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Week 14: 3.5 Conclusion

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Throughout the whole semester, I started to be aware of the media that appear subconsciously in our daily life.  From the ten entries in this portfolio, I found out a lot of useful information that I have never realized before. The convergence of media is the main topic covered the whole semester.  The way I think about and use the media have changed.  I noticed that the copyright and privacy issues that I have neglected before, is one of the important impact on using the media.  For example, Facebook has all the ownership of what we have post on it such as photos, information, and videos.  It is very important to acknowledge that we do not have any rights in Facebook.  We have to be very careful when posting information on Facebook.  Even though we set private for our profile, we only avoid the users of Facebook in accessing our profile and yet Facebook still own all the information in our profile. 

In the meanwhile, although the information in the World Wide Web, we called it the Web, is up to date, we cannot fully trust the content in the Web. It is not credible.  As the participatory culture, everyone who can access internet can create and publish information in the Web.  We can only refer to the information but not to rely on it. 

In the issue of gaming industry, I discover the connection between the movie industry and the gaming industry.  And we cannot differentiate between fantasy and reality, virtual world and real world.  As the offline world is like an extension from the online world, vice versa.  At the same time, the crime cases that have increased rapidly in the gaming industry, is a serious issue that we should look into.  

In conclusion, the unit has covered all these themes - ownership, privacy, ethics, participation and credibility.  It has been very beneficial for me and I have been well informed, from what I have learnt. Engaging media redefines the meaning of today's world and it is an interactive medium, which brings consumers and the people behind the screen closer. 

Week 13: 3.4 Who's listening? Mass communication in a networked, mobile environment

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Source: Tomi Ahonen upcoming book Mobile is 7th Mass Media Channel, 2008
www.tomiahonen.com


Key Point:

  • The 7 Mass Media
    • 1st - Print (1500)
    • 2nd - Recordings (1900)
    • 3rd - Cinema (1910)
    • 4th - Radio (1920)
    • 5th - TV (1950)
    • 6th - Internet (1995)
    • 7th - Mobile (2000)
  • The 6th Mass Media - Internet 
    • first media that could do everything that the previous five media could do
    • first interactive media, and Search
  • The 7th Mass Media - Mobile
    • can do everything the previous six media can do, including interactivity & search of the internet
    • five absolute competitive advantages
      • personal mass media
      • always-on media
      • always carried media
      • built-in payment channel
      • creative tool - always present at point of creative impulse
      • most accurate audience info
  • BDDO survey of 3000 customers around the world and found 60% of mobile users take the phone to bed with them (BDDO April 2005)
  • Nokia Survey of 5500 people a year later found 72% of phone owners use the phone as the alarm clock (Nokia June 2006)
TED Talk - Jan Chipchase on our mobile phones
Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase's investigation into the ways we interact with technology has led him from the villages of Uganda to the insides of our pockets. He's made some unexpected discoveries along the way.

Conclusion:
  • Connections and Consequences
  • The immediacy of ideas - if you want a big idea, you need to embrace everyone on the planet
  • The immediacy of objects - things become smaller as the functionality that you can access becomes greater. Thus, the speed of the adoption of things is just becoming more rapid in a way that we cannot conceive
  • Design stuff carefully - the ability to transcend space and time; it will innovate in ways we cannot anticipate; despite our resources they can do it better than us
  • The direction of conversation - we need to learn how to listen

Week 12: 3.3 Talk to me! Chatting/ Texting/ Twittering at each other

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Reading:
E.J Westlake (2008). Friend me if you Facebook: Generation Y and performative surveillance. The Drama Review 52 (4), 21-40
Fun Article about Facebook and how people perform themselves through digital media.


Summary:

  • Facebook: Facebook develops technologies that facilitate the spread of information through social networks allowing people to share information online the same way they do in the real world
  • Facebook was founded as a way to enhance face-to-face contact on university campuses, it has virtual and physical life unique on the internet
  • Argument: the predominantly Generation Y Facebook community uses Facebook to define the boundaries of normative behavior through unique performance of an online self
  • Facebook has become one of the fastest growing - and some will admit most addictive - pastimes in U.S.
  • MySpace is designed for global connectivity, has many features that allows for greater online creativity; Facebook is designed to allow for real-life social connections
  • The performance of self on Facebook always has the potential of carrying over into 'real life' and vice versa
  • Facebook take the concept of the personal web page and the blog further, enhancing the personal profile with tools for users to comment upon or even alter the content of fellow users' pages
  • Many sociologists worry that the increased internet use by Generation Y will result in their lacking the socialization needed to function in society
  • Facebook and MySpace made headlines in 2005 and 2006 for two reasons: 
    • they had raised issues about internet predators
    • they had caused concern about the availability of information for state surveillance
  • Users have jokingly referred to Facebook as 'Stalkerbook'
  • Facebook is a forum for the policing and establishing of normative behavior, more than the imagined forum of deviant exhibitionism
  • To some degree, the people of Generation Y trust technology, believing they can direct their performance to their chosen audience
  • GenerationY's political participant will continue to grow but political involvement seems muted when it comes to public protest
  • The people of Generation Y are choosing social cohesion over privacy challenges outmoded notions of individual freedom versus state intrusion
  • To some degree, both 'private' and 'public' are revealed as social constructs that shift and change over time
  • While Facebook operates as a forum for establishing social norms, the continual reinvention of Facebook by independent developers and users creates an opening through which Generation Y can push the boundaries of their online performance of self.


Watch: TED talk - Evan Williams on Twitter
In the year leading up to this talk, the web tool Twitter exploded in size (up 10x during 2008 alone). Co-founder Evan Williams reveals that many of the ideas driving that growth came from unexpected uses invented by the users themselves. Evan Williams is the co-founder of Twitter, the addictive messaging service that connects the world 140 characters at a time.

Week 10: 3.1 Inform me! news media

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Discussion:

  • How do you get your information/ news? Why?
    • Online: Borneo Post Online/ The Star Online/ Youtube
      • convenient
      • options
      • speed
      • updated
    • TV: Satelitte
      • live
      • visual
      • real
      • entertaining
    • Newspaper
      • cheap 
      • reliability
      • detail
      • respect proffessional
    • Radio
      • entertaining
      • up to date
      • convenient
  • How does this differ from old generation/ family?
    • the convergence from old media to new media
    • the existence of censorship
  • What do you find more credible? Why?
    • Printed newspaper
      • more accurate
    • Online news
      • not so accurate 
      • not specific
    • Wikipedia
      • not so credible
      • can change the content anytime, anywhere by anyone

New Sites that I'm interested in:
  • The Business Time: http://www.btimes.com.my/
  • The Borneo Post: http://www.theborneopost.com/
  • The Star Online: http://www.thestar.com.my/
  • News Strait Time: http://www.nst.com.my/

Week 9: 2.5 All the world's a game: virtual worlds, interactivity, convergence

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Summary from class lecture:

  • movie industry & media connection
  • virtual world & real world
  • impossible to switch off digital world
  • distinctive => senseless
  • curiosity
  • significant aspect of digital media & culture
  • expresses both existing & newly emerging possibility
  • negative & positive
  • politically, economically, socially, culturally
  • Why the film industry involved in the game industry
  • World of Warcraft (WoW) 
    • 11.5 million paying subscribers
    • pay US$14.95 every month
    • Plus: books, music, clothing, board games, calenders, card games, etc
  • computer games is not just a computer games, it is more than that
  • think of the production
  • Fans 
    •  Examples: the guilds, 'do you wanna date my avatar', south park, exhibition, video, remediation
  • Games stay 'alive'
  • we are not in Kansas anymore
  • commercial product
    • consumed worldwide
    • exploited worldwide
  • WoW - MMOs
    • large scale
    • mostly made by man ( 90-95%)
    • born out of Richard Bartle's MUD 1
  • Life in the MMO 
    • MMO is obviously a construct
    • rules enable the action and relations
    • rules govern behavior
  • open design: eg.Second Life, Project Entropia
  • closed design: eg. Wow, EverQuest
  • both designs enable different actions and experiences
  • on economic, ownership and gameplay - different designs different ideas
  • key issues: commercialisation of the game and commodification of information
  • Who owns the information 
  • Different designs explore/ enable different ideas
  • Why keep a design closed?
    • maintaining the game's economy
    • maintaining the player experience
    • perception of fairness
    • inflation and deflation
  • these economics are constructs
  • and their black markets can be big money
    • scarcity in game - senseless
    • value too therefore is constructive
  • in the digital world, time = money
  • gold farming - buying time
  • distinction between actual & virtual money 
  • The use of 'Bots'
  • Impacts
    • griefplay
    • minor
    • murder
    • marriage
    • addiction
    • crime
    • child labour
    • global inequity
    • discrimination
  • Korea online game industry is huge

Week 8: 2.4 Play with me!: Having fun with media

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Readings: 
Helen Thornton, (2009). Claiming a stake in the videogame: what grown-ups say to rationalise and normalise gaming.  Convergence 15 (2), 135-139
Very thorough take on gaming, analysis discourses of gamers, especially gender and sexualiy

Summary:
  • Argument: the political and social necessity of including gamers and their discourses into research on gaming in order to better understand the significance of gaming and gaming discourses on our social and political lives
  • The author indicates that games are simultaneously set up as escapism, fantasy and play but claimed by adult gamers as serious, rational and logical pastimes
  • ‘Pleasure’ is often used by cultural theorists and new media theorists, rarely actually interrogated
  • The issues of articulation enmeshed in issues of power, gender, class and context
  • The article focused on how pleasure emerges through articulation
  • The article also focused on the ways gamers rationalize, normalize and justify gaming underlying the factors: pleasure and play
  • The justifications gamers offer not only work to normalize gaming; they also seem to work to normalize it as particular kind of heterosexual, social and rational activity
  • If pleasurable aspect placed into defining parameters of the social, the pleasure of gaming is less about the games themselves and more to do with the presence of friends in a social environment
  • Conclusion
    • The author argue that it is precisely this unsettled relationship between pleasure and adulthood which makes the gamers quite defensive about gaming practices
    • Further investigation which takes into consideration the context, discourses and power relations upon which the activity of gaming is contingent in order to understand the complex relationship between pleasure, play and adulthood, which seems to mark both articulations and practices of gaming
Jenkins, H. (2006). The war between effects and meaning: Rethinking the video game debate.  In D, Buckingham & R. Willett (Eds.), Digital Generations: Children, Young People, and New Media (pp 19-31).  New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass


Summary 
  • Limbaugh ruled that video games have ‘no conveyance of ideas, expression or anything else that could possibly amount to speech’ รจ there is no constitutional protection
  • Limbaugh claimed that video games do not express ideas and they represent a dangerous influence on American youth
  • Effects are seen as emerging more or less spontaneously, with little conscious effort, not accessible to self examination
  • Meanings
    • Emerge through an active process of interpretation
    • Reflect our conscious engagement
    • Articulated into words
    • Critically examined
  • Games is partly a consequence of their growing importance in young people’s lives
  • Reformers argue that children are particularly susceptible to confusions between fantasy and reality
  • The author claims that education are being made in the public policy debates about video games; both sides talk about games as ‘teaching machines’
  • Grossman (2000), a retired military psychologist and West Point instructor believed that games represent a powerful mechanism for reshaping our behavior
  • But, Grossman’s model only works if we assume that players are not capable of rational thought, ignore critical differences in how and why people play games, and remove training or education from any meaningful cultural context
  • Games are most powerful when they reinforce our existing beliefs and least effective when they challenge our values
  • Students are encouraged to think about the media from the inside out, assuming the role of media makers and thinking about their own ethical choice


I agree that game actually is a very useful learning tool for educational function.  Children will prefer to learn knowledge from a game rather than a book.  However, violence element in gaming industry actually is a major issue that affects the impacts on gaming.  I suggest that we should control the playing times for children as children do not know how to differentiate both the positive and negative impact of gaming.  They will easily addict to game. 

In my experience, I seldom play games but I enjoy when I am playing.  I like to play Left 4 Dead.  It is very adventurous.  Normally I play game because of desire but not boredom.  I love to play computer games, but I control myself not to play too much.  Game is a kind of distraction for me.  



In this week tutorial, we are give a task to identify a video games.  This is the game that my group get:


This game is called Space War.  It is one of the earliest digital computer game developed by Steve Russell in 1962.  This game is a two-players modes.  Gamers control the game by using a front panel with four switches each.


Besides, the class also discussed a list of positive and not so positive impacts on gaming.

  • Positive:-
    • Relaxing
    • Entertaining
    • Killing Time
    • Stress reliever
    • Distraction
    • Passion
    • Fun
    • Educational
    • Exciting
    • Interactive
    • Challenging
    • Enjoyment
  • Not so positive:-
    • Violent
    • Wasting time
    • Disturbing 
    • Addictive
    • Mind consuming
    • Useless
    • Annoying
    • Corrupting


Week 7: 2.3 Entertaining the world: using media across cultural boundaries

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Readings:
Jenkins, H (2006). Pop cosmopolitanism: Mapping cultural flows in an age of media convergence.  In H. Jenkins, Fans, bloggers and gamers: exploring participatory culture (pp 152-172). New York University Press. 
Summary:
  • Pop cosmopolitan is someone whose embrace of global popular media represents an escape route out of the parochialism of one's local community
  • The increased centrality of teens and youth to the global circulation of media in an era where a teen's Web site can become the center of an international controversy
  • Corporate convergence (top-down) - the concentration of media ownership in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of multinational conglomerates who thus have a vested interest in insuring the flow of media content across different platforms and national borders
  • Grassroots convergence (bottom-up) - the increasingly central roles that digitally empowered consumers play in shaping the production, distribution, and reception of media content
  • These two forces intersect to produce what might be called global convergence
  • Global convergence is giving rise to a new pop cosmopolitanism
  • The author use pop cosmopolitan to refer to the ways that the transcultural flows of popular culture inspires new forms of global consciousness and cultural competency
  • Imperialism argument blurs the distinction between at least four forms of power:
    • Economic - the ability to produce and distribute cultural goods
    • Cultural - the ability to produce and circulate forms and meanings 
    • Political - the ability to impose ideologies
    • Psychological - the ability to shape desire, fantasy and identity
  • Western economic dominance over global entertainment both expresses and extends America's status as a superpower nation
  • The rise of broadband communication enables the foreign media producers to distribute media content directly to American consumers without having to pass through U.S. gatekeepers or rely on multinational distributors.
  • Global culture produces local differences in order to gain a competitive advantage within the global marketplace
Am I pop cosmopolitan?
I was slightly affected by the Japanese comic called Nana (Manga).  It is a comic series written and illustrated by Ai Yazawa.  I liked the characters and the story so I started to buy the merchandise products.  After the comics, there are films,anime and video games produced.  



Nana in comic

Nana 2 in film

I think the Japanese punk style in Nana is quite attracting and cool.  That's why I love Nana.

Week 4: 2.2 Don't touch that! Copyright, ownership and institutional control

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Reading Material:
Steven Collins, (2008). Recovering fair use, M/C Media Culture 11 (6).
An article about fair use and copyright. Gives a good summary of the legal history of the term, and its applicability to digital media through specific cases.

Summary of ''Recovering Fair Use''
  •  Prosumerism
    • Creativity blending media consumption with media production to create new works that are freely disseminated online
    • ''at electric speeds the consumer becomes producer as the public becomes participant role player'' (McLuhan 4)
    • Creating a new creative era of mass customisation of artifacts culled from the (copyrighted) media landscape (Tapscott 62-3)
    • The propertarian approach is winning and frequently leading to absurd results. (Collins)
  • Fair Use
    • The balance between private and public interests in creative works is facilitated by the doctrine of fair use
    • The majority of copyright laws contain ''fair'' exceptions
    • Fair use characterised by a flexible, open-ended approach that allows the law to flex with the times
    • Despite its flexibility, fair use has been systematically eroded by ever encroaching copyrights
    • ''Legal regime for intellectual property that increasingly looks like the law of real property, or more properly an idealized construct of the law, one in which courts seeks out and punish virtually any use of an intellectual property right by another.'' (Lemley 1032)
    • This paper situates fair use as an essential legal and cultural mechanism for optimising creative expression
    • Fair use is a safety valve on copyright law to prevent oppressive monopolies
    • Lange and Lange Anderson argue that the doctrine is not fundamentally about copyright or a system of property, but is rather concerned with the recognition of the public domain and its preservation from the ever encroaching advances of copyright (2001)
    • Fair use should not be understood as subordinate to the exclusive rights of copyright owners
    • The complete spectrum of ownership through copyright can only be determined pursuant to a consideration of what is required by fair use ( Lange and Lange Anderson 19)
    • Fair use is not only about the marketplace for copyright works; it is concerned with what Weinreb refers to as ''a community's established practices and understandings'' (1151-2)
    • Judicial application of fair use has consistently erred through subordinating the doctrine to copyright and considering simply the effect of appropriation on the market place for the original work.
    • The current state of copyright law is, as Patry says, ''depressing''
    • Preserve existing failed business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners
    • ''Free culture'' proponents warn that an overly strict copyright regime unbalanced by an equally prevalent fair use doctrine is dangerous to creativity, innovation, culture and democracy
    • The rise of the Web 2.0 phase with its emphasis on end-user created content has led to an unrelenting wave of creativity, and much of it incorporates or ''mashes up'' copyright material
    • The fair use doctrine in formulating a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law
    • Fair use is an authorised use of copyrighted materials because the doctrine of fair use is embedded into the Copyright Act 1976
    • Fair use '' should not be considered a bizarre, occasionally tolerated departure from the grand conception of copyright design'' but something that it is integral to constitution of copyright law and essential in ensuring that copyright's goals can be fulfilled (Leval 1100)
    • Fair use applies to unlicensed use of sound recordings and re-establishes de minimis use
    • In order for the balance to exist in copyright law, cases must come before the courts; copyright myth must be challenged
    • McLeod states, ''the real-world problems occur when institutions that actually have the resources to defend themselves against unwarranted or frivolous lawsuits choose to take the safe route, thus eroding fair use'' (146-7)
Watch: A Fair(y) use tale
A clever and enjoyable comment on institutional attempts to curtail the doctrine of ''fair use''.

This is a really interesting video that discussed about copyright law by using Disney movies and characters.  Below is part of the transcript that was mention in the video:- 
  • Federal Law allows citizens to reproduce, distribute, or exhibit portions of copyrighted motion pictures, video tapes, or video discs under certain circumstances without authorization of the copyright holder. The infringement of copyright is called ‘‘Fair Use’’ and is allowed for purposes of criticism, news reporting, teaching, and parody.
  • Chap 1: Copyright definition
    • Copyright is a permanently fixed the original work, permanently fixed the original work in some form than can be seen or heard.  Only the copyright owner has the right to use their work.  It’s forbidden to use a copyright work without the permission granted by the copyright owner. Anyone who uses the copyright work has broken the law. And we better be able to pay the copyright permission.  
  • Chap 2: What can be copyrighted
    • Books, plays, music, dance, movies & pictures
    • We can't copyright an idea. Our culture told us that it would be unwise to limit the power of a great idea. We can only copyright for an idea text.
  • Chap 3: Copyright duration and the public domain
    • The law says copyright only last for a fixed amount of time. For example, copyright also last for only ten years.  Our culture thought that was long enough for a copyright owner to make money from their work.  After just for ten years, the work will into the public domain.  Anyone could use the work.  Public domain is a disgrace of forces of evil. A work in the public domain is free for anyone to use. It’s essential because our culture creates new ideas by building earlier works.  So the public domain is necessary a living striving society. Unfortunately, copyright keeps getting longer.  There seems to be no limitation for copyright on how long copyright last.  For example, copyright now last a lifetime plus seventy years and for a company copyright last over hundred years. So, copyright last more like forever.
  • Chap 4: Fair Use
    • There are limitations on copyright. Copyright maybe broken as its slippery.  You can borrow a small amount of the copyright work to teach, news reporting, parody, critical comment.  There are certain rules that demonstrate fair use, first is the nature of the work borrowed,   second of all is the amount you borrowed.  And it has to be something that doesn’t change the original work’s value the market place.(commercial impact) Fair use is not a right. Fair use is only a legal defensive position. And this is not fair.  
If fair use actually works, then movie like this will have legal protection.'

Watch: Lawrence Lessig on laws that strangle creativity
An excellent talk about the impact of technologies and regulation on creative experimentation and expression.

Summary on the talk:
  •  Three story to one argument
  • First story, in 1906, John Philip Sousa travelled to the United States capital and talk about the ''Talking Machine'' He said, '' These talking machines are going to ruin artistic development of music in this country.  When I was a boy, in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together songs.  Today you hear this infernal machines going night and day.  We will not have a vocal cord left.  The vocal cords will be eliminated by a process of evolution as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.''
  • Read Write Culture vs Read Only Culture
    • Read write culture is a culture where people participate in the creation and the creation of their culture
    • Read only culture is a culture where creativity was consumed but the consumer is not a creator.  A culture which is top-down owned where the vocal cords of the millions have been lost
    • The 20th century (developed world) was a century where culture moved from this read-write to read-only existence
  • Second story is about two farmers who raised a case that complained the airplanes were trespassing their land.  and the supreme court used 'common sense', a rare idea in the law, to object the case. 
  • Common sense revolts at the idea
  • The third story is about the broadcasting 'war' between ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated).  When broadcasting was created, ASCAP was the legal cartel that controlled the performance rights for most of the music that would be broadcast. They raised rates by 448% between 1931-1939. In 1939, Sydney Kaye started BMI.  BMI was much more democratic in the art that it would include within its repertoire.  BMI took public domain works and arrange them to be given away for free to their subscribers.  In 1940, ASCAP threatened to double their rates then the majority of broadcasters switched to BMI. In 1940, ASCAP cracked, the broadcasters did not revolt as ASCAP predicted.  Even though the broadcasters were broadcasting something called second best, that competition was enough to break, at that time, this legal cartel over access to music.
  • The Argument:
    • Internet is reviving the read-write culture
    • User-generated content, spreading in business in extraordinarily valuable ways like these, celebrating amateur culture 
    • Culture where people produce for the love of what they are doing and not for the money
    • Culture that the kids are producing now
    • They remix many contents into a different media form and it is not called ''piracy''
    • They are taking and recreating using other people's content by using the technology, it is a literacy for this generation
    • There is a growing extremism that comes from both sides in this debate, in response to this conflict between the law and the use of these technologies
    • To balance it, Lessig stated that two types of changes is needed:
      • First, that artists and creators embrace the idea; freely. So, for non-commercial, this amateur-type of use, but not freely for any commercial use.
      • Second, we need the businesses that are building out this read-write culture to embrace this opportunity expressly, to enable it, so that this ecology of free content, or freer content can grow on a neutral platform where they both exist simultaneously, so that more-free can compete with less-free, and the opportunity to develop the creativity in that competition can teach one the lessons of the other
  • Conclusion: artists' choice is the key for new technology having an opportunity to be open for business, and we need to build artists' choice here if these new technologies are to have that opportunity
  • Kids vs Us
    • We made mixed tapes; they remix music
    • We watched TV; they make TV
    • We can't kill the instinct the technology produces; we can only criminalize it
    • We can't stop our kids from using it; we can only drive it underground
    • We can't make our kids passive again; we can only make them, quote, ''pirates''
    • We live in this weird time, it's kind of age of prohibitions, where in many areas of our life, we live life constantly against the law
    • They live life knowing they live it against the law
    • The realization is extraordinary corrosive, extraordinary corrupting

Week 3: 2.1 Entertain Me! Who makes your entertainment? Institutions, audience & participatory culture

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Reading Material:
Cucco, M. (2009) The promise is great: the blockbuster and the Hollywood economy. Media Culture and Society, 31(2), 215-230
     http://mcs.sagepub.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/cgi/reprint/31/2/215
Coppa, F. (2008) Women, Star Trek and the early development of fannish viding. Transformative Works and Cultures 1(1).doi: 10.3983/twc.v1 i0.44
     http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/44/64
Summary: 
The promise is great: the blockbuster and the Hollywood economy
  • Blockbuster
    • the audiovisual product
    • when come into cinematographic field - distinguishing characteristics its the size
      • the major economic investment
      • the amount of taking
    • everything revolves around the idea that a big production gives a better performance at the box office
    • the investment nowadays
      • the promotional process
      • the choice of genre
      • the narrative component
      • the place of consumption
    • Steven Spielberg - the director of Jaws - the father of blockbuster genre
    • Blockbuster and the new economic politics of Hollywood, would not exist without television
    • The advent of television turned the home into new entertainment centre, changing the forms and places of film consumption (Gomery,1992)
    • The first distinctive feature - the high economic investment involved
    • Costs are much higher
    • Blockbuster was born as a transnational product (Stringer, 2003)
    • A commercial product targeted at an international market
    • In blockbuster, the economic of media products are more important 
  • The cinematographic transposition of successful novels/TV series/ plays, participation in festivals
  • The saturation booking strategy
    • able to influence the economic performance of a film converge in it
    • represented a revolution in the three stages of the film industry's value chain
    • Jaws 1975 taught the film industry 3 lessons: 
      • the central role of advertising in order to guarantee the success of the film
      • television's capacity to advertise a film to viewers and make them want to see it
      • the importance of the opening weekend, considered to be the most critical moment in the life-cycle of a product
    • Why the strategic role of the opening weekend
      • to concentrate advertising costs and optimize effects
        • the new distribution strategies increased the concentration of advertising in that period but did not reduce it in terms of quantity
      • to avoid a qualitative debate
        • These movies depend on the so-called 'uninformative information cascade' (De Vany, 2004)
        • hit and run (De Vany, 2004)
        • the effect does not last long (De Vany, 2004)
        • this way quality becomes irrelevant (Lewis, 2003) and is no longer an economic threat
      • to maximize the cost of transfer rights
        • movies that manage to maximize their presence at the begining of the life-cycle will command the highest prices
      • to maximize the star and pre-sold identity effect
        • stars have turned into brand products (Bakker, 2005)
        • pre-sold identity concept
          • only consider the phenomena of sequel, prequel and remake
          • they are not completely new products, public more familiar
      • to reduce the danger of competition
        • major distributions always reach an agreement on the release of their most important list of movies
        • blockbusters tend to come out in the summer when the networks' competition is weaker
      • to exploit the potential of multiplex cinemas
        • the life-cycle of movie has been shortened by (the windowing system)
          • the wide opening weekend release pattern
          • the concentration of advertising in the weeks immediately before the first screening
      • to maximize distributors' receipts
        • distributors and exhibitors share the takings according to percentages that change over the weeks
        • the concentration of revenue on the first weekend brings a higher remuneration for the distributor
  • Conclusions
    • blockbuster manages to propose a kind of film where the promise of novelty and greatness lies in the use of advanced technology able to offer exciting special effects
    • the risks liked to original and against-the-mainstream choices
    • the opening weekend has become the central moment of the life cycle



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