Television and Film Production

The media are home to an eclectic bunch of people. This book is about who they are, what they do, and what their work means to them. Based on interviews with media professionals in the United States, New Zealand, South Africa, and The Netherlands, and drawing from both scholarly and professional literatures in a wide variety of disciplines, it offers an account of what it is like to work in the media today.
Media professionals face tough choices. Boundaries are drawn and erased: between commerce and creativity, between individualism and teamwork, between security and independence. Digital media supercharge these dilemmas, as industries merge and media converge, as audiences become co-creators of content online.
The media industries are the pioneers of the digital age. This book is a critical primer on how media workers manage to survive, and is essential reading for anyone considering a career in the media, or who wishes to understand how the media are made.

The editor seeks short essays (to be grouped into chapters) that describe the new fields of producing in today's shifting context of production, distribution and audiences. In a student-friendly style, the book discusses the skills and the complexities of being a creative producer, using examples and explaining their context while deferring the definitions of key terms to footnotes. Case-studies that illustrate key aspects of producing are also welcome, but at all times a pragmatic approach is encouraged. While describing the landscapes of the profession in different regions, this will not be a how-to book with legal forms, back-end deal memos and such but rather will offer the non-professional a close attention to the large economic outlines, the social pressures and the specific skill-sets that producing now demands in its many different contexts and marketplaces. These essays will be interspersed with interviews (already transcribed) of luminaries in the field such as Lianne Halfon (Ghostworld, Juno, Perils of Being A Wallflower, Young Adult), Jack Lechner (Fog Of War, Blue Valentine), Katriel Schory (20-year head of the Israeli film fund), Peggy Rajski (Matewan, The Grifters, Little Man Tate), director Kim Peirce (Boys Don't Cry, Dear White People) as well as many other up-and-coming figures working now within the field's new possibilities.
Routledge/Focal Press describes the book series as “an easy-to-read series for undergraduate and graduate students that ... offers a broad but detailed view of the industry and varying career tracks within it, ultimately bolstering readers’ confidence that they have a solid understanding of what it takes to achieve creative and financial success with their art—in other words, what it takes to make a living as an artist." In addition, some critical attention to the field's boundaries and social history is also invited.
The final style of the book will be conversational and direct : examples can be found in previews of earlier editions : https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Screen-PERFORM-Anna-Weinstein/dp/1138945129

This article argues that the Political Economy of Communication (PEC) has generally failed to develop theories of media production. Such theory as exists has been heavily influenced by accounts of mass production and flexible specialization in Hollywood.

Hollywood film production has been viewed as paradigmatic of media production in general, in the same way as Ford was for manufacturing, and these theories continue to influence accounts of production across media and cultural industries.

The article tests the mass production/flexible specialization paradigm against both the evidence of the Hollywood case and Ford’s mass production system. An alternative paradigm,
the theory of craft media production, is also examined. The article then attempts to show how applying organization theory and media economics can provide a more convincing explanation of media production and of the Hollywood case. Finally, the article briefly attempts to show how we might develop rich theoretical explanations of media production by exploring the relationships between economic, organizational and media-specific cultural elements.

The war that changed us, produced by Electric Pictures, directed by Don Featherstone, and co-written by Don Featherstone and Clare Wright, aired on ABC1 in July 2014. This essay reflects on the role of the professional historian in the process of developing and writing a four-part television documentary series to commemorate the centenary of World War I. It explores the conflicts and collaborations required to bring to the small screen an enormous story with huge implications for current political debates about remembrance, patriotism and the function of the national broadcaster

The recent introduction of video streaming services into the Australian television industry has already had a significant impact on the local broadcast and subscription ecology. Undoubtedly, the sudden influx of foreign content and choice, paired with increased content deregulation, will have considerable ramifications for the Australian production industry in the long term. While many have predicted widespread devastation, this paper suggests that access to ‘big data’ and increased audience ‘addressivity’ (Hallinan and Striphas 2014, 13) could in fact serve to protect and promote the continued production and consumption of local drama content via this ‘new screen’ option.

These essays all—in various ways—address the relationship between adaptation, “true events,” and cultural memory. They ask (and frequently answer) the question: how do we script stories about real events that are often still fresh in our memories and may involve living people? True Event Adaptation: Scripting Real Lives contains essays from scholars committed to interrogating historical and current hard-hitting events, traumas, and truths through various media. Each essay goes beyond general discussion of adaptation and media to engage with the specifics of adapting true life events—addressing pertinent and controversial questions around scriptwriting, representation, ethics, memory, forms of history, and methodological interventions. Written for readers interested in how memory works on culture as well as screenwriting choices, the collection offers new perspectives on historical media and commercial media that is currently being produced, as well as on media created by the book’s contributors themselves.

"Focusing on the award winning costume designer Yves Barre’s work for The League of Gentlemen (BBC, 1999-2002), this article explores the role of the costume designer in television production. As a highly branded TV show by the authorial signature of its writer/performers, The League provides a perfect case for exploring the significant contribution of the costume designer for developing a ground-breaking phenomenon. Thus, the underlying objective of the article is to make ‘the hidden labour of production’ visible (Scannell 2007: 4), and shed light on costume design process – one of the less observed stages of television production. Using an anthropological method that combines original interviews with Yves Barre, Steve Pemberton (one of the writer/performers), Jon Plowman (the executive producer) and Jemma Rodgers (the producer) as well as second hand material such as DVD extras, the article provides insight into the show’s creative process. 

Highlighting the collaborative nature of television production the article focuses on issues such as creative autonomy, individual creative input and collaboration. It explores how a costume designer works within a collaborative process and ‘adds’ to a text. The article examines the work pattern of the costume designer, how he communicates with his colleagues, how his creative process develops, how much creative autonomy he obtains and what the main elements affecting his work are. Respectively, the article scrutinises how ‘behind the scenes’ elements – such as production conditions, working relationships, artistic vision and individual input – influence on-screen features such as the physical look of characters. For example, in The League between them the three writer/performers played all the main characters. Barre did not merely dress these characters but by developing complex paddings he also created their physical silhouettes, which had great influence on the end product.

The article also sketch outs the key features of costume design process such as the research period and costume fittings. It, for instance, point outs that through thorough research, the designer was able ‘tune himself’ to the writers’ ‘wavelength’. This developed a close relationship between the professionals, which then allowed great creative freedom for the designer. Barre did not only work on the main characters but also had significant control over the look of the supporting actors. Through creating the look of the people in the background, Barre helped create the atmosphere of the fictional town where these characters lived.

By building on a bottom up approach the article on one hand sheds light on a specific creative process, yet it also help illuminate some of the general features of costume design for television and the role of the costume designer especially for creating ‘special moments’ in television. "

** This is an online journal article that you can access via the link above

This chapter provides a critical introduction to the finance and production of independent film and television production in the UK. Film, long considered entertainment rather than art, continues to suffer from low levels of public funding, and the major incentive – tax relief – favours large-scale American productions rather than indigenous ones. By contrast, television, regarded as a public service, has enjoyed far greater financial support and has been globally successful as a result. However, here too SMEs struggle and, if successful, are vulnerable to takeover by ‘super indies’, global entities driven by commercial logic. The chapter critiques the narrow concept of economic success that permeates both these industries and the policy context that surrounds them, and argues for a more culturally ambitious approach that will encourage more diverse and innovative production.

Good Girls is an original, comedy-crime drama created by Jenna Bans. It premiered on February 26th, 2018 on NBC as a mid-season entry.

From publicly-available sources, I determined (1) the creator’s track record of success and (2) the originality of the story’s premise.

Using a proprietary algorithm, I determined the size of the pilot episode script’s semantic network.

With these three variables, I identified 18 comparable dramatic series that appeared on the four major broadcast networks in the last ten seasons.

Based on my analysis, I predict that (1) Good Girls will not achieve a full first season, i.e. 20+ episodes (2) Good Girls has only a 1-in-6 chance of being renewed for a second season and (3) if renewed, the season will fall well short of 20 episodes.

This article explores what two regional film production companies in Norway do to survive and succeed with their goals. The production of feature films in Norway is largely an Oslo-based effort, but despite this reality, there are companies in the regions that produce feature films. The analysis draws on semi-structured interviews with eight employees in two companies. Mer Film has in relatively short time managed to attract talented directors and establish networks with international, critically acclaimed production companies. Filmbin was one of the first film companies in Norway who committed themselves to the production of films for children. The article shows that success must be related to context and that reputation, talent development and choice of genre, geographical location, networking and social capital, risk diversification, entrepreneurship, organizational culture and leadership, are essential factors for the companies.

E-book completo disponível em: https://www.benditas.art.br/colecao-narrativas/

Esta é a primeira parte de um estudo em dois volumes apresentado por Maíra Bianchini, no qual a autora reflete sobre os desenvolvimentos históricos que abriram caminho para a criação e o crescimento acelerado, no contexto atual, dos serviços de vídeo sob demanda em streaming (ou seja, em fluxo de mídia pela internet), considerando os elos da produção, da distribuição e da exibição do mercado audiovisual.

Ao longo dos dois volumes, a autora analisa como o posicionamento estratégico destas empresas na criação de conteúdos originais avançou inicialmente na produção de séries televisivas, buscando a inserção no mercado audiovisual que mais cresceu em termos de reconhecimento cultural e comercial neste início de século XXI, enquanto as ações de distribuição e de exibição destes empreendimentos foram construídas a partir de uma evolução no segmento do vídeo doméstico, profundamente afetado pelas transformações tecnológicas da digitalização dos meios de comunicação. A Parte I apresenta noções básicas relativas à área da economia do audiovisual e às características deste mercado, bem como explora as particularidades dos segmentos da TV aberta e da TV por assinatura. A obra se concentra na história da televisão dos Estados Unidos, país predominante no estabelecimento das lógicas e da dinâmica competitiva que regem o mercado das séries ficcionais televisivas em âmbito global.

Research on filmmaking outside urban centres tends to concentrate on regional development— researchers note that the cultural industries have a positive impact on tourism, place branding and the local economy (Hedling 2010). More generally, research tends to focus on how the cultural industries affect the places where they are located. However, few researchers have reversed this perspective by examining how location affects the companies themselves. In order to address this gap in understanding, I will revisit the relationship between place and filmmaking in Norway in this chapter. This relationship matters because the Norwegian government supports regional film based on the premise that film production in different places will generate more varied films. Therefore, in what follows I will look at the ways in which four regional production companies in Norway relate to their geographical location, and what being a 'regional company' means to their survival and viability. After briefly situating place in relation to the political context of filmmaking, I will elaborate upon the concept of place more broadly, and then describe my four case studies. I will then discuss the relationship between these regional film and television companies and their locations by assessing interviews, websites, and their latest productions. My analysis will demonstrate that place does matter to these companies, in terms of inspiration, the use of the local landscape in productions themselves, the use of local directors and film workers, and, to a degree, the telling of stories that are identified with the regions in question. I will also reveal some of the complexities involved in promoting one's local affiliation, because regional film production is sometimes regarded as less professional. Place and policy Place is an important concept within Norwegian film and cultural policy, not as an isolated phenomenon but as part of a commitment to regional development. Norway has a scattered population and tensions between the political centre and the peripheries are central to the political history of modern Norway (Pettersen et al. 1996: 259). In his analysis of centre and periphery in Norway, Stein Rokkan (1987) describes how cultural opposition to the values of the central state from markedly distinct peripheries has been strong in Norway. After the Second World War, the state assumed an active role in the modernisation of Norway, focusing, initially on northern Norway. It was a national priority to develop industry and achieve equal living conditions in every part of the country, thanks to a form of exogenous thinking that believed in the redistribution of wealth and opportunities from the centre to the periphery. According to Selstad (2003), more recently the government wants growth to happen from within the regions themselves. As a result, the cultural industries are newly attractive to policymakers because of the positive economic effects they are believed to have. Policymakers, as mentioned above, see the cultural industries as drivers of regional development (Philo and Kearns 1993). The Norwegian government therefore wants film production to take place in the regions rather than be concentrated in Oslo. It is a policy goal that regional film should attract private investors and thereby raise more money for the Norwegian film business, but it should also contribute to tourism, place promotion and work opportunities in the regions.

Readers The Art and Craft of Motion Picture Editing by Michael Hoggan (ACE) might be tempted to begin at the end, rather than the beginning of this slim volume. That would be a good choice since the Appendix, "Film Production's Historical Timeline" is a valuable addendum to a useful book. This list was compiled by Hoggan, Conrad Denke, Donald Petrie, Richard Leeman, Fred Ginsberg, and Joel Kranz in March, 2020. They created a document that is much more than a simple chronology. It covers not only film, but also radio and television, noting inventions, technologies, the people involved, and including all-important patents and legal decisions. There is informed and good-humored commentary such like that in the

This textbook is about basic television production techniques. The book is written in simple language for graduate and postgraduate students covering topics related to photography, video camera handling, sound, lighting, television news writing, documentary, news production, television reporting, video editing, graphics, make-up, set designing and television presentation. This book was part of the national Textbook Writing Project commissioned by the university.
This book can be purchased from the sales counter of the university. Email: https://www.mcu.ac.in/
Page: 167
Price: Rs. 175/- (Paperback)
Publisher: Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism and Communication, Bhopal, India

Sul modello di analoghe esperienze internazionali, anche in Italia la produzione della soap opera televisiva – una “fabbrica a ciclo continuo” che richiede ritmi sostenuti di scrittura, ripresa e montaggio, oltre al pieno controllo dei fattori ambientali – si è strutturata (fin dagli anni Novanta) mediante la creazione di centri di produzione appositi, o la riconversione (spesso esclusiva) di spazi già esistenti. Sono nati alcuni “micro-mondi” produttivi, innervati da routine e culture professionali che si ripetono per anni, in stretta integrazione tra una forma “all’italiana” di studio system e le necessità di approvvigionamento delle reti. Attraverso l’analisi dei principali casi nazionali – i Telecittà Studios di San Giusto Canavese, dove sono prodotti Vivere (Canale 5, 1999-2008) e Centovetrine (Canale 5, 2001-in corso); il Centro di Produzione Rai di Napoli, sede di Un posto al sole (Raitre, 1996-in corso); gli studi di Termini Imerese realizzati (tra le polemiche) per Agrodolce (Raidue, 2008-09) –, il saggio intende affrontare uno dei caratteri ricorrenti di questi centri produttivi: l’occupazione di luoghi marginali nelle geografie dell’audiovisivo italiano, tra insularità produttiva, relazioni tra centro (mediale e politico) e periferia, e un pur minimo allargamento degli immaginari spaziali televisivi con l’uso accorto e parsimonioso di location e riprese in esterna.

Managing Media Work provides a comprehensive, cross-national overview of the theory and practice of working in the media in the digital age. Focusing on three key areas-new media work, media professions, and media management-this text prepares students to effectively manage their own media careers and to manage human capital in creative companies. Written by leading international scholars, the book addresses the increasingly global, networked, and unpredictable nature of the media industry as well as the growing complexities of media work.

In film and media production, ambient sound is a standard term that denotes the site-specific background sound component providing locational atmospheres and spatial information of public places. In this article, the specific role of ambient sound to create the context for the spatial experience in film and media production has been thoroughly examined in the light of Sound Studies. The article investigates the capacity of ambient sounds to sculpt the presence of a site by producing an embodied experience of the site. The article brings in a much-needed focus on the complex relationship between sound and site by examining the spatial environments recorded, mediated, and reconstructed by sound practice. Guided by the production studies of sound, the article draws on the theories of diegesis, mimesis, and presence to reformulate the notion of the soundscape while keeping a conceptual base in phenomenology of sound in analyzing the spatial and atmospheric listening experience. The article cites examples from representative Indian films and few of my own sound artworks as case studies to make critical listening and analysis of the processes through which ambient sound practice enhances the spatial and atmospheric sensations. The article draws insights from prominent sound practitioners in the form of long interviews conducted by me over several years and self-reflective insights on my own work. The practice-led inputs make the empirical basis of the article shedding light on the production processes providing links between certain techniques available to specific phases of sound production and aesthetic principles shaped by the respective phases of practice with ambient sounds. The article locates a distinct shift occurring through these trajectories of sound practice and relates this shift to the recent “spatial turn” in Sound Studies, making valuable contributions to the field interested to inquire about the emerging spatiality and public-ness in sound artworks.

'The River' a South African Telenova (created by Phathutshedzo Makwarela and Gwydion Beynon) set in the modern heterotopia follows different trajectories embarked by various characters who are emblems of Refilwe's utopia.  Each character is also an extension of diamonds engulfed in blood, greed, power and desire. While diamonds are popularily known to be a ' woman's best friend', Refilwe's heterotopia present diamonds as one's worst enemy foreboding the fate of a character. In this essay, I examine the relationship between Lindiwe Dlamini-Dikana (played by Sindi Dlathu), her murderous and dark nature plunged into a 'pool' of blood filled with diamonds.

Pay fiction experienced a production boom in Europe between 2008 and 2017. The output of original productions in Europe’s five main markets (France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the UK) leapt from 8 series in 2008 to 47 in 2017 – a rise of +490% (as shown in the previous chapter). This growth is based on a change in the national production paradigms, which are increasingly modelled on “quality TV” from the US (Thompson 1997). Unsurprisingly, most of the titles travel very well across borders, both within and outside Europe. These series are much more export-friendly than what the national public and private (free) TV producers traditionally used to produce (Scaglioni and Barra 2013).
This renaissance of sorts in European scripted pay TV production is also bound up with major changes in the industry that affect how European fic- tion productions begin to circulate. Besides pay TV growth in all the main markets studied, it is also about the arrival of the global SVOD giants based in the US (Netflix and Amazon Prime Video), the explosion of European OTT platforms, and the ever-greater take-up of streaming technology by the more traditional networks (Lobato 2019). All these factors have led to both a certain uniformity in productions across Europe and an increased transnational circulation of these products. This chapter maps out the de- velopment of the transnational circulation of European series in the five sample countries from two distinct yet complementary standpoints. First, we explore the circulation of pay fiction in Europe from an export perspec- tive; second, we focus on how those countries have gone about importing European scripted pay fiction in this context

Bollywood is at once inspired by the fashion industry in India both thematically and professionally, and simultaneously inspires the fashion industry. This cross pollination between two industries means artists can cross into parallel artistic careers easily and draw from connections in one industry into the other. Economically this allows for both of these businesses to sustain each other at some level. This close relationship between the fashion and film world is a unique feature in India.

The globalization of film production shows healthy film market results for the coming years. This is seen as one of the advantages for film production companies, but it is also has becoming a challenge for them to produce more quality films and providing a systematic methodology in the future. In order to enhance the quality of film production industry in Malaysia, this research paper presents the one of essential approaches project phases as the best global practices and techniques in the PMBOK® guide. This research paper has identified the use and investigates the effectiveness of project phases in the PMBOK® guide as revealed by Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring, Controlling, and Closing. In this research paper, it has been argued that film production companies in Malaysia have no systematic of workflow film processes and no actual acknowledged globalization standards procedures, and practices to produce a successful film project by accordingly to the PMBOK® guide. This research paper is dominated by qualitative methods.

This book is the first to evaluate contemporary Spanish cinema and television in the new context of transmedia, perhaps the most pressing problem in current media studies. It is divided into three sections-film, television, and transmedia-of three chapters each. The aim here, as elsewhere in my work, is to go beyond the limits of Spanish cinema studies, which tends to restrict itself to a small number of art or auteur feature films that are by no means representative of the field as a whole. Moreover, Spanish TV studies, which is practiced only within Spain and in departments of communication and social sciences, focuses on institutional questions and rarely examines concrete texts, as I do here. In the first part of the book, "Film," chapter 1 begins with a close study of some forgotten feature films from 1980s cinema, a neglected decade; the second chapter gives an account of a festival-cum-industry screening attended by the author; the third explores the media self-fashioning of Spain's best known auteur, Pedro Almodóvar. The second section of the book, on television, gives a detailed report on one full season of series production (chapter 4), an analysis of LGBT dramas in Catalonia (chapter 5), and an account (chapter 6) of three TV series on the construction boom and bust that has caused Spaniards such anguish and is perhaps the country's most pressing social issue. The third and final section of the book, which also contains three chapters, first traces the little known history of the crossover between cinema and television since the 1950s (chapter 7). Chapter 8 moves to the present, proposing a new paradigm in the Spanish audiovisual scene, one that inverts historical hierarchies: namely, popular cinema and quality television. Chapter 9 presents a transmedia study of current fiction on the economic crisis, offering close readings of case studies in print, cinema, and TV. Fittingly for a study of transmedia, this last chapter shows how the novel and television have become more cinematic, while cinema has become more televisual.

"Representation, stereotyping, 'race' and multiculturalism in film, television and other audio-visual forms have been subjected to numerous studies in Britain and the United States. However there hasn't been a concerted effort, and a systematic study, that addresses those issues within the framework of televised animation in Britain. Furthermore there are no animation-inspired studies involving practical dimensions that exist to facilitate such discourse. This work examines the characterization of blacks in contemporary British-made animated films. It explores racial stereotyping and locates significant absences. The study involves two components: theory and practice. The first element seeks to investigate issues relating to representation, stereotyping, 'race', and British multiculturalism. Using case studies the work posits that Britain's multiculturality has not been adequately represented in popular modes of television animation. The second component involves the production of a 'claymation' film designed to demonstrate how it is possible to counter some of the gaps and problems embedded in black representation in the media, but especially animation

The intersection of race, ethnicity and sexuality circumscribes the boundaries of American identity. Historically, homosexuality was tethered to unpopular racial, ethnic, and ideological minorities. In recent years, mainstream film and television have contributed to redefining nonheterosexual peoples' place in the American national imagination: from outcast to partial insider. While the history of the LGBT movement is replete with racial and ethnic diversity, the US popular media have repeatedly emphasized one dimension-its whiteness. As homogenizing agents, the media have helped to generate a false image of an ethnically and racially homogeneous LGBT community. In this paper we examine popular television and films' changing depictions of sexual minorities. We contend their quasi-accepted status comes at the cost of reinforcing whiteness as the apex of American authenticity.

We extract textual and content data from the pilot episode scripts of 181 new, dramatic television series and use it to predict the 18-49 demo ratings for the first five episodes of the series' first seasons. As expected, we find that the originality of a series' premise, the track record of success of the its creator(s), and the cognitive complexity of its pilot episode script each explain a statistically significant proportion of the variance in ratings between the 181 series but none of the variance within series.

This article argues that transatlantic hybridity connects space, visual style and ideological point of view in British television action-adventure fiction of the 1960s-70s. It analyses the relationship between the physical location of TV series production at Elstree Studios, UK, the representation of place in programmes, and the international trade in television fiction between the UK and USA. The TV series made at Elstree by the ITC and ABC companies and their affiliates linked Britishness with an international modernity associated with the USA, while also promoting national specificity. To do this, they drew on film production techniques that were already common for TV series production in Hollywood. The British series made at Elstree adapted versions of US industrial organisation and television formats, and made programmes expected to be saleable to US networks, on the basis of British experiences in TV co-production with US companies and of the international cinema and TV market.

Appel à communications pour le colloque international "Freak accidents : de l' accident improbable et monstrueux au cinéma" À l'Université de Caen Normandie et l'école supérieure d'arts et médias de Caen/Cherbourg les 6 et 7 avril 2022.
Direction Alexis Guillier, artiste et doctorant du programme de recherche et création en art RADIAN (Normandie Université - LASLAR) et Philippe Ortoli (professeur en études cinématographiques, Université de Caen - LASLAR).

La revolución digital ha transformado de un modo decisivo la industria del entretenimiento audiovisual,
especialmente la del sector televisivo. Los operadores españoles han pasado de gestionar una
cadena de televisión a un grupo de canales y toda una serie de plataformas complementarias accesibles
desde el móvil e Internet. Como consecuencia, toda la cadena de valor de la producción audiovisual
necesita ser revisada, desde la ideación de los contenidos hasta su producción y comercialización.
El presente artículo analiza la estrategia multiplataforma de los principales grupos de televisión
en España así como los formatos de entretenimiento más propicios para este nuevo ecosistema.

The digital revolution has deeply transformed the audiovisual entertainment industry, especially the television one.
Spanish broadcasters have gone from managing a single television network to a group of channels and a range of
complementary platforms accessible from the Internet and mobile devices. As a result, the entire audiovisual production
value chain needs to be revised, from content ideation to production and marketing. This article analyzes the
multi-platform strategy of the major Spanish television groups and evaluates the most suitable entertainment formats
for this new ecosystem.