used video cassettes for training distributed workforces, and wired cantinas for employee entertainment. Television at work describes the myriad ways the medium served business' attempts to shape employees' relationships to their labor and the workplace in order to secure industrial efficiency, support corporate expansion, and inculcate preferred ideological orientations. narrowcasting, immediacy, time-shifting, flow, Post-Fordism, labor, audience labor, video, satellite, CCTV"--

Book Milkyway Image

    Book Details:
  • Author : Yi Sun
  • Publisher : Springer Nature
  • Release : 2021-09-01
  • ISBN : 9813365781
  • Pages : 145 pages

Download or read book Milkyway Image written by Yi Sun and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book adopts an integrative research framework that primarily combines industrial and discourse analysis to investigate the company Milkyway Image, drawing upon literature that studies film studios and the practices of film production, distribution, and reception. The history of the Hong Kong-based film production company Milkyway Image from its founding in 1996 to the present exemplifies the metamorphosis of the post-return Hong Kong film industry to an era characterised by Hong Kong’s integration into a Chinese national context and the transnationalisation of world cinema. It shows that contemporary Hong Kong cinema’s transition resists a monolithic chronicle and instead represents a narrative combining the perspectives of different interest groups and a complex process of compliance and resistance, negotiation and contestation. The meaning of Milkyway’s films shifts as they are circulated across cultures and viewed within diverse frameworks, and our understanding of Hong Kong cinema is subject to varying contexts and historical configurations. For researchers in film and media studies and those who have a general interest in Hong Kong cinema, Asian cinema, or contemporary film culture, this book reveals how a variety of industry and cultural bodies have become co-creators of meaning for a film production house, and how the company operates as a co-creator of the discourse that surrounds it.