Thinking outside the box

1. Endism is the idea that when new ideas come along, older ones are replaced
2. A media ecosystem is a system in which living organisms interact with one another and with their sorroundings and an ecosystem is always in a state of continuous ferment. S essentially, it is the collection of media sources found in our environment.
3. narrowcasting television is T.V in which specialist content is aimed at subscription-based audiences and distributed via digital channels. i.e the media's way of aiming to get more money.
4. The web is enormous, but it's just one kind of traffic that runs on the internet's tracks and signalling. The internet is more than one kind of traffic running and signalling.
5. Push media is the media that can be consumed easily by everyone. i.e on Tv it is channels one to five as they are available to all. The opposite, pull media, is when the audience is consuming media which they have demanded. i.e digital t.v channels.
6. Bloggong gives people a way of sharing their ideas without having their intellectual merit judged. i.e they can post their ideas without any discernible literary so theyare not under pressure.

My decision

I have decided to do my case study on the fim industry. I will focus mainly on how fiolms are produced, sent to cinemas and viewed. I will also however, touch upon the decline of cinema viewing figures and the possible causes for this

Feedback #1

Well done Saad - up to date and a proficient summary of some of the key debates for the film industry. I would expect you to be referencing websites that you have visited and including some facts and figures too on distribution or downloading.



Make sure you source all webpages read.



B/1

digital technology and the film industry.

1) For this question, i referred to the bbc website where i found out about how distribution of films is changing due to the new technologies available.
Traditionally, film makers used film 'rolls' which were negatives and had to be sent to a laboratory at thr end of the day to be used, this inconvenient technique has been replaced by digital cameras which allow the films to be downloaded onto a computer and watched throughout the day quickly and easily.
Film rolls have to be edited on a 'workplate' using a mechanical editing machine which is difficult because the picture frames can't be located easily. Using digital technology, it is possible to use the computer to 'trim' the film and edit it however necessary using different softwares such as CGI. Also, digital technology alllows the picture frames to be combined with a soundtrack easily.
Difital technologies allow the director to view the film right after it is shot so that he can decide whether or not he needs to shoot it again.
Digital projection systems are the latest thing. The release copy of the movie is delivered on a hard drive, sporting 100 gigabytes of the latest Hollywood fare, a digitally scanned copy of the master film print. Once clipped into place the movie is simply uploaded to a server and is one button-push away from being digitally projected. The big advantage of digital projection is the picture quality.

2) Once a film has been completed, it has to be sent to the studio where a licensing agreement is made with the distribution company. This company decide how many copies to make and shows it to prospective buyers. The buyer then sends the movie to a cinema a few days before it's opening date.
This process is changing rapidly not only to make it more profitable fo the distribution company, but also to promote the fiolm more. Recently, companies like Buena Vista have been taken over by larger companies like Disney who then send the film to the cinema themselves so as to avoid the'middle man'. Some distribution companies merge with production companies so they can work together on films like Star Wars and share the profits.

These are a couple of admission summaries throughout cinemas:

Cinema admissions for January08 stood at 13.5m, down 3.6% year on year.
• The average weekly admissions figure for January was 3.04m.
• Continuing its success into January, I Am Legend was the biggest film of the month taking £18m.
• P.S. I Love You starring Hilary Swank was in second place with £8.9m, it tells the story about marriage, friendship and how a love so strong can turn the finality of death into a new beginning for life.
• In third position was St.Trinian's , the story of the an anarchical school for uncontrollable girls with £6.5m.
• Released on 25 January, Sweeney Todd featuring Johnny Depp and Sacha Baren Cohen was in 4 th place with £6.3m.
• In fifth place the real world and the animated world collide in Enchanted which took £5.7m.

Cinema admissions for January07 stood at 14.0m down 0.2% year on year.
• The average weekly admissions figure for January was 3.15m.
• Night at the Museum featuring Ben Stiller hit the number one spot in January taking £12.5m.
• The Pursuit of Happyness was in second place with £7.6m, starring Will Smith.
• Rocky returned to the big screen in January 2007, taking his place in the ring for the last time. The film was the 3 rd top performer of the month.
• In fourth place was the film telling the Story of Beatrix Potter, Miss Potter, starring Ewan McGregor and Rennee Zellweger.
• Casino Royale continued to do well into January 2007 featuring as the fifth biggest film of the month.

I found these two summaries on an advertising company's website called Pearl And Dean. It clearly shows the decline in cinema admissions over the period of just a year. This decline may be

3) Prices for Cinema tickets are increasing, and prices for home cinema systems are reducing. This fact is resulting in people wanting to watch films at home rather than going out to the cinema. Film pirates make an estimated £300million profit a year according to the Federation Sgainst Copyright Theft. (FACT)
This illegal activity is fast replacing the cinema industry and many believe that if this is to be avoided, films should be legally availabe at the same time for download as they are at the cinema. Filmakers object to this notion because they want their films to be experienced in the cinema befoe they are availabe on 'the small screen'.

Moral panics and concerns with online technology.

The main social concern that sorounds the evolution of digital technology is that there will no longer be a global village. Instead, there will be a divide between people who do have access to these technologies, and people who don't. However, this article has some interesting information about an organization the united nations are setting up which concentrates on funding less developed countries with enough money to gain access to not only computers, but the internet too. The organization is called 'Digital Soliditary Fund'.
The evolution of these technologies has also had an effect on the way we interact with other people online. for example, the availability of networking sites such as Bebo and Facebook have given us ways of 'selling ourselves' not only to our friends, but also anyone else who choses to visit your profile and read all about you. On the other hand, some people interact with friends more cautiously because of the rising numbers of people who use these sites to 'stalk' people and the rising number of cases such as the 'MySpace killer'.
The fact the the WWW is so huge makes it incredibly difficult to monitor everything that goes on. This is why people say 'the only place we have any freedom is on the web' - because nobody can tell penalise you on the web. However, this is becoming a problem not only on local levels for the police but also on national levels for th government. The fact that the internet is so open means that killers and terrorists can use the internet to communicate information securely. These sorts of things can not yet be sensored or moderated. Also, the small number of sites that can be moderated are so easy to violate and hack, that people are finding ways of getting around these regulations and moderators.

Tell me the future...

1. Chris Wolfe is the co founder of MySpace and he says that these online networking sites are fast eveolving into a social web. He says that he expects it to become infinitely more personal portable and collabarative. He also says that the expectations of the users of these social websites are growing rapidly - they expect to be able to use these sites more often, more easily and more safely. Portable technology will fufill these expectations and ultimately make this phenomenon even more popular.
2. Chad hurley is the co founder of YouTube and his goal is to make this video site available to every person on the planet by making videos easier to upload and to access. He is an extremely positive technology determinist because he is predicting his comapnys technology to develop into ore complex, widely accessible and informative within the next five years.
3. Maurice Levy says that advertising companies will have to be much more creative to catch our eye as more and more people use digital technology. She says that this is because of the 'explosion of media channels'. The difference bwtween linear and liquid media is that in liquid, you can move in and out of settings. (You don't have to follow as many rules - you have more freedom)
4. Norvig is saying that when Edison invented electricity, he had no idea that this invention would lead to things like MP3 players and T.Vs, this is the case with online technology as well - people now use the internet for nearly all their needs: shopping, socializing, gaming, communicating. Norvig seems to convey the idea that the impact the internet is having is so great, that it may one day be as significant as the impact electricity has had on our lives.
5. The impact of technology on the economy is that less developed countries are being provided with less power, cables, etc. If this continues, there will be a huge digital divide between deceloped countries and undeveloped countries as some people will have the internet whereas others won't.

Characteristics of new media

1) Digitality is the binery code which all programmes and softwares are based on. It consists of a series of on and off pulses which are responsible for running anything on your computer, i-pod, T.V etc.

2) Interactivity refers to all the different ways in which people 'stream' This nlcudes satelllite dishes, broadband, cable T.V etc. Recently, this interactivity has been compressed to be able to fit more information into one 'bandwidth'. This basically means that it is more efficient as more information can be communicated and faster. Another feature of interactivity is that it is a two way process. i.e. you can respond to what your media tachnology says - you can interact with it.

3) Hypertextuality is the study of how texts are organised and structured. It is not as linear as it used to be and this has increased the competition between different media texts as it allows you to 'jump' between different texts.

4) Dispersal deals with how different types of information is shared between people and organizations. The fat that there has been more and more dispersal in the past few years has increased the market for producers.

5) The study of virtuality is very similar to iconography as it deals with how cartoons etc are representations of how real something is. There is a debate which asks the question 'are these animations and cartoons a representing or mimicking real life situations.'

6) Convergance refers to the idea that new media technologies are merging old technologies into smaller devices which can do more that one thing. Examples include mobile phones with cameras and the internet, mp3 players with video playing and photo viewing capabilities etc. The debate in this section is 'have these new media technologies gone too far?'