{"title":"Better Pictures Through Chemistry: DuPont and the Fight for the Hollywood Film Stock Market","authors":"L. Marzola","doi":"10.7560/VLT7602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/VLT7602","url":null,"abstract":"Despite being strangers to the photographic field, DuPont entered the motion picture film stock market in the 1920s through a need to create peacetime markets for its wartime facilities. As DuPont transformed into a chemical company, nitrocellulose film stock was one of the products that could be made from the company’s guncotton factories. In order to penetrate Hollywood, the chief market for its film, DuPont needed to create a product that could match that of Eastman Kodak, the undisputed industry leader. The threat to its dominance contributed to Kodak’s interest in selling panchromatic film, a factor often ignored in light of the conversion to sound. The competition between these companies contributed significantly to the rapid increase in the quality of film stock, as well as to the changing relationship between technological manufacturers and their customers in Hollywood. DuPont and Kodak also serve as contrasting examples of the incursion of corporate research into the motion picture industry, enlightening our understanding of an expanded system that positions the studios as both consumers of technology and sellers of entertainment.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133554701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interentity Communication: The Ontological Imaginary of Early Network Design","authors":"S. Malčić","doi":"10.7560/VLT7603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/VLT7603","url":null,"abstract":"Since the world saw proof of US and UK digital surveillance practices, the Internet has been imagined in public discourse not so much as a digital frontier than as a strictly delimited identity management system. While it is no doubt productive to think about this political crisis in terms of the Internet’s post-1968 countercultural history, that history is itself embedded within a larger intellectual history of mathematical logic. By taking a detour through the emergence of computer science as an academic discipline, this article examines the historical basis for a cyberspace of identity.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"146 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114538815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pro Tools, Playback, and the Value of Postproduction Sound Labor In Canada","authors":"Katherine Quanz","doi":"10.7560/VLT7604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/VLT7604","url":null,"abstract":"The motion picture industry’s transition from magnetic tape–based sound editing to digital, computer-based sound editing occurred from the mid-1990s through the early 2000s. This transition had major consequences on postproduction sound labor in Canada. In this article, I argue that digital audio workstations, such as Digidesign’s Pro Tools, threatened the role of Canadian postproduction sound practitioners. In order to protect their position within the industry, they adopted a rhetoric of self-promotion to change the value of their profession from technician to artisan. In order to make this claim, I analyze the discourse of sound editors and rerecording engineers in Canada’s dominant trade paper, Playback, over an eighteen-year period. This research contributes to ongoing scholarship on the role of digital audio workstations in film soundtrack production, as well as the impact of digital technologies on media industries and production cultures.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115432114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Journal of The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers / SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal","authors":"Jonah J. Horwitz","doi":"10.5594/j00980c1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5594/j00980c1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129972313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Peripheral Market?: Hollywood Majors and the Middle East / North Africa Market","authors":"N. Mingant","doi":"10.7560/VLT7506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/VLT7506","url":null,"abstract":"This article proposes to look away from highly publicized markets for Hollywood such as China toward a lesser-known area: the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). After presenting the economic and cultural strategies developed by the Hollywood majors over the past century, the article explores the current characteristics of the MENA market and the way these strategies are applied and adapted, faced with geopolitical constraints and the prevalence of piracy. The difference between strategies in the two regions are notably brought to light.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114346587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Self-Regulation through Distribution: Censorship and the Comic Book Industry in 1954","authors":"Shawna Kidman","doi":"10.7560/VLT7503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/VLT7503","url":null,"abstract":"In 1954, comic books faced a public controversy over allegedly immoral content and simultaneously suffered a sharp decline in sales. The major publishers responded to both of these problems with the implementation of a code of censorship that enabled and justified aggressive self-regulation. Although most accounts of censorship focus on texts and cultural contexts, this article shows the extent to which the regulation of mass media necessarily involves vast and powerful infrastructures of enforcement. In particular, it highlights the critical role that distribution played by organizing the industry’s basic infrastructure and by functioning as a central mechanism of self-regulation.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132421511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Television beyond the Networks: First-Run Syndication of Original Content in the 1970s","authors":"Karen Petruska","doi":"10.7560/VLT7504","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/VLT7504","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers historical case studies of Winters/Rosen’s Story Theatre and Norman Lear’s Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, first-run scripted programs that endeavored to address a national audience through the syndication marketplace during the 1970s in the United States. Despite the programs’ efforts to operate outside network distribution circuits, both series faced profound challenges that spotlight a range of factors that reinforced the dominance of CBS, NBC, and ABC during the network era. Positioned within larger cultural shifts, this consideration of first-run syndication charts the growing importance of independent stations and alternative modes of distribution, examines obstacles in the path of producers of innovative content, and discusses how these programs complicated traditional notions of televisual quality and value.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114577335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Redistributing Japanese Television Dorama: The Shadow Economies and Communities around Online Fan Distribution of Japanese Media","authors":"R. Denison","doi":"10.7560/VLT7505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/VLT7505","url":null,"abstract":"Fans’ online activities are often traced through the most active participatory members of fan communities. By contrast, this article examines online fan distribution from the outside in as a way of reconsidering how the peripheries of a fandom shape the communities at the heart of a fan culture. Taking Japanese dorama (television drama series) as my case study, I examine how dorama fans redistribute texts and how they communicate with one another while doing so. I argue that these practices reveal an emerging shadow economy that tantalizingly challenges some entrenched ideas about online fan communities and their creative work.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122484998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Palimpsests of Power: UNESCO-“Sponsored” Film Production and the Construction of a “Global Village,” 1948–1953","authors":"Regina Longo","doi":"10.7560/VLT7507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/VLT7507","url":null,"abstract":"This article maps the development of UNESCO’s sponsored film programs. Funded simultaneously by religious organizations, philanthropic foundations, and corporate and governmental interests, early UNESCO educational films were particularly adept at utilizing diverse resources to bring diffuse networks of institutions and individuals together to produce films that promoted a specific form of participatory democracy and civil society. Via UNESCO’s Communication Programme, these films served to advance not only UNESCO’s humanitarian goals but also larger political and economic goals. By understanding the circulation and distribution of these productions, a clearer picture emerges of NGO- and state-sponsored visual information campaigns that utilized film to advocate for a particular form of neoliberal state building during the height of the Cold War.","PeriodicalId":335072,"journal":{"name":"The Velvet Light Trap","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116452713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}