edia agazine Menglish and media centre issue 50M | december 2014

Sci Fi, SF – what's the di erence? Girls on Film THE FEMALE GAZE REVISITED Media Language MICROANALYSIS  APOCALYPSE NOW Crowdfunding for students The Wire vs Treme

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This magazine is not to be photocopied. Why not subscribe to our web package which includes a downloadable and printable PDF of the current issue or encourage your students to take out their own £12 subscription?

Seasonal greetings from MediaMagazine is MediaMagazine! published by the MediaMag English and Media website – exciting This issue should provide Centre, a non-profit you with plenty of making organisation. changes ahead! stimulus, whatever your The Centre publishes a interests. All AS Media wide range of classroom LAUNCHING EARLY 2015 students should read materials and runs As part of the redevelopment of Steph Hendry’s overview courses for teachers. If the English and Media Centre’s of Media Language, especially paired with Mark you’re studying English website, the MediaMagazine site at A Level, look out is also getting a new look – and Ramey’s masterly micro-analysis of the Apocalypse for emagazine, also some exciting new features, Now opening sequence The latter is a gift for Film published by the Centre. including: students, as is Nick Lacey’s case study of Lionsgate The English and Media Centre • improved search of archived – perfectly timed to coincide with the launch of 18 Compton Terrace articles Mockingjay Part 1. A2 Media students can explore London N1 2UN our update on the issues confronting the BBC, and Telephone: 020 7359 8080 • access to the complete archive Fax: 020 7354 0133 as downloadable PDFs current debates about representations of place, • the facility to select your own Email for subscription enquiries: gender, and the (Fe)Male Gaze; and if you’re doing [email protected] username and password. documentary in A2 Film Studies, there’s an excellent

Editor: Jenny Grahame The site will go live early in 2015. contextual case study of the iconic Night Mail. On the production side, three student-written pieces should Subscriptions manager: Emma Marron demonstrate the range of possibilities for those Teachers! hoping to enter the media industries, and the pros Design: Sam Sullivan Print: S&G Group IMPORTANT INFORMATION and cons of internships, screenwriting and crowd- Cover: Turksib, Screaming Train FOR WEB SUBSCRIBERS funding production projects. The issue is topped and (The Stenberg Brothers) tailed with articles on Science Fiction: Roy Stafford’s Before you can access the new ISSN: 1478-8616 MediaMagazine website, you will speculation about the hybridity and diversity of the need to register your school on genre, and Steve Connolly’s use of social media to the site and choose a magazine influence the programming of the SyFy Channel. username and password to pass We have not one but two Christmas presents on to your students. accompanying this issue! Firstly, a free online Science Once the site has launched, Fiction supplement, in collaboration with BFI’s Sci-Fi you will no longer be able to Days of Fear and Wonder season. 10 articles over 46 access the site using IP access pages, thanks to the generosity of BFI Education. or your 2014-15 username and password. And secondly, we’re not only re-running our lovely Look out for the email MediaMag Production competition, one of the ‘MediaMagazine website – your highlights of our year, but also launching a brand unique voucher code’. This new competition for those of you with an interest in email will include instructions on writing for, in, or about the media. We’ll be publishing how to set your username and the outcomes online, and the winning entries will password and access the site. be featured in future issues of the magazine – useful KEEN TO FIND OUT WHAT’S additions to portfolios or CVs. The details are on page HAPPENING NOW? 5, and entry forms will appear online in January. Go for it! OR ANY QUESTIONS OR Happy New Year from MediaMag! CONCERNS? Email [email protected]

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Representing Place: Crowd-funding for contents 30 Versions of the City in 50 Students The Wire and Treme Animator and filmmaker Nathan Wilkes shows you how crowd- funding can be the answer to your no-budget productions, The Front Page with some useful tips for avoiding The latest media news and 04 the pitfalls and maximising your views. income.

‘Sci-fi’, SF and Science Fiction: What’s the Writing Dust: Becoming 06 Difference? Andrew McCallum compares the 52 a Screenwriter representation and role of the city A Level Film student Abbie As a preface to the British Film in two groundbreaking TV drama Loosemore’s short film screenplay Institute’s current Science series for HBO, both written by was selected for production on Fiction season (and MediaMag’s David Simon. the 2014 BFI/NFTS Film Academy free online Science Fiction residential. What did she learn as supplement) Roy Stafford her script was brought to life from introduces some of the big Silence in Court: Judge page to screen? questions about the history, range 35 Judy is in session... and diversity of the science fiction Harry Cunningham finds out why genre. one of his favourite TV shows, The Female Judge Judy, is the most successful 56 Gaze: Rethinking The Media Concepts: daytime programme in America. Representation 12 Media Language Steph Hendry focuses in depth Turning The on the vocabulary and skills you’ll 38 Unbeatables into need to become a fluent reader, a Great Draw: An writer and user of media language Interview with Juan Jose across a range of texts. Campanella The Unbeatables is the first full- For What it’s Worth: The length animated movie to tell BBC Past, Present and the story of a table football team. Debates around gender 18 Mike Hobbs caught up with its representation in Media and Film Future acclaimed director to ask him Studies have traditionally been The BBC as we know it stands about the movie, and his life as a dominated by discussion of ‘The on the brink of profound and filmmaker. Male Gaze’. Sean Richardson unavoidable change. Jonathan argues that the most important Nunns explores the issues. The Beautiful Games: gaze for many advertising texts is, from Rio to Glasgow in fact, a ‘Female Gaze’. Doing Micro-analysis: 42 Cinematography, 22 Night Mail: The Creative Sound and Editing in Apocalypse Now 60 Treatment of Actuality At AS Level, moving-image study Mark Ramey analyses one of the tends to focus on micro-analysis most powerful film openings of of the media language used to all time, and provides a complete construct meaning. But by A2 master class in how to approach you’ll need to understand the the Film Studies AS micro-analysis contexts for, and debates around, coursework task. Third-year Media undergraduate texts and their production. Mark Charley Packham has had an Ramey applies this process to unforgettable summer working Lionsgate: Can Katniss an iconic documentary for Film in production both for the FIFA Everdeen Save it? Studies 26 2014 World Cup in Rio and also Nick Lacey investigates the covering the somewhat different complex economics of the film Commonwealth Games in rainy industry with a case study on Continuum, Sci-Fi Fans Glasgow. This is her story. and the Power of the Lionsgate. 64 Tweet. Or ‘How I Took on the SyFy Channel and Girls on Film: Lukas Lost’ Moodysson’s We are the 46 Self-confessed sci-fi geek Steve Best Connolly’s account of a Twitter Kathy O’Borne analyses a campaign to save a much-loved Swedish film which would make TV series illustrates how social an ideal case study for work media are changing the balance on representation, media and between fans, producers and identity, and collective identities. media institutions.

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Days of Fear and The big screen re-release of Kubrick’s emailing Mark Reid, Head of Education at masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, the BFI at [email protected] Wonder: Science frequently cited as one of the greatest Fiction at the British films of all time, screening nationwide And more... Film Institute from 28th November: http://www. BFI’s website includes links to a bfi.org.uk/whats-on/bfi-film- cornucopia of further explorations, from releases/2001-space-odyssey the best 21st-century sci-fi to the best The national re-release of Ridley Scott’s in 80s sci-fi posters, end-of-the-world- SF Noir Blade Runner: The Final Cut, movies, greatest sci-fi characters of all launching in April 2015. time, and much more. Not to mention Star Wars Day on 13th December . . . A host of classics available through BFI Player, including: The Man Who Fell to Into Film Earth, E.T., Fahrenheit 451, Serenity, The Day The Earth Caught Fire, Under The The 2014 Into Film Festival includes Skin, and Flash Gordon. a BFI Sci Fi strand, featuring 10 films chosen for their appeal to young For Film students, accessible critical audiences, from Attack the Block to books on some iconic classics, including Aardman Animations, supported by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, classroom resources available here: War of the Worlds, Quatermass and the http://www.intofilm.org/festival/ Pit, Solaris, Alien, Dr Strangelove, Blade programme/bfi-sci-fi#resources-in- Runner, Things to Come, and the Cinema strand of Stanley Kubrick The British Film Institute’s spectacular http://shop.bfi.org.uk/sci-fi/sci-fi- And not forgetting... Science Fiction season is well under way, books.html MediaMag’s own special 46-page but there’s plenty still to see and watch Science Fiction supplement, covering out for. The Science of Sci Fi: The many of the films mentioned here, The Season covers three broad strands Midwich Experiment and more. The supplement, created in from the BFI Collection. Can you use your powers of deduction partnership with BFI, is free online from the MediaMag home page – go to Altered States Mad scientists, mutants, to uncover the scientific truth behind the www.englishandmedia.co.uk man-machines and mind-bending trips strange goings on in the sleepy village then click the MediaMag tab. - these films connect with the biology of of Midwich? Working with professional our guts and the chemistry of our brains. neuroscientists, you’ll enter the world of a British sci-fi classic and explore the Contact! The infinitely vast reaches of external environment and the internal outer space evoke fear and wonder in human factors as they seek to discover equally boundless measure. It’s not just what has happened to the unconscious about the thrill of boldly going – these inhabitants of Midwich. The day includes are films which play on our fears of several real experiments, including using invasion, extinction and annihilation! an EEG machine to study a human’s Tomorrow’s World From the seemingly brainwave patterns, LIVE, and examining far-flung dystopias where ultraviolent an MRI scan to look for anomalous gangs roam post-apocalyptic results in the inhabitants of Midwich. wastelands, to more immediately And having explored the science behind recognisable futures in which our the strange circumstances in Midwich, megacities grow out of control. you can watch this terrifying British classic. It seems as though something The Highlights like this has happened before, many years ago… These free events take place Here are just some of the must-see in January and February in Canterbury, highlights you can still catch: Stroud and the Rhonda Valley. Book by The Front Page was compiled by Jenny Grahame.

4 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM BOGOF? Two for One? This year, MediaMag offers not one but TWO competitions!

Are you a writer as well as a producer? Are you passionate about journalism, blogging, review writing, news and opinion, or the world of print media? Are you a creative writer, or a Journalism or English Language student keen to extend your portfolio with a wider range of forms and genres? If so, we want your writing!

The 2015 MediaMag Media Writing Competition In response to popular demand, we are introducing a The rules new competition for students interested in writing about Your piece should be around 1000 words. We can be flexible and for the media. Your writing could be in any of the either way, but, as in the real world, space is at a premium, so following areas: don’t stray too far from the limit. • An editorial piece of journalism about some aspect of the It must be your own, unaided work media landscape – the choice is yours. It should be sent to us as a Word document, double-spaced, • An interview with a professional media practitioner in a and without embedded pictures or special formatting. If you medium of your choice, from music, through photography, wish to suggest illustrations, add a page of links or references advertising, newsgathering, gaming, TV or film. at the end of your article. • A textual analysis of a media text – again, of your choice, You must download and complete the competition entry and in any medium. form in full, and send it with your article by Friday 20th March 2015. If your article is shortlisted, we’ll publish it in an online supplement. The final winning entries will appear in print Watch out for further details on the MediaMag home page in in a future edition of MediaMag. All shortlisted contributors January. will be invited, with family and teachers, to our Awards Ceremony at BFI Southbank on Wednesday 8th July, where the winners will be announced.

The 2015 MediaMag Production Competition This competition has gone from strength to strength, and student productions just get better and better! The brilliant 2014 entries can still be seen online via the MediaMagazine home page and we hope you’ll be challenged by them to enter yourselves. This year we are offering a special BFI award for productions in a genre of your choice on Britain and Britishness. Full details of the categories, formats and rules will be available from the MediaMag home page in January. The deadline for entries is Friday 20th March 2015, and the shortlist will appear online on Friday 1st May.

So you’ve entered – what happens next? The details of the shortlists for both competitions will be posted online on Friday 1st May 2015, and entrants will shortly afterwards receive an invitation to the Awards Ceremony. The winners of both competitions will be announced and presented by celebrity judges at the Awards Ceremony in NFT1, BFI Southbank, on Wednesday 8th July 2015.

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In tribute to the British Film Institute’s current Science Fiction season (and MediaMag’s free online Science Fiction supplement!) Roy Stafford introduces four recent films starring Scarlett Johansson to raise some of the big questions about the history, range and diversity of the science fiction genre.

The British Film Institute announced ‘Sci-fi: Days of Wonder’ as a celebration of ‘film and TV’s original blockbuster genre’. It’s a catchy title for a season of films, but it raises several problems for Film and Media Studies students hoping to gain knowledge and understanding about film and television culture. Not least of these problems are the assumptions underpinning the use of the terms ‘sci-fi’, ‘blockbuster’ and ‘genre’ – all terms indiscriminately used in popular discourse, but all contentious and in need of explication. In the last twelve months UK cinema audiences have been offered four different films featuring the Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson. Each of the four has been tagged ‘sci-fi’ or ‘science fiction’ by at least one source, and together they form an interesting case study.

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The case study films are Captain produced for the BFI season includes America: Winter Soldier (US, 2014), Her several films that were released before (US, 2013), Under the Skin (UK, 2013) 1975, and several later films that were and Lucy (France, 2014). Although all not given a blockbuster release. four have been described as science- You can watch the trailer here: http:// fiction, there are major differences www.bfi.org.uk/sci-fi-days-fear- between them, and certainly disputes wonder about how they should be classified. Let’s begin with the ‘blockbuster’ tag. The term ‘blockbuster’ describes a highly successful or popular The Power of the production. It refers to the size and Blockbuster scale of productions, budgets, forms of audience appeal and distribution It’s been claimed that the term patterns. Blockbuster films are ‘blockbuster’ derives from descriptions generally released to at least 3,000 of the largest Second World War screens in North America. They must bombs, which could literally destroy therefore appeal to as many different whole ‘blocks’ of housing or offices audiences as possible – to the ‘four – hence its application to ‘killer quadrants’ of young and old, male and movies’ which effectively destroy their female. And to draw in these audiences, competition. Arguably the concept they must usually encompass more dates from the 1975 release of Jaws than one genre – for example, action, in North America, which attracted romance, adventure, comedy – and huge audiences through innovative appeal to fans of specific stars, CGI and distribution and exhibition strategies, effects, and so on. It is highly unusual including simultaneous screenings for a blockbuster movie to relate to a North America-wide during the single ‘pure’ genre. summer vacation – a new strategy at the time. Jaws is a ‘monster movie’, a According to this definition, only one of ‘creature feature’, which under some our case study films, Captain America, definitions might be categorised is actually a blockbuster. The ‘Marvel as science fiction. Perhaps the BFI Cinematic Universe’ has been described marketing team was referring to the as a ‘mega-franchise’ of film titles based Star Wars films (1977, onwards) as key on Marvel’s comic book characters. ‘sci-fi’ blockbuster films. Yet the trailer These are made independently by

8 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM Marvel Studios, and then distributed (used as a reference by one of the Hollywood studio majors source here for North (Paramount in the case of Captain American distribution) America). refers to Captain America as ‘Action/Adventure’, Lucy represents a different challenge to Under the Skin as ‘Sci-fi’, the Hollywood ‘majors’, the six studios Lucy as ‘Sci-fi Action’ and which comprise the membership of the Her as ‘Comedy/Drama’. MPAA (the Motion Pictures Association So what exactly might of America). Produced by Luc Besson’s ‘sci-fi’ mean – and is it EuropaCorp (in English) in France, the same as ‘science Lucy was distributed in North America fiction’? And perhaps we and the UK by Universal. It had a also ought to reconsider blockbuster-style release with success whether these concepts that was to some extent unexpected, are actually useful critical but it has not been seen as a potential tools for film scholarship. franchise with sequels/prequels etc. Neither Her nor Under the Skin were Some Sci-fi marketed as blockbusters. Her received History a ‘wide’ release on over 1,000 screens The earliest film title in in North America, but not the 3,000+ the BFI’s marketing of required for a blockbuster; and Under ‘sci-fi’ is Metropolis (Fritz the Skin opened on only a handful of Lang Germany 1927). In and Science Wonder Stories. But he also screens in the US, and in the UK was his 1947 book on German cinema, critic notes that by that time, films featuring mainly screened in arthouse cinemas. Siegfried Kracauer refers to the three trick photography and set designs to films made by Lang for the German represent future or alien worlds, for So What Exactly is this studio Ufa between 1927 and 1929 as example the films of George Méliès Science Fiction Genre? dealing with ‘thrilling adventures and such as A Trip to the Moon (1902) had If we turn now to questions of ‘genre’, technical fantasies’ – the other two made a link between science and it’s worth remembering that film genres were Spies (1928) and The Girl in the cinema as spectacle. So up to the early are defined by film scholars in order to Moon (1929). He doesn’t mention the 1930s, science fiction was not a film be useful as tools for critical analysis. term ‘science fiction’. genre as such, but a type of narrative As suggested above, audiences are Some scholars have argued that that lent itself to adventure, fantasy, attracted by different aspects of a recognisable elements of what we now horror or spectacle. These popular film’s appeal, which might include know as science fiction can be found literary genres had little cultural status; references to its genre – but not in literature thousands of years ago; and this was also true of science always using the terms or definitions but the first generally agreed science fiction in print form, which was usually used by scholars. Film reviewers and fiction novel is usually taken to be Mary circulated as cheap novels or short film journalists in the popular press Shelley’s Frankenstein from 1818. When stories. However, books written by a may define it differently again. Film Frankenstein was successfully adapted ‘serious author’ such as Aldous Huxley’s industry professionals use only the for the cinema in 1931, it was perceived Brave New World (1932) or George broadest definitions of genre; in fact as part of a cycle of Gothic horror films Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty Four (1948), ‘science fiction’ or ‘sci-fi’ is a term that produced by Universal in Hollywood were rarely described as science fiction; the industry itself is reluctant to use, (following Dracula and preceding The they were ‘literary’ rather than ‘genre’ because it implies a narrow audience Mummy). From Kracauer’s description novels. appeal. If you check the promotional of ‘adventures’ and ‘fantasies’, the range materials for the four films in our case of imaginative narratives featuring, for Sci-fi study, you will see a wide range of example, scientists able to build a robot ‘Sci-fi’ is a shortened version of ‘science genres mentioned. To take just one (Metropolis) or to ‘re-animate’ humans fiction’, first used in the 1950s. Why example: the website Box Office Mojo (Frankenstein), were increasingly was it shortened? Possibly to make associated with the ‘horror’ genre. the writing – and the films – sound more ‘modern’, much as ‘hi-fi’ was used Steve Neale is one of the best-known during the same period to describe theorists of film genre. He suggests that ‘high fidelity’ music. A few years later, the term ‘science fiction’ to describe in the 1960s, a New Wave of science stories using scientific advances wasn’t fiction writing began to appear in really established until the late 1920s, the UK and US, with authors such when it was associated with American as Robert Heinlen, Kurt Vonnegut, pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, and

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 9 MM But when it was re-released in 1993 in a re-edited form, the film became a cult success. Now associated with postmodernism, and with the growing reputation of Philip K. Dick, author of the original SF classic novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the film is acknowledged as a masterpiece for its ‘neo-noir’ visuals and profoundly dystopian vision. Blade Runner focuses on the question ‘What does it mean to be human?’ This arises from a classic ‘What if?’ scenario: what if replica humans could be constructed which could not be distinguished from ‘real people’? It is the force and complexity of these ‘what if?’ scenarios that defines an SF film; ‘SF’ might also stand for ‘speculative fiction’, perhaps a larger generic category that includes forms of fantasy writing, and stories without scientific or ‘futuristic’ elements. It could be argued that a sci- fi film is likely to put spectacle (special effects) and action/adventure ahead of this kind of speculation, whereas for genre purists, science fiction is defined by that ‘what if?’ question. The inference is always that whatever Thomas Pyncheon. Some of these new combat, swept all before it as a genuine fictional world is shown (‘alternative’ or writers – and their readers – favoured ‘sci-fi blockbuster’. That film was of future), the narrative speculates about writing which was more experimental course Star Wars. George Lucas and what we can learn about our world in imagining what would happen if Steven Spielberg (with the Indiana today. science changed society through new Jones films) set out to re-create the technologies, or if social and political adventure serials shown in cinemas in Scarlett’s Four Case Study changes were made to contemporary the 1930s-1950s, among them Flash Films society. They wanted to keep the full Gordon (1936). The early serials had term ‘science fiction’, or to abbreviate been called ‘space operas’, and the Let’s return to our four case study films, it to ‘SF’. But most of all, they wanted same term was applied to Star Wars. to see where they stand generically. to distinguish themselves from ‘sci-fi’, This was a pejorative term, like ‘soap Captain America is a superhero action and to promote SF as a ‘proper’ literary opera’, implying that these films were film. Its ‘alternative universe’ scenario genre. When their new stories were merely the same old dramas, but this hints at SF, but its emphasis on action, adapted for the cinema, they were time set in space. Despite this implied special effects and the spectacular marketed as SF, not sci-fi. One of the criticism, the overwhelming success suggests that sci-fi is its main focus, first big successes of the new science of Star Wars then brought sci-fi back even though Johansson’s role as an fiction cinema was Stanley Kubrick’s into the mainstream, with Lucas’s ‘action woman’ raises questions about 2001: a Space Odyssey (UK/US 1968) – continuing epic as its most popular gender roles in contemporary society. an iconic movie, based on an Arthur incarnation. Lucy is in some ways very similar, and C. Clarke story, still regarded as one the titular central character played by of the greatest films ever made, and The Story of Blade Runner Johansson also develops ‘superpowers’. re-released this winter. The shifting cultural attitudes But these are associated with some towards different forms of science form of scientific research recognisable Star Wars – Soap in Space? fiction can perhaps best be seen from our perspective (even if it is During the 1960s and 1970s SF cinema in what happened to Blade Runner. exaggerated, distorted and perhaps flourished. But then, in 1977, a film When first released in 1982 as a sci-fi fantastic) that becomes the central drawing on a Western (The Searchers, blockbuster following Star Wars, Blade point of the narrative – there is a ‘what 1956) a Japanese historical film (The Runner disappointed at the box office, if?’ idea about human brain power that Hidden Fortress, 1958) and various apparently because it lacked a clear is as important as the resolution of the Second World War films about aerial enough narrative or sufficient action. action genre narrative. Writer-director

10 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM relationship with his OS – something which can be compared to, and can perhaps have an impact on, his ‘real’ relationships with other people. Here is a familiar SF scenario which is containable within other classifications – romance, drama, comedy as well as ‘independent cinema’, ‘Hollywood art cinema’ and others which refer to specific audience segments. Thus Scarlett Johansson, one of the most adventurous of Hollywood stars, has appeared in four very diverse films from four different categories of cinema, linked only by their connections to ideas about ‘science fiction’. Those links are useful in reading the films – but they don’t in any simple way refer to conventional ideas about genre. There is no clear distinction between ‘SF’ and ‘sci-fi’, both of which derive from ‘science fiction’; but there is a dynamic relationship between the shifting definitions of all three – definitions contested by different audience groups – and understanding this is essential for participation in debates about contemporary cinema. Roy Stafford is a freelance film lecturer and Besson makes this explicit by referring writer and the author The Media Studies directly to 2001: a Space Odyssey and by Book and The Global Film Book. He also naming his character ‘Lucy’, which was edits The Case for Global Film blog at http:// the name given to the earliest human itpworld.wordpress.com discovered by archaeologists. Clearly sci- fi in terms of action and spectacle, Lucy Follow it Up may also be genuine SF. Kracauer, Siegfried. 1974. From Under the Skin is based on an SF novel Caligari to Hitler: a Psychological (Michel Faber, 2000) and presents an History of German Film. (almost) social-realist account of a Neale, Steve. 2000. Genre and woman who seduces men she finds Hollywood. on the streets. There is no ‘spectacle’ as www.boxofficemojo.com such, but instead a series of seduction scenes using music and simple effects to represent how these men are ‘used’ MoreMediaMag by an alien. Under the Skin is defiantly from the archive SF in its questions about humans and Science Noir – Blade Runner and aliens, and defiantly avant-garde in its Alien, Paul Jones, MediaMag 6 presentation (see the SF supplement on A Question of Identity: Code 46 and the MediaMagazine website). Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Finally, in Her, Johansson appears only Nick Lacey, MediaMag 15 as the disembodied voice of a computer What’s gone wrong with Science operating system. The fictional world is Fiction? Elysium, Jonathan Nunns, set only marginally in the future – where MediaMag 47 a lonely man finds that he can buy an Operating System (OS) for his digital Fear and Fascination: The Alien Series devices which acts as if it works only and ‘The Other’, Elaine Scarrett for him. In other words he can have a MediaMag 27

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Following on from last issue’s overview of the broad principles on which Media Studies is based, Steph Hendry focuses in depth on the vocabulary and skills you’ll need to become a fluent reader, writer and user of media language across a range of texts.

Every media product is constructed from a combination of possible production choices, and media language is the collective term used for the multitude of possible elements that could be selected. Choices in the way a camera is positioned, the wording of a headline or the cropping of a photograph all combine to communicate ideas to the audience. Media language choices are the creative building blocks used by all media producers, and understanding how they work, and why a specific choice might be made is the first stage of analysis. As a Media student, you need to be able to analyse the work of others; but you also need to create your own media products, which will require demonstrating your understanding of

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Basic Conventions Based on Type/Platform Moving Image Audio Print E-Media Camera placement and Sound effects/ambient Page design – use of columns, size Site and page design and movement sound/silence/ signposting. of text, proportions in terms of appearance. Readability must be words and images etc. Readability considered. Sound is crucial.

Lighting Interview/presentation style. Lexis (word and grammar choices) Lexis in body text, headings, in body text, headlines, captions captions etc. Editing etc.

Mise-en-scène (all that is seen Studio/Location elements. Photos and illustrations – Photos and illustrations. on screen) cropping, placement etc. General tone of address. Multi-media (video, audio, Special effects animation etc.). Music. Accepted position of different Audience engagement and elements of the text. participation. Sound beds. Navigation. how to use media language. And just as 1. Media Language Choices For example: when learning Spanish or German, the are Thought Through • Some newspapers take a political best way to become good at ‘reading’, Media producers take great care in their position on certain issues and the ‘writing’ and ‘using the language’ is to media language choices. The choices editor will make sure the tone and practise as often as possible. they make will all be deliberate and, as slant of the stories and images In order to be able to analyse such, contain meaning. The selection published meet this agenda. effectively, there are some basic of one media language option rejects • Film directors will decide on a principles to consider. all alternatives; and whilst there may style and tone for the film and be practical reasons for many of the 1. Media language choices are all lighting, sound, special effects choices, it is important to recognise thought through. decisions etc. will need to reinforce that every choice communicates this decision. 2. Media language choices are not something to the audience. Of infinite. course, the audience may not always accept the meanings intended by the 2. Media Language Choices 3. Audiences interpret media are not Infinite language choices. producer, but media language choices are the producer’s way to attempt to A media producer cannot always do 4. Institutions try to fix meaning with communicate a specific message. exactly what s/he wants in terms of media language choices. media language choices: the type, form or genre of the production may

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limit the choices that can be made. they need to focus on it; audio media are quite different. The newspaper form Media platforms, forms and genres cannot do this. E-media can bring uses a set of design principles that are all have their own conventions. These together moving image, sound and the very specific and different to the ones conventions in themselves create a written word to communicate in a way used by magazines. framework that media producers need neither moving image nor print can do Conventions based on genre to be aware of, even though they may separately. Genre conventions, once again, choose to ignore, challenge or subvert Conventions based on form require media language choices. them. Within each platform or type of media Media producers often need to Conventions based on product type/ there are many different forms or create products that are familiar to distribution platform genres. the audience in terms of their genre, There are (very basically) four types since audiences frequently use Moving-image forms include of media product: moving image, their experiences and preferences documentaries, feature films, news audio, print and e-media, a very broad of different genres to select what bulletins, drama, variety shows etc. A term that includes the internet, social to watch, read or listen to. Genre news broadcast on the BBC may look networking and gaming, amongst conventions enable producers to set very similar to a news broadcast on ITV. other electronic media forms. up audience expectations; at the same The style of presentation, the mise-en- time, such conventions also limit the Each type of media product has its scène choices and even the language media language choices available. own specific range of media language are part of the conventions of the form. choices available. For example, moving If a producer wants to appeal to fans Print forms include newspapers, image and audio texts can use a of film noir or crime drama, the use magazines, posters, flyers, display musical soundtrack specifically selected of lots of low key lighting, a soft jazz advertising etc. You will know the to lead the audience’s emotional soundtrack, an urban mise-en-scène difference between a newspaper and a response; print media cannot do this. and a retro-style wardrobe allows the magazine; both are print products and On the other hand, print can capture audience to quickly recognise the as such share print conventions – but a specific moment in a photograph genre and, therefore, what to expect magazine design and newspaper layout and ensure the audience is aware that from the film or television programme.

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3. Audiences Interpret Media Language Choices The act of interpreting media language choices can often be an active process, but, like our understanding of our own first spoken language, it is often subconscious. Some media denotation: the literal meaning of the language choices are so conventional word or simply what is being presented that we don’t need to interpret them in an image. The connotations are the consciously; we automatically know additional meanings that are associated what they mean. with a word or image – sometimes For example, if a film director based on history or ideologies that may introduces a character in half-light, be lost on the audience member. smoking a cigarette, we may read In this image four aliens and one the character as a villain of some human are shown to be walking. In sort. A character presented via a low the trailer for the film Guardians of the The Wild Bunch and The Right Stuff camera angle will appear intimidating, Galaxy they are walking forward in use the framing of the characters to whereas a backlit image of a woman slow motion. The body language and reinforce their heroic stature, and could create an angelic, otherworldly placement of the characters connotes this meaning becomes associated appearance. If an idea of an isolated the idea that they are (if a little with the image. The repetition of the and troubled hero is required, he could ramshackle) a heroic group. shot in similar contexts allows the be shot from above whilst looking out Some audience members may ‘meaning’ of the shot to be absorbed over a city presented in long shot. know that the image is deliberately by audiences. The newer versions of The reason we are often unaware that referencing a shot from the 1969 film this shot are relying on the audience’s we are interpreting media language The Wild Bunch – a shot that has been understanding of the connotations choices is that we have a huge body used again and again in films such as within the image to create humour. of experience in the act of ‘reading’ A Clockwork Orange, The Right Stuff, The image is used in Monsters Inc., The media texts; and so it has become Armageddon, Monsters Inc. and more World’s End and Guardians of the Galaxy second nature. Like reading a collection recently The World’s End. to reinforce the idea that the characters of L-E-T-T-E-R-S, we cannot help but organise what we see into something meaningful.

Denotation and Connotation Another part of the interpretative process is the way certain media language choices create connotation, or a second level of meaning. The first level of meaning in an image is its

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Media Language – The Starting Point for Analysis Analysing a media product begins with the observation and recognition of media language choices. Once the media language choices have been identified, the next step is to consider why those choices have been made: • What was the producer trying to are a long way from being traditionally A caption will help the audience achieve? heroic. The image is used ironically. understand what is going on. The • What information is communicated phrasing of the caption will help shape by the choices made? 4. Institutions Try to Fix the reader’s interpretation and may • Do the media language choices Meaning with Media influence their views on the event. This provide narrative information? Language Choices is called anchorage – where multiple The selection of media language media language elements work together • Were the media language choices elements and the way they are arranged to help fix the meaning and close down influenced by form or genre codes? alternative interpretations. can have artistic meaning or be part of • Does the meaning depend on a structured communication between Headline 1: Obama outlines the current the way multiple media language producer and audience. Sometimes the threats to international peace. choices have been put together? choices aim to create a very specific Headline 2: Obama criticises Cameron’s • What meaning is the audience meaning and attempt to structure the economic policy. most likely to take from the audience’s interpretation. product? Headline 3: Obama said the fish he Imagine you are a news editor and you caught yesterday was ‘this big’. Finding answers to these questions are running a front page story about gets you well on the way to creating an Barack Obama visiting the UK and you The audience’s interpretation of Obama’s analysis of the product. will be using the picture above. hand gesture and Cameron’s facial expression depends on the anchorage You have to decide on the caption that Steph Hendry is a lecturer in Media at of the surrounding news story. In itself will appear below the image in both the Runshaw College and a freelance writer. the picture is ambiguous. There is not print and online versions of the story. Follow her on Twitter @albionmill enough information for the reader to Without a caption the image is open to know what is going on so additional a number of potential interpretations. information needs to be provided.

16 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM Media Language Observation What was the producer trying to achieve? How might the audience interpret the media language choice? The main image has a limited colour The urban scene created here is one that is harsh, cold and unwelcoming. The out of focus palette – it is largely green and black background forces the focus on the wall and the woman even though she is relatively small with brick red acting as a contrast. within the image. The colours are muted but the red cuts through. Rather than creating vibrancy though, the rough finish of the wall adds to the generally murky tone of the setting. The foregrounded mise-en-scène is a The depiction of the urban landscape here sets the tone for the crime drama. The audience brick and metal urban location. can tell it is based in a city, but instead of constructing a modern, glamorous and civilised place, this city is slightly run-down, old fashioned and impersonal. The audience may assume The background to the mise-en-scène that the programme will be cold and stark in tone and be harshly realistic. is an out-of-focus overview of a city.

The actress is framed off-centre and The body language in the pose communicates a closed-off personality, sadness and is in long shot. She is posing alone loneliness. This interpretation of the actress’s pose is supported by the mise-en-scène. Her with her arms crossed and her head is size and positioning creates a sense of vulnerability, and so we can assume she is the subject lowered. He coat is tightly buttoned up. of the tag-line. She was a hunter but becomes the hunted. Her isolation and introspection identifies her as potential prey. The tag-line uses word play ‘when the hunter becomes the hunted’.

The images in the lower third echo The use of colour creates the idea that the man in the lower part of the image is predatory. the colour scheme of black, green and A focus on his eyes makes his gaze an active one. This is juxtaposed with the passive image brick red. of the woman, whose gaze is turned downwards. This reinforces her position as a potential victim, and the male as the villain of the narrative. The red band across his eyes creates a sense The man’s eyes are highlighted by the of his evil, and links back to the Biblical connotations of the title – ‘The Fall’ from Grace. brick red.

The poster names the programme and If audiences are to watch the programme, they need to know its name! The star in this case is the star at the top. one that will be recognised by many audience members. Gillian Anderson’s most well-known role was as an FBI agent in The X Files. This may lead us to assume that (as the hunter) she plays a detective. This anchors the audience’s genre expectations.

The poster identifies other crime Audience expectations will be made through the associations created by referencing previous dramas created by the writer and crime dramas. producer of The Fall.

Sample Analysis: A Poster for The Fall (BBC2) A poster is created as a promotional tool. This poster needs to raise awareness of the TV programme and create a desire in the audience to watch it. The media language choices used to create the poster are intended to meet these basic functions.

MoreMediaMag from the archive Analysing Media Texts, Steph Hendry, MediaMag 28 Independent Thinking in Media Examinations, Steph Hendry, MediaMag 43

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The BBC has a unique status as The Birth of Public Service one of the world’s most loved Broadcasting and respected broadcasters. The British Broadcasting Corporation is viewed by many as one of the great But in the UK, public attitudes triumphs of British cultural power, are complex, confusing and a hugely influential institution over ninety years old which has consistently frequently contradictory – and reflected the vision of John Reith, its the Beeb stands on the brink founder and first Director General. of profound and unavoidable Reith was far-sighted enough to understand the potential power of the change. Why should this matter infant broadcaster, and instilled from to us as audiences? Jonathan the start its core values and mission statement: to ‘inform, educate and Nunns explores the issues entertain’. It was not without reason underpinning the role of the BBC that Reith put the words in that order, in Britain. with ‘entertainment’ intentionally well down the pecking order. The BBC has capture the mass audiences demanded sought to implement that vision ever by advertisers. since, remaining in-depth enough to inform, academic enough to educate, The licence fee was also intended to and entertaining enough to reach ensure that the BBC remained free out to mass audiences. And these of government interference. Had it audiences have remained essential become a directly tax-funded branch to the BBC’s existence, since from its of the state, it would be vulnerable inception it has been uniquely funded, to direct political pressure to become not by subscription or advertising, but a mouthpiece for government by a licence fee, in effect a kind of tax propaganda. Thus the licence on its users. fee allowed the BBC the financial freedom to fulfil its remit, whilst Establishing Independence remaining ideologically free from Back in 1922, Reith’s pioneering both governmental and commercial mission statement was deliberately pressure. Licence fee funding would framed to promote information and be collected directly by the BBC itself, education above entertainment, with enabling the organisation to fulfil its good reason. The idea was that the mission. From this inspiration sprouted BBC should remain free of advertising the radio broadcaster of 1922 that or subscription funding, to allow it to would gradually grow to become the make and distribute programming global provider of television, film and that would inform and educate, free web content that we know today. The of the commercial pressures that broadcaster rapidly came to dominance could otherwise cause it to fixate on in the UK; but in more recent years it providing populist entertainment to has become acknowledged as a global

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symbol of British culture, watched, Other sections of the media have listened to and logged on to the world accused the BBC of parroting the over. Politicians talk about soft power, ideological line of the current in which national arts and culture government, and losing the convey ideology, ethics and outlook. independence the licence fee was In many places, including those where intended to guarantee; whilst Britain itself was loved, loathed or governments do not collect the licence viewed with indifference, the BBC was, fee, they do control the level – a flaw and still is, valued and trusted for the which provides the opportunity to quality, objectivity and honesty of its financially influence the BBC after all. coverage. Attacks have also been made on the sums paid (from the public purse) by The Ambitions of the ‘Hideously White’ the BBC to its own senior staff, such BBC are ‘Chilling’ (James That positive narrative is, however, as the ex-Deputy DG Mark Byford, Murdoch, 2009) not the only interpretation of this whose exit package amounted to Much of the rest of the British mass complex story. The history of the BBC nearly a million pounds, and the five media, particularly those which operate can be viewed in less positive terms. year contract given to the presenter in the cut-and-thrust commercial Detractors have criticised the institution Jonathan Ross, worth approximately world, see the BBC as an unfair, anti- as a monolithic force dominating eighteen million pounds. Perhaps competitive institution which uses the centre-ground of broadcasting, the most damaging claims appeared public money to damage their own reflecting the elitist philosophies and in competing media, arguing that commercial interests. Newspapers, prejudices typical of the restricted ignorance and incompetence had led for instance, whose physical sales are and self-replicating range of people the BBC to nurture the celebrity of in headlong decline, have had little it recruits. It has been accused of serial abusers such as Jimmy Savile, success in attempting to charge for excluding, intentionally or otherwise, Rolf Harris and Stuart Hall. The BBC was web content, due in large part to the those without elite educations, women, attacked for its long-term failure to success of BBC News Online, which is and other ‘minorities’ at all levels. Every identify and remove these men, and to free at the point of use. Independent Director General (DG) has, after all, confront its own failings. TV production companies have faced been a white, middle class, middle- Other areas of the media have also massive additional competition in aged man. Acknowledging this, Greg frequently included criticism that the the form of the BBC’s most popular Dyke, DG in the early 2000s, described BBC promotes liberal leftist values, in-house content such as Strictly Come his own organisation as ‘hideously despite allegations that the BBC simply Dancing (BBC, 2007-present), EastEnders white’. features propaganda for whichever (BBC, 1985-present) and Dr Who (BBC, political party is in power. Further 1963-present). Subscription platforms critiques paint the BBC as a complacent such as Sky loathe the publicly-funded giant that lines the pockets of its competition and, as they see it, the executives. built-in advantages granted to the BBC. All of these groups would like to see the BBC much reduced in the scope and scale of its activities, or stripped of its funding, broken up and sold off, leaving perhaps only a rump of low-cost services at the periphery of

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since 2010, meaning that the BBC has already suffered a long-term decline in income as inflation reduces the value of the licence fee year on year. The BBC’s charter is due for renewal in 2016, and there is every likelihood that the current situation will become wholly unsustainable in the near future. The BBC must either follow the government’s wishes, or be starved mainstream programming, as with The radio and online content on demand of funds and be forced, inch by inch, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the after initial transmission, without into a narrower role and a cultural USA. needing to pay for a TV licence. And backwater. as increasing numbers access content All of these negative critiques share online, the argument for a TV licence So What of the Future? the belief that the BBC as it is now fee which is universally paid in order to is unsustainable. This is not due to One of the great quotes about the BBC provide a universal service is seriously commercial competition or scandal. was that it made ‘the good popular undermined, both in theory and in The threat to the BBC is the mechanism and the popular good’ (Sir Huw practice. that has most sustained it: the TV Wheldon). Popular hits, such as Strictly licence fee. The second problem inherent in the Come Dancing and Doctor Who have structure of the BBC is the scope been matched by cultural successes Analogue Funding for a for political pressure to be applied. such as Walking with Dinosaurs (BBC Digital Age Current and previous governments 1999) Horizon (BBC, 1964-present) and Imagine, (BBC, 2003-present) Two issues are clear. Firstly, the TV were closely allied to Rupert Murdoch’s – expensive, culturally significant licence fee was set up to cover all the News Corporation – until the deep gambles unlikely to be made under a BBC’s services. That was fine whilst embarrassment of The News of the directly commercial funding regime. people got their BBC via TV and radio; World phone hacking scandal in Without the need to pay more than however, in the online age, increasing 2011. Governments unsympathetic the yearly licence, both popular culture numbers of people access their content to the BBC may not be directly able and ‘high’ culture have been made via smart phones and tablets. The to intervene in its content, but their accessible to people without the funds BBC’s own catch-up service the iPlayer indirect power is enormous. The for a visit to The Royal Opera House, makes it possible to access BBC TV, government sets the level of the licence fee, which has been frozen West End Theatre, the World Cup or the

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content which can (with notable and perhaps impossible challenge in exceptions such as HBO products) less anybody’s language, even the Received reliably be expected to make back Pronunciation of the BBC. its investment. Hence the renowned documentaries of the BBC Natural Postscript: Top Post or History Unit, the BBC’s global news Poisoned Chalice? Olympics. That may be about to end. services and its arts content could be At the time of writing, Rona Fairhead, It is probably inevitable that the BBC’s the unintended victims of the profound ex of the Financial Times, has just been services, as they are increasingly upheaval likely to come within the next named as the first female Chair of accessed online, will have to be few years. The question is this: can the the BBC Trust (the body that oversees encrypted and put behind a pay-wall, BBC’s guiding principles be preserved? the BBC). That this senior post had to directly available only to licence fee The loss of ‘fat-cat’ salaries and be offered, over a period of months, payers/subscribers. This may in turn financial waste would help the to several highly influential people result in the end of the universal BBC to win back public trust after (including the Olympics 2012 supremo BBC, free to make the good as well the self-inflicted wounds of recent Sebastian Coe), all of whom turned as the popular, creating a funding scandals. What is at risk is what the it down, speaks volumes about the model closer to that of Virgin and BBC has done well. Nations that have challenges the BBC is about to face. Sky. Here subscribers would buy into a broadcast environment without a Jonathan Nunns is Head of Media Studies the elements of the BBC that they public service tradition have typically at Collyer’s College and moderates for the wanted, whilst not buying services offered advertising-funded populism WJEC. they feel they do not need. The end to the masses, with quality content of a universal service could mean safely locked behind pay-walls for Follow it up. the end of the ‘public service’ ethos those who can afford it (see HBO and which has defined the BBC. Exposing Game of Thrones et al) or, in some Higgins, Charlotte The BBC the BBC fully to the commercial countries, simply not made at all. Report, The Guardian http://www. market could produce a broadcasting The challenge for the BBC, as a key theguardian.com/media/series/the- environment more like that of the provider and ambassador for British bbc-report (8/9/14) USA, where commercial pressure has culture, is to maintain its unique led to the predominance of cheaply- strengths, whilst evolving to meet the MoreMediaMag made populist content at the expense irresistible technological and financial from the archive of riskier and more expensive cultural challenges of the future. A tough Frozen Licence Fees and the Culture of the BBC, James Whipps, MediaMag 35 Ethics in TV: Phone-ins, Fakery, Fraud, Keith Randle, MediaMag 22 Editorial ethics – Guidelines and Regulations, Jerome Monaghan, MediaMag 22 TV – What is it Good For?, Roy Stafford, MediaMag 22

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Doing micro-analysis: the use of cinematography, sound and editing in

Mark Ramey talks you through an eloquent analysis of one Apocalypse of the most powerful film openings of all time, and provides a complete master Now class in how to structure the The 1500-word micro-analysis is probably Film Studies AS micro-analysis the first piece of written coursework you coursework task. will undertake as a WJEC AS Film student, and therefore may present you with your Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now first stumbling block. However, there (Coppola, USA, 1979), focusing on an should be nothing to fear, especially if admittedly ambitious three micro- you’re an engaged film fan, as the focus is features – cinematography, sound and on the technical use of cinematic devices editing. and their impact on the spectator. In other words, how does the performance, The Context of the Film – cinematography, editing and sound in a Production and Reception film make me scream or laugh or cheer the protagonist on? Apocalypse Now is a Hollywood film set during the Vietnam War. It is shot from Before starting the micro-analysis you the perspective of an American marine, need to do a minimum of three things: Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) and 1. Know your techniques well – and concerns his secret mission to execute a know why they are used in films. rogue American Colonel, Kurtz (Marlon For example, low-key, high-contrast Brando), who has formed his own army lighting is a generic feature of many deep in the jungle of neighbouring horror films because it creates a Cambodia. It was directed by Francis feeling of mystery and uncertainty Ford Coppola, one of the great directors for the spectator. of contemporary American cinema, and represents one of his finest achievements: 2. Focus on one or two micro- winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and features. two Oscars – one for sound and the other 3. Choose an appropriate and for cinematography. manageable scene (generally 5 minutes long) rich with complex The Micro-features to be micro-features. Analysed What follows then is an attempt to ‘Cinematography’ is one of the basic explore the opening of the classic elements of film language, consisting of

22 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM Cinematography The cinematography in this sequence perfectly matches the editing style the use of and sound design. As the intention throughout this sequence is to create a dreamy conflation between reality and cinematography, fantasy, there is little obvious camera movement and a tendency to hold the sound and editing in shot in a variety of long takes. The opening shot is an Extreme Long Shot (ELS) of a pristine jungle. The camera is static and the take long. The result framing, lighting, camera movement and extreme long shot (ELS) of the jungle, Apocalypse of this is that we have the opportunity which erupts into explosive fire at exactly focus. ‘Sound’ represents the recording, to study a tropical paradise of western remixing and editing of both diegetic and the same time as the lyric, ‘This is the fantasy – palm trees under a hot sun. The non-diegetic sound. ‘Editing’ concerns the end!’ eerie diegetic sound of the helicopters organisation and ordering of shots. Now One final sound treatment is that of and then the dream-like opening bars of Willard’s non-diegetic voiceover which the music suggest a possible disruption The Opening Sequence in gives us an exclusive insight into to this scene. Unfocused helicopters in Context his thinking, and complements the the foreground move across the frame, The scene I will analyse is the film’s subjective cinematography. Sheen is dust swirls over the scene and then the opening sequence, lasting 7 minutes deadpan. His subsequent mental collapse jungle surprisingly explodes into flame. and 30 seconds. In this scene we witness is not hinted at in the voiceover in terms The camera now pans gently from left to Willard’s mental collapse as he awaits his of either tone or pacing, but rather in his right to illustrate the space that has been next mission in a hotel room in Saigon. cold emotionless delivery: disrupted by this cataclysmic event, and By the end of the sequence we are aware At home I never said a word to my wife other opens up the cinematic frame, adding that Willard is depressed, battle-weary than ‘Yes’ to a divorce. to our perception of the realism of the and haunted by images of jungle warfare. scene.

Sound Design There follows a meaning-rich slow dissolve with Willard shot in an upside- The following three paragraphs analyse down big close-up (BCU) in the left hand sound design, and it is here – with portion of the frame. Using asymmetrical analysis – that the marks are found for a framing in this way allows for the gradual really strong response. A cohesive feature emergence into the right-hand side of of the sound design in this sequence is the frame of a variety of images: the hotel the creation of a dream-like soundscape Editing fan lying above the dreaming Willard in a by merging diegetic and non-diegetic point-of-view shot (POV); the helicopters sounds that reflect the haunted mind The editing in this sequence has a gentle apparently destroying the jungle; of Willard. Walter Murch and his Oscar- pace using slow cross-dissolves between an upright BCU of a Buddhist statue wining sound team have merged fantasy only a few master shots. There are a series depicting the serene face of the Buddha. with reality by recreating the hypnotic of cuts towards the end of the sequence Thus we see into Willard’s mind; and so sound effects of helicopter engines when Willard is drunkenly moving the cinematography in this section of the and blades on synthesisers. In his hotel about his hotel room; but the transitions sequence can be said to be subjective. bedroom, Willard’s mind is never free between the opening fade from black from the helicopters buzzing over Saigon and the final fade to black that ends the This is a complex cross-dissolve that and the whirring ceiling-fan. sequence are largely slow cross-dissolves. subtly conveys to the spectator the An effect of this is that images overlap haunting madness and brutalising Another effect in this opening sequence and share screen-time, thus creating links destruction of war through its is the use of a non-diegetic musical in terms of narrative and character. Once cinematography and editing. soundtrack. The music is by the famous again, as with the sound design, there counter-culture 60s American rock group, At one point the entire frame is is a merging between the real and the The Doors. The music has a dream- symmetrical in that an upside-down, imagined. The editing manoeuvres us like quality which perfectly matches haunted Willard in BCU is balanced across into the dream-filled world of Willard’s the film’s visuals. Crisp reverberating a war filled jungle by the right-way-up nightmares, as we will see in the section cymbals, rhythmic drums and a sultry serene Buddha. The implication is clear on cinematography that follows. vocal delivery by front-man Jim Morrison here: war is an abomination, and the create a sense of nightmare. The lyrics soldier’s world is literally the wrong-way also perfectly express key visual elements round. The peace-loving enlightened in the sequence as in the opening religion of the Far East can show us war- mongering Westerners the way.

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24 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM dissolves. We see Willard drinking alcohol carelessly in MCU, topless, unshaven and sweaty. As the music rises to a manic crescendo of bestial shouts and grunts, Willard becomes violently drunk and deranged. The scene ends with Willard in long shot (LS) punching a full-length dress- mirror and cutting his hand. We then cut to Willard falling over the bedclothes leaving a trail of blood on the white The lighting and use of colour here is The next significant shot occurs when sheets. He collapses into a low-level LS significant. The BCU of Willard is lit using Willard’s eyes open (in the previous bed positioned centrally in the frame so we a strong key-light from one side, but no scene they were shut) and we have our can witness his distress as he smears fill-light from the other side, thus creating first cut to a POV shot of the fan above the blood from his hand onto his face an enigmatic effect: one side lit, one side Willard’s bed. The lighting is low-key and and weeps uncontrollably: a compelling in darkness. The same light design is the fan blades are ominous and shadowy performance by method actor Sheen. The used on the mysterious Buddha statue like the helicopter blades he remembers music fades out and the spectator, along reflecting the stereotypically alien and from the war-zone. with Willard, slips into unconsciousness inscrutable East. The POV shot continues, tilting down by fading to black. As the music reaches a drum-filled as Willard wakes from his nightmares pounding crescendo the faces disappear and looks across his hotel room to a Conclusion and we are back in the ELS of the now blind-encased window through which This micro-analysis has shown that destroyed jungle, grey smoke dominating bright natural sunlight is pouring. Willard Apocalypse Now is a rich cinematic text the frame as two out-of-focus helicopters leaves his bed and goes to look outside. that impacts powerfully on the spectator move symmetrically from left to right and It is at this point that the helicopter through its use of cinematography, sound right to left across the frame. This is ‘hell’, sounds of his dreams become a reality as and editing. We witness objectively the and the camera once more slowly and overhead a real helicopter can be heard beautifully filmed horrors of warfare, and unflinchingly pans left to right to show us disappearing into the distance. the subjectively filmed personal traumas the full horrors of war. At the CU of the blinds we see Willard’s of a battle-weary soldier. Thus we are We then have another slow dissolve fingers part the slats and peer outside perfectly set-up to follow Willard on his into a high-angle close-up (CU) of into a deep-focus, harshly illuminated, surreal search for both Kurtz and his ELS of the busy streets of Saigon, capital own peace of mind through a war-torn city of South Vietnam. Diegetic street- Vietnam. sounds fade-up gently to emphasise Mark Ramey teaches Film and Media at the emerging reality of the scene and a Richard Collyer’s College, Horsham, West cut now shows us a BCU side-profile of Sussex. Willard looking though the slats. Here the film’s opening dialogue is delivered MoreMediaMag as a subjective thought: ‘Saigon – shit! from the archive I’m still only in Saigon!’ Clearly Willard has Willard lying on a bed with crisp white Producing Private Ryan: The Story of become confused: is he in the jungle or is sheets; the camera circular pans above an Epic-Opening Sequence, James the jungle in him? As he says, ‘Every time him, reflecting his powerlessness and Rose, MediaMag 37 I think I am going to wake up back in the foreshadowing the rotation of the jungle.’ This man is disjointed – out of Becoming a Media Detective – fan blades. Cross-dissolving one shot time and space. Alternative Approaches to Textual on another (a composite) we see the Analysis, Michael Parkes, MediaMag The film then cuts back to an eye-level, helicopters moving across the frame from 45 left to right; this on-screen movement is low-key CU of Willard staring vacantly. We Ashes to Ashes Shot by Shot, Bethan then matched into a left to right pan as now witness a series of shots depicting Hacking, MediaMag 26 the scene cross-dissolves into an extreme Willard’s despair and mental collapse. close-up (ECU) of a number of artefacts Through his dead-pan voiceover we learn There are also dozens of past articles resting on Willard’s bedside table and that he has agreed to divorce his wife and featuring close analysis of particular eventually revealing in CU a sinister has been on at least one tour of duty. In film and TV sequences, film posters, service revolver tucked under a white one shocking MCU we see Willard coolly and print layouts. pillow. Clearly Willard finds it hard to relax burn a hole in his wife’s photo with a even while on R-and-R. The lyrics of the cigarette. accompanying music emphasise Willard’s Subsequent scenes are edited with more collapse: ‘Lost in a romance, wilderness pace, using cuts as well as slow cross- of pain.’

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How can the producers of one of the biggest and most lucrative film franchises this century be at trying to break Hollywood’s domination risk of financial meltdown? Nick of blockbuster movies. Lacey investigates the complex In 2012 Lionsgate was the 5th top economics of the film industry distributor (based on box office gross) with a case study on Lionsgate. in North America, putting it ahead of Hollywood major studios 20th Century a conventional narrative, impressive Fox and Paramount Pictures. The In 2013 the biggest grossing movie in special effects and an eye-catching following year it slipped one place, but North America (which includes Canada) production design. was The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, was still ahead of Paramount. Does this All that is true, except for one thing: it which took $425m at the box office. mean we have a seventh major studio wasn’t strictly a Hollywood film. It was It was a typical Hollywood product, to consider? At the end of the 2014 produced by the ‘mini-major’ Lionsgate, featuring a star, Jennifer Lawrence, summer I can write confidently that the a Canadian-American company that’s next instalment of Lionsgate’s science

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The Walt Disney Studios Parks and Resorts Disney Consumer Media Networks Disney Products Interactive

• Walt Disney Studios Motion • Disneylands in • Disney Consumer • Disney ABC Television Group Disney Interactive Pictures Florida, California, Products • ESPN focusing on the • Disney Music Group Paris, Hong Kong • Disney Publishing • ABC Entertainment Group internet, mobile • Marvel Studios and Shanghai Worldwide • ABC News content, social • Touchstone Pictures • Cruise club • Disney Stores • ABC Owned Television media and video • Disney nature • Vacation club Stations games. • Walt Disney Animation • Alani resort • ABC Family Studios • Adventures • Disney Channels Worldwide • Pixar • Imagineering • Disney Theatrical Group fiction franchise, The Hunger Games: have exceeded $100m at the North For example The Walt Disney Company Mockingjay Part 1, will be a ‘smash hit’. American box office, the cut-off point has five divisions that include a record So why do Lionsgate investors have for a film having ‘blockbuster’ status. label, television stations, videogames as something to worry about? Like the major studios, Lionsgate well as theme parks. doesn’t actually produce many films as The Walt Disney Company The Lionsgate Story most of its ‘slate’ (the films it distributes) Because Disney owns companies Lionsgate began in 1997 as a Canadian are ‘pick ups’ (films made by other in different media it can obviously distribution company based in companies). benefit from synergy. For example, Vancouver and, according to Unlike the major studios, Lionsgate isn’t it can release the film soundtrack the-numbers.com, has distributed part of a large media conglomerate. to, and a novelisation of, its summer 261 films since. Only 10 of these

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extremely profitable, such as the Saw franchise (2002-), the first of which cost a mere $1.2m to produce. It also distributes the highly successful Tyler Perry films such as Madea’s Family Reunion (2006), which took $63m in North America from a $10m production budget (but only $51,000 internationally!). Tyler Perry’s films are popular with African-Americans, hence their particular success in North America. Despite this success with low-budget films, Lionsgate had not made a profit for five years when the first of The Hunger Games films was released. Its response hit Maleficent on Walt Disney Records Hollywood head-on because it is not part to this lack of profitability has been to and Disney Press respectively. Synergy of a major media conglomerate. compete with the major studios; indeed, allows the company to cross-promote In early 2012 Lionsgate bought the Lionsgate is often referred to as ‘a mini its products, and exploit its properties in independent producer Summit major’. As Anita Elberse (2013) has different media. Entertainment, and so inherited the pointed out, the blockbuster strategy is Although Lionsgate has four divisions, Twilight franchise. Until then it had only the only one that is economically viable which include both the television and released one $100m-plus film, Fahrenheit in the film industry at the moment; it music industries, and even though it 9/11 (2004), a documentary directed originated when Alan Horn, at Warner produces television programmes, such by Michael Moore that (unsuccessfully) Bros.: as Orange is the New Black for Netflix, and attempted to prevent George W. Bush chose to single out four or five so-called tent- part-owns nine cable television channels, being re-elected to the Presidency that pole or event films—those thought to have the some of which do play the company’s year. That film had a budget of about broadest appeal—among its annual output of films and television programmes, it $6m*. This amount is typical for Lionsgate around twenty-five movies, and support those is nevertheless a small company. In because, as an independent, it can’t picks with a disproportionately large chunk of its terms of size it cannot compare with afford the risk of making big budget total production and marketing budget. established Hollywood. For example movies – one flop could spell disaster. Walt Disney’s market capitalisation (at To take one example: Warner Bros. spent Elberse, 2013 25.08.14, calculated on number of shares around $100m producing The Adventures These ‘tent-pole’ films are invariably x share price) was $155.33bn compared of Pluto Nash (2002), which only took just either franchises, remakes or adaptations to Lionsgate’s $4.49bn. Even Sony, which over $7m worldwide at the box office. If (possibly all three) such as Maleficent, has been struggling for a number of Warners’ film division hadn’t been part of based on Sleeping Beauty (1959). In the years, had a capitalisation five times AOL Time Warner that sort of return on last three years (up to the end of August that. So though Lionsgate has been investment could have spelt bankruptcy. 2014) only seven films in the Top Tens hugely successful with The Hunger Games Before buying Summit, Lionsgate were original properties. Unless you’re franchise, it is embarking on a high- appeared to be content to distribute Disney and own Marvel Studios, one of risk strategy in trying to compete with low-budget films that, if popular, became the most difficult aspects of this tent-pole strategy is kickstarting a franchise; so Lionsgate took a massive risk with The Hunger Games: Fewer than 500,000 copies of the first The Hunger Games book had sold in 2009 when Lionsgate reportedly paid author Suzanne Collins $200,000 for the rights to the trilogy. By the time Jennifer

28 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM Lawrence was being fitted for her costume, nearly However, the Divergent (2014) franchise 10 million copies of the series were in print. might be able to fill the gap, at least in Lionsgate increased The Hunger Games’ budget to part, that will be left when The Hunger $80 million, pruning an already slim budget for Games series comes to an end next other films and looking for sellable assets. The year. It took $228m worldwide from an company was burdened by debt… But by the end $85m budget, and the next in the series, of 2011, Lionsgate had transformed from a hit- Insurgent, is due in 2015. Lionsgate has or-miss indie studio to the undervalued owner of stated it wants to increase the amount Hollywood’s next blockbuster franchise. of money it makes from television programmes; but, at the time of writing, Lee, 2012 the amount of revenue that television That risk paid off; but other films of this brings in is only a small proportion of ‘blockbuster strategy’ have floundered. the total, and it remains reliant on its film The attempt to launch an Ender’s Game division. (2013) franchise looks to have failed, as There are reports that The Hunger Games the first film took only $89m worldwide will feature in a theme park (unlike *Note on budgets and box office: on a production budget of $110m. It’s Disney and Universal, Lionsgate doesn’t The source of the budgets are highly likely that The Legend of Hercules yet own one) and a range of jewellery imdb.com and the-numbers.com. (2014) would have produced sequels if based on the film is available. However However, they are invariably ‘estimated’ the $70m-budgeted film had grossed the soundtrack is distributed on Island/ budgets, as film companies reserve the more than a measly $60m worldwide. Universal (owned by a large media right to be creatively accountable, and conglomerate) and though Lionsgate will don’t publish film costs. In addition, get some of the revenue, it has to share it the budgets only estimate production with what are in effect its competitors. costs; prints + advertising add, on average, another 50% to the total. The At the moment Lionsgate is ‘punching box office figure refers only to what is above its weight’. But there’s a possibility taken in cinemas. Before the producers that the commercial size of its Hollywood see any of the takings, the exhibitor and competitors will crush it sooner rather distributor take their ‘cut’ (all the major than later. Even Katniss Everdeen herself studios distribute their own films in North may not be able to save it. America). After their run in cinemas, films Nick Lacey teaches Film and Media Studies, is can make money on a variety of other the author of several Media and Film Studies platforms, such as DVD and subscription textbooks, and is a freelance writer. television.

Follow it up Elberse, A. 2013. Blockbusters: Why Big Hits – and Big Risks – are the Future of the Entertainment Business. Lee, C. 2012. ‘Lionsgate Has a Hit with ‘Hunger Games.’ Can It Turn a Profit?’, Newsweek, 2nd April, available at: http://www.newsweek.com/lions- gate-has-hit-hunger-games-can-it- turn-profit-63989, accessed August 2014.

MoreMediaMag from the archive Who Runs Hollywood?, Helen Dugdale, MediaMag 17 World Cinema, Hollywood and Non- Western Film Industries, Roy Stafford, MediaMag 26 Independent Hollywood?, Nick Lacey, MediaMag 43

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30 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM Andrew McCallum The received wisdom about writer- the police force, the port, City Hall, producer David Simon’s much-lauded education and the press. All are compares the TV drama shows, The Wire and Treme, is shown as corrupt and dysfunctional, representation and that both are as much about the cities so reflecting poorly on the Baltimore role of the city in two in which they take place as about their of the real world. David Simon characters. The former, set in Baltimore acknowledges this when he writes groundbreaking TV on the East Coast of the United States, by way of an apology that ‘we put drama series for HBO, just north of Washington D.C., explores our town’s shit in the street’ in an act both written by David the city’s post-industrial decline of ‘premeditated trespass’. The Wire, against a back-drop of ongoing conflict however, while set in Baltimore and Simon. between police and drug gangs. The portraying problems faced by a city latter, situated in New Orleans over identifiable as Baltimore, is not a drama the three years following Hurricane that is especially about the city. Simon Katrina’s devastation of the city in 2005, also recognises this when explaining chronicles the city’s reconstruction that the representation can effectively while following the lives of a be extended to take in any number of diverse group of its inhabitants. cities: It is impossible to watch either By choosing a real city, we declare that the without developing a strong economic forces, the political dynamic, the sense of location. However, I class, cultural and racial boundaries are all that would argue that only Treme much more real, that they do exist in Baltimore is really about a specific and, therefore, they exist elsewhere in urban city, while The Wire uses America. Baltimore as a back-drop Baltimore, it seems, has been selected for an exploration of civic not because it is more worthy of decay and corruption in portrayal than other cities, but because general. In other words, Treme could of convenience (it is where Simon only be situated in New Orleans, while lived and worked as a journalist). It The Wire could be set just as effectively is a template for all such cities. This in several other American cities. This, becomes apparent when considering I would like to suggest, is carefully how representation of location in the established in the opening credits to show’s opening credits plays down the both shows. specifics of geography, instead giving the impression that viewers could be The Wire: a Cop Show watching any number of places. Featuring An(y) American City in Decline Over a 90-second sequence containing around 70 fast-cut edits, only two Each of The Wire’s five series focuses brief shots actually identify the city on one of Baltimore’s key institutions: (something that holds for each series, even though the credits change each time). One is a long shot of the business district, which is not particularly distinctive and so would only be known to someone already familiar with the city, the other a close-up of a Baltimore police badge. The latter clearly does establish location, but it is perhaps more noteworthy as a signifier of the show’s genre as of its setting. The Wire, for all its in-depth social commentary, is, at heart, a cop show. And cop shows are nearly always set in actual places. (Rather than compile a list for you, I defy you to think of one that isn’t.) Consequently many of the shots switch between ones of cops and ones of drug-dealers. That we are watching a crime show is further established by the

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Saints, is conspicuously absent from the credits, despite gaining global recognition as a key feature of news coverage after the storm, when it housed up to 40,000 displaced city residents. In this instance, however, the lack of clearly identifiable landmarks is not an attempt to offer New Orleans as a representation of all US cities in decline. Instead, it suggests an attempt to tell particular stories about the city, without any pretensions to telling the use of grainy film stock and mocked- recognisable, however, because of the whole story. Specifically, the series up CCTV footage. Extreme close-ups huge political and cultural significance focuses on what Simon calls ‘the role of feature so often that perspective on a of the hurricane itself: it received mass culture in restoring and sustaining New broad geographical location becomes global media coverage, much of it Orleans’. This means that the characters lost. Baltimore is pushed to one side focused on the lack of a coordinated chosen are ones ‘heavily weighted and the show becomes a personal response from the authorities, to culture bearers, to those who look at the lives of those involved in a which was seen as indicative of their supported, patronized or contended battle between the powerful and the with culture bearers’. powerless, a conflict vividly represented This is made clear in the credits (see by a shot of a stone cracking the lens of above left) by the use of real-life a surveillance camera. footage of various marching bands and Treme: a Drama Putting a dancers. These do tie the show firmly City Back Together to place, as the style of music and dancing featured is most associated Treme could only be about New with New Orleans, and its annual Orleans, given that it is a dramatised Mardi Gras festival. Many of the shots representation of events in the city are close-ups of original footage from general disregard for the poor, black in the years immediately following before the storm, emphasised by the communities that bore the brunt of the Hurricane Katrina. The opening credits grainy film-stock. Intercut with shots storm damage. quickly establish this by showing a of damage caused by the storm, they satellite shot of a colossal weather As in The Wire, there are no shots of suggest that the show will draw on system, which cuts to an interior shot easily identifiable public buildings. the city’s heritage, using this to put it of storm waters flooding a house, This need not have been the case. One back together. Where The Wire was a followed by a long shot of a residential building, the Superdome, home to the critique of the collapse of institutions district under water. The location is only American football team New Orleans

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Follow it up ‘HBO’s Treme creator David Simon explains it all for you’ at http:// www.nola.com/treme-hbo/index. ssf/2010/04/hbos_treme_creator_ david_simon.html ‘David Simon on what HBO’s ‘Treme’ meant to him and what he hopes it across the whole of the United States, meant to New Orleanians’ at http:// this would appear to be about the www.nola.com/treme-hbo/index. possibility of piecing back together ssf/2013/12/david_simon_on_what_ individual lives, and of culture bringing hbos_treme.html meaning to those lives even in the face of indifference from official bodies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_ Simon The most significant shots in the opening credits, however, are not of people, but of the mildewed walls of MoreMediaMag the city’s destroyed housing stock. from the archive Displaying the names of the cast series. In studying representation in Reading Red Riding, Roy Stafford, members against these walls suggests moving-image media, however, it is MediaMag 29 that the show is intent on reinserting always worth questioning the literal, to the inhabitants of New Orleans back see what alternative version of events TV Drama, Institutions and Audiences into the very fabric of the city. It also might be offered by choices made by – Exam tips for OCR AS Media, Jason suggests that people are inseparable all those involved in a production. In Mazzocchi, MediaMag 28 this case, they suggest a desire not to from these houses. This gives the drama The Wire: The American Dream draw too much attention to the city a political angle, which is followed as Nightmare, John Fitzgerald, itself, so that it can stand for a bigger, in several storylines portraying the MediaMag 18 difficulties people had in preventing national story. The opposite is the Playing Games with Audiences: Why the authorities tearing down their case with Treme. But here, too, it is not Sky want you to Make the Atlantic houses – even though they were easily good enough to state simply that it Crossing, Steve Connolly, MediaMag reparable – in order to manipulate the offers a portrayal of the city of New 40 social groups able to return to live in Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. What the city. kind of portrayal? And whose version Creativity and Genre in TV Crime of New Orleans? These are important Drama, Nick Lacey, MediaMag 33 Representation: Delving questions to ask because their answers Deep say lots about the potential impact of a drama on individual viewers and on an The Wire has become inseparable in audience as a whole. public consciousness from Baltimore. Many British viewers perhaps Andrew McCallum is Co-Director of the only know of the city through its English and Media Centre. representation in the award-winning

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Harry Cunningham finds out why become the number 1 US daytime show, would be unthinkable for EastEnders to even beating The Oprah Winfrey Show to be broadcast anywhere else than BBC one of his favourite TV shows, the top spot. No other courtroom show One, or for The IT Crowd to have been Judge Judy, is the most successful comes close to beating it, and Judge Judy shown on ITV2 rather than on Channel daytime programme in America. has outlived many of its direct rivals. So 4. Only on very rare occasions, or years what is it about it that is so successful? Is after the original broadcast, are the rights ‘I am a truth machine sir… I eat liars up for it Sheindlin’s personality and the sharp, sold to a rival channel. For instance Pick breakfast.’ witty and decisive way in which she TV on Freeview Channel 11 has recently delivers justice? Is it the sheer variety starting showing old episodes of The Bill ‘Do you know what my father used to say of guests that comes before her? Or is from the 1980s and 90s; but the show to me? Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s Sheindlin’s show significantly less staged was decommissioned in 2010 and so raining.’ than similar formats, thus making it feel it is not a true syndication as the show ‘Don’t try to teach a pig to sing, it doesn’t work more real to the viewer? is not being shown simultaneously on and it annoys the pig.’ more than one channel. Moreover, it seems unlikely that BSkyB, who own This is just a taste of the sort of thing you Pick TV, would be awarded the rights to will hear if you dare to enter the lion’s show more recent episodes of The Bill in den: the simulated reality courtroom of the middle of the day, given the cost of Judge Judith Sheindlin, which sits for one buying them. hour every day on ITV3. Whether it’s a simple dispute about rent, or elaborate The USA, however, has different channels fraudsters defending the most shocking for different states, and only a few networks broadcast to the entire nation. behaviour, Sheindlin hears it all on Context her extraordinary show. But in the UK, As a result a show must be sold to, and Judge Judy has made little impact: it is First let’s get a bit of background on the succeed on, many different TV channels scheduled at 9.25am on ITV3, where it show and how the American television for it to be deemed a success. Judge Judy has to compete with homegrown reality industry works. In Britain the vast first aired on local Californian channel shows like The Jeremy Kyle Show on ITV1 majority of channels are broadcast to KCAL-TV in September 1996, but has now and Channel 5’s flagship morning chat the entire country and are almost always grown to such an extent that CBS, which show The Wright Stuff. sold or commissioned from a production owns KCAL, recently commissioned a company to a channel on an exclusive prime time (between 7pm and 10.30pm) Yet since its inception in 1996, Judge basis. A show, therefore, becomes one-hour special. This is completely Judy has exceeded all expectations to associated with a particular channel: it unheard of for a courtroom show – or

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 35 MM indeed for any daytime show. How Real is Judge Judy? however, is in Sheindlin’s suggestion that she is able to recover money from One of the reasons for this is Judge Many people have argued that one of a person. For purposes of convenience, Judy’s consistently high ratings. Under the reasons Judge Judy is so successful it is the production company Big Ticket the Neilson system – a complex method is because it comes across as a lot less Entertainment that pays out (participants of rating viewing figures through staged than similar shows such as The can be awarded up to $5,000) from the monitoring audience reactions devised People’s Court and the now-axed Judge show’s budget, and not the plaintiff or by marketing executive Arthur Neilson Joe Brown. the defendant, even if Sheindlin says, in the 1930s – a programme receives a Certainly the cases last as long as as she often does, that ‘you owe them ranking from 0.0 to 10.9. In its first season they need to: there is no set format. the money.’ Guests are also paid an Judge Judy scored 1.5. Such a score was Sometimes it takes half an hour (an entire appearance fee and expenses, so they an average ranking for a programme in show) for Sheindlin to rule; but other have nothing, apart from their reputation, that slot. But by the end of its first season, times justice is served in a matter of to lose; whilst a real civil court would that had increased to 2.1 and by the end minutes. In one case involving a woman require the litigant to pay for a solicitor. of its second run in 1997-8 it had doubled suing two men for stealing her wallet again to 4.3. By the end of 2011, the show What of Sheindlin herself then? Seeing Sheindlin concluded her proceedings was regularly claiming ratings of 7.0, an just how televisual her unashamedly in less than thirty seconds. As she unprecedented score. This translated as abrasive, witty and controversial style is, questioned the woman about what was an average of 9.6 million daily viewers, it would be easy to assume that Judge in her wallet, the two men admitted to (good in the UK, but unheard of in Judy is simply an actress with no legal Sheindlin that ‘there was no earpiece in the more fragmented US schedules) – background, playing up to the cameras [the woman’s] wallet’, leading her to erupt something that Sheindlin herself often on instructions from her producers. But in a fit of giggles, branding them ‘dumb refers to during the show: this could not be further from the truth. and dumber’ before ruling in favour of ‘I’d like 10 million people to hear that you’ve done the woman. Sheindlin, a real family court judge in something stupid!’ New York for 25 years, initially captured But what of the court itself? Surely a the attention of the producers when she barks at one litigant. mere TV company cannot set up its own she was the subject of the documentary court, as the voiceover in the opening series 60 Minutes. Here she can be seen titles proclaims? It is true that in a legal ripping into lawyers and caseworkers sense Judge Judy is not a real court but who were holding up proceedings in a in many areas it still carries out all of the real court. Indeed in an interview with functions of a court in all but name. This David Bauder in The Huffington Post is because all participants must sign a she recalled how ‘she dumped lengthy legally-binding contract which prevents motions written by expensive lawyers in them from having their case heard the trash’ when she was still a judge in elsewhere once Sheindlin has ruled. It New York, ‘and told them if they didn’t also ensures that both the plaintiff and reach a settlement, she would tell their the defendant agree to what Sheindlin clients the lawyers wanted to bleed says. If property is to be taken from a them financially.’ Even her bailiff, Petri defendant and returned to the plaintiff, Hawkins-Byrd, who has stood by her side then it will be returned under the for every single episode, solemnly calling supervision of a police officer or marshal; the show to order, was brought over from if a person is awarded damages, then New York. Having worked as Sheindlin’s they will be compensated to the amount bailiff in her real court, she insisted on his stipulated. Where one could argue appointment, rather than looking for an the programme is slightly misleading, actor to fill the slot.

‘This is My Play Pen!’ Given all of this then it is very clear that one, if not the greatest appeal, of Judge Judy is Sheindlin herself. In her own words she is an undiscriminating abuser: she will lay into anyone she thinks is obstructing the course of justice, and she is not afraid to say things as they are. It doesn’t matter who comes before her: even when she was called to arbitrate a case involving celebrity rockstar John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) she didn’t hesitate to tick him

36 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM Kimberlianne Poldas goes further. She Harry Cunningham is a freelance writer says the show might actually reduce and an English student at Loughborough respect for the bench, and describes University. He has written for The Guardian, the format as ‘sarcastic, accusatory and The Independent, The Huffington Post, opinionated’. The Leicester Mercury and Writers’ Forum But perhaps what Poldas criticises is Magazine. Follow him on Twitter: actually what makes the show more @harrycunningham successful in the States than in the UK. Sheindlin’s contempt for bureaucracy See the cases for yourself on and repetition means that litigants and YouTube: viewers are offered a justice system John Lydon [https://www.youtube. completely at odds with the real life com/watch?v=K3L7xIJ3aDo] court system. Perhaps this desire for an instantaneous and reactionary justice Dog Breeding [https://www.youtube. system is less prevalent in Britain. The com/watch?v=DANe4b6daxw] 10.17- British court system is seen as the best in 23.00 world: we Brits do not film our trials, and Beaten up and stabbed we accept that justice can and should [https://www.youtube.com/ take a painstaking long time – as we’ve watch?v=DANe4b6daxw] 23.08- seen recently with the phone hacking 32.58. trial. The eBay scammer [https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=iNrwd8X3jeA] Conclusion: Variety + Opinion + Sheindlin = An Stood up on Prom Night Irresistible Combination [https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DANe4b6daxw] From the You only have to look at the different beginning to 10.17 types of cases that are brought before off for being disrespectful, or to tell him Judge Judy to get a sense of why the she thought he was part of a ‘strange show is so popular. Some are trivial: an Further Reading business where everyone dresses funny, elderly man suing a university student Bauder, David. ‘Judge Judy Rules does their hair funny...’ he met on the gay dating website Grindr Daytime TV Ratings’ in The Huffington In her essay, ‘‘Take Responsibility for for unpaid loans; a woman suing a Post July 2013 yourself’ :Judge Judy and the Neoliberal dog breeder for selling her a dog that Laurie Ouellette, ‘‘Take Responsibility citizen’, Laurie Ouellette describes how hadn’t been bred properly. Others are for yourself’: Judge Judy and the ‘the courtroom subgenre of reality more serious: men suing for damages Neoliberal Citizen’ in Reality TV, television exemplifies a ‘Neo-Liberal’ after being beaten up; a woman suing Remaking Television Culture. 2008. form of governance – a do-it-yourself someone who scammed her out of $400 culture.’ In short, shows like Judge Judy over eBay – she had been sent pictures Poldlas, Kimberlianne. ‘Should We appear to empower people: they seem of a mobile phone instead of the phone Blame Judge Judy? The Messages to suggest that individuals have a duty itself – and occasionally the sad cases TV Courtrooms Send Viewers’ in to take control of their own lives and that would never make it to a real court Judicature (American Judicature their actions, for if they don’t, they will but which ultimately deserve a hearing: Society, 2002) Volume 86, Issue 1. be held to account quickly and shrilly the fifteen year old girl suing a boy who’d pp.38-43. by Sheindlin, who once said of her stood her up on prom night… (see end Sheindlin, Judge Judith. 1998. Don’t courtroom, ‘this is a monarchy not a for links to these cases). Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining. democracy’. In other words, participants Sheindlin is the mistress of it all. If she are encouraged to value the power of the thinks a case is trivial or someone is TV executives behind the show over the MoreMediaMag wasting her time she will say; if she has from the archive legal power of the state. to dismiss a case but believes one of Jeremy Kyle – Analysing the Impact Sheindlin is not without her own critics, the litigants is morally wrong, even if and Appeal, Sara Mills, MediaMag 22 and David Neubauer and Henry Fradella they acted within the law, she will not in ‘Judge Judy: Justice with attitude or just hesitate to speak out. For Sheindlin plain nonsense?’ admit that clearly believes a dressing-down in her courtroom in front of 10 million people in taking her message – which is inconsistent with is worth just as much as a financial the normal behaviour of judges and the actual settlement. Her show then is ultimately a day-to-day operations of America’s courts – she is testament to the power of television. doing more harm than good to the legitimacy of the judiciary.

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Turning

into a Great Draw

An interview with Juan José Campanella

The Unbeatables is the first full- and Spanish-speaking markets. MM: What was it like growing up in the land of Alfredo di Stefano length animated movie to tell Directed by Juan José Campanella, (legendary Argentine footballer the story of a table football team who won the 2010 Oscar for who exiled himself to Spain and died during the recent World Cup), (and its talented, well-meaning Best Foreign Language Film for the mighty Diego Maradona and but diffident player), when their The Secret in Their Eyes, this is current superstar Lionel Messi? JJC: It is perhaps strange but I was natural home is destroyed. It his first animated feature. Mike never particularly keen on football. has been a box office smash in Hobbs caught up with him to ask There is no law that you must like the director’s native Argentina, him about the movie, and his life it! Even here in the UK, where you invented the game, there must be as well as other Latin American as a director. many people who aren’t especially

38 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM interested. It is the same in Argentina. to say in the movie. Essentially I wanted How did you pull in the animators? Therefore, I had to do other things to address some themes – passion, Did you know Sergio Pablos to gain attention: I became the class betrayal, friendship – which I feel are beforehand? clown. Of course, I grew up surrounded universal. My aim was to approach JJC: I didn’t know Sergio personally by football. When I was still 18, we them in a very immediate manner, so but of course I knew his work (his is won the World Cup in our homeland, that we could quickly depict these for the guiding vision behind Despicable with other great players such as Mario audiences. In real life, it would take Me). I met him and I’m glad to say we Kempes and Ossie Ardiles. I was happy, years! saw eye to eye on most aspects of how we wanted the film to look. We wished but it still wasn’t the centre of my life. Was it easy to get funds together for to develop further this new style of So, in that case, how did you come the movie? intimate animated performances. to make this film? JJC: It wasn’t that hard. We started JJC: Well, I read the original story by with development funding of €50,000, Once Sergio was on board, it became Roberto Fontanarrosa in the mid 1980s which helped us to get the script even easier to attract talented – it was called Memoirs of a Right Winger written. After that, it became slightly animators, but I don’t think recruitment (an obviously punning title) and was more complicated. If you are making a was ever going to be a bugbear. There’s just a three-page monologue, but it film outside the United States, you have a pool of about 3000 top animators in stayed with me and germinated in my to get many organisations involved. We the world – we got 400 of them. Most brain for almost 30 years. Strangely were able to get support from many are under 30, don’t have families, are enough, Roberto was mainly a subsidised national bodies – in fact I great travellers and are quite happy to comicstrip writer, so in some sense we worry that audiences will fall asleep go where the interesting work is. are paying homage to him by turning as we scroll through the seemingly The making of the film was split the story into an animated movie, even endless list at the start! But the main between Spain and Argentina – did though we have expanded the plotline body of the funding came from three this cause you any problems? massively. separate production companies. JJC: Not really. About 20 minutes was However the seeds of the story might You did well – I gather the film was shot in Spain under Sergio, and the well have remained in my head, had the most expensive ever produced rest in Argentina. Communication is so not Gaston Gorali approached me with in Argentina. What was the final quick and reliable these days. I think I the rights to the story. Gaston is an cost? only travelled to Spain once during the experienced screenwriter and his idea JJC: It actually cost around $21 million. filmmaking. In the future, I seriously was that we put together a movie that It’s also the most expensive animation believe that all animators will be able was a combination of live action and ever, from any Latin American country. to work from home, so they can choose animation. We started to develop the However, I’m happy to say that the film their working hours – many of them are screenplay with Eduardo Sacheri and has already taken over $25 million, night owls and might prefer not to be gradually our ideas crystallised. so even before we opened in the UK tied down to studio hours. and the US, we were in a very good That is how it came about but I think position. you are also asking me what I wanted

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 39 MM Can you tell us a little more about goes to football matches in Germany fantastic actors (such as Rupert Grint your use of the 3D process? has more in common with his/her and Rob Brydon) to voice the parts. JJC: We always wanted the film to be counterpart in Argentina (to take the Therefore, in terms of what you hear, shot in 3D, but I must qualify that by recent World Cup finalists) than either everyone should feel they can relate to saying what I think 3D is best at doing. does with, say, lawyers or bankers in cultural issues and identities that arise. For me, 3D is far more effective when it their own countries. Obviously, the look of the film is is used to give added depth to intimate So, yes, I cannot deny that people in constant. With regard to representation, scenes, rather than hurling objects out different countries do see things in I feel that the characters who appear of the screen in a bombastic manner. I feel it should be like sitting on stage in a theatre production [Campanella is also a noted theatre director]. I never wanted to use it to attack the audience. Was it always the intention to attract a global audience? What challenges does that pose? JJC: Naturally we hoped to interest people throughout the world because the language of football is universal, as is enthusiasm for the game. But we soon realised we’d have to adapt the screenplay for different nations as opposed to relying on straight translation. varying ways and, of course, language in the movie are archetypes who How about the issues of cultural does not always bridge the gap. George people everywhere can understand. For identity and representation that Bernard Shaw said: ‘England and example, one of the table footballers arise? America are two countries separated is clearly modelled on the great JJC: Well, to start with, I think that by the same language’; we naturally Colombian player, Carlos Valderrama, kids worldwide grow up watching the have the same misunderstandings who is echoed in appearance by David same programmes, and that tends to in Spanish-speaking countries. That Luiz. Another one is reminiscent of encourage a shared sense of identity. I is one of the reasons why we have the Dutch maestro Ruud Gullit. And, can see that there may be differences, worked so hard, for instance, on the UK even though the actual people may but I honestly feel that the ties that version. I have tweaked the screenplay appear more Latin American than, bind football lovers the world over are with Michael and Richard Smith and perhaps, Northern European, I do not more significant than the barriers that producer Victor Glynn and co-producer believe that will cause representation divide them. Let me put it this way. I David Burgess. These two have also problems. believe that the average person who ensured that we have brought in some

40 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM Do you feel there is a political Originally, you were an engineering nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign message to the movie? student. What made you turn to film Language Film). I didn’t feel I could JJC: As I’ve hinted, I feel the underlying studies? relax until that point. I couldn’t do message is that we often find that we JJC: The truth is that I always wanted to normal things, such as buy somewhere have more in common with the people pursue film but lacked the confidence to live or get married. Now, of course, I we’re supposedly ranged against – in to devote myself to it full-time. I was can see it was worth it! this case, the table footballers facing actually studying film at night. It was And MM’s verdict on The seeing the great movie, All That Jazz each other in different coloured shirts Unbeatables? Sports movies are discover a shared bond. It’s a political directed by Bob Fosse, which gave me notoriously difficult to get right and movie for kids! the final push I needed to dedicate football films are the hardest of the myself. I gave up engineering at once, I’ve counted at least five different lot, for obvious reasons: with very titles (The Unbeatables, The but I don’t regret having studied it for few exceptions, actors can’t play Underdogs, Metegol, Futbolin, a while, because I think it gave me an football and footballers can’t act. Foosball) – do you feel that is in any essential oddness, a different way of Sport, itself, is inherently dramatic way confusing? looking at things, a sort of trump card in a way that scripted drama can JJC: Not to me. It’s still the same film. I if you like. rarely match. But, cleverly swerving can see it can be a bit of a headache for around these problems in Maradona Can you sum up the benefits of a and Messi style, Campanella has the marketing people. But, for instance, film education? What do you think crafted a convincing animated it makes sense that the film is called you need to succeed? action movie. The Underdogs in the US because there JJC: It’s very hard to say what will be Mike Hobbs is a freelance journalist and a is an American TV programme called useful for other individuals. However, regular contributor to MediaMagazine. Showdown of the Unbeatables – it is I do believe that no knowledge is ever vitally important not to cause confusion useless. If you can learn a little bit MoreMediaMag in the main market. about all the various facets you need from the archive to put a film together, it will serve you You make quite a few TV Waltz with Bashir, Mike Hobbs, well. programmes in the US. Does your MediaMag 26 TV work inform your film work (and As to how to achieve what you want Drawing the Movies: an Interview vice versa)? in the business? Again, that depends JJC: Definitely. It’s not just a question of with a Storyboard Artist, Neil very much on who you are. But I can Paddison, MediaMag 12 getting the money from TV to finance say with absolute confidence that the the filmmaking! What I find is that one thing you will need is resilience. films often focus on character whereas You must have the protective skin of episodes in TV series (where the a rhinoceros, because success almost characters are already developed) help invariably takes a long time. I started me to concentrate on pacing and plot. at the age of 19 and didn’t feel I was But both are extremely helpful. successful in any way until I was 42 (in 2001, the year The Son of the Bride was

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 41 MM

Third year Media undergraduate ‘1970, winners and where?’ Charley Packham has had an ... unforgettable summer, not ‘1954. Go!’ only working in production I knew the offside rule as well as any for the FIFA 2014 World Cup younger sister: it was illustrated for me through the use of condiments in Rio (poor thing!), but also on a pub table by my older brother. covering the somewhat different Still, much of my preparation for my interview consisted of my male friends Commonwealth Games in rainy throwing stadiums and dates at me as Glasgow. This is her story. I helplessly responded with countries, teams and players (pronounced incorrectly of course – here’s looking at you HAM-EZ). Think those self

42 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM improvement montages you see in that takes place the day before a match Hollywood movies – well it was like at the stadium), live match highlights that, but with probably more pizza and and infotainment features (content beer involved, not to mention the 100+ that plays on the big screens at the hours spent playing the FIFA World stadiums), aerial compilations (any Cup test on an app on my phone (I helicopter footage) as well as any ad eventually reached the title of ‘World hoc content that came through. The Cup Ambassador’). production office (almost entirely made of plywood) became centre stage for Having amassed a pub quiz-worthy the next 6 weeks, a fetching uniform of knowledge of tournament trivia, and Smurf-blue polo shirt and grey combat generally adopting the ‘fake it till you trousers my costume, as the world of make it’ approach of just sounding like football became less like learning lines, I knew what I was on about – ‘Robbie and more like genuine knowledge. Keane for Republic of Ireland and those In the run up to the tournament we Well, when in R(i)ome… last minute goals in 2002 – crazy huh?!’ had several training days in London, – I went into my interview feeling like a Work aside, Brazil was a wonderful host outlining our specific responsibilities mighty fraud. Turns out I needn’t have and many a night was spent drinking and learning more about the ‘Broadcast worried: my soon-to-be boss saw right far too many caipirinhas and hopelessly Information Platform’ (BIP for short) through me when I got 1 out of 4 on failing to conceal our British two- on which we were working. We were a football knowledge test. I ‘fessed up left-footedness in samba bars across contracted out by HBS – Host Broadcast about my weaknesses immediately, and the city. I largely worked late shifts, Services – which dealt with all internal we all laughed. An icebreaker at least meaning I had just about enough time production, and we were based at the but potentially a deal breaker too – to hit the beach and hotel pool and FIFA International Broadcast Centre in how could I claw this back? top up some semblance of a tan in the

When I received an email advertising the outskirts of Rio. mornings. From visiting Christ ‘the guy for a team of online publishers for in the sky’, cablecar-ing it up Sugar Loaf The BIP is a web-based information the new Broadcast Information mountain, frolicking in the Fan Fest on system, which keeps television Platform for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Copacabana beach and street partying broadcasters around the world up I fitted the bill for nearly every single with the locals in Baixo Gávea, I aimed to speed with footage from the requirement... except the point about to make the most of every minute I tournament. It was conceived in ‘football knowledge an advantage’. spent in the City of God. order to inform broadcasters who Attempting to discreetly gloss over this had bought the rights to screen the I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Brazil, particular element of the candidate tournament of all footage that was meeting some incredible and lovely criteria, I played up the other qualities scheduled to be filmed, or any that people, having several near misses they were looking for – organised, was available, as well as providing with famous footballers and pundits sociable, hardworking and so on – and important production documentation (I was almost always in the loo when smiled my way through the rest of the such as running orders, music cue colleagues bumped into them), visiting interview. I listened attentively and sheets and translations and transcripts breath-taking places and absorbing the asked questions throughout the task of interviews and press conferences amazing atmosphere. By the end of my which simulated what we’d be doing daily. Each team member was assigned stint (just after the quarter finals) I was out in Brazil, and managed a near particular production teams to sad to leave... But probably not as sad perfect score. I got a call a month later liaise with and chase up about any as Brazilians were a week later... – I’d got the job and was going to Rio. information. I specifically monitored MADNESS! Still, my melancholy couldn’t last the Match Day – 1 content (any training long. Just over a week after getting

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 43 MM controls all the big screen content that gets displayed at each venue). This specifically included operating all visual, social media and interactive content for the Badminton events based at the Emirates Arena, curating playlists for each session, cutting between broadcast feeds, graphics and VT packages and roaming camera feeds and counting in and out of items to ensure all content ran to time. Much to everyone’s surprise, the first few days in Glasgow were some of the hottest ever on record, and a fierce rival to Brazil’s sporadic winter sun. My friend and colleague who was working on the lawn bowls claimed that one of the camera men had to be sent home with sunstroke, and things got really bizarre when spectator services started supplying huge vats of sun cream next to the breakfast buffet. Although the unseasonably sunny weather did not hold up, nothing dampened the spirit of the Glaswegians. It was not hard to see why they are dubbed ‘the friendly games’ and this years event was touted as the ‘best games ever’. Maybe I’m a little biased but I’d have to agree… Having known very little about Badminton prior to working on the Games, I left a well-spring of Badders- knowledge and made some new pals in the process, even hitching a cab back to the athletes village with one back to London I of the players from Jersey’s team post was off to Glasgow wrap party (thanks Alex!) I bid farewell to begin training to Glasgow but not before donning on the hardware some tartan and making the most of and software I’d be the surroundings, sweating it out at a operating at the traditional Scottish Céilidh – gie it laldy Commonwealth we most certainly did! Games. My role here Working in sport production is at times was entirely different to what I’d been I imagine somewhat like being an doing in Brazil. Working as a vision athlete; the hours are long, it can be playback and desk operator was a physically and mentally demanding far tecchier role and one where the and endurance is essential. But being a hands-on experience of a live multicam part of something watched the world TV studio and gallery environment over is an incomparable feeling and I throughout my degree really came feel honoured to say I was part of the into its own. I was glad for the variety production of two of this year’s hugest in roles to keep my brain working sporting events – whilst having a ton of hard and strengthening my skills base fun in the process. whilst remaining in the fast paced It’s been a manic busy summer, but far environment of a live sporting event. from being run down (pun intended) My role involved working directly I hopefully plan to continue working for Great Big Events in the Sports in the field. Initially I had never really presentation department (which considered sport a viable area to

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MoreMediaMag from the archive Painting Television – Editing Factual TV, Ella Blythe-Morter, MediaMag 49 Sport and Television: The Mexican go into; but my experiences this Wave, Jason Mazzocchi, MediaMag 18 summer have made me reconsider entirely. Incorporating the areas I Squashed Out: Money, the Media, feel passionately about, live events and Minority Sport, Struan Bates, – feeding off that atmosphere and MediaMag 11 excitement is second to none – travel Score! Football on Film, Mark Ramey, and broadcasting makes it an ideal fit MediaMag 26 for someone keen to tour the world Working in TV, Samantha Bakhurst, and explore new areas in both life and MediaMag 22 work. In the ‘Media Industries’ section of the Whatever your entry point, be it archive there are dozens of articles Arsenal aficionado or clueless and by practitioners, interns, students casual viewer, sport can be a brilliant describing media placements and field of production to work in. Those undergraduate courses, and other worried about a lack of creativity need accounts of work experience by A only look to the moving short films better renew that gym membership. Level students. produced by the story features teams, Game of 5-a-side anyone? and the powerful montages that accompany any closing credits. After Charley Packham is in her final year all, filmmaking is about telling stories, studying Television Production at and sport is full of them. Bournemouth University. She currently works freelance as a short film producer I’ve been well and truly bitten by the and television and film worker. Catch her bug (and Suarez aside, a few mozzies on Twitter @cpacks too for that matter) but before all that... my dissertation beckons. Oh and I’d

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 45 MM

GIRLS ON FILM LUKAS MOODYSSON’S WE ARE THE BEST

There’s nothing like a low budget We are the Best, by acclaimed film director Lukas Moodysson, tells the independent movie to give story of three teenage girls who form you a different perspective on a punk band. In Stockholm. In 1982. familiar issues, particularly where In Swedish. Yes, it’s foreign and set thirty years ago, but don’t let that put representation is concerned – and you off. Away from the Hollywood better still if it gives you a bit blockbusters which dominate multiplex of historical distance from the cinemas, independent filmmakers Synopsis around the world are making fantastic Unhappy with their lives at home and assumptions and stereotypes we movies which look at the world from school, 13-year-old punks Bobo (Mira take for granted about youth, a different angle. The freedom that Barkhammer) and Klara (Mira Grosin) comes with low budget independent gender and age. Kathy O’Borne want to form a band, but don’t know production allows directors to create how to play an instrument. They recruit analyses a Swedish film which representations of the world that are Hedwig (Liv LeMoyne), an unpopular would make an ideal case study diverse, challenging and creative. We but talented Christian who plays are the Best presents teenage girlhood for work on representation, classical guitar. Together the girls write in a joyful and refreshing way. It’s also their own teen anthem, ‘Hate the Sport’. media and identity, and collective a great film to look at in AS Media After several adventures together, Studies. identities. including hooking up with a local punk band, drinking until they are sick

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Surviving the nightmare of high apocalyptic city. A boy passing with his school is a common theme in teen friends leans in and jokes: films. I would argue that Moodysson’s The prettiest girls in town. I’m getting so horny. expressive, open style of filmmaking gives his female protagonists a The close-up reaction shot of Bobo distinctive voice, and by referring to key suggests she is not completely immune moments from the film we can explore to criticism. Over-the-shoulder shots how Moodysson represents adolescent repeatedly show us what Bobo sees femininity in a way that is often at odds in the mirror, sometimes with obvious with the Hollywood ‘teen movie’. dissatisfaction. But despite Bobo’s teen and begging for money for an electric insecurities, the girls stay resolutely guitar, the girls finally get to perform Appearance and Image punk. And, in a great subversion of at a youth club Christmas concert. a Hollywood ‘ugly-duckling’ make- As in many teen films, Klara and Bobo Despite the local crowd trying to attack over, Klara and Bobo cut Hedwig’s define themselves and are marked them, the girls end the film triumphant, long blonde hair asymmetric and out as different through their clothes chanting ‘We are the best’. short. Hedwig’s mum might claim and hairstyle. Klara has a Mohawk, her daughter has been bullied, but in Bobo a D.I.Y. crop. At school, the girls The Emotional Challenges reality Hedwig loves her new look and are derided by their female peers of Youth is now a close-cropped member of the for the way they look. Two blonde, Like several of Moodysson’s previous band. In the closing scenes of the film pastel-clad disco fans (their conformity films, We are the Best explores the Hedwig takes to the stage in a suit, emphasised in a tight two-shot) offer emotional challenges of being young. her strong, androgynous look a sharp their sympathy: He explained the motivation behind contrast to the hyper-feminine disco the film as follows: It’s such a shame you look like that. You could dancers we see at the school concert. be super-cute. The girls refuse to be defined by gender I felt I had to do something about survival stereotypes, adamantly denying that and about coping with life and about how to Later at a local youth club, its chaotic they are a ‘girl band’. They understand, deal with being neglected by your parents, atmosphere emphasised by the camera like all good Media students, that feeling ugly… all those things most young whip-panning from side to side and the word ‘girl’ is not just a biological people face. I just wanted to make a film about slipping in and out of focus, Klara and term but can carry with it all sorts of survivors, I think. Bobo seek refuge in a side room where they are building a model of a post- negative connotations. Lukas Moodysson, 30.05.14, thedissolve.com

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 47 MM Music The music you fall in love with as a teenager stays with you the rest of your life. In We are the Best, punk music bonds the girls and gives them a means of self-expression. The film is based on a graphic novel by the director’s wife, Coco, who was herself a punk in 80s Stockholm. The rebellious spirit of punk allows the girls to avoid the self-conscious restraint of feminine conformity. Their own song, ‘Hate the Sport’, is written after they are humiliated by a PE teacher. Musical revenge sums up the spirit each other but united in their ability marking their allegiance through of punk; Moodysson describes it as to misunderstand and embarrass their clothes and music. In Hedwig, a ‘reacting instinctively to something… teenage daughters. The film opens at Christian guitar player who each year and then turning it into music’ (scene Bobo’s mum Lena’s 40th birthday party. is mocked at the school concert, they commentary, Huffington Post, 23.07.14) The camera leaps from guest to guest recognise both talent and a fellow By the end of the film the band’s before tilting downwards through the outsider. The innocence of childhood appearance at a small-town youth crowd to an isolated Bobo at the edge friendships escapes into scenes which club provokes a mini riot. A shared of the room. The framing of her face celebrate being silly: throwing leaves, love of punk can provoke love as well between a forest of bodies emphasises making models, feasting on sweets as anger; Hedwig’s acoustic rendition her sense of dislocation. She retreats and ice-cream. Moodysson has said of a favourite track is a revelation to to her room as her Mum and friends that the film, although scripted, was Klara and Bobo, squashed together embark on a game of spin the bottle. about 60% improvised – a technique on a sofa in their rehearsal room. A phone call to best friend Klara possible in small-scale productions. When Bobo lies in bed listening to (cross-cut between bedrooms) reveals I think many of these scenes, which music through headphones, the ironic are highly expressive but do little to lyrics: ‘I’m such a lucky girl – I feel so drive the narrative forward, would not honoured’ – emphasise feelings of have survived a Hollywood-style edit. neglect. Moodysson uses the song to For me, the looser narrative structure create a sound-bridge between Bobo’s creates a deeper engagement with the late night isolation and her journey to characters. school the next morning, suggesting The girls’ relationship is tested by their that things will be no better here. But meeting with a local punk band. When unlike Hollywood, the film avoids using both girls decide they like Elis, the lead non-diegetic sound to manipulate the singer, jealousy follows, threatening audience’s emotional reactions. The Klara and Bobo’s friendship until problems there too – Klara holds up the music we do hear always comes from Hedwig steps in: ‘Repeat after me – I phone to let Bobo listen in on a heated the world on screen. Moodysson has like you’. What they have together is argument about laundry. Klara’s parents said this was a deliberate attempt to way more important than a stupid boy are liberal and attentive in a way that ‘make the film seem clean’. Like the from the suburbs. hand-held camera and improvised Klara finds embarrassing, for example attempting to ‘jam’ with the girls as dialogue, this technique lends the film In Conclusion an authenticity which often seems lost they rehearse. Lena, on the other hand, Ultimately, the band don’t do that beneath the high production values of neglects Bobo in favour of a string well. The final scene of the film shows Hollywood. of boyfriends, at one point assuming Bobo is asleep when in fact she has Bobo, Klara and Hedwig on the bus home from their final, badly-received, The Generation Gap gone to Klara’s house. As in the earlier Moodysson film Together, children are performance, determined to ignore Since James Dean in Rebel without a represented as equally, if not more, the criticism of their youth club Cause, teen films have explored the mature than their parents; in one scene leaders. They have achieved little, and divide that emerges between young Bobo offers to make hot chocolate for only Christian Hedwig seems to have people and their parents. Many of her just-dumped Mum. changed, swearing happily with her Lukas Moodysson’s films address this friends, but they have succeeded on relationship, for example his debut Friendship their own terms. ‘I don’t care what film Show me Love. In We are the Best you say, WE ARE THE BEST’ scream a Female friendship is at the heart of this the parents are seen as different to Swedish punk band, the soundtrack film. Bobo and Klara are inseparable,

48 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM finally set free from the diegetic world. We see a montage of the girls creating havoc – turning up at their local take- away in a giant cardboard box and being removed by security, lighting a fire beneath a statue, dropping balls of wool from a first floor flat on to passers- by. Using a small cast, improvisation and a simple story, the film expresses the energy of girls who refuse to conform to a feminised ideal. The trailer used to promote We are the Best outside Sweden proudly declares that the film is for everyone who is, will be or used to be 13. In reality, I’d imagine that the film found its largest audience amongst older independent cinema fans who admire Moodysson’s work and might feel nostalgic for the in a 2007 survey of 3,200 young women, more MoreMediaMag 80s world that he so lovingly recreates. than half of 16- to 25-year-olds and a quarter of from the archive 10- to 15-year-olds said the media made them The Teen Movie, Rob McInness, The film only made £42,000 on the feel that being pretty and thin was the most MediaMag 22 weekend it was released at 40 UK important thing cinemas, so the wave of festival awards In a Class of its Own: The American and great reviews didn’t persuade Caroline Criado-Prez, 02.05.13, Guardian Teen movie, Sara Flanagan, that many people to buy a ticket to Professional MediaMag 11 watch it. The challenge of independent When Bobo, the most self-doubting Milestone Movies in Youth Culture, distributors like Metrodome, the member of the gang, asks Klara what’s Michael Ewins, MediaMag 33 company that marketed this film, is good in her life, she replies ‘You’re in they are up against not only Hollywood the world’s greatest band’. Despite its but the rise of internet downloads and meticulous attention to punk detail, in the growing popularity of TV drama. It’s the end this film celebrates what the a great shame that more young people girls do, not what they look like. (particularly girls) haven’t seen this movie, particularly given that: Kathy O’Borne is a Media Studies teacher and a freelance writer.

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 49 MM

Film and media production So you’ve decided to make a film, but 1. Do not aim your project you want to make this one better than at other students coursework usually involves a your average Film Studies project. Good Your friends and classmates would love zero-budget, minimal mise-en- for you! But where’s that money going to donate all the money they have to to come from? Funding opportunities scene and much ingenuity. But your project but they’re just like you. are becoming less and less common They don’t have any money. They’re if you want to move on to more as grants and funds start to dwindle students. The general financial situation into non-existence, but one funding polished, professional productions for most students is that they don’t opportunity has become more popular you’ll need a real budget. have enough money and so if you try than ever. Animator and filmmaker Nathan to aim your project at other students, I’m sorry to say you’ll be disappointed. Wilkes shows you how crowd- Crowd-funding! If you know some students with some funding can be the answer, with Crowd-funding cash lying around, great. Go get them! is when you ask But don’t be disappointed if your whole some useful tips for avoiding online for large class doesn’t rally together to collect the pitfalls and maximising your amounts of 100% of the budget. income. people to donate small numbers 2. Family is key of money to your When I did my crowd-funding project. If you campaign, over 30% of the total came know crowd-funding, you probably from my family. They’re your family. know Kickstarter and you can think of Of course they want to support you. lots of experienced, professional adults Whilst this may not be your primary creating massive projects, but it’s also source of income, it can have a major completely possible for you, a student, effect. Whether it’s £10 or £100 you can to raise money for a short film. usually rely on at least one member I decided to do a crowd-funding project of your family to donate to your for my short film PARK. I was very campaign. They almost feel like it is a nervous about starting but eventually compulsory commitment. Obviously do I did it and I managed to raise over not pressure them into this, however; £1300 for my project which I can use asking politely or pulling in a favour in to help make it so much better than return for some extra chores around if I had just tried to do it without any the house always goes down well. money. I was able to hire musicians, sound editors and other animators. 3. Spend 6 months Before we go any further, why not preparing take a look at my Indiegogo campaign Six MONTHS! Yes. Six months. Crowd- website, which will show you why I funding is hard and can either be a needed to raise the funding, and what I massive boost to your reputation or a was able to do with it: massive epic fail for your reputation. https://www.indiegogo.com/ So you want to make sure you do it projects/park-a-new-and-exciting- right. Throughout these six months of animated-short-film preparation you should spend that time making as many contacts as possible. And now let’s take a look at how you Whether it’s in person or through can do well crowdfunding as a student. social media, just make as many

50 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM regardless of whether you’ve reached your target or not. Using a more popular website does not mean more people will look at your project. That must come from you, and people will look at your project regardless of what website it’s on.

7. Do not just rely on online donations You do not have to rely on online donations alone to fund your campaign. Go out and do some fundraising. It’s not hard – I made £30 just from asking random people to donate spare change. But you can contacts as you can. Find out about 6. Use IndieGoGo go much further than that. You could networking sessions, film events and organise some sort of fundraising day No, we haven’t been sponsored to film screenings in your area, and bring or a raffle, or you could try busking. say this. There are many reasons as a pack of business cards. Also in this Hey, it all helps. to why IndieGoGo is better than any time, do as much research as possible. other crowd-funding website. Whilst Watch as many pitch videos as you can, Kickstarter is an incredibly popular 8. Stay optimistic, work read as many articles as possible and website, that doesn’t make any hard understand what makes a good pitch difference to the popularity of your Crowd-funding is hard. Like, really hard. video. campaign. Firstly, Kickstarter have had You will get tired, you will get bored many campaign donations go ‘missing’ and you will hate yourself for constantly 4. Remember the 30% rule and campaigns not receiving any posting the same link over and over The 30% rule is the basic rule that in money, which is incredibly worrying again. People will even criticise you, the first three days of your campaign for anyone considering a campaign. As people will un-follow you, un-friend you must make 30% of your target. well as this, Kickstarter has a business you, tell you to stop, but guess what? Why? Because if you hit that much rating of B- compared to IndieGoGo’s Your project is worth it. Out of all the in your first three days, it will look business rating of A+, which means terrible things I just listed, you will good for potential donors. This rule is also get donations for you to make commonly applied to most campaigns: your dream project, contacts that the most amount of money you’ll make want to get involved in your film, local will be in the first and last days of the newspapers that want to give you free campaign, so make them count. Really publicity for your film and the great push those first three days because feeling that people support you and they can make a massive difference to want your project to succeed. the rest of your campaign. So go out there, work hard and make the best crowdfunding campaign the 5. ALWAYS do a video that if there is a problem with your world has ever seen! There’s an idea that you can do a campaign, you’ve got a better chance crowd-funding campaign without Nathan Wilkes is an alumni of the BFI/NFTS of getting it handled properly with making a video. Whilst most websites Film Academy, and a freelance animator IndieGoGo. As well as this, IndieGoGo give you the option not to make a and director. Nathan has recently started offers an advice service for all video and instead just upload a picture, working on his first feature film script, campaigners so that their campaign this is not a good idea. People do not which is a British sci-fi adventure. can be reviewed and have feedback want to read, especially if it’s a film before they go live, and therefore have project. They want to watch, they want a better campaign. Finally, doing a Follow it up: to meet you, hear you, get to know crowd-funding campaign can be risky. http://www.voice-online.co.uk/ you. A video gives your audience the If you use Kickstarter you must make article/nathan-wilkes-has-eyes- opportunity to see the confidence you your exact total, otherwise you cannot hollywood have in your project that typed words receive ANY funds! So that means that could never properly do justice to. See Nathan’s IndieGoGo funding if you miss your target by a penny pitch here: https://www.youtube. then you end up with nothing. On the com/watch?v=FoLJIR34c94 other hand, with IndieGoGo you have the option to receive all your funds

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A Level Film student Abbie Loosemore’s short film screenplay was selected for production on the 2014 BFI/NFTS Film Academy residential. So how did she get started, what was her inspiration, and what did she learn as her script was brought to life from page to screen?

Back in December 2013, I was asked narratives. Over the summer I had read NFTS we had a writing masterclass to produce a script for a short film The Secret History by Donna Tartt and from screenwriter Tony Grisoni (Fear as part of my application to the BFI/ this heavily influenced the story and and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Red NFTS Screenwriting course. I was a characters in Dust. Her novel is about a Riding series) and he said that ‘in order member of the Cambridgeshire BFI group of friends who attend a college to write, one has to write badly first’. Academy, and we had just completed a together in Vermont. They become Having gone through multiple drafts short film that was screened at the BFI obsessed with the Greek God Dionysus of a script, this is something that I feel Future Film Festival. My role had been and experiment with Bacchanalian is true! cinematography and I had worked rituals, which lead to them to commit Following the first draft, I attended closely with the director to translate the a murder. This idea of a cult, corrupted a ‘Writers’ Weekend Retreat’ at the script onto the screen. Having this prior innocence, and desire leading to NFTS in December where each of experience, I knew the process the crew downfall was something that I wanted the six screenwriters was assigned a had to go through in order to make the to write about and try and capture in a mentor who was a graduate of the words on the page come to life and this short film; I felt the concept of young NFTS screenwriting course. We had knowledge really helped when I was people believing themselves to be gods a read-through of each of our scripts writing Dust. was very interesting and enigmatic, and and it was really interesting and useful similar to Hitchcock’s Rope and Oscar Before writing Dust I had very little to hear how my script sounded read Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. experience in scriptwriting and had aloud and then to be given feedback made only a few short films and music When I wrote the first draft of my script, by experienced writers. Working with videos, where I relied on visuals to I tried not to concern myself with the my mentor was one of the most helpful tell the story, rather than dialogue. I fine details of the characters and plot aspects of the scriptwriting process; write and read poetry, so literature and at first because I wanted to get an idea her experience and knowledge of the stories have influenced my writing and down on the page and then go back elements of a short film really helped the process of creating characters and and improve it later. While I was at the shape the script into a strong piece.

52 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM We spoke about the motifs of the with ideas. I found this one of the most in a strong enough place to share characters, and I began to see the story challenging but exciting aspects of with the director. With each draft, new from all their perspectives; to have that making the film: it allowed the process ideas started to develop and I sought in mind from the beginning has proven to become collaborative, which is advice from my mentors and teachers, really helpful. We also talked about the essential. especially when something new struck necessities of the script, and what we me. On our ‘Writers’ Weekend Retreat’ we could cut, change or develop into a also had the chance to meet and talk One thing that I learnt most during new idea. I found the suggestions from to working writers and directors, and this process is that it is okay to steal my mentor and fellow writers great for ask them about their writing and film- ideas from other people! I watched a making process. We spoke to Destiny few scenes from The Master (Anderson, Ekaragha and Bola Agbaje (Gone Too 2012) as its plot is also based around Far, 2013, The Park, 2011) and Jamie the dynamics of a cult, and for the Stone (Orbit Ever After, 2013), and they murder scene in my script, I was gave us advice about working in the inspired by Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, film industry and what it’s like to have a 1999) and the image of a circle of script developed by a team of creative masked followers standing gravely people. Hearing this from a professional around a leader. As a writer you can point of view made me really gather inspiration from anywhere, appreciate the filmmaking process, and and if you are stuck for ideas – or made me understand the importance experiencing ‘writers’ block’ (which I think all six of us experienced at some point during the process) – I personally found one of the best things to do is to walk, listen to music or to read in order to gather ideas, and to try and return to what inspired you to write the story. In our masterclass with Tony Grisoni we talked about this; he told us how he sets aside a certain time for writing, and that it’s about dedicating yourself to the craft, like any art.

Into Production: the Crew It was now time to meet the crew and of course, this was nerve-wracking; these were the people who I was creativity, as their ideas gave me a new entrusting with the story that I had insight into what I could do with the been working on for months. But it story, and where the story could go. was also exciting as they had been A script is, of course, a work in progress, selected for their talent and experience, and having other people’s suggestions so I was looking forward to sharing and input can be really helpful. But it the script with them. We did a read- is also important to stay true to your through of the script and hearing it out original ideas, and what made you loud was, for all of us, a really exciting of not being too protective over the write the piece in the first place. Our and special moment. I could see the script, and letting others in. lead tutor for screenwriting, Brian Ward, cinematographers and director taking told us that we are the ‘guardians of After this, all six of us stayed in touch notes and that was great, knowing that the flame’ and as writers it is our job with our mentors and were given three the script was already visual enough to protect the essence of the story deadlines for new drafts of the script. for them to see how they would shoot and make sure it doesn’t get lost in From December to March, my script it. The crew then gave feedback on the the filming process – especially as a changed in many ways, and definitely script, and their reactions were positive. crew of young people from around for the better. The characters and their Everyone was energetic and excited the country were about to interpret motives were stronger, the plot was about making it, and we also planned the script in their own way. Brian also clearer and I had added more dialogue to develop some new ideas. suggested that while being protective to develop the story. By the time the One of the issues that came up was of your script is a good thing, it can pre-residential weekend came around the length of my script, so cutting it also be restricting, and that as writers, in March, where we were to meet our down was a necessity. This is perhaps especially screenwriters, we have to crew, the script had gone through one of the things I struggled with most, be willing to let go and compromise around nine drafts (!) and I felt it was

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 53 MM as I had to do what is called ‘killing large country house, which meant our occasionally post-production process. your darlings’. But despite having to Producers and Production Designer For me, the opportunity to be on set edit out some of my favourite parts, I had to find a suitable location for the and to be involved with the shoot learnt that although good action and shoot. Each crew was given around was great, but also sitting back and good dialogue are important, they £1500, which meant we had to budget watching the crew turning the words aren’t everything; sometimes the same effectively, make considered decisions on the page into moving images things can be conveyed through the about props, and identify what was a was a really interesting and exciting facial expression of an actor, the editing necessity within the script and what experience. Not only did I trust them all, and the mise-en-scène. So if you find wasn’t. especially the director who understood yourself struggling with cutting parts what the story meant and what I Working with the director and of your script: don’t underestimate wanted to convey, I was amazed to see cinematographers was a very exciting the power of the micro-elements. how things were created right there process. Prior to the shoot we had When shooting Dust I found that on set, particularly when certain things a series of planning sessions where the actors were able to bring a new happened that were unscripted or unplanned but worked so much better! Having a good relationship with the director, and with the crew, is also very important and I was very lucky to have such a strong connection with mine. At first I was apprehensive about some of the decisions being made on set, but once we saw the rushes it was amazing to see what the crew had achieved and that my script was now a real live short film. The post-production team were effectively writers and directors themselves, as they had the task of creating a clear narrative within the film so that it all made sense. One of the most exciting and rewarding moments of the residential for me was sitting down in the NFTS cinema about to watch the final cut of the film for the first time. Seeing what had been so clear in my head for so long, on the screen, with each member of the crew’s input evident and the actors’ interpretation of the lines spoken in dimension to the script, and the scenes we would talk about the props and surround-sound was incredible. I think sometimes worked better where they costumes we required, the lighting one of the greatest things for a writer, conveyed the story with actions and we needed and the music we wanted. and I’m sure other writers agree, is to body language rather than words. This We worked together on shot lists and see their work transformed onto the was partly down to the vision of the storyboards, which meant a lot of late big screen in front of an audience, and director, but also to the strong visuals nights! We also had to pitch our film to knowing the amount of passion that of the script. So when writing, consider our funders in what is called a ‘Green went into the creation of it. how mood can be conveyed through Light Meeting’, where we presented on other elements, and how a director For those of you who are writers and the style of the film, the location, the would be able to show it. looking to apply to the NFTS residential story and the budget before getting course, or just considering writing a When the crew reassembled in the go-ahead. short film, the best advice I can give April for the two-week residential, We had two days to shoot, which is to stay true to your ideas, but also we had already shared ideas and meant planning was essential. to compromise and work with others. thoughts on the script, location and Teamwork was vital on such a tight Your characters are only whole when actors via a closed Facebook group. schedule, and our crew worked really the words are read aloud and acted, Communication during this period well together as we were all on the so part of the process is the magic of was essential and without it we same level, something that makes the being a writer and just sitting back and would have been unprepared and whole process a lot easier. The writer watching it all come to life. the filming process wouldn’t have is not usually on the set of the film, gone as smoothly. Dust is set in a Also, inspiration is all around so always and only involved in the pre- and

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rewarding experiences to date. It is MoreMediaMag such a great opportunity to meet from the archive other creative like-minded people, to You can read Abbie’s account of work with professional actors and to creating a video essay for her AS Film meet people from the industry such analysis task in Reading Film through as Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Writing with film, Barney Oram, Goblet of Fire), Timothy Webber (Gravity) MediaMag 45 and David Morrissey (The Walking carry a notebook with you to jot down Dead), but it’s also a catalyst for other ideas or things you hear people say on opportunities and productions with the the train or in cafes. This can really help people you meet on the course. It’s not with gathering ideas if you are stuck, only inspired me to watch more films, and can also help everything become and get involved with projects, but to clear. Scripts are the beginning of any write more and share my ideas with film and as Brian Ward said, ‘You can others. make a bad film out of a good script, Abbie Loosemore is an alumni of the 2014 but you can’t make a good film out of a BFI/NFTS Film Academy. She is currently bad one’. working as a learning support teacher at Having the chance to experience the Long Road 6th Form College, and awaiting NFTS residential was one of my most interview results.

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 55 MM If thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Research suggests that advertising campaigns for a female audience are dominated by heterosexual Caucasian size 0 to 2 models. This is a fact, despite what we might think or want, in a multicultural, complex world. Increasingly, accusations have been made by the likes of Naomi Campbell and Dame Vivienne Westwood that representations of women in advertising are too white and nearly exclusively under size 6. Rethinking Representation This ‘sizeism’ in the media today is totally at odds with the facts, as if we live in some kind of virtual ‘size zero’ universe; Western women, on average, are size 14 or above. Anxiety and issues with body image are on the rise for both men and women in relation to media imagery, but the power of ‘the perfect body’ shows no sign of diminishing. The ‘Plus Size’ model is a term that has become popular as advertisers in the media have realized they can be very successful in embracing, or at least attempting to project, tolerance for what people actually look like. In 2007, the consumer goods giant Unilever/Dove ‘banned’ so-called size zero models for products including Lux shower gel, Sunsilk shampoo and even Slim-Fast diet drinks. Unilever unveiled this ‘self-imposed ban’ as part of a marketing ploy. The group released press claiming that its brand directors and advertising agencies across the Debates around gender representation in Media and Film world would be expected to use only Studies have traditionally been dominated by discussion models or actors with a body mass of ‘The Male Gaze’. But it could be argued that the most index (BMI) of between 18.5 and 25, ‘in line with United Nations guidance on important gaze for many advertising texts is, in fact, a ‘Female what level of BMI can be considered Gaze’. Sean Richardson explains. healthy.’ Fast forward to 2014 and the documentary A Perfect 14 (directed by Giovanna Morales), tries to reflect the need for the media to reject size 0/2

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models and represent the reality of culpability in perpetuating obsolete often been overlooked in previous women closer to the size 14 average in beauty standards’. The film combines critical studies of representation. Yet, the West today. the stories of the models with an this female gaze is at the heart of the exploration of ‘weightism’, a very problems that A Perfect 14 is trying to A Perfect 14: Representing powerful discrimination that dominates address. The representation of false and ‘Real’ Women the catwalks of London, Paris and unattainable images of the idealised The documentary challenges the Milan. Interviewing experts in the field female body is clearly linked to the idea idea of beauty and what is beautiful of body image, the film accuses the of the gaze and to spectatorship theory. or normal, with the rejection of the ‘media machine’ of creating destructive traditional concept of what a woman illusions and impossible body images should look like. that have massive negative impact on the self-confidence of women. The A Perfect 14 documents the story of female image, as gazed upon by other three plus-size models, Elly Mayday, females, is clearly a very controversial Laura Wells and Kerosene Deluxe. area of debate and academic The three women are followed over discussion. a six month period, trying to reshape the preconceptions of the world The Female Gaze of fashion. The Huffington Post said Women as spectators and as consumers that A Perfect 14 is ‘opening up a of media images of other women have new conversation about the media’s

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 57 MM If the reality is that looking at false representations of our bodies causes anxiety and self-loathing then we need to learn to challenge and change those representations. In analysing female representation, you will invariably encounter theorist Laura Mulvey and her pioneering 1970s work on ‘The Male Gaze’. However her work has now been challenged, and you need to analyse how women themselves consume and decode images. Mulvey’s theory is now seen as very limited in its approach; it assumes there is only one kind of spectator (male) and one kind of masculinity (heterosexual). The apparent crisis in female body image that Dove/Unilever seized upon back in 2007 suggests that the female gaze is crucial for media and Film students. Mulvey’s original thesis, groundbreaking in its day, neglected the pleasures of ‘the look’ afforded to and not gender specific. This is very See http://abcnews.go.com/ female spectators, and the complex empowering as women can reject the Health/model-elly-mayday-fights- way that females look at, and are notion of their ‘to be looked at-ness’ cancer-female-stereotypes/ affected by looking at, other women. (Mulvey) and being objectified by the story?id=21597235 look. The iconography of the tape This is a very fruitful area of research for The loss of the blonde hair, the key measure signifies the societal pressure Media and Film students. Proppian ‘Princess’ signifier in popular and expectation to be a stereotypical Western mythology and fairytale, size and weight. This, when juxtaposed is significant, with the lingerie with the anchor text, ‘Perfect’, creates company running an international an attack on dominant ideology, where advertising campaign centred on size 14 is unseen. Mayday. The defiant posing, with the Elly Mayday, the blonde haired classical modelling gestures, allows model in the centre of the poster is a look that can be multi-gendered the key subject of the documentary. and empowering. Surgery scars and Her diagnosis with cancer is at the hair loss are signifiers that are not emotional heart of the film, and down-played or photo-shopped, her image illustrates how women but celebrated and made part of the can potentially reclaim ‘the look’. campaign’s message. If we look at the poster artwork for Elly Mayday was a superstar on the the documentary film A Perfect 14 we Canadian modelling circuit, but aged can further explore the idea of the Potential Female Gazes 25, discovered she had an extremely female look. The variety of body shape In this context we need to consider two rare form of ovarian cancer. She and race in the image is immediately potential female gazes: the look of the continues to model despite her rapid striking. The non-stereotypical imagery subject, In this case the look/gaze of weight and hair loss. Her image, based is anchored by the text, ‘A Film Elly Mayday, and the look/gaze of the on being ‘plus size’ and a more realistic About Women Reshaping the World’. ‘real’ audience, the women consuming role model for women, takes on a The female ’look’ does not have to this image. The subject here gazes off- deeper meaning as she continues to assume a male perspective, as Mulvey camera, indirectly yet almost defiantly model into her cancer treatment. argues, but can be neutral, engaged averting her gaze from the more

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buying products – after exposure to any size models in ads (versus ads with no models). Follow it up: Also, normal-weight consumers experienced Kaplan, Ann. 1983. Is the Gaze Male? lower self-esteem after exposure to moderately Women and Film – Both Sides of the heavy models, such as those in Dove soap’s Camera. ‘Real Women’ campaign, than after exposure to Coward, Rosalind. 1985. Female moderately thin models. Desires: How they are Sought, Bought confrontational direct-to-camera look Naomi Mandel, Marketing Associate professor, and Packaged. of the poster art for A Perfect 14. School of Business, Arizona State University Ed. Gamman, Lorraine and Margaret In Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Crucially, Mandel, who is interested Marshment. 1989. The Female Gaze, Female Spectatorship, feminist critic in nonconscious influences on Women as Viewers of Popular Culture. Jackie Stacey suggested that the female consumer preference and consumption Stacey, Jackie. 1993. Star Gazing: look works on different and multiple experiences, concludes: Hollywood Cinema and Female levels for ‘fascination and aspiration’. Spectatorship. This campaign and the marketing We believe it is unlikely that many brands will campaign for A Perfect 14 aim to create gain market share by using heavy models in http://www.aperfect14.com/ engaging yet aspirational opportunities their ads. for the female gaze to flourish and be The website for A Perfect 14 concludes MoreMediaMag empowered. with the statement: from the archive The power of looking is A Perfect 14 shows the desperate need for A Beginner’s Guide to Laura Mulvey, unquestionable. Like the story of diversity and a true reflection of today’s society Lucy Scott-Galloway, MediaMag 21 Medusa (in mythology, the monster in the fashion industry, our media and role Analysing Still-image Advertisements with the face of a hideous woman models. The subjects of the film are determined – Lynx Full Dry Control 2011, Mark with hair made from live venomous to eliminate the established perception in Ramey, MediaMag 45 snakes, whose direct gaze would turn society that one size fits all. onlookers to stone), the gaze can With thanks to James Earl O’Brien and Giovanna If Mandel’s analysis is correct, it seems Morales Vargas, O’Brien Films for generously provoke very negative reactions, yet we that the message of A Perfect 14 should providing images from A Perfect 14 are transfixed. However, recent research (http://www.aperfect14.com) Photo credits: Lanaya be required viewing for women – and Flavelle Photography and Monika Anna and Alexis on the Female Gaze and its effects is especially Film and Media students. Kelly Photograph very revealing: We found that overweight consumers Sean Richardson teaches Media Studies at demonstrated lower self-esteem – and Penistone Grammar School, Barnsley and therefore probably less enthusiasm about moderates for a leading awarding body.

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At AS Level, moving image study Imagine the scene. One of the fastest land vehicles on the planet hurtling tends to focus on micro-analysis through the night – pistons pounding, of the media language used to whistle wailing, spitting sparks into the construct meaning. But by A2, sky. Watch it race across moor and city, farmland and mountains. Marvel at the you’ll need to understand the sophisticated organisation and heroic contexts for, and debates around, efforts of the men and women that texts and their production. Mark help this monster of steel and steam power its way across a unified and Ramey applies this process to grateful country – from London to the delivery of letters from one end of the an iconic documentary for Film Scottish Highlands. And thrill with the country to the other in just one night. thought of the letters it has collected Studies. And thanks to the high quality of the en-route getting ever closer to their cinematography, innovative sound recipients, as in the words of the poem design and dramatic use of original by W. H. Auden, music by Benjamin Britten and poetry …none will hear the postman’s knock by W.H. Auden (both at that time Without a quickening of the heart unknown men of genius) the brief was For who can bear to feel himself forgotten? achieved. The machine alluded to is of course ‘I look at cinema as a pulpit’ the subject of the eponymous Night The character of John Grierson Mail documentary (Basil Wright & underpins the work of the British Harry Watt, 1936, UK) – the story of an Documentary Movement which overnight steam-train postal service reached its peak in the 1930s and run by the GPO (the General Post 1940s under the auspices of various Office). Funded by the GPO, and filmed government bodies such as the EMB by its very own film unit under the (Empire Marketing Board) and the CFU guidance of master documentarist John (Crown Film Unit), as well as the already Grierson (the man who coined the term mentioned GPO. This era is sometimes ‘documentary’), Night Mail remains termed ‘the age of propaganda’ and to this day the British Documentary it certainly showed an escalation in Film Movement’s most celebrated government-sponsored film production product. The brief of Grierson’s talented – perhaps most famously in Germany team was to present to the public and Russia. In Germany the Nazis swiftly and to postal workers a vision of the embraced documentary as a means of Post Office’s advanced and efficient

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english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 61 MM depicting their ideology, and in such of them... yet we are all dependent on them, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, films as Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl just as we are all dependent on another. It The shop at the corner and the girl next door. 1935: see MM 48) they perfected the has nothing to do with class or education. The cinematic celebration of dictatorship. In simple fact is that we are in each other’s debt. Auden Russia the people and their machines We must acknowledge it and pay it with respect were the star, as in Dziga Vertov’s and gratitude one to another…This is what ‘The Creative Treatment of tribute to the mechanically-powered documentary is all about. Actuality’ communist revolution, Man with a Grierson’s problematic definition of Movie Camera (1929: see MM 48). documentary as ‘the creative treatment The diverse political ideologies of the of actuality’ has taxed film academics 1930s and 40s (remember this is an for close to 90 years and shows no age before TV!) found documentary sign of diminishing its irritation. The to be an effective means of mass definition also lies at the heart of many communication and Grierson was questions posed on documentary A2 no different. His interest was in Film examinations – in 2012 students confronting social issues such as were asked the following question: housing problems and the hard lives Grierson defined documentary as ‘the creative of the working classes; and his work is treatment of actuality’. What are some of therefore imbued with a strong social the key issues raised by this definition for conscience. As he noted: spectators of documentary? And in Night Mail we see just that, with I look at cinema as a pulpit and use it as a screen time devoted to clerks in the WJEC propagandist. London, Midland & Scottish Railway The essence of this debate is the Grierson, ‘Propaganda’ in Sight and Sound, Vol. II, 8 (LMSR) scheduling offices, platform complex idea of ‘realism’ or (more café tea ladies, track-layers, letter Grierson was also at the forefront simplistically): how does one capture sorters, porters, signalmen, guards and of the nascent practice of Public or construct the real? In this context so on. Only train drivers are relatively Relations. Driving him was an almost Grierson’s famous definition of inconspicuous; but then Grierson’s evangelical desire to combat the documentary raises issues about how paymasters were the GPO not LMSR extreme propaganda of the Nazis and far a documentary filmmaker should (although they were more than happy communists with a more socially- engage in the creative manipulation to take part) and any focus on the conscious democratic and humanist of their subject matter. An immediate romance of train driving could have style of documentary: qualification of this idea of ‘creative detracted from the more mundane task treatment’ concerns the technological You can be totalitarian for evil and you can be of the postal service. Indeed the very contexts underpinning documentary heart of the film is a celebration and dramatisation of the rather dull work of letter delivery – something in part elevated to high drama by focusing on the dangerous and skilful transfer of mail bags to and from a speeding train. The workers we meet in the film are sometimes shot in heroic silhouette, or given dialogue that (despite now sounding stilted and unnatural to our modern ears) at least then allowed totalitarian for good. My position is that this is the working man a voice that was a time when we had better be totalitarian for dignified and realistic. Exterior scenes good... and for the sake of humanity. of dialogue were all voiced after the In terms of his brief at the GPO he also shoot in post-production; but the filming: in other words it is all well and notes that: screenplay written by Watt tried to use the actual language he had heard good demanding authentic realism – The first terms of reference of the GPO being used when filming. And of course but only if the technology enables it. Film unit were... to provide for the staff an Auden’s poem – ‘perhaps the most Grierson’s crew faced numerous understanding of their individual relations to lyrical final sequence in the history of technical problems: clockwork and the overall... GPO activities... [to give people] documentary film’ (BFI 2007 DVD sleeve very heavy cameras; poor portable an understanding of their participation in the notes) – also serves to hammer home lighting; no location sound equipment; total activities of the state. the message that the GPO delivers no lens turret to facilitate the quick We take [the postman] for granted like the mail efficiently and democratically to a changeover of lenses; only two milkman, the engine driver, coal miner, the lot united nation:

62 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM minutes worth of film available in It’s also worth noting that Soviet of course the most famous instance of every magazine, limiting the length of cinema’s most famous movie Battleship this; but it can equally be found in less long takes; upside-down viewfinders; Potemkin (Eisenstein 1925, USSR) had elevated fare, as the renowned radio black and white film; the problems its UK premiere as a double-bill with broadcaster Alistair Cooke noted in The of filming on a moving train, and so Grierson’s very own Drifters (1929). As Listener in 1936: on. One particular hand-held shot Scott Anthony notes: To anybody with an eye for patterns, to of a rapidly approaching mail bag The two films [Turksib & Night Mail] share a anybody who loves trains, to anybody who is being swept aboard the train was love of big close-ups of wheels, pistons and excited by twilight, by human beings being extremely dangerous as the nets used general shots of machinery... [and] attempt sarcastic, by a filing system, by a cup of tea – to capture the mail-bags sometimes to make maximum metaphorical capital from this film is compulsory. broke, and if that had happened the the image of the train... [which in Night Mail] cameraman, Chick Fowle, could have Mark Ramey teachces film and Media is characterised as a medium for connecting died. More complex shots required Studies at Richard Collyer’s College, physical and social spaces, linking an everyday Horsham, West Sussex. postbox in Bletchley with the mines of Wigan... it is an industrial enabler and social integrator... its tracks marking out a new democratised Follow it up: Further space. Reading and Viewing: That Soviet cinema inspired Grierson Anthony, Scott. 2007. Night Mail (BFI and his peers at the GPO Film unit Film Classics) and beyond did not however mean that its style was replicated wholesale. The Soviet influence: From Turksib to Indeed, Night Mail is inconsistent in its Night Mail – Dual Format DVD/Blu-ray approach, in part due to the varying and booklet approaches to realism. As Anthony Web: www.screenonline.org (search further notes: for Documentary/Grierson/Night Mail, the construction of a fake train interior etc.) at the GPO’s Blackheath (London) Wright’s conception of Night Mail as a picture Britain Through a Lens: the studio, and even the clickety-clack composed of Soviet-style montage and Documentary Film Mob (BBC: sound of the train moving was statistics, clashed with Watt’s Night Mail of Broadcast 2011) mimicked by a model train set in narrative – based realism. post-production. Clearly capturing (or Alberto Cavalcanti (Night Mail’s Interactive web: BFI Archive constructing) reality was important to inventive sound-designer) was equally Interactive: The GPO Film unit – Grierson’s team; but equally they were happy to follow his own ideas, finding hosted by Derek Jacobi http://www. constrained by their technology and the harsh sounding term ‘documentary’ btplc.com/bfi/jacobi/jacobi_250.html the practicality of their task. repellent whilst noting that its hard- edge was an enticement to the The Soviet Connection MoreMediaMag commercial partners Grierson had to from the archive The GPO film unit also had to be work with. Cavalcanti preferred the Reality Bites: Documentary in the guided by Grierson’s social agenda term ‘realist’ or ‘neo-realist’ which neatly 21st Century, Carly Sandy, MediaMag and the GPO’s publicity brief, but they sidestepped the complex issues of truth 30 still found room for some aesthetic and objectivity. The Real Thing: Studying creativity. Of the many cinematic As Anthony comments, Night Mail’s Documentary, Jeremy Points, influences on the group in their ‘weak jokes, digressions and delight MediaMag 9 preparation for Night Mail the Soviet in human twitterings’ marks it out as propaganda feature film Turksib (Victor un-Soviet and represents The Power of Digital Documentary: Turin, 1929) is perhaps the most Armadillo and Restrepo, Sean the point where the British documentary began powerful. Turksib charts the building of Richardson, MediaMag 38 the first Soviet railway from Turkestan to throw off its early influences and develop its to Siberia and was so enthusiastically own distinctive character. greeted by Grierson that he arranged Whatever the motives of the film’s for Wright to script the English subtitles producers, it is clear that the film’s on its 1930 UK release. Indeed Grierson contemporary and current popularity and Wright, like many of their peers, rests neither just in its depiction of a were enthused by a love of all things bygone age of steam or in the laudable Soviet, and they even met as members example of a socially-engaged middle- of the London based socialist ‘1917 class elite mythologising the working Club’. classes, but also in the film’s finely observed humanism. Auden’s poetry is

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 63 MM

Self-confessed sci-fi geek Steve Connolly documents a Twitter campaign to save a much-loved TV series which illustrates how social media are changing the balance between fans, producers and media institutions.

I am a sci-fi fan. There. I’ve said it. Go as a whole. While I accept some of his fi audiences are traditionally seen as ahead, you can judge me all you want arguments about Hollywood’s failed articulate, intelligent and passionate to, but I have been completely obsessed attempts to make critically valuable sci-fi (alright then, obsessive as well) with the genre (in its book, TV, comic films, I would say that such an account and social media has allowed them and film forms) since I was about 7 does not include two quite significant to engage with, critique and even years old. My house is stacked with sci-fi points: firstly, that while Sci-Fi at the influence their favourite shows in a way films, books, comics and memorabilia cinema has generally been quite poor which renders the ‘official’ discourse of (yes, memorabilia – that’s how sad I am) (too much CGI in place of character critics – in newspapers, on TV and on the which celebrates this nerdiest and most development, too many explosions in mainstream web – a bit irrelevant. derided of genres. place of ideas) in the last few years, for Why make these two points in this various reasons, sci-fi on TV has gone I was extremely interested then, by magazine? Well this article is, to some from strength to strength. Secondly, that Jonathan Nunn’s excellent article on extent, about ‘fan power’ or fandom – in sci-fi generally has flourished because the decline of the sci-fi genre film in effect, the way that social media has of the power of audiences in using MediaMag 47, which made me reflect given sci-fi fans a voice loud enough social media to create a commentary upon how I view the state of the genre to influence the way that programmes around their favourite sci-fi texts. Sci-

64 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM get made. However, it is also the enigmatically, by cult sci-fi/horror actress first two series were shown on the UK story of how I became involved in an Rachel Nichols) a cop from 2077 who Syfy Channel, with the show topping attempt to use Twitter to influence a is transported to the present day by a the channel’s ratings chart on a number media institution – something that time-travelling device which has been of occasions, with close to a quarter of has happened with more and more stolen by some terrorists. In the dystopic a million viewers in some weeks – not frequency recently – and so is at least future that Cameron inhabits, the world bad for a Canadian show on a minority partly about the relationship between is not run by governments, but by major cable channel! In early 2014, fans of the audiences and institutions, or indeed corporations who restrict many people’s show, including me, were waiting with industries, which might be particularly movement and freedom of thought. As bated breath for the announcement of useful for you as Media students. a police officer from the future, Cameron the start of series 3 in the UK. And this is sees it as her role to stop the terrorists where events took a surprising turn. The Object of My Desire (who go by the collective name of Some years ago, before most of the Liber8) and so she is aligned with the The Campaign people reading this article were in corporations who employ her. But as the I am, it has to be said, more of a Twitter secondary school, I wrote an article for narrative continues, the lines between follower than a Tweeter. I use the social MediaMag about Battlestar Galactica, Kiera and Liber8, and indeed between media platform to pick up bits of news which was an utterly revolutionary good and bad, become very blurred. and information that are generally not reboot of a rather cheesy series I Like Battlestar Galactica, the show is distributed through mainstream media had watched as a kid in the 1980s. driven by strong female characters and channels. As a consequence, a look at Battlestar Galactica virtually redefined explores some interesting political ideas, my profile would probably reveal some science fiction on TV, with higher such as the fine line between freedom quite disparate interests. However, while production values, complex characters fighting and terrorism, the increasing watching the show I had followed the and overarching themes that had not been seen on the small screen before. Indeed, Battlestar Galactica was part of a wider trend in TV, where TV shows were generally becoming better quality, more complex and increasingly intelligent, and taking over the kind of big intellectual themes which (as Jonathan Nunns pointed out in MM47) had previously been the province of Hollywood sci-fi. Battlestar Galactica was so good because it broke new ground in the genre in a number of ways. The narrative was completely driven by the female characters; the programme wove reflections on the state of post-9/11 America into many episodes; and the frequently tense, documentary-style camera work gave an edge to the show that raised lots of questions about realism and authenticity – not ideas one power of corporations in our lives, and would normally associate with sci-fi. the tension between the role of the Since Battlestar Galactica, there have state and the rights of the individual. been a host of TV shows which have There are also some truly extraordinary sought to push the boundaries of and realistic fight scenes, which are the genre in terms of representation performed entirely by the cast without and narrative. None more so than the use of stunt doubles. Continuum, a Canadian series about a The show has been a resounding critical official Twitter account for Continuum (@ time travelling law enforcement officer success in both Canada and America, ContinuumSeries) as a means of picking chasing terrorists from the future in receiving numerous awards – including up on some of the subtleties and plot present day Vancouver. a record 14 Leo Awards (the Canadian points that had eluded me. So it was equivalent of the BAFTAs.) The three with some surprise, one morning in April Continuum series were shown on the Showcase 2014, that the official Twitter account Continuum follows the journey of channel in Canada, and on the Syfy – run by the people who run the show Kiera Cameron (played, increasingly Channel in the US Here in the UK, the in Canada – had retweeted a comment

english and media centre | December 2014 | MediaMagazine 65 MM made by a British fan, Glenn O’Connell. I included the Twitter handle for the UK the programme on the air in Britain O’Connell had emailed Syfy UK to find SyFy Channel (@syfyuk) so they could again as we were. For good commercial out when they planned to show Series 3. see that we had the support of the reasons, they clearly couldn’t retweet actors in the show our demands, but, rather obliquely they The reply he got was obviously not were showing that they were on our positive. As can be seen in the screen There were great responses to my side. shot, I responded to this, as did tweets from the stars of the show numerous other people. As I saw the including Rachel Nichols and Erik This kind of tweeting and retweeting number of Favourites, Replies and Knudsen, who plays Kiera’s geekboy went on for a month or so, with little Re-Tweets grow, it occurred to me that helper Alec Sadler. Rachel Nichols has success, but during ‘the campaign’ I there might be a way of harnessing this nearly seventy thousand followers, and learnt a lot about the way that fans, and discontent to see if we (and by ‘we’ here, Erik Knudsen has another six and a half particularly sci-fi fans, use Twitter to I mean the fans of the show in the UK) thousand. Numerous other people, form relationships with both the people could get the SyFy channel to change including most of the cast, eventually who make shows and with each other. their plans. retweeted or favourited the original tweets in which I asked them to show The key reason why Twitter has become Sci-fi and the Power of the their support for showing the third such an important tool in marketing Tweet season of the show in the UK. Along media texts is undoubtedly the power During the course of the campaign, I with this strategy, I thought we might of the retweet. If you can get a Twitter- had come across Rich Piechowski (@

user with a lot of followers to retweet engage the SyFy channel in a dialogue Piech42), sci-fi tweeter extraordinaire the details of your show or product, it is about why they made their decision, for and Continuum super-fan. With several clearly going to be an excellent, low cost example by highlighting the fact that thousand followers, Piechowski is a very way of promoting it. With this in mind, I the viewing figures for Continuum were vocal user of Twitter, commenting on a thought it might be interesting to see if relatively good. range of Sci-Fi shows from around the we could get some important people to world. A quick survey of the internet Unfortunately, these kind of tweets had retweet our concerns, thereby trying to will reveal his role as the guiding no effect. There was no reply from Syfy. effect a change of heart on the part of mind behind petitioning Showcase Interestingly though, we were getting the Syfy Channel. So, I spent some time (the Canadian broadcaster that makes support from the people who actually finding the personal Twitter accounts Continuum) to make a fourth series made the show in Canada through of four actors in the show, following of the programme. He retweeted the official Continuum Twitter account, them and asking them if they could and commented on a number of the suggesting, perhaps unsurprisingly, retweet our concerns, making sure that tweets I made, including the novel, but that they were as interested in getting

66 MediaMagazine | December 2014 | english and media centre MM ultimately fruitless, idea that we should However, it’s not all Positive to an appreciation of narrative and use Twitter to petition Channel 4 and for the Sci-Fi Twitterati… representation that more traditional see if they were interested in picking up journalism cannot provide, precisely However, it’s still unclear how influential the show. Piechowski is a veteran sci-fi because it is facilitated by a social all this is activity really is. At the time fan and when asked, is really clear that medium that relies on interaction with of writing, the SyFy Channel UK still sci-fi fans’ articulacy and passion means others. Fans are constantly discussing has no plans to show series 3 of that they have real power to influence the shows, bouncing ideas off each Continuum in the UK, and Showcase producers. other and hypothesising. This element has yet to announce whether or not it of fan interaction, with viewers using I guess the most obvious example of will commission a fourth or subsequent Twitter to comment before, during and fans fighting to save a show with some series. Indeed some theorists have after shows, is one of the reasons for sci- success is Firefly (Joss Whedon’s sci-fi suggested that this kind of fan fi’s resurgence on TV. fantasy). In that case, they didn’t manage behaviour is exactly the kind of thing to get any more of the TV show but they that producers want and need, because In the case of my battle for Continuum did manage to get a film – Serenity. It it promotes the show without the need series 3, institutional change has not is widely acknowledged that much of for spending any money on expensive the love for Firefly came after the show advertising. The media critic Soren was released on DVD. The DVD was an Peterson has termed this situation ‘loser absolute hit with the fans – who couldn’t generated content’, effectively pointing believe there were to be no more out that the user does all the work, but episodes of this wonderful show. Fan the profit and the power remains with pressure for more led to Serenity being the industry. made – and it almost certainly wouldn’t From a Media Studies point of view, have been made if it wasn’t for the fans. we should pay close attention to the been achieved – but a number of fans Piechowski is also clear that Twitter way that Twitter foregrounds texts have undoubtedly formed links and has allowed these fans to strategise in that more ‘mainstream’ media ignore. relationships with the text, actors, and the way that they attempt to influence This could happen with ‘cult’ texts such makers of the show. This, in some small as Continuum, which have small but way, has changed the relationship devoted audiences, or it could be about between producers and audience for news stories which mainstream news the better. outlets, such as the BBC or Sky News, seem to ignore. Dr Steve Connolly is a Media Studies teacher, examiner and freelance Media Studies We should also be aware that consultant. social media is an integral means of distributing and promoting media texts, The full text of my interview with Rich and it is clear that media institutions Piechowski can be found at http:// realise that fans can have a relationship producers. Because it is a social network, mediaschool.blogspot.com with actors, directors and producers that and because they can connect with they could not have in the past. It also each other through the hashtag, Twitter means that some fans have the ability MoreMediaMag facilitates this strategy in a way that was to become opinion formers, simply from the archive previously unimaginable: by force of the number of followers What’s Gone Wrong with Science Organisation also plays a big part. An organised they have, and the number of times Fiction? Elysium, Jonathan Nunns, and strategic fandom is far more likely to get they tweet. In a genre like sci-fi, where MediaMag 47 some success than a bunch of individuals talking fandom is uniquely obsessive, this is Battlestar Galactica – the Ultimate independently of one another. This is where quite significant; while the super-fans Space Opera, Steve Connolly, ‘tweetathons’ (like the ones we are doing for who tweet may not be able to influence MediaMag 22 Continuum Season 4) can be very useful – the producers, they can become critically fans’ call for more is heard all at once and influential in a way that traditional Who’s got the Power? Cult fans versus condensed together. It is very difficult not to print and broadcast journalists may the Film Industry, Elaine Homer, hear this. not be able to. Indeed, these Tweeters, MediaMag 25 who have time and space to discuss These observations suggest that and comment on the complexities of the global nature of Twitter and the contemporary sci-fi on TV are taking commitment of sci-fi fans is a perfect advantage of the fact that shows like match, demonstrating that the power Continuum and Battlestar Galactica relationship between audiences and are dense and enigmatic; the fact that producers in this genre might be they are exploring that density in 140 changing in favour of the fans. characters may, paradoxically, lead

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