The Chutry Experiment

One of the quirks of digital movie rentals has been a legal impediment that prevented Netflix from integrating with Facebook and other social media sites. The challenge Netflix faced was a law, the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act, but known informally as “Bork’s Law” because it was passed in the wake of Bork’s contentious Supreme Court nomination process. During the confirmation hearings, the Washington DC City Paper, an alternative weekly, obtained Bork’s movie rental records and published an article about them. Although his movie choices were relatively innocuous, it was rightfully seen as an invasion of privacy, and Bork’s Law was passed as a result. The result of that law was that Netflix was reluctant to create a Facebook app that would automatically post someone’s video rental or viewing activity.

Now, after several years of lobbying, the Senate has passed a bill creating an exception to this privacy loophole. According to Ars Technica the bill clarifies two areas of concern that Netflix faced. First, it makes clear that consent for sharing rental histories can be conducted over the Internet. Previously, this required written consent. Second, consent can be given for up to two years, rather than on a case-by-case basis. So, it’s probably safe to expect that Netflix will have a Facebook app in place relatively soon, opening up the potential that you will be alerted every time one of your friends binge watches an episode of Breaking Bad.

That said, if I remember correctly, the Facebook app would also allow Netflix to individualize accounts even further, especially given the practice of shared accounts. My tastes are obviously quite a bit different than other members of my family, which would mean that if I were to integrate Netflix and Facebook, I’d want to avoid broadcasting what they watched using a household account in my name. People already have a number of mechanisms for social sharing–GetGlue, Miso, etc–and typically volunteer this information when they want to share it. Social media is already the new “water cooler” for talking about TV and movies, so integrating something automatic seems likely to capture only a narrow group of users. In addition, given the continued ambiguities about privacy–expressed in part through the Facebook memes where people ask you to make their status updates private–suggest that many Netflix and Facebook users will opt out of this frictionless form of sharing (there’s actually quite a bit of research that supports this notion).

The bill still hasn’t been signed by President Obama, so there is still a ways to go before it becomes law. It seems like a reasonable update, as long as people are able to protect their privacy, but I think it also opens up the possibility for Netflix to engage in even more individualized forms of media recommendations.

Just a quick note to point out that new details have emerged about the Redbox streaming video service. New Tee Vee reports that monthly subscriptions start at $6 a month, and that an $8 monthly subscription will also entitle users to four credits for kiosk rentals. Users will be able to access their Redbox streaming accounts from up to five devices, and the service will also offer video-on-demand rentals for as low as 99 cents. When I was completing my journal article on Redbox for the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, I finished by pointing out that Redbox would eventually move into streaming, so it will be interesting to see how they complement/compete with Netflix, YouTube, and others who are already doing streaming. If their listed prices are any indication, it’s possible that the service will continue to drive down the perceived value of digital video rentals and purchases even further.

Also worth noting is the fact that Redbox, rather than paying a flat fee for content (like Netflix does), will be paying for content based on the number of subscribers, a move that several studio executives have opposed in the past. Home Media Magazine has a good overview of some of the industrial implications of Redbox streaming.

I have been turning over some ideas about the move to christen 2012 as the “Meme Election.” To some extent, this desire to revisit the 2012 campaign was driven by an Atlantic article by Megan Garber, which places emphasis on the Obama campaign’s deft ability to navigate various social media, an interpretation grounded in Obama’s own willingness to participate in various election-year memes, as well as the lively Obama Tumblr, which allowed the campaign to use a more playful tone. This playfulness is typified by Obama posing with McKayla Maroney, the “Not Impressed” gymnast from the U.S. Olympic team, whose scowl launched one of the more popular memes of the 2012 election.

Garber’s article seems to take for granted that Obama’s campaign was far more successful at using memes than Mitt Romney’s election team, and there is probably some truth to that, although to some extent at least, Obama’s team built upon an existing community of creative class workers who were more likely to support him than Obama. Many of the more popular memes (as Garber defines them), such as Eastwooding and Binders Full of Women (here’s my response), came from outside the campaign itself, as everyday people sought to participate by demonstrating their cleverness or by sharing the creativity of others, often to make a political point. As my somewhat infrequent blog posts show, I’ve been consistently amused by many of these memes and find them to be a fascinating expression of political culture, one that fits neatly with my enjoyment of (almost) all things snarky and satirical. Popular culture (as Henry Jenkins  reminded us in his discussions of “fan activism“) can be a powerful tool for conveying a political idea.

But I think this focus on image macros and other forms of visual cleverness may contribute to an incomplete depiction of how the 2012 election functioned. First, in the final days before the election–and even in the immediate aftermath–much of the debate was focused on the practice of interpreting polls. During the days leading up to the election, there were (for example) countless attempts to discredit polling expert Nate Silver, whose predictions turned out to be more or less spot on.  There was the “unskewed polls” guy, whose predictions were briefly shared, and certainly conservative fears about Obamacare, gun rights, and Benghazi, among other issues are shared in a viral (or meme-like) fashion. If we take the idea of the meme more broadly to include any “concept” that spreads via the internet, we have to take account for these attempts to circulate ideas, even if many of them are later proven false by fact-checkers (and of course, the critique of fact-checkers itself arguably became a meme). By talking about these issues as “memes,” I’m not ignoring other effects of calculating polling results or other aspects of the campaign, including the use of email and social media to fundraise and target voters (and I would argue that one of the under-reported stories of this year’s election is the intensification of campaigns using “Big Data” to identify and reach out to likely voters). Instead, I think we might benefit from a more nuanced perception of how memes function in the spaces of political and popular culture.

Garber is absolutely right about a number of points. Much of this communication is, as she puts it, “niche [and] networked.” To be sure, I disagree politically with many of my Facebook friends and often encountered image macros that didn’t reflect my political views, but the Obama Tumblr and other social media tools tended to attract participants who shared political views. She also points out the idea that we have reached the era of the “permanent campaign” (if we weren’t there already), one that involves an active, ongoing participatory political culture, one that isn’t necessarily tied to a specific political candidate, even if Obama benefited tremendously from social media. Much of that material will be frustrating, and memes can spread false information almost as quickly as it can spread truthful information. It can be profoundly clever and can dramatically change our perception of public figures (or at least reinforce emergent views of those figures). Perhaps rather than thinking about memes in terms of campaigns, we should understand them as part of an ongoing–often fraught–political conversation.

It’s official, Cary’s gem of an art-house multiplex, the Galaxy Cinema, has announced that they will be closing the doors this weekend. The last movies will unspool on Sunday evening, and then the Research Triangle will have lost one of its most significant–and eclectic–movie theaters. The theater has been fending off an eviction notice for the last few months, along with development plans that would turn the location into the site of a grocery store. Even so, it’s impossible not to see the Galaxy’s struggles in the context of the turbulent futures of so many art house theaters as we convert from film to digital projection. David Bordwell has written eloquently about this topic, and independent art-house theaters across the country have been facing difficult decisions about whether to convert or not, given that most new digital projectors cost around $100,000. It’s a situation that affects another theater dear to my heart, the Cameo Art House in Fayetteville, where I saw dozens of movies every year before moving up to Raleigh. Both theaters are owned by local citizens who love movies and who have attempted to create not just a place for watching good, engaging, independent films but also places that give back to the community in a variety of ways through fundraisers, debate screenings, and other events.

The Galaxy has always been a hybrid space–one that offered Bollywood hits alongside of art house and independent movies and that catered to the diverse communities of professors, tech industry professionals, and others who called the Raleigh suburb home. The theater employees were knowledgeable about film and consistently friendly. It was clear that the workers were passionate about movies and about creating an atmosphere where film lovers would feel at home. It’s also the place where I had part of my first date with my wife, Andrea, so of course, there is some profound personal nostalgia that I will always have for the theater. There are a couple of other art house theaters in the Triangle–the Rialto in downtown Raleigh, the Colony in north Raleigh, and the Carolina in Durham, but it’s hard not to feel like a distinctive, local space has been lost, and I’d imagine that even with these other movie theaters, that I’ll be seeing far fewer movies in theaters (and maybe even far fewer movies) in the months to come.

I do hope that some of my local readers will consider the option of donating to support the survival of the Cameo Art House in Fayetteville. They have a page on their website calling for donations and explaining the costs (about $100,000 per screen) and the necessity of conversion, as well as the difficulty of financing this type of cost for theaters operating on the margins. It’s easy to say that movie lovers still have unprecedented choices when it comes to art house and independent films–the VOD menus on most cable sites offer a massive “multiplex” on-demand for costs that aren’t that much higher than a movie ticket, but the cultural pleasures of getting out of the house, of watching with others, are in danger of fading away. I realize that I’m verging on some of the nostalgic language about a dying movie culture that I generally try to criticize, but it’s hard to keep a sense of critical distance when those industrial changes hit so close to home.

Last night’s debate left us with two or three comments that will endure throughout the election season and beyond, but none will likely have the staying power of Mitt Romney’s remark that when he was seeking out job female applicants his staff brought him “binders full of women.” On one level, it’s easy to read Romney’s remarks as a slip of the tongue, but on another the comment seemed to confirm the viewpoint that Romney is a jerk who is oblivious to women’s needs. In her debate post, Amy Sullivan details the ways in which Romney (“Mitt the Man”) came across as insensitive to women, and the binders comment–which only came out when Romney was trying to avoid answering whether he supported the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act–has provided a shorthand for expressing that sentiment. Within minutes of of the comment (as CBS News reports), there were Twitter feeds (@RomneyBinders had 33,000 followers by Wednesday afternoon) and Tumblr accounts where many of the Romney binders images were posted, suggesting that the comments provoked a fair amount of outrage.

In keeping with the current election-year rhetoric, many of the Romney binders relied upon existing internet memes in order to make their political points, ranging from The Most Interesting Man in the World to a revival of the “texts from Hillary” meme (via That Wren Girl) and even a riff on the Ryan Gosling meme (borrowed from MoveOn’s Facebook page). Many other posts from the Binders Full of Women Tumblr use images of recognizable celebrities in order to mock Romney or tie his comments to misogynistic aspects of contemporary culture. In one image, Romney’s comments are aligned with Hugh Hefner and in another with John Cusack, and in probably my favorite, with the movie Dirty Dancing. Although these posts may not constitute an entirely politically coherent response to Romney’s remarks, they do help to make visible Romney’s lack of concern for a number of women’s issues (including his non-answer on the Lily Ledbetter question). Further, because of the popular culture associations–with TV, film, and other internet memes–many of these political expressions are instantly accessible.

In addition, these images help to reinforce the idea that the 2012 election’s media format is that of the image macro, a picture superimposed with text, usually with humorous intentions. If 2008 was the “YouTube election,” then it might seem odd that static images would make such a comeback, but I think there are a few reasons that this is happening. First, the role of Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook in this election eclipses what was happening in 2008. More people are sharing political information than before, and thanks to Twitter’s associations with micro-celebrity, more people are attempting to create clever responses to debates and other political events in order to achieve (very) temporary fame–a tendency that The Onion beautifully satirtized in a post anticipating the second debate. Second, image macros are more instantly accessible than video mashups, even while using some of the same principles of montage and associative editing that Richard Edwards and I discussed in our article on some of the more popular mashups from 2008, including “Vote Different.” Image macros are fleeting; they can be viewed more easily than videos. Richard and I argued that mashups created meaning through the clash (or meshing) of popular and political culture imagery, and most image macros follow this same logic. More crucially, they have a much lower barrier to entry in terms of their production in that virtually anyone can go to a Meme Generator site, post or (more likely) borrow an image, and then add the necessary text to create their contribution to a meme. Video editing, on the other hand, requires a much more significant investment of time on the part of the creator. Thus, rather than taking several hours to painstakingly piece together multiple clips from a movie with a political speech, meme participants can get something posted literally within minutes, shaping the response to a debate even before it has finished.

This might produce some anxiety about critical distance or a fear that we may be relying too much on snap judgements about who “won” a debate. But I would argue that these fleeting political comments actually open up the debates to greater scrutiny than ever before. And the “Romney binder” meme has, in fact, opened up Romney’s record for hiring women, and it turns out that his record isn’t that great. It’s difficult to predict whether a political meme will endure. Eastwooding seems to have faded relatively quickly even though it was able–briefly at least–to integrate itself with older, more established memes. Still, as a moment of crystallizing a political truth, these populist forms offer a fascinating, lightning-quick mode of expression.

Update: Tama Leaver gave a talk at this year’s Internet Research Conference that mentions this post–talk about up-to-the-minute research–and makes a useful distinction between “trolling,” which he defines as disruption for the sake of disruption, and “image macro politics,” which can work as a form of online activism or engagement. But even as I review Tama’s presentation, I find myself wondering whether “meme election” might be better, especially given elements such as the Paul Ryan Gosling Twitter account, which borrows heavily from the logic of “remix politics” but also makes only limited use of images or image macros.

My article, “Make any Room Your TV Room: Digital Delivery and Media Mobility,” has been published by Screen and is now available online. The article addresses the ways in which digital movie delivery tools–whole house DVRs, movie apps, etc–have been promoted. The project began as I became fascinated by a series of advertisements, including Direct TV’s “Robots” and “Love Match” ads, as well as several others that seemed to be promoting the idea of individualized media consumption, even in situations where families are gathered together in the same space (Verizon’s “Shining Star” Christmas ad is a good example of this, but I can’t find it right now). As a result, these ads seem to serve a pedagogical or teaching function, demonstrating for us as viewers how we might integrate these new technologies into our homes and our lives. The research builds upon Lynn Spigel’s fantastic work on 1950s television, which explored how advertisements for TV sets helped to model how families could integrate TV into the home.

Chris Cagle has a new blog post that addresses what seems to be a decline in blogging in the field of film studies. Chris grounds this observation in the context of his own essay in Jason Sperb and Scott Balcerzak’s edited collection, Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction, Vol. 2, in which Chris offers a polemical argument endorsing the potential benefits of academic blogging for film scholars. Like Chris, I find that the initial energy behind academic film blogging seems to have waned–even as my own output has declined dramatically–and I think it’s worth asking about why that is happening. I have a couple of answers in mind and would be curious to know if others have similar experiences:

First, blogging has lost its novelty factor. Blogging appealed for early adapters and now we’ve moved on to other forms of networked communication–Twitter, Facebook, mashups, image macros–that make the practices of blogging feel less vital and immediate. There are so many competing communication formats, blogs are just one place where we can devote our limited energy.

On a related note, film scholars may be deciding that the energy needed to maintain a blog isn’t worth the payoff. I’d imagine that most tenure committees still don’t give significant credit to a well-maintained academic blog. I barely mention mine in my tenure file, even if it (indirectly at least) had a profound effect on how I was able to build a scholarly network. But on an anecdotal level, blogging feels like the one thing I can sacrifice while trying to publish, teach, grade, do service, and maintain a healthy family life. Short and fast–again, think Twitter and Facebook–is easier, even if it is more difficult to archive.

Similarly, TV lends itself to water-cooler discussion. Even if large numbers of TV fans can use DVRs and other tools for catch-up viewing, there is a premium on watching live and sharing in the reactions to narratives as they unfold. While film premieres have a similar value–there is obviously some pleasure in being the first to see and review a movie–the fragmentation of the theatrical distribution schedule has made it harder to sustain the conversations that many independent films inspire. Even if VOD allows for somewhat more simultaneous distribution schedules, most of us aren’t watching movies that way.

Finally, I wonder if it’s the movies themselves that are the problem (or, more precisely, if it’s our perception of the movie industry). Chris is perhaps the best example out there of a scholar who uses his blog to explore film history, but blogs seem best suited to looking at the contemporary, the immediate, and as a number of non-academic film critics have asserted, there may be reasons to be pessimistic about the current state of the film industry. Richard Brody of The New Yorker is more subtle here than David Denby or David Thompson, who both seem to have concluded that cinema is declining or dead. But there seems to be an on-going and inescapable sentiment that movies have lost their cultural relevance.

There are probably other factors here. Some of this could be purely a personal perception. I’d also be curious to see if academic TV bloggers feel as if the initial energy associated with blogging has faded. Like Chris, I don’t think that these forms of networked scholarly communication are dying so much as they are transforming. And I still see more dialogue between entertainment journalists and media scholars, but like Chris, I’m curious to see what forms this dialogue will take.

Update: I think the cinetrix has probably the best possible response to the current round of hand-wringing about the decline of film blogging. I’ll be the first to admit that some of what I was describing is probably personal, and some of it may be specific to academic writers (although even there, I realize that a number of media scholars continue to blog frequently and continue to offer a wide array of approaches to blogging).

One of the characteristics normally associated with on-demand programming is the idea that it is menu-driven, rather than being driven by the continuity of television channels. Even so, a number of people who use streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu used these services to engage in binge viewing practices, where they would watch several episodes of a show in sequence by clicking through ordered menus. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about this practice, one that points out some of the industry ramifications–most notably the fact that binge viewing cuts into traditional revenue models based on advertising and syndication–but it also touches briefly on how this changes the culture of TV viewing (notably one Netflix executive discourages the use of the term “binge viewing,” suggesting that it makes the practice sound “pathological”). But as these practices have evolved, it is interesting to see Netflix attempt to program binge viewing into their streaming video service using a feature they call “Post-Play.”

The feature, which has been available on the laptop and PS3 versions of Netflix was recently announced on their official blog, and essentially the feature is set up so that the credits are minimized and the following episode will be cued up in another corner of the screen. If the viewer does nothing, the next episode will automatically start. As a result, binge viewing becomes the default option rather than something viewers have to actively create. In a sense, this brings us to a new version of what Raymond Williams referred to as “televisual flow,” in which TV is structured or organized in a way that is deliberately designed to keep us watching (and in Williams’ case, designed to keep us watching the same channel).

But what I find fascinating about the announcement is the reaction to the feature in the comments. Hating Netflix has become kind of an art form, where bloggers, commenters, and others complain about some aspect of Netflix (often in a manner that seems excessive, given the relative novelty of streaming video), but in the comments, you can also begin to see a fairly sophisticated discussion of how on-demand movies and TV shows are contributing to an evolution in viewing practices. Some commenters complain that the feature makes it more difficult to view the credits, while others state that having the new episode start right away disrupts the sensory pleasures of savoring an episode while the credits and music play. Others suggest that the feature should be opt-in so that viewers who want to continue watching an episode don’t have to hit a button to continue watching. Finally, many viewers point out that extra scenes are often embedded deep into the credits so that a viewer may miss an important scene. These comments point to valuable questions about how viewing practices and interfaces are constantly in negotiation in the current moment of media in transition.

After several years of writing, I’ve just submitted my revised manuscript for second book, On-Demand Culture: Digital Delivery and the Future of Movies. The book is still several months away from publication–there’s copy-editing and page-proofing to be done–but the lion’s share of writing and researching is complete. And quite naturally, completing such as task has me reflecting on my writing process for this book and thinking about what I would like to do next.

To a great extent, these questions are caught up in the personal. I started writing book two just a few weeks after meeting and falling in love with the person who would eventually become my wife, and although she has been supportive of my research, I also have little interest in maintaining my hermetic lifestyle and the writing pace that saw me through the completion of Reinventing Cinema. It’s also a “professional” question, in that I am aware, as many scholars have been discussing lately (I’ll cite many of them soon), that there is some value in writing in formats that are not considered “academic” or that we need more flexible ideas of what counts as a “sellable” piece of academic writing in an era in which academic presses are struggling (as the discussion of the University of Missouri Press illustrates). It’s also “political,” in the broad sense of that term. Writing in academic contexts can often be very insular, and I’d like to branch out from that and to see more scholars do the same.

With that in mind, I’ve decided that I’m going to be taking a little breather before I decide on my next Big Project. I’ve maintained a more or less frenetic writing pace since about 2007, and I think it’s time to recharge a little bit and figure out where I want to focus my writing efforts in the future. That’s not to imply that I am not excited about the work I have done in On-Demand Culture or in the scholarly essays that grew out of it. Instead, I think this might be an opportunity to go back to using the blog as a space for thinking about and testing ideas, for cultivating new approaches and new ways of thinking about the issues and ideas that matter to me. When I finished Reinventing Cinema, I already knew, even as I was sending off the manuscript, where I would be going with my next book, that I wanted to address the distribution “crisis” and especially how it might be affecting independent film. In the process of writing, my focus shifted slightly. I became interested in Redbox kiosks, 3D movies, digital cable advertisements, movie apps (such as the Netflix iPhone app), and other aspects of the movie industry, but they were all tied to the idea of digital delivery and to the underlying concerns behind my original set of questions: What is digital delivery and where is it taking us? What are the implications for the movie industry, for independent artists, and for audiences? The answers, as I hope my book will show, are complex and sometimes contradictory. I don’t have that gnawing question this time, that sense of crisis that propelled my research for the last three years since Reinventing came out.

But in thinking about the process for this book, it was (in some ways) much less “public” than the process for my first book. In some ways, that was a function of time. I chose to cut down on blogging so that I would have more time for bigger projects, such as academic essays and the book. Part of that was the changed nature of the academic blogosphere, and here is where I think that some of my experiences might fit into the (very productive) discussions that I have been following about blogging and academic writing. One of the reasons that I have likely slowed down on blogging is that the format seems less social than it used to be. There are a number of reasons for this shift, and Kathleen Fitzpatrick identifies a few of them. RSS feeds make it so that readers don’t have to go directly to the author’s blog, and perhaps more insidiously, Facebook has a “hovering” effect in that it sucks comments and content in, making them less visible on the blog. Comment spam also became a factor, especially starting around 2004 or so, which also adds a barrier–required registrations, demonstrating that you’re not a robot–to keep readers from commenting on the blog directly.

That being said, I think the blog format–informal and conversational–can foster valuable dialogue and can allow authors and readers to share and develop ideas. I like Kathleen’s idea of blogging as serialized scholarship, and her suggestion that we need better methods for “capturing thought in the idea of being produced.” Some of this process is “captured” in blog archives. I can see, for example, that I wrote quite a bit about Redbox and related phenomena, but many of the helpful responses I received along the way aren’t there. And like her, I’m not ready to suggest that humanities journals no longer serve as “tombstones” for thought, in the same way that Paul Krugman sees happening in economics journals, but I think the play between blogging, academic journals, and books can help to foster healthy discussion about a research topic, whether it’s Keynesian economics, the future of the book, or the ongoing evolution of the movie industry.

Further, as Jason Mittell notes, there is some value in using blogs and other social media formats as a form of pre-publication publicity. Jason had a much more “open-source” process for his second book, in that he posted entire chapters to his blog and Media Commons for peer-to-peer review, inviting feedback from anyone who wished to comment (he also points to Scott Higgins’ ongoing research, which has, so far, only been published on his blog. I’ve posted a few ideas, but rarely have I posted actual content here, but like Jason, I think these forms of “pre-publication” can serve a vital role of engaging with a wier audience, even while having your ideas tested by this more expansive form of readership. Their comments provide me with even more incentive to renew my focus on blogging, especially during a moment of media transition when it feels like so many writers are getting it wrong, as I tried to complain in my bullet-point post mentioning Neal Gabler and Ranall Stross’s recent articles.

Ultimately, these questions about format and informality even speak to the possibility of reconsidering the object that can be monetized by academic presses. Jeff Rice has been addressing the University of Missouri Press’s evolution by suggesting that presses ought to consider selling short articles/essays for a dollar or two via electronic formats, following the “singles” model used by iTunes to great success. I think there is quite a bit of value in that, especially when many journals charge exorbitant rates ($15 and more) for digital copies of single articles. I realize the motivation behind the higher rates–protecting the value of institutional subscriptions–but a bestselling academic “single” might provide academic presses with some additional revenue.

No matter what, I am excited that On-Demand Culture has taken this big step towards completion, not just because it frees me from an intense focus on a single deadline but because it allows me to begin thinking about the “next” question, about what I want I want to write about and even about the formats I’ll be using to engage with others about those ideas.

Just a quick pointer to a fascinating bit of stunt comedy, in which Mark Malkoff took on the challenge of finding out how many hours of Netflix he could watch in a single month. Reasoning that he wanted to get the most value out of his $7.99 monthly streaming bill from Netflix, Malkoff watched 252 feature-length movies in a single month, meaning that he paid approximately three cents per movie. It’s an intriguing experiment to me, in part because it takes the promises of the long tail to absurd lengths, and for the most part, Malkoff was an attentive and reflective participant. He also notes, for example, that his use of streaming video consumed a lot of data, even joking that his cable company is likely “mad” at him for using so much bandwidth, and calling attention to one of the “hidden” costs of streaming video and long tail economics.

He points out that he had more than enough films to watch, given that Netflix has thousands of titles available on its streaming service, so although it is easy to complain about a “content drought” on Netflix, these complaints may be shaped by expectations that we should be able to stream the most recent titles. He also discusses, in this New Tee Vee interview, how he used a balance of social media and recommendation engines, such as Instantwatcher, to find movies that he wanted to see. He also points out that streaming (at least on Netflix) still makes it difficult to watch with the bonus features familiar from DVDs. To correct the situation, he gets a bemused Jason London to comment on Dazed and Confused and a bedraggled Andrew McCarthy to pull him on a wagon through Central Park while he watched St. Elmo’s Fire on his iPad (a subtle reminder that streaming content is also mobile). The video is quite obviously great PR for Netflix, although Malkoff professes that he was never in contact with the company until after the experiment was complete, but it’s also a quirky illustration of how our viewing expectations and practices have changed in the streaming era.

Update: I forgot to link to Malkoff’s complete list of movies that he watched over the course of a month. There are a number of really good films here, ranging from film studies staples (Bonnie and Clyde) to silents (plenty of Keaton and Chaplin) to indie and cult classics (Tiny Furniture, Big Lebowski), although toward the middle he seemed to decide to be a little masochistic and watch some of the “worst” movies possible (Battlefield Earth, Gigli).

Steven Zeitchik and Jonathan Landreth have a fascinating must-read article that explores how the Chinese market is affecting creative decisions made by Hollywood studios (also Check out Zeitchik’s blog post on the topic). Because of China’s growing middle class (and the further opening up of their movie quota system), studios are working harder to produce content that will satisfy the relatively strict censors at China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television while also working to court Chinese businesses for production funds.

Some of these changes are relatively minimal: The movie Battleship was tweaked to give Chinese scientists credit for first identifying the alien invaders. Others are more substantial. The remake of Red Dawn (which seems to have been in process for ages) was re-edited to change the U.S. invaders from Chinese to North Korean, while Chinese bioelectric engineers were added as “experts” to the movie Salmon Fishing in Yemen, when there were no similar characters in the original novel. In all cases, narrative and character decisions are being made with some awareness about how (and even whether) the film will play legally in the Chinese market.

Zeitchik and Landreth characterize these decisions as a form of “censorship” in a couple of places, but I’m not quite sure that’s the right way of describing what is happening (or I would at least like to qualify the concept of censorship here). Yes, undesirable images may be censored, and in some cases literally cut, from movies, as happened when Chow Yun Fat’s scenes were removed from one of the Pirates of Caribbean movies. And these decisions may shape the kinds of projects that get funded. I’d imagine, for example, that a studio might now be much more reluctant to finance a project like Seven Years in Tibet. But “economic censorship” is quite a bit different than state censorship, and filmmakers theoretically could reject working with Chinese companies, as Relatively Media did when it was threatened with a boycott by human rights groups angered that they planned to film in a location close to wehere activist Chen Guangcheng was being held under house arrest. And if this means that we will get fewer racist caricatures of Chinese people and cultures, then I think there is some value in respecting these markets. This doesn’t mean that state censorship isn’t functioning here–China’s censorship practices are well-documented–but it is still the case that most of the motivations for Hollywood for altring content are economic.

Still, I think the article is an important read if only because it illustrates the degree to which these forms of economic censorship function in shaping cinematic storytelling, and more significantly, how these changed storytelling practices are being driven not necessarily (or even primarily in some cases) by American sensibilities but by those of a wider, globalized audience and by the state and economic interests that seek to shape the content of Hollywood entertainment.

Roger Ebert has a thought-provoking post on the role of streaming video in financing independent and art house films, in which he argues that declining DVD sales will make it more difficult for DVD companies to pay for quality film restorations, leading to a situation in which “ non-blockbuster titles will undergo a sudden income crisis.” Ebert explains that in the past, DVD companies could rely on retail sales through direct mail or Amazon, to video stores, and to Netflix. But due to the availability of streaming video sites, DVD sales have been declining and video stores have been closing, while Netlix has begun to purchase fewer DVDs because of its increasing emphasis on streaming. Further, studios make less money selling streaming rights than they do selling DVDs.

Ebert’s argument builds upon the news that consumers will likely watch more movies online in 2012 than they do on DVD, a situation that is obviously unlike to reverse itself. I know that in my own household, my stepdaughter and exchange-student daughter rarely watch DVDs, other than infrequent trips to Redbox. I still receive DVDs from Netflix, but they typically collect dust. When we decide to watch something, it usually involves flipping through menus on Netflix, using both genre categories and (less often) our instant queue, to find something to watch. Very rarely do we have “appointment screenings” of movies, unless I am doing research on something. Ebert acknowledges that he divides his viewing relatively evenly between streaming and DVD, and I think we have reached a stage where, for many families, skimming streaming services has become a major option for passing time during the evening. In some cases, this may involve maintaining a Netflix membership and complaining periodically about the thin streaming catalog or rotating between Netflix, Hulu, and an independent site, such as Fandor (a site that deserves a lot of credit for not only supporting older titles but also for its 50/50 revenue split with independent filmmakers).  But in the near future, it seems unlikely that there will be a single catalog where everything will be readily available.

With that in mind, we need to be attentive to the ways this will affect different aspects of the film industry. Ebert is probably right to surmise that film restorations may become prohibitively expensive for everyone other than a small number of boutique companies like Criterion, but I wonder how newer independent films will be affected, given that most of them will likely never be converted to film prints. Direct DVD sales (and sales through Amazon) are still likely to play a crucial role in financing independents (note my previous post on crowdfunding and the practice of pre-selling DVDs), but streaming and other forms of video-on-demand are also likely to play a critical role, and I suspect that Ebert is right to speculate that this may require consumers to pay more to support these films. As Ebert puts it, “Sooner or later, one way or another, streaming will have to pay for the films it streams. That means us.” Thus, we seem to have reached a strange point in which more choices than ever are (or at least appear to be) instantly available, even while those choices may be splintered between a variety of platforms and devices that sometimes make it difficult for consumers to seek out specific movies. At the same time, despite this wide range of choices, the loss in DVD sales continues to make it difficult to pay for and maintain catalogs of older films.

Taking a quick break from working on revisions to book two to point out some recent discussion of the use of crowdfunding to raise money for independent films. Since the 2008 closure of several major indie distributors, there has been a slow but steady turn toward alternative funding and distribution models, and there seems to be some evidence that prominent indie filmmakers are using crowdfunding techniques.

Writing for the Sundance blog, Elisabeth Holm discusses The Canyons, a collaboration between Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader and novelist Bret Easton Ellis on The Canyons, a drama about a group of power-hungry Hollywood types. Notably, in addition to raising funds through Kickstarter (the team has already raised $148,000-plus with a day of fundraising left), Schrader and Ellis also invited supporters to help cast the movie, using Let It Cast, a kind of open-source casting system that allows actors to post auditions for parts online. But I think that what is striking about The Canyons is the degree to which the film ‘s crowdfunding promotions are tied up in more traditional forms of promotions and tie-ins. Although it is relatively common for indie producers to promise copies of the DVD when the film is completed, it struck me that selling the DVD before the movie comes out functions somewhat like  ”foreign pre-sales” might have in the past; that is, it is essentially selling some “rights” to the movie (in one case, broadcast rights, in another, the right to own a copy of the DVD)  before it is finished in order to finance the completion of the movie. This is sort of obvious, but by selling enough copies of the DVD before the film is made–by my count, they pre-sold well over 700 DVDs–they can also demonstrate interest in the film before it is even finished. At the same time, the campaign seems to offer, more than most Kickstarter projects, a ticket to a limited form of access to celebrity. Gifts for larger donations include the opportunity to meet Schrader or Ellis, to get script notes from Schrader, and in one case, Schrader’s set gift from Robert DeNiro on Taxi Driver (an engraved belt buckle). It’s an interesting example of how older forms of independent cinema are now being repackaged through these crowdosurcing models.

Lucas McNelly discusses a similar project featuring a familiar Hollywood actor, Matthew Lillard, who is usually remembered for his role as Shaggy in the Scooby-Doo movie or as one of the wise-cracking teens in Scream. Lillard has raised over $128,000 (with a week left, as of today) from over 1,800 backers, suggesting that he has a much broader base of support, even if the donations have been smaller. The movie, Fat Kid Rules the World,  which has already played at South by Southwest, is an adaptation of a novel, providing it with an existing fan community beyond Lillard’s reputation as an actor. There are some creative perks–one donation amount will allow you to have Lillard (as Shaggy) record your outgoing voicemail message–but as McNelly suggests, Lillard’s active attempt to engage with potential fans has been crucial to the campaign’s success. Lillard spent a marathon 3 hour session on Reddit, chatting with fans and allowing them to ask him anything they wished. This is not suggest that one approach is superior, but instead to point out that inside and outside are becoming increasingly blurred when it comes to the use of crowdfunding models.

For something a little more substantial, Geoff King (author of the forthcoming Indie 2.0 and several other books) pointed to a BBC report on crowdfunding and its place in the indie sector, which they framed through a discussion of another successful indie project, Andrew Semans’ Nancy, Please (note: I had the opportunity to review Semans’ poignant and observant short film, All Day Long several years ago, so I can’t wait to see his latest effort). Some data from the BBC piece: over 5,000 films have successfully raised funds on Kickstarter, and as King notes 17 films from this year’s Sundance and 33 from this year’s SXSW were Kickstarter projects. Definitely quite a bit to think about here as indie funding models continue to evolve.

In doing some research on digital movie distribution, I have become fascinated by the role of movie kiosks as tools for renting, and in some cases selling, movies. Probably the most visible–and most disruptive–version of the use of kiosks has been Redbox, which now has over 35,000 DVD vending machines in retailers, fast food restaurants, and airports across the United States and Canada. I’ve discussed Redbox in some detail in an article I published in the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, where I linked Redbox’s success, in part, to its ability to cater to families, especially those with young children, while also attempting to map out how Redbox’s cheap rentals (along wit Netflix’s streaming service) were changing the “value” of a copy of a movie. When consumers learn that they can pay a dollar or so for a night’s movie rental, there is little incentive to pay $15-20 for a copy of the film.

But this focus on Redbox’s role in shaping the value of cinematic texts (recall David Bordwell’s argument that “films have become files”) placed too much emphasis on the novelty of that particular company and ignored a number of other past precedents and new practices in automated video vending. Many of the origin stories about Redbox discuss Mitch Lowe’s past failed attempt to create a VHS vending service in the 1980s called Video Droid, but since then, I have been running into a number of other examples of services that have a longish history in both Europe and East Asia. Currently, I am still learning more about some of these services, and if you have any experience with them, I’d appreciate any guidance (in the comments, on Facebook, Twitter, or by email). One of the more dominant services appears to be Cinebank, a video vending machine (some locations called it a “video vestibule”) company operating in Germany, Italy, and Spain. Oddly, it appears that although the machines operate 24 hours a day, you must register in advance and can only do so during certain hours of the day, and in order to register users must provide their finger print. But from what I have been able to tell, Cinebank–or at least the company that manufactures their kiosks–has been in operation since the 1990s.

In other sites, video kiosks appear to be having less success. The British service Rent it Here has been in and out of administration in the last month or so, and from what I can gather, despite some early enthusiasm, another service, The Movie Booth, has also been relatively unsuccessful, but I am still trying to sort out some details there. These also appear to have disappeared, but there were a couple of predecessors to Redbox here in the United States. The most prominent one that I could find was MovieBankUSA, an off-shoot of Cinebank, the European automated video vendor, but unlike Redbox, MovieBank charged $3.50 per rental, and stories about this service also disappear sometime around 2008 or 2009, but like Redbox, the service was promoted as a convenience to consumers, one that was available 24 hours a day. Unlike Redbox, the service gave each member a PIN that could be used to access movies, and the service encouraged parents to create unique PINs for each family member so that their children couldn’t rent inappropriate movie titles. The service also used a “block” system, in which users could pre-pay $50 to get seventy dollars’ worth of rentals. Interestingly, MovieBank targeted not only retail locations but office complexes and apartment buildings. There was also a service in Singapore that also shut down, and like Cinebank, it required a thumbprint, but in the limited discussion I have seen (and much of this is only on Lexis-Nexis, so I can’t link), it sounds like Singapore’s small size, its later business hours, and the vaster selection at video stores (and online) made those options more attractive than kiosks.

There was also an attempt back in 2008 to rent or sell movies using flash drives pioneered by a service called Porto Media. At the time, there was a lot of skepticism regarding the service, and I don’t see any indication that the service ever took off. But in the last few weeks, another service, Digiboo, is attempting to try flash drives again, this time by targeting travelers in airports. I’ve seen a few Redbox kiosks in airports, and it seems that sites of enforced waiting (often without access to wi-fi) such as airports serve as ideal locations for cheap video rentals. Digiboo is quite a bit more expensive for rentals than Redbox, but it allows users the option to purchase, and unlike Porto Media, it benefits from increased processing power, with some downloads taking only about 30 seconds, with Digiboo’s chief marketing officer frequently comparing video vending to buying a bag of M&Ms.

It’s obviously too early to make any predictions about whether Digiboo will function as a useful alternative to Redbox. I know that I don’t often travel with a spare flash drive (although I probably should), but by contrast, I also plan my in-flight reading activity well in advance of any trip that I take, so I am likely not the best judge. What I am trying to uncover is why certain models (Redbox, Cinebank) seem successful while others disappear, often without any media attention whatsoever. Why might some locations and populations be more prepared to embrace kiosks while others are not? It’s easy to dismiss Redbox (and probably other kiosk services) as feeding into “lowest common denominator” entertainment, but rather than seeing kiosks merely as reinforcing the popular, it’s worth asking how they fit into a wider everyday media culture.

While doing research for my second book on the digital distribution of movies, I read with extreme interest David Bordwell’s latest book, Pandora’s Digital Box, a highly-accessible but thoroughly researched text that focuses primarily on how digital projection systems are affecting movie theaters. Although Bordwell touches briefly on the role of video-on-demand and day-and-date distribution, he looks at these practices in order to consider how they feed into the theatrical experience. While Bordwell acknowledges that many of these changes are revolutionary–our concept of “film” is completely transformed and our film production and exhibition practices have changed dramatically–Bordwell is careful to view these changes as being entirely positive or negative; instead, recognizing how much of cinema’s origins have been lost to history, he attempts to offer detailed technical and anecdotal accounts of the digital transition.

All of these changes beg the question: what happens to “film” in a digital age? And here, I think Bordwell’s background in the poetics and the production cultures of filmmaking provides a powerful answer. Film persists, he suggests, in the “craft routines” and the visual language of the medium (215). Those routines may be altered–and some may be rendered automatic–but the 100+ years of making movies on film still speaks to us and through movies in an increasingly digital age.

Bordwell’s book is highly readable, accessible for almost anyone interested in the film industry. As he noted on his blog, he sought to write the book in a “para-academic” style, one that depended on careful inquiry and in-depth research while also using language that will be familiar to non-specialist readers. The book, in keeping with our digital age, is available as a PDF download from his website for $3.99.

Bordwell starts with the premise that, in the digital age, “films have become files” (8) and builds from there to ask what this means for moviemakers, audiences, theater owners and workers, and others who are affected by the film industry. In other words, what happens when movies are reconceptualized as objects that can be accessed on-demand, rather than as material objects that require an elaborate shipping, delivery, and storage system? One answer to this question is that much of the labor associated with movie projection becomes de-skilled and automatized. Rather than skilled, unionized projectionists, projection becomes automatic, handled through a few mouse clicks.

Throughout his career, Bordwell has been attentive to the fact that the movie industry is shaped by relations of power, and this book is no exception. One of the persistent questions that is addressed throughout the book is the issue of how the digital changeover will affect both independent filmmakers and theater owners, whether those spaces are art-house, smart-house, or simply regional mom-and-pop theaters in small towns. As Bordwell suggests, digital projection provides the Hollywood studios and distributors with much greater control over the exhibition process, allowing them to monitor more precisely how often (and even when) a film is shown. He adds that, in the long run, the conversion to digital will provide distributors with significant savings.

For independents, there are other complications. The cost of converting (and then upgrading) equipment makes local, small-scale ownership of theaters more complicated, and Bordwell cites data from National Association of Theater Owners president John Fithian to suggest that hundreds of smaller theaters could close in the wake of digital conversion. Alongside of this discussion, Bordwell traces the changing role of film festivals as “distributors,” an argument that I’ve been exploring from a slightly different angle. As Bordwell notes, digital submissions have allowed for a massive expansion in the number and diversity of festivals. In 1980, he calculates that there were 100 festivals worldwide. By 2008, that number had reached 4,000 (157).

Given that theaters–even the larger commercial chains such as AMC, Regal and Cinemark–had less to gain from digital conversion, Bordwell spends quite a bit of time discussing the negotiations between theater owners and distributors and effectively makes the case that 3D, which was being touted as far back as the 2005 CinemaCon, served as a “Trojan horse” (73-74) that helped  spur the “need” for digital projection. Lured by the promise of ticket surcharges and the textual novelty of movies like Avatar, theaters were ultimately willing to convert, even though the 3D bubble would eventually burst, despite current efforts by James Cameron, Peter Jackson (who is pushing for 48 frames per second projection, rather than the standard 24 fps), and others to promote the format.