POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF TURIN DEPARTMENT OF CONTROL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING Commission of Computer Engineering, Cinema and Mechatronics Master Degree in Cinema and Media Engineering Master Degree Thesis INFLUENCES BETWEEN TV SERIES, NEW TECHNOLOGIES, TERRITORY AND USER GENERATED CONTENT A PRACTICAL APPROACH Candidate Supervisor Manoj Rollo Prof. Elena Baralis Co-Supervisor Prof. Riccardo Antonino Academic Year 2017-2018 This work is dedicated to: my beloved family; Mom and Dad, they always encouraged me to go on; Federica, for her love, her patience, her faith; all of my friends and everyone who supported me. Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my thesis advisor Prof. Riccardo Antonino. He consistently allowed this paper to be my own work, but steered me in the right the direction whenever he thought I needed it. He gave us (to me and my co-worker Chiara) this great and very interesting opportunity based on his own original idea. I would also like to thank the experts who were involved in this project. Firstly, Chiara Sapio, my great co-worker and a special teammate. Without her creativity, her skills, her professionalism and her support this project wouldn’t be awesome as it is. Secondly, special thanks to Mara Guarneschelli and Filippo Silvestro for their big help in the work. I would also like to acknowledge Prof. Elena Baralis, Prof. Sara Monaci and all my professors of the course of “Master Degree in Cinema and Media Engineering” [Department of Control and Computer Engineering] of the Polytechnic University of Turin. Finally, I must express my very profound gratitude to my parents, my sister and Federica for pro- viding me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. Thank you! A big thank to Federica, to my entire Family, to all my friends and to everyone I met on this educational path. Summary Historically, fan culture has played an enormous role in the creation and development of science fiction and fantasy, and the genres have left a significant impact on the lives of their fans. The rise of the Internet has offered to fans a lot of new ways to communicate by creating online communities which help people to connect from all over the world, giving them the possibility to share their thoughts and enthusiasm about their passions with media, texts and creations. The development of new technologies has provided new tools for creation of products inspired to the original (digital paintings, videos, fan fictions and much more) while the increasing popularity of social media has increased the diffusion of User-Generated Content (UCG) among the online fan communities. For all these reasons we have created a small team for producing a fan-made video in- spired to Game of Thrones opening titles sequence with some of the most famous Italian cities, completely made with the use of Computer Graphic tools and 3D modeling software. We shared it on biggest social network (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twit- ter) to understand their contribution for the diffusion of UCG and for collecting fans’s reactions. This is a way to really touch being part of an online community. The thesis will also show the production pipeline that we have followed to create the video, the strategy we developed to promote our work on social media and the results we achieved. This thesis is divided into five chapters: • Chapter 1 It provides a brief introduction to the topics of fandom. it also details the nature of the subsequent chapters. • Chapter 2 It provides an overview of the UCG field. It also examines the motivations that brings users to use their creativity for the community they belong to, the uses of the new technologies and the relationship between fans and producers. • Chapter 3 It explore the reasons behind the great popularity of Game of Thrones and it provides an overview of the online community reated by the popular TV show. It i also includes a section dedicated to the main italian GoT fan group that supported us with the sharing of our product. • Chapter 4 It explains the methodology and the workflow that we have followed for achieve the final result and the strategies we chose to share the content on social media. • Chapter 5 It gives an analysis of the data gathered after sharing the short video on the most popular social media among the major GoT fan communities. ii Contents Summary i List of Figures vi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Meaning of Fandom and Fan Communities ................... 3 1.2 A short History of Modern Fandom ....................... 3 1.2.1 The beginning 1900 ........................... 4 1.2.2 The start of Media Fandom ’60-’80 . .................. 4 1.2.3 The rise of Internet 1990-2000 ...................... 7 1.2.4 Fandom in the new millennium . .................. 7 1.3 Fan’s Works .................................... 8 1.3.1 New technologies and 3D for Media Creation ............. 10 1.4 Fan group in Italy in the Age of Media Convergence ............. 12 2 User Generated Content 15 2.1 What is UCG? .................................. 15 2.1.1 Terminology ............................... 16 2.1.2 UCG .................................... 17 2.2Fan’sproducts.................................. 18 2.2.1 Fan-Fictions ............................... 20 2.2.2 Fan-Art .................................. 20 2.2.3 Filk .................................... 21 2.2.4 Costuming ................................ 21 2.2.5 Fan-advertising .............................. 22 2.3 Creativity ..................................... 23 2.3.1 Drivers .................................. 25 2.4 Copyright problems ............................... 26 2.5TheinfluenceofTVSeries............................ 27 2.6 Behind the use of new 3D technologies ..................... 28 2.6.1 Brief History of VFX and CG ...................... 29 2.7 The sharing of UCG ............................... 32 2.7.1 YouTube ................................. 32 iii 3 The Big Phenomenon: ‘Game of Thrones’ Fandom 35 3.1AboutGoT.................................... 35 3.2 Why Game of Thrones and the reasons behind its success .......... 37 3.3 Influence on us .................................. 39 3.3.1 Effects on the locations ......................... 40 3.3.2 Views ................................... 41 3.4Themediaandthefans............................. 41 3.5 Their Social strategy ............................... 44 3.6 Italian GoT fans ................................. 47 3.7 Game of Thrones – Italy : the Facebook page and official website ...... 50 3.7.1 A brief history of the page and the reasons behind its success . 50 3.7.2 How to manage a successful Facebook page .............. 51 3.8 Attitudes and behaviors of the typical GoT Italian fan ............ 52 4 The Big project 53 4.1 GoT Italy ..................................... 53 4.1.1 Our Project ................................ 53 4.1.2 Brief History of the original Intro .................... 57 4.2 Production Pipeline ............................... 60 4.2.1 PRE-PRODUCTION .......................... 60 4.2.2 PRODUCTION ............................. 61 4.2.3 POST-PRODUCTION .......................... 63 4.3 Our work’s pipeline ................................ 64 4.3.1 Concept .................................. 64 4.3.2 Production - MODELING ........................ 69 4.3.3 Production - Animation ......................... 82 4.3.4 Production - Texturing ......................... 83 4.3.5 Production - Lightning .......................... 85 4.3.6 Production - Rendering ......................... 86 4.3.7 Post-production ............................. 89 4.4 Sharing the work... ................................ 90 4.4.1 When? ................................... 92 4.4.2 Where? .................................. 92 4.4.3 How? ................................... 93 5 Data Collection and Analysis 97 5.1 ...Gathering the results .............................. 97 5.2YouTube...................................... 97 5.2.1 Views ...................................101 5.2.2 Likes ....................................101 5.2.3 Comments .................................102 5.2.4 Shares ...................................103 5.2.5 Devices ..................................104 5.2.6 Traffic Sources ..............................105 iv 5.2.7 Demographics ...............................105 5.2.8 Comparison with other videos ......................107 5.2.9 Charts ...................................107 5.3Facebook.....................................110 5.3.1 The results, an overview .........................110 5.3.2 Most Liked, Shared and Commented Posts on Facebook .......112 5.3.3 YouTube vs Facebook ..........................115 5.4 Instagram, Twitter and others ..........................115 5.4.1 IG .....................................115 5.4.2 TW ....................................116 6 Conclusion 119 6.1Future?......................................122 A GALLERY 125 Bibliography 137 v List of Figures 1.1MemeforFandomfoundonInternet...................... 2 1.2 Infographic for the major fandom in history .................. 6 1.3 Sci-Fi Convention ................................. 7 1.4 Cosplayers ..................................... 9 1.5 3D for Media Creation .............................. 11 2.1 User-Generated Content . .......................... 16 2.2StarWarsUCG.................................. 18 2.3 Torino Comics - Costumes/Cosplayers ..................... 22 2.4 UCG for advertising and money ......................... 23 2.5 TV series influential