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Internet Attractions: online video and user-generated ephemera
Abstracts
key speakers: Professor Barbara Klinger (Indiana), Professor Jon Dovey (UWE), Hugh Hancock (Artistic Director, Strange Company) Rik Lander (U-soap Media)
Barbara Klinger
Re-enactment: Fan Performances of Movie Scenes from the Stage to Youtube
Among the fan activities that scholars have analyzed, the fact that fans frequently embody films is perhaps a lesser-known and studied phenomenon. However, a cursory look at Youtube reveals that some viewers relish the opportunity to demonstrate their mastery of a film by uploading videos of their re-performance of its scenes. This paper will examine the multiple forums in which fans act out movie scenes, including off-Broadway productions, Movie-oke, avant-garde “happenings,” and, of course, Youtube. I will argue that this kind of embodiment is more of an everyday occurrence than we realize and that it represents a form of play with identity—particularly in terms of gender. Among other things, a fan's memorization and physical and vocal reenactment of films enters into the complex processes by which identity is micro-managed, balanced and unbalanced, on a daily basis.
Optional weblink: for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI-PxIRWhRo ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0i18Yrw04E ; http://www.onemanstarwars.com/
Jake Smith
Wave of Imitation
Though often considered a lesser form of acting, doing impressions has been an important gateway into show business and an effective way for amateur entertainers to establish a rapport with audiences. Online video providers are altering the dynamics of celebrity imitation by allowing amateur recitations of film dialogue and imitations of media personalities to be easily distributed, discussed and assessed by a wide audience. In this presentation, I will situate online impressionist videos in relation to the history of celebrity mimicry in the media.
Andrew Clay
Pancakes and World Peace: user-generated video and the ‘enchanted objects' of stop motion animation
James Provan (user-name GiR2007), who describes himself as a ‘musician, photographer and video producer', uses stop motion animation techniques to make YouTube videos. Provan brings inanimate objects to life in familiar domestic contexts and attracts significant audiences. Stop motion photography has a long history that can be traced back to early cinema and the conceptual separation of live-action and animation. This paper will contextualise YouTube animation to two other historical circumstances of ‘enchanted objects' – the ‘trick films' of J. Stuart Blackton ( The Enchanted Drawing (1900), The Haunted Hotel (1907)) and Norman McClaren's Neighbours (1952).
YouTube user James Provan (GiR2007) http://www.youtube.com/user/GiR2007
The Enchanted Drawing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYDmH2B9XJw&feature=PlayList&p=EA7974E95D20B45A&playnext=1&index=9
Neighbours http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh4DstK2w_Q
Iain Robert Smith
“Actione, Terrore, Suspenzo, Spider!”: Transcultural appropriation and amateur media production in the Italian Spiderman
In 2007, a group of film students based at Flinders University produced a trailer for a film entitled Italian Spiderman . Purporting to be a lost film from 1964, the trailer took its inspiration from such infamous transcultural appropriations as 3 Dev Adam (1973), known as the ‘Turkish Spiderman,' and the TV-series Supaidāman (1978), commonly referred to as the ‘Japanese Spiderman.' Exploring the ways in which this text feeds into the complex transcultural history of the Spiderman franchise, this paper will consider what this can tell us about those unlicensed appropriations of media franchises that function outside of transnational regulatory frameworks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhHhXukovMU
Miriam Ross
IMDB and Youtube: New Sites for Public Discourse on Cinema
In my paper I will be discussing the way in which IMDB (the Internet Movie Date Base) and Youtube have emerged as sites for public engagement with and negotiation of contemporary films. Using the sites' pages which are dedicated to contemporary South American films as a case study, I aim to outline the way in which the message boards, and other user generated content on these sites, provides a platform for issues such as; access to South American cinema; national and transnational identity in these films; and identification and misidentification with themes and characters in the films.
Hugh Hancock – Strange Company http://www.strangecompany.org/
David Buckingham
Skate perception: self-representation, identity and visual style in a youth subculture
This paper presents an analysis of the role of visual self-representation – specifically in the form of video – in one area of contemporary youth culture – namely, skateboarding. This is a field in which visual representation (in the form of photography and video) has been a significant, long-running concern. The paper considers the status of skateboarding as a youth ‘subculture'; the particular functions and purposes of video-making within it; how young video-makers learn their craft, including via online forums; and the typical content and aesthetic form of skateboarding videos. The article is based on extensive viewing, immersion in specialist websites, and personal interviews with UK-based skateboarding video-makers. It focuses on the role of ‘subcultural capital' within this community of video-makers, and draws attention to some of the tensions and ambiguities that arise from the relation between amateur producers and the professional video industry.
http://www.skateperception.com
Rebekah Willett
Always on: camera phones, video production and identity
This paper analyses new and emerging practices connected with camera phones. With changes in technology, video-making using phones is now commonplace, with higher quality images and larger files being saved, viewed and distributed. Through interviews with ten camera phone users, this paper examines the particular affordances (properties and possibilities) of camera phone video in comparison with camcorders and still cameras. The paper also examines some of the camera phone videos produced by the ten participants, and categorises them in relation to other domestic video-making practices. Further, mobile phone video-making is analysed as a way of defining, performing and constructing individual and group identities.
http://moblog.net
Jo Henderson
Short Shrift: The BBC's Video Nation Project
Video Nation emerged in the early 1990s as a broadcast form of the video short. At the heart of the project was the intention to offer ‘ordinary people' the opportunity to represent themselves. This paper examines Video Nation's shift from a broadcast to a web-based, cross- platform project and interrogates the institutional rhetoric promoted on the project website and the role of the institution in the production process. The additional levels of mediation, in part due to the archival nature of the web-based project, have resulted in the production of texts that supplement the BBC's existing agenda and I suggest somewhat counter-intuitively, that the range of positions that the project now offers to ‘ordinary people' to represent themselves ahs decreased substantially since the projects transference to a Web 1.0 mode of distribution delivery.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation
Rosamund Davies
Digital Intimacies: aesthetic and affective strategies in the production and use of online video.
The status of video has shifted from that of a discreet medium, available only through one way channels of delivery and consumption from producer to viewer, to that of a flexible and combinable form of communication: one that can function as an exchange and a dialogue between users. This paper will explore how the cultural and aesthetic values of immediacy and intimacy are performed in contemporary online video texts and in the way they are circulated. It will also suggest ways in which oppositions and comparisons between professional and amateur practices need to be rethought and redefined.
Elizabeth Evans
Carnaby Street , 10AM : Kate Modern and the Ephemeralisation of Online Drama
This paper looks at the internet series Kate Modern to explore ways in which producers of online drama construct a notion of ephemerality that is tied to a particular type of interactivity. It is possible to still watch Kate Modern as an archived online text, but it is now impossible to experience the text, with its inbuilt collaborative and interactive mode of storytelling, as originally intended. Online drama such as Kate Modern can be seen as both anti-ephemeral and hyper-ephemeral, building on the twin capabilities of the internet to be both historical and of the moment.
www.bebo.com/kmseason1 in particular the videos ‘Free Will' and ‘Trait positive'
Jon Dovey
Archeologies, economies and ecologies
How did the long 20 th Century struggle to democratise and diversify mass media become the driver of the 21 st Century digital economy ? What were formerly ‘alternative media practices' are now the commonplace of web media. User generated content is widely promoted as the driver for Web 2.0 – a new kind of internet dominated by us, the users and consumers. However these claims are not as new as they might seem. This historical review will re contextualise contemporary hype by undertaking an archeology of selected moments of ‘user generated content' from screen media histories. By contrasting 20 th Century arguments for ‘alternative media' with the contemporary claims for Web 2.0 it will ask what we can learn from the complex genealogies that link the avant-garde, the documentary movement, public service broadcasting, cable TV, Film Collectives, Video Workshops, PC pioneers, internet developers, hackers, game modders, vloggers and virals. These contrasts will also be contextualised by an understanding of the new economies of the user generated environment based on my own experience of recent commercial engagement with the emergent forms of web drama. It will conclude by considering the sustainability of free labour and advertising funded models for ‘ephemeral media' production.
Tracy Harwood
Machinima: evolution of an etribe
This paper reflects on evolution of an etribe focusing on the machinima community. Machinima is the making of short films using 3D games engines where content is a form of fan fiction, embedded with the values of games engines. Research suggests tribal identity is related to artistic content, fun and play, pursuit of creating something better and a democratic approach to production and consumption of content. Development of games and participation in new gaming forms, such as MUVEs (multi-user virtual environments) by tribal members has resulted in recognition of changes to the artistic values upon which the community is built.
Mark Hain
Resurrecting the Vamp: Cinema's Loss and New Media's Finding of Theda Bara
This project examines fan-created video collages constructed from film clips and still images of the 1910s film star Theda Bara. I will use my examination of these collages to argue that media consumers have the ability and the desire to act as “amateur” archivists, thereby taking a more active role in preserving cultural heritage. This becomes all the more significant in that only a small fraction of Bara's films survive. In this instance, I contend that film loss has actually allowed fans richer possibilities for appropriation and interactivity, thus modifying the conventional relationship between consumer and mass media.
Sam Coley
“Sound and Vision”: A presentation detailing the online practices of David Bowie fans
This presentation investigates the merging of on-line audio and video content through my observations as the producer of a series of radio documentaries about musician David Bowie. Although initially broadcast on traditional AM/FM frequencies, these documentaries were quickly adopted by Bowie 's international fan community and turned into on-line media via streaming, file-sharing, Facebook, message-board, and Youtube technologies. This presentation of practice examines “production and genre” and “audience” behaviour. Topics such as user-generated material and the re-working of existing productions will be explored alongside the role of online communities in the distribution of content.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t66_6jBPjFE&eurl=http://www.bowiedownunder.com http://www.radionz.co.nz/search?mode=results&queries_all_query=bowie+waiata
Rik Lander – ( U-soap Media) http://www.u-soap.com/
William Merrin
Understanding Me-dia
Contemporary digital developments take us beyond the broadcast-era model of media production, distribution and consumption and necessitate a significant rethink of the media studies that historically developed to study that era. Central to this digital ecology are new modes of horizontal peer communication. Traditionally ignored by media studies this paper argues that their contemporary rise poses distinct problems of volume, ephemerality, access and knowledge for the academic discipline, requiring fundamentally new theorisations, explanations, methods and research projects. Ultimately the rise of ‘me-dia' challenges us to produce a new type of ‘me-dia studies'.
Nicola Osborne
Serving the Ephemeral: cultural and practical challenges for enhancing multimedia services with user generated content
What are the roles and responsibilities for academic multimedia services seeking to distribute and add value with and to ephemeral media in the new landscape of fragmented content, retrospective and automated rights management, the remixing and repurposing of multimedia elements and the massive growth of user created multimedia objects? This paper will look at the issues of authorship/ownership and the community as well as the legal and cultural barriers inherent in enhancing online academic multimedia services with ephemeral material and user generated content and comment. I will be drawing upon experiences and content related to EDINA Multimedia & Education services on which further information and, if colleagues are accessing the site from licenced institutions, the services themselves can be accessed here:
http://www.edina.ac.uk/multimedia/
Daniel Ashton
User-generated media and professions: machinima and the negotiation of industry transitions and professional practices
The 1996 100 second film Dairy of a Camper marked the first example of what would later (in 1998) be termed ‘machinima'. This paper will explore the professionalisation of machinima in relation to the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS), tracing connections with film, television and digital games industries and examining the development of a ‘user-generated profession'. Engaging with Deuze's (2007) media logic approach attending to commonalities across media industries, this paper will outline the broader insights and implications of the professionalaisation of machimina for examining user-generated content and amateur production.
Claire Wardle
‘ UGC' @ the BBC
This paper will present the findings from an AHRB/BBC Knowledge Exchange research project on the BBC's use of user generated content (UGC). It is based on newsroom observations at nine locations across the BBC (across geographical locations and media platforms) and 115 interviews with BBC journalists and editors, as well as 12 focus group discussions. ‘UGC' is often described by commentators and practitioners as having revolutionised journalism by disrupting the traditional relationships between producers and consumers of the news. This research suggests that these types of grand claims are pointless, until we acknowledge the complex realities hidden beneath the umbrella term ‘UGC'. It is preventing a nuanced exploration of the impact of these types of Audience Material on contemporary news organisations and their audiences.