CAREERS, COMMUNITIES, AND INDUSTRY EVOLUTION: LINKS TO COMPLEXITY THEORY

2001 ◽  
Vol 05 (02) ◽  
pp. 239-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL B. ARTHUR ◽  
ROBERT J. DEFILLIPPI ◽  
VALERIE J. LINDSAY
Keyword(s):  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Industry Evolution ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Building Industry ◽  
Independent Film ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Boat Building ◽  
Film Making ◽  
Principal Unit

Traditional views of industry evolution focus on the company as their principal unit of analysis. We offer an alternative view that links between workers' careers and successive community, company and industry effects. We apply this view to evidence from independent film-making, and suggest a conception of the career, involving three "ways of knowing", to underlie these links. We next explore two more industry examples, the New Zealand boat building industry and the Linux operating system in the software industry, which provide further support for the alternative view proposed, as well as extending it to consider the influence of the World Wide Web. We see all three industry examples as illustrating a range of ideas in complexity theory. We propose that a career-centric view provides a useful basis for the further exploration and application of complexity theory to industrial life.

American Independent Horror

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-158
Author(s):  
Bryan Turnock
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Attractive Alternative ◽  
Independent Film ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
American Horror Film ◽  
Social Turmoil ◽  
Film Making

This chapter assesses the emergence of American independent horror, looking at George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). By the mid-1960s, the traditional Hollywood studio system was responsible for only around 20 per cent of America's film production. The remainder came from independent film-makers and from films made outside of the United States, where labour and locations were cheaper. The 'New Wave' movements in countries such as Japan, France, Britain, and Czechoslovakia introduced new styles of film-making to American cinemagoers, who found them an attractive alternative to the classical Hollywood feature film. As such, the late 1960s saw enormous changes in American cinema, including within the horror genre. Influenced by social, political and cultural upheavals occurring in the country at the time, 1968 is often cited as the dawn of the 'modern American horror film'. The chapter considers how political and social turmoil in America led to a growing number of independent film-makers actively working against the industry establishment, taking advantage of the heavily diminished influence of the major studios, and producing films which rejected Hollywood conservatism and deliberately pushed the boundaries of acceptability.

The Origin, Practice and Meaning of the Free Cinema Manifesto

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 294-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Drazin
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Independent Film ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Film Making ◽  
First Time ◽  
Important Basis

In the late 1940s, the independent film quarterly Sequence, which championed a personal, committed cinema, stood for an attitude towards film-making that provided an important basis for the development of the Free Cinema movement in the following decade. It was in Sequence that the phrase ‘Free Cinema’ was coined for the first time. This article traces the early development of the Free Cinema ethos in Sequence magazine and follows the steps by which the idea was turned into reality. It singles out Lindsay Anderson as the most influential figure in both the genesis and direction of the movement. After its formal end in 1959, Free Cinema lived on most obviously in the British New Wave of the 1960s, but its characteristics defied easy analysis. Discussing the legacy of the Free Cinema, the article explores its contradictory, subjective nature and examines the dominant role that Anderson continued to play in determining how it came to be understood.

British Women Amateur Filmmakers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes ◽  
Heather Norris Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Visual Anthropology ◽  
Gender History ◽  
Remote Communities ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
And Gender ◽  
British Commonwealth ◽  
Film Making

In the rapidly growing study of amateur film, this groundbreaking book addresses the development of British women's amateur visual practice. Drawing upon social and visual anthropology, imperial and postcolonial studies and British, Commonwealth and gender history, the authors explore how women in Britain and overseas, used the evolving technologies of moving imagery to create visual stories about their lives and times. Locating the making, watching and sharing of women's recreational film-making against wider societal, technological and ideological changes, British Women Amateur Filmmakers discloses how women from varied backgrounds negotiated changing lifestyles, attitudes and opportunities as they created first personal visual narratives about themselves and the world around them. Using non-fictional films and animations, the authors invite readers to view films through different interpretative lens and provide detailed contexts for their case-studies and survey of over forty women amateur filmmakers. Whether in remote communities, suburban homes, castles, missionary or diplomatic enclaves, or simply travelling as intrepid sightseers, women filmed their companions, other people and their surroundings, not only as observers but often displaying agency, autonomy and aesthetic judgment during decades when careers, particularly after marriage, were often denied in film and other professions. Research across Britain on films in private hands and specialist archives, interviews and extensive study of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers (IAC's) collections enable the authors to reposition an activity once thought of as overwhelmingly male and middle class.

Restrained Airs: The Diegetic Surface and Nondiegetic Depth of British Film Music

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-443
Author(s):  
Paul Mazey
Keyword(s):  
Film Music ◽  
The World ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Film Making ◽  
The Way

This article considers how pre-existing music has been employed in British cinema, paying particular attention to the diegetic/nondiegetic boundary and notions of restraint. It explores the significance of the distinction between diegetic music, which exists in the world of the narrative, and nondiegetic music, which does not. It analyses the use of pre-existing operatic music in two British films of the same era and genre: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), and demonstrates how seemingly subtle variations in the way music is used in these films produce markedly different effects. Specifically, it investigates the meaning of the music in its original context and finds that only when this bears a narrative relevance to the film does it cross from the diegetic to the nondiegetic plane. This reveals that whereas music restricted to the diegetic plane may express the outward projection of the characters' emotions, music also heard on the nondiegetic track may reveal a deeper truth about their feelings. In this way, the meaning of the music varies depending upon how it is used. While these two films may differ in whether or not their pre-existing music occupies a nondiegetic or diegetic position in relation to the narrative, both are characteristic of this era of British film-making in using music in an understated manner which expresses a sense of emotional restraint and which marks the films with a particularly British inflection.

Britain's Channel 4: A TV Provider Caught Between Private Sector Funding and Its Cultural Mission

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 418-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Bock ◽  
Siegfried Zielinski
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Independent Film ◽  
Television Channel ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
Funding Mechanism ◽  
Contemporary Perspective ◽  
Hybrid Character ◽  
Commercial Station ◽  
First Time

This article, which first appeared in Media Perspektiven 1 (1987), is published here for the first time in English. It offers an enlightening contemporary perspective, from the then German Federal Republic, on the innovation in European broadcasting which Channel 4 represented. It outlines the policy context which gave rise to the UK's fourth television channel and describes its unique, hybrid character as a commercial station funded by advertising revenue with a public service remit. It assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Channel 4's commissioning structure and identifies significant examples of its innovative programming, paying particular attention to its support for independent film. That emphasis is noteworthy since it was West German television's film-funding mechanism that provided the model on which Film on Four was based. The article recognises Channel 4's commitment to catering for minority audiences, to enabling broader access to programme-making and to commissioning work that was experimental in form and content. It is generous in suggesting that such a risk-taking cultural enterprise was only possible within the UK's mature and highly developed broadcasting ecology, but it remains cautious (perhaps presciently) of its sustainability in the expanding commercial marketplace of multi-channel television.

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