Film, TV and Radio industries Books

Book Synopsis'Funny, filthy and fantastic. Cackled from start to finish' - Rylan ClarkHow do you ask your mate for that £50 back?When is OK to trump in front of your partner?And what should you do if you've accidentally sexted your boss?William and Jordan are from very different worlds.William's an etiquette expert, with his tongue firmly in his teacup and unparalleled knowledge of table linen. Jordan's a TV and radio presenter, the patron saint of Burnley and an expert in all things common. Together they've entertained millions of listeners worldwide with their hit podcast Help I Sexted My Boss.Now, they’ve pooled all of their wisdom on how to get through life’s most awkward moments.From candlelight suppers to picky teas, first dates to flatmate dramas, Help I Sexted My Boss is full of both useful and useless advice. This is your indispensable guide to navigating the trepidation and challenges of modern life.'Hilarious lads.. and weirdly useful. This generation’s Ant and Dec. If one of them was really posh. Great read' - Vicky PattisonSunday Times bestseller, November 2023Trade Review'Funny, filthy and fantastic. Cackled from start to finish' * Rylan Clark *'Perfect timing for Xmas' * Heat magazine *'Hilarious lads.. and weirdly useful. This generation’s Ant and Dec. If one of them was really posh. Great read' * Vicky Pattison *'A lovely hilarious book by lovely hilarious boys' * Joel Dommett *'Hilarious and awful at the same time' * Scott Mills *

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Book SynopsisJust because arts organisations are non-profits doesn’t mean they shouldn’t make money; it means the money they make goes back to fund the mission - whether that’s music, visual arts, theatre, dance, or one of many other mediums that enrich our lives. In the US alone, the arts are a $763 billion sector whose 100,000 organisations serve almost every community in the nation. There’s no reason arts organisations should struggle to make ends meet. And now, with arts-tested strategies from Aubrey Bergauer, they won’t. Running your arts organisation like a business is your path forward to: Grow audiences and keep them coming back again - Make our organizations more inclusive - Get younger attendees in the seats and on the donor rolls - Generate millions more dollars in revenue - Continue to create the art we love-without the stress of figuring out how to afford it - The for-profit world knows how to achieve success across customer engagement, the user experience, company culture, the subscription economy, technology and media, new revenue streams, and brand relevance. Run it Like a Business provides a powerful, proven framework to help all arts organisations revitalise their economic engines and ultimately serve the art and its patrons.

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Book Synopsis''Buoyed by an appealing and measured sense of affection. Whether you love Marvel 3000 or you''re a Scorsese sympathisers, MCU is worth your time, being a pacy, lively account of the single most important studio of the century... This account offers a wealth of insight.'' - EmpireMarvel Entertainment was a struggling toymaker not even twenty years ago. Today, Marvel Studios is the dominant player both in Hollywood and in global pop culture. But what accounts for its stunning rise? In MCU, beloved culture writers Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards draw on more than a hundred interviews with actors, producers, directors, and writers to present the definitive chronicle of Marvel Studios and its sole, ongoing production, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As they delve into the studio''s key moments - from the contentious hiring of Robert Downey Jr. for Iron Man to the negotiations over Disney''s acquisition of Marvel to studio head Kevin Trade Review'A superb chronicle of how Marvel Studios conquered Hollywood.... This definitive account of the Hollywood juggernaut thrills.' * Publishers Weekly *'The book every MCU fan needs to read.' -- Alan Sepinwall * author of The Sopranos Sessions *'A gift. Comprehensive, accessible, and entertaining, MCU makes for a great primer on a modern pillar of Hollywood entertainment.' -- Nicholas Quah * Vulture and New York Magazine *'I watched all the movies. I devoured all the articles. I listened to all the pods. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the MCU . . . and then I read this magnificent book. For fans, by fans; hilarious, gripping, and emotional; no infinity stone is left unturned. I loved it three thousand.' -- Damon Lindelof * Emmy-winning screenwriter *'A riveting, deeply researched history of the collaborative wizardry and backstage showdowns behind Marvel Studios' popcorn-movie empire.' -- Douglas Wolk * author of All of the Marvels *'Robinson, Gonzales, and Edwards deliver the definitive chronicle of the greatest cinematic achievement of all time. An absolute treasure trove of depth and detail that will delight both new Marvel fans and Marvel zombies from way back, like me.' -- Jeff Cannata'I thought I was an authority on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I was wrong. This impeccably researched and reported tome is both a propulsive page turner and a real peek behind the curtain into how you build a cultural phenomenon, brick by obsessive brick.' -- Marc Bernardin * screenwriter and comic book author *'A deeply researched and engagingly written spin through Marvel history that gives credit where it's due, without papering over cracks. Even the biggest fan will find new revelations and new perspectives in the often first-hand accounts of the studio's climb to world dominance.' -- Helen O’Hara * Empire Magazine *'At some point, the movies based on the Avengers superhero group and its individual members ceased to be just comic-book entertainment; they became cultural touchstones. Robinson, Gonzales, and Edwards bring extensive knowledge to the task of determining how, and they obviously love the craft of cinema . . . Something important took place when the Avengers assembled, and this book provides the background for the sprawling canvas.' * Kirkus Reviews *

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Book SynopsisThe first biography of the Rat Pack – Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop et al – the original Swingers. Brilliant and beautifully written story of their rise and fall, and their connections with the Kennedys and the Mafia. They alit in Las Vegas for a month to make a movie and play a historic nightclub gig they called the Summit; they hit Miami, the Utah desert, Palm Springs, Chicago, Atlantic City, Beverly Hills, Hollywood back lots, illegal gambling dens, saloons, yachts, private jets, the White House itself. It was sauce and vinegar and eau de cologne and sour mash whiskey and gin and smoke and perfume and silk and neon and skinny lapels and tail fins and rockets to the sky. It was swinging and sighing and being a sharpie, it was cutting a figure and digging a scene. It was Frank and Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin and Peter Lawford for a while and Joey Bishop when they asked him and Jack Kennedy and Sam Giancana and tables full of cronies and who knew how many broads. It was the ultimate spasm of traditional showbiz – both the last and the most of its kind. It was the Rat Pack. It was beautiful. ‘Rat Pack Confidential’ – you’re never far from a cocktail, a swingin’ affair and a fist-fight.

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Book SynopsisCan we ever really know the truth about our parents? From the popular journalist, podcaster and tweeter about his rescue dog #SophiefromRomania comes a moving memoir in search of the truth behind his isolated childhood and absent father. Rory Cellan-Jones knew he was the child of a brief love affair between two unmarried BBC employees. But until his mother died and he found a previously unknown file labelled 'For Rory' he had no idea of their beginnings or ending, and why his peculiarly isolated childhood had so tested the bond between him and his mother. 'For Rory,' his mother had written on the file 'in the hope that it will help him understand how it really was ...' This is a compelling account of what Rory uncovered in the papers, letters and diaries; a relationship between two colleagues (two romantics) and the restrictive forces of post-war respectability and prejudice that ended it. It is also an evocation of the progressive, centrifugal force at the centre of all their lives - the BBC itself. Both tender and troubling, the drama moves from wartime radio broadcasts, to the glamour of 1950s television studios, to the golden era of BBC drama. His father may have directed The Forsyte Saga and Rory may have watched him from the corridors, but he would never actually meet him until much later in adulthood. Until then Rory's life was bound to the one-bedroom flat he shared with his mother in Ruskin Park ...

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Book SynopsisIn the hundredth year of the British Broadcasting Corporation, historian Simon J. Potter looks back over the hundred year history, asking if the BBC is really the ''voice of Britain'', and what comes next for British public broadcasting.2022 marks the centenary year of the British Broadcasting Corporation. As Britain''s most famous and influential broadcaster, the BBC faces a range of significant challenges to the way it operates, and perhaps to its existence, from the government but also from a rapidly changing media environment. Historian Simon J. Potter explores the hundred year history of this corporation, drawing out the roots of these challenges and understanding how similar threats - hostile politicians and prime ministers, the advent of television - were met and overcome in the past.Potter poses the question ''Is the BBC the voice of Britain?'', exploring its role in changing wider culture and society, promoting particular versions of British national identity, both at home and overseas. The BBC has long claimed to speak for the British people, to the British people, and with a British accent, and Potter explores how far these claims have been justified with this exciting new study which covers the establishment of the BBC Empire Service and the World Service, and focuses on people, programmes, and politics to understand the Corporation''s engagement with changing ideas about culture and society in Britain, including issues of class, gender, and race.Trade ReviewIn just over 300 pages the author gives a comprehensive history of the BBC and also provides much in the way of analysis of the relationship between the broadcaster and state. * David Harris, Radio Listeners Guide 2023 *A sharp-eyed survey of the BBC's increasingly fraught relations with other people, notably politicians and listeners. * Dominic Green *In my view, this book is a masterpiece because it blends perceptive political analysis and thorough historical perspective with an informed evaluation of future challenges. * David Harris, Radio User *Like a good physician, [Potter] is not squeamish about sticking in the scalpel to reveal some grisly realities * Oscar Jelley, Oxford Review of Books *... lucid book provides a useful account of the key staging posts in the life of this national institution... leads readers on a pleasant canter, starting from the BBC's small beginnings... this book offers value for money as a general introduction to the BBC and a good read overall. * Chandrika Kaul, BBC History Magazine *... academic and astringent... [earns its] place on the ever lengthening shelf of Beebology. * Stefan Collini *Potter's book This is the BBC can best be seen as a summarising study of the abundant BBC literature, with a special focus on broadcasting's international function. * Huub Wijfjes, TMG journal *Table of ContentsIntroduction - A Century of the BBC 1: Public Utility, 1922-1939 2: Propaganda, 1939-1945 3: Losing Control, 1945-1959 4: Transformation and Stagnation, 1960-1979 5: On the Market, 1980-1999 6: Going Digital, 2000-2022 Prospect - The BBC after Broadcasting

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Book SynopsisThe story of Eastmancolor's arrival on the British filmmaking scene is one of intermittent trial and error, intense debate and speculation before gradual acceptance. This book traces the journey of its adoption in British Film and considers its lasting significance as one of the most important technical innovations in film history. Through original archival research and interviews with key figures within the industry, the authors examine the role of Eastmancolor in relation to key areas of British cinema since the 1950s; including its economic and structural histories, different studio and industrial strategies, and the wider aesthetic changes that took place with the mass adoption of colour. Their analysis of British cinema through the lens of colour produces new interpretations of key British film genres including social realism, historical and costume drama, science fiction, horror, crime, documentary and even sex films. They explore how colour communicated meaning in films ranging from the Carry On series to Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), from Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to A Passage to India (1984), and from Goldfinger (1964) to 1984 (1984), and in the work of key directors and cinematographers of both popular and art cinema including Nicolas Roeg, Ken Russell, Ridley Scott, Peter Greenaway and Chris Menges.Trade ReviewRooted in detailed primary research into aesthetics, production practices, technologies and institutions, Colour Films in Britain, provides a comprehensive and illuminating consideration of the adoption, diffusion and popularization of colour in British cinema from the mid-1950s. -- Duncan Petrie, University of York, UKColour Films in Britain is a landmark study of the transition to colour that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. No other book has yet tackled this transition with such depth, breadth and precision. The collaborative efforts of Sarah Street, Keith M. Johnston, Paul Frith and Carolyn Rickards are a model for research that I hope will soon be taken up in other national and transnational contexts. -- Joshua Yumibe, Michigan State University, USATable of ContentsIntroduction Section 1: What is Eastmancolor? 1. Branding and Marketing the Eastmancolor Revolution 2. Eastmancolor, the British Film Industry, and Institutions Section 2: Eastmancolor and British Genre Films 3. Comedy and Satire 4. Social realism / contemporary drama 5. The Colour of Crime 6. Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction 7. Historical and costume films 8. Musicals, pop films, and the concert film Section 3: Eastmancolor Outside the Mainstream 9. Key colourists, 1955-85 10. Art, experimental, and avant-garde practices 11. Eastmancolor and the Amateur Film 12. Short and Documentary Films 13. The Colour of Sex? Eastmancolor and the Sex Film Section 4: Preservation and Restoration 14. Cultures and Practices of Preservation and Restoration Conclusion First Appendix: Eastmancolor Film List, 1954-85 Second Appendix: Technical Appendix

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Book SynopsisUp for a dream promotion, Emma won’t let anything get in her way – not even love.Working for a major Hollywood film company isn’t all glitz and glam. But when Emma gets sent to tour around Italy to scout the perfect location for a new blockbuster movie, she’s not going to complain. Especially when it could make or break her career…Historical adviser Mark is a distraction that Emma does not need. As they explore the beauty of Italy, though, Emma starts to fall for the mysterious historian, finding herself torn between her job and her heart.From the wild, northern mountains of Piedmont, down the vibrant coast of Cinque Terre and through the rolling hills of Tuscany, Emma’s journey becomes one of self-discovery as she questions her priorities in life.This heartwarming story of romance and redemption is the perfect read for fans of Tilly Tennant, Holly Martin and Daisy James.

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Book SynopsisThomas Doherty tells the story of the 1947 hearings into alleged Communist subversion in the movie industry. Show Trial is a character-driven inquiry into how the HUAC hearings ignited the Hollywood blacklist, providing a gripping new history of one of the most influential events of the postwar era.Trade ReviewThomas Doherty’s fans, of whom I am one, know he is a first-rate film historian with a sharp eye for political theater as well as a stylish writer with a knack for turning a phrase. Show Trial gives a thorough, well-contextualized, clear-eyed, and witty account of the 1947 HUAC “Hollywood Ten” hearings, full of pithy characterizations and choice bits of business. -- J. Hoberman, author of An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold WarThomas Doherty’s Show Trial is a uniquely pragmatic history of the Hollywood Blacklist—a big book on a big topic that ruthlessly defies and confounds orthodoxy at every turn. No book in print provides a fuller accounting of the hearings themselves. And no author to date gives his readers so much room to appreciate and understand who said what and why. -- Jon Lewis, author of Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los AngelesDoherty is one of the best, if not the best, writers in the American studies world today, and has produced an excellent book that will command a great deal of attention. Show Trial sheds new light on the story of the Hollywood Ten and HUAC and does it in fresh and exciting ways. One of the book’s greatest strengths is that it stays away from familiar academic debates that focus heavily on politics and instead tells a character-driven story using quotes from a wide variety of contemporaneous participants. Doherty places the personalities of the era—left and right—on center stage. This is easily the most comprehensive and comprehensible study of HUAC and the Hollywood Ten to date, and I predict it will become the book to read on this topic. -- Steven Ross, author of Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and AmericaIlluminating. . . . With accessible prose and astute academic insight, Doherty shows us that both the studios and the Hollywood Ten were victims of HUAC. His Show Trial is likely to become the standard authority on the genesis of the Hollywood blacklist. -- Christopher Yogerst * The Washington Post *Deeply absorbing, expertly researched, and thoroughly entertaining. -- Noah Isenberg * The New Republic *[Doherty] brings fresh scepticism to the many self-serving myths that have encrusted the tale. . . . It is impossible to read Show Trial without thinking about its relevance to the current situation in America. The country is again faced with a resurgence of nativism, racism and isolationism (ironically, it is now progressives who are warning about nefarious Russian influence) and a culture of believing figures in the public eye to be guilty until proven innocent. One can only hope for another pendulum swing, such as the one Thomas Doherty, in this engaging study, demonstrates happened over the Hollywood blacklist. -- Phillip Lopate * Times Literary Supplement *A thorough and lively chronicle of a shameful episode in American political and entertainment history. * Kirkus Reviews *A riveting, exhaustive look at the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee investigation into Communists in the film industry. . . . In the current era of legislative upheaval, Doherty’s vital, impressive history feels both relevant and urgent. * Publishers Weekly *Written with breathtaking concision and all the intrigue of a spy novel, Doherty’s account of the 1947 House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC) hearing frames the alleged subversion of Hollywood by Communists as the mirror image of the Moscow Trials. -- Carrie Rickey * Film Quarterly *A shameful interlude in American history highly relevant to today’s political divisions. * Booklist *The historian Thomas Doherty explains in yet another expertly crafted book on American movie history, that the combination of Hollywood and communism has always made for a great show. * Journal of American History *Engrossing. . . . The world suffers no shortage of books about the blacklist, but Show Trial stands out for telling its story without grinding axes. -- Jesse Walker * Reason *Doherty thoroughly chronicles the HUAC circus, with its parade of well-known stars—both defiant (screenwriters Dalton Trumbo) and reluctant (Humphrey Bogart)—and accusers, such as Rep. J. Parnell Thomas. . . . For readers who appreciate both Hollywood's golden age and the postwar politics that animated it. * Library Journal *Doherty proves there are still a few surprises, even after recent revisionist accounts exposed deeper ties than previously known between the Hollywood Ten and their Soviet controllers. In his fascinating Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist, Doherty doesn’t romanticize the Ten or try to justify the excesses of HUAC. Instead, he highlights a lesser-known aspect of the hearings: the dilemma of Hollywood centrists and liberals squeezed between the extremists on both sides. Like anti-Trump conservatives today, anti-Communist liberals in late 1940s Hollywood found that the middle could be a very lonely place. -- Mark Horowitz * Commentary *A lively and highly readable account. . . . Show Trial provides a vivid picture of an episode in US history that, for a barely credible mixture of political ugliness and downright farce, has rarely been equalled. Or at least, not until recently. -- Philip Kemp * Sight & Sound *Show Trial is a solid piece of reportage on a specific event that had shattering results. . . . We’ve all read accounts of this fateful showdown between Washington and Hollywood, but never in such depth or with such well-informed commentary. -- Leonard MaltinA difficult book to summarize, Show Trial reflects a lot of hard work and has interesting content almost page by page. The fresh research is fascinating, much of it from recently released HUAC documents revealing (partly) what went on backstage of the extravaganza. -- Patrick McGilligan * Cineaste *Show Trial may not be the final word on HUAC and Hollywood but it will be the must-cite source wherever academic research encounters the HUAC and Hollywood nexus, especially concerning the year of 1947. -- Michael Kitson * Senses of Cinema *Doherty's numerous biographical asides enhance the readability of his work while providing much-needed nuance regarding a complicated period of American history. * Choice *General readers will enjoy the rich anecdotal material and the bright and breezy style of Doherty's work. Scholars will also find in the narrative and the sources the raw materials of future work. * Historian *An excellent introduction to the topic for a younger generation who may not have known that the Trump era is not the first in U.S. history to play fast and loose with the Constitution. -- Jan-Christopher Horak * Archival Spaces: Memory, Images, History *Table of ContentsProgram NotesThanks and AcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsPart I. Backstories1. How the Popular Front Became Unpopular2. Hollywood’s War Record3. The Preservation of American Ideals4. The Magic of a Hollywood Dateline5. Smearing Hollywood with the Brush of CommunismPart II. On Location in Washington6. Showtime7. Lovefest8. Friendlies, Cooperative and Uncooperative9. Hollywood’s Finest10. Doldrums11. Crashing Page 112. Contempt13. $64 Questions and No Answers14. Jewish Questions15. The Curtain DropsPart III. Backfire16. The Waldorf and Other Declarations17. Blacklists and Casualty Lists18. Not Only VictimsA Bibliographical NoteNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisAriel Rogers rethinks the history of moving images by exploring how experiments with screen technologies in and around the 1930s changed the way films were produced, exhibited, and experienced. She challenges conventional narratives about the novelty of the twenty-first-century multiscreen environment.Trade ReviewThere is no other book remotely like this. On the Screen is original in the material it unearths and discusses, offering an innovative history of film and technology. It strikes an easy balance between big ideas and focused analysis, addressing unmapped screen dynamics as crucial elements of cinema. -- Haidee Wasson, author of Museum Movies: The Museum of Modern Art and the Birth of Art CinemaOffering an extensive and systematic exploration of screen practices in the 1930s, Ariel Rogers recharacterizes this seemingly solid, coherent era by analyzing its multiplicity and heterogeneity. The screen becomes a kaleidoscopic reality. -- Francesco Casetti, author of The Lumière Galaxy: Seven Key Words for the Cinema to ComeFilm theory's classic question "What is cinema?" often gets a (stereo)typical answer around the idea that movies exist when projected on standard screens in theaters. With her well-known and lauded attention to archival research, Ariel Rogers revises this received account of cinema and essentially rewrites it from the ground up. This is a rich and rewarding study that combines sharp scholarship with compelling new interpretation to change the field. -- Dana Polan, New York UniversityA thoroughly documented account of the broad culture of synchronicity in screen culture over the long 1930s. * Choice *On the Screen is a major achievement that insists on screen technology as an integral component of film history. * Technology and Culture *Rogers’s detailed and impressively supported account of how film screen technologies have proliferated is a timely and relevant study. * Film Criticism *Rogers provides a vivid sense of the historical particularity of screens in the long 1930s. * Film Quarterly *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Production Screens in the Long 1930s: Rear Projection and Special Effects2. Theatrical Screens, 1926–1931: Transforming the Screen3. Theatrical Screens, 1931–1940: Integrating the Screen4. Extratheatrical Screens in the Long 1930s: Film and Television at Home and in TransitCoda: Multiplicity, Immersion, and the New ScreensNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisRochona Majumdar examines key works of Indian art cinema to demonstrate how film emerged as a mode of doing history and that, in so doing, it anticipated some of the most influential insights of postcolonial thought. She analyzes the films of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Ritwik Ghatak as well as a host of film society publications.Trade ReviewFrom writer Rochona Majumdar comes this decidedly anti-colonialist read about the history of Indian cinema, with a specific eye towards post-independence India and the house of cards its democracy is built on. Highlight of the book is whenever Majumdar waxes philosophical about Ritwik Ghatak, a filmmaker worthy of much more discussion here stateside. -- Joshua Brunsting * CriterionCast *Rochona Majumdar, the historian, intervenes in the rich discourse surrounding the films of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Ritwik Ghatak through her meticulously researched and compelling book, Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony. -- Swarnavel Eswaran * South Asian History and Culture *Majumdar’s brief comment on Ray’s Calcutta trilogy as an ethnographic turn in his career, for example, is a fine provocation to rethink the shifting significance of realism in Ray’s oeuvre. Such remarks invite scholars to study these filmmakers in a comparative vein across regional, national, and transnational concerns, a task set in motion by Majumdar’s book. -- TRINANKUR BANERJEE * Film Quarterly *Rochona Majumdar's book on Art Cinema is a compelling chapter on India's modern history recorded on screen. -- Tanushree Ghosh * The Indian Express *Rochona Majumdar's book is a pleasingly accessible academic study on Indian art cinema. -- Jel Arjun Singh * India Today *The book is nuanced and its arguments are complex. Yet, it is lucid and accessible, and makes for a compelling reading. It is a compulsory book for anyone interested in history and/or visual culture. -- Dr. Arvind Elangovan * Critical Collective *How does cinema apprehend its historical moment? With characteristic eloquence and insight, Majumdar gives us a vivid account of India’s art cinema and film societies to take the shifting pulse of a nation in the early decades of its independence. In Art Cinema and India's Forgotten Futures, a rigorous interrogation into the category of radical art extends archivally-rich readings of works by Ray, Sen and Ghatak, to ground a powerful vision of films that put the specious terms of India’s democracy under scrutiny. This book changes how we will think about histories of, and histories within, art cinema. -- Priya Jaikumar, author of Where Histories Reside: India as Filmed SpaceHistory and film criticism are profoundly imbricated in Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures. Even as the book uncovers new archives for postcolonial research, it triumphantly validates cultural criticism as historical method. An invaluable scholarly work. -- Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, coeditor of Commodities and Culture in the Colonial WorldThe tradition of art cinema in India has rarely been framed with such a rich archival ambition. Displaying an eye for detail and a strong conceptual drive, Majumdar creatively establishes a similarity between the art film maker’s capacity for historical reflection and the historian’s craft. -- Ranjani Mazumdar, author of Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the CityLike the incisive art cinema she unsheathes, Rochona Majumdar probes India in its painful passage beyond partition, staggering into modernity. Cinema has never been more ‘critical’ than in Bengal from 1960 to 1974 as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, and Mrinal Sen exposed the innards of an immense ailing culture of which the brightness of Bollywood is but a fever symptom. Majumdar, to use her fertile word, apprehends the absolute necessity not just of art films like those she deftly analyses, but of the fragile film society movement that let them breathe. It’s an inspiring if tragic history, one she carefully remembers for a future that may still be possible. -- Dudley Andrew, Yale UniversityIn this engaging book, Majumdar has brought art cinema alive in a carefully contextualized study of Ray, Sen, and Ghatak—three Bengali directors who, she argues, anticipated critical historians. Her writing is evocative, thoughtful and illuminating. -- Partha Chatterjee, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Columbia UniversityTable of ContentsIntroductionPart I: The History of Art Cinema1. Art Cinema: The Indian Career of a Global Category2. The “New” Indian Cinema: Journeys of the Art Film3. Debating Radical Cinema: A History of the Film Society MovementPart II: Art Films as History4. Ritwik Ghatak and the Overcoming of History5. “Anger and After”: History, Political Cinema, and Mrinal Sen6. The Untimely Filmmaker: Ray’s City Trilogy and a Crisis of HistoricismEpilogue: Art Cinema and Our PresentAcknowledgmentsNotesSelect BibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisRochona Majumdar examines key works of Indian art cinema to demonstrate how film emerged as a mode of doing history and that, in so doing, it anticipated some of the most influential insights of postcolonial thought. She analyzes the films of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Ritwik Ghatak as well as a host of film society publications.Trade ReviewFrom writer Rochona Majumdar comes this decidedly anti-colonialist read about the history of Indian cinema, with a specific eye towards post-independence India and the house of cards its democracy is built on. Highlight of the book is whenever Majumdar waxes philosophical about Ritwik Ghatak, a filmmaker worthy of much more discussion here stateside. -- Joshua Brunsting * CriterionCast *Rochona Majumdar, the historian, intervenes in the rich discourse surrounding the films of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Ritwik Ghatak through her meticulously researched and compelling book, Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony. -- Swarnavel Eswaran * South Asian History and Culture *Majumdar’s brief comment on Ray’s Calcutta trilogy as an ethnographic turn in his career, for example, is a fine provocation to rethink the shifting significance of realism in Ray’s oeuvre. Such remarks invite scholars to study these filmmakers in a comparative vein across regional, national, and transnational concerns, a task set in motion by Majumdar’s book. -- TRINANKUR BANERJEE * Film Quarterly *Rochona Majumdar's book on Art Cinema is a compelling chapter on India's modern history recorded on screen. -- Tanushree Ghosh * The Indian Express *Rochona Majumdar's book is a pleasingly accessible academic study on Indian art cinema. -- Jel Arjun Singh * India Today *The book is nuanced and its arguments are complex. Yet, it is lucid and accessible, and makes for a compelling reading. It is a compulsory book for anyone interested in history and/or visual culture. -- Dr. Arvind Elangovan * Critical Collective *How does cinema apprehend its historical moment? With characteristic eloquence and insight, Majumdar gives us a vivid account of India’s art cinema and film societies to take the shifting pulse of a nation in the early decades of its independence. In Art Cinema and India's Forgotten Futures, a rigorous interrogation into the category of radical art extends archivally-rich readings of works by Ray, Sen and Ghatak, to ground a powerful vision of films that put the specious terms of India’s democracy under scrutiny. This book changes how we will think about histories of, and histories within, art cinema. -- Priya Jaikumar, author of Where Histories Reside: India as Filmed SpaceHistory and film criticism are profoundly imbricated in Art Cinema and India’s Forgotten Futures. Even as the book uncovers new archives for postcolonial research, it triumphantly validates cultural criticism as historical method. An invaluable scholarly work. -- Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, coeditor of Commodities and Culture in the Colonial WorldThe tradition of art cinema in India has rarely been framed with such a rich archival ambition. Displaying an eye for detail and a strong conceptual drive, Majumdar creatively establishes a similarity between the art film maker’s capacity for historical reflection and the historian’s craft. -- Ranjani Mazumdar, author of Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the CityLike the incisive art cinema she unsheathes, Rochona Majumdar probes India in its painful passage beyond partition, staggering into modernity. Cinema has never been more ‘critical’ than in Bengal from 1960 to 1974 as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, and Mrinal Sen exposed the innards of an immense ailing culture of which the brightness of Bollywood is but a fever symptom. Majumdar, to use her fertile word, apprehends the absolute necessity not just of art films like those she deftly analyses, but of the fragile film society movement that let them breathe. It’s an inspiring if tragic history, one she carefully remembers for a future that may still be possible. -- Dudley Andrew, Yale UniversityIn this engaging book, Majumdar has brought art cinema alive in a carefully contextualized study of Ray, Sen, and Ghatak—three Bengali directors who, she argues, anticipated critical historians. Her writing is evocative, thoughtful and illuminating. -- Partha Chatterjee, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Columbia UniversityTable of ContentsIntroductionPart I: The History of Art Cinema1. Art Cinema: The Indian Career of a Global Category2. The “New” Indian Cinema: Journeys of the Art Film3. Debating Radical Cinema: A History of the Film Society MovementPart II: Art Films as History4. Ritwik Ghatak and the Overcoming of History5. “Anger and After”: History, Political Cinema, and Mrinal Sen6. The Untimely Filmmaker: Ray’s City Trilogy and a Crisis of HistoricismEpilogue: Art Cinema and Our PresentAcknowledgmentsNotesSelect BibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review”A rigorous and monumental historical study of Bombay-produced Hindi cinema, which addresses the paradoxes of Bollywood's histories in highly engaging as well as truly enlightening ways. This is an essential study of Indian popular cinema and its indomitability.”—Catherine Grant, coauthor of The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound and Image”The longue durée of Bollywood is the subject of Unruly Cinema. A lively and textured account of the contradictory development of mainstream Hindi cinema as an industrial product, on the one hand, and an art form, on the other, this book is a must read for students of South Asian film, the culture industry, and discourses of globalization.”—Keya Ganguly, author of Cinema, Emergence, and the Films of Satyajit Ray

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Book SynopsisTrade Review”A rigorous and monumental historical study of Bombay-produced Hindi cinema, which addresses the paradoxes of Bollywood's histories in highly engaging as well as truly enlightening ways. This is an essential study of Indian popular cinema and its indomitability.”—Catherine Grant, coauthor of The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound and Image”The longue durée of Bollywood is the subject of Unruly Cinema. A lively and textured account of the contradictory development of mainstream Hindi cinema as an industrial product, on the one hand, and an art form, on the other, this book is a must read for students of South Asian film, the culture industry, and discourses of globalization.”—Keya Ganguly, author of Cinema, Emergence, and the Films of Satyajit Ray

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis carefully researched and nuanced account of local film history is essential reading for researchers and students who are interested in understanding the evolution of film culture as it played out beyond Hollywood. * Early Popular Visual Culture *[A] quietly radical rewriting of American film history since the 1910s. * Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television *Table of ContentsAccessing Moving Images AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Defining the Local Film1. The Silent Pageant: Municipal Booster Films 2. The Home Talent Film and the Origins of Itinerancy3. "How Movies Are Made": Hollywood and the Local Film4. Itinerants Adopt a Baby: The Local Hollywood Film and the Operational Aesthetic5. Kidnapping the Movie Queen: Amateur Aesthetics as Cultural Critique 6. The Cameraman Has Visited Your Town: The Local Film and the Politics of Recognition7. Every Town has its Main Street: The Banal Localism of the Civic Film8. Reclaiming the Local Film: Artifacts, Archives, and AudiencesConclusion: See Your Town Disappear: The Historicity of the Local FilmFilmographyBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis carefully researched and nuanced account of local film history is essential reading for researchers and students who are interested in understanding the evolution of film culture as it played out beyond Hollywood. * Early Popular Visual Culture *[A] quietly radical rewriting of American film history since the 1910s. * Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television *Table of ContentsAccessing Moving Images AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Defining the Local Film1. The Silent Pageant: Municipal Booster Films 2. The Home Talent Film and the Origins of Itinerancy3. "How Movies Are Made": Hollywood and the Local Film4. Itinerants Adopt a Baby: The Local Hollywood Film and the Operational Aesthetic5. Kidnapping the Movie Queen: Amateur Aesthetics as Cultural Critique 6. The Cameraman Has Visited Your Town: The Local Film and the Politics of Recognition7. Every Town has its Main Street: The Banal Localism of the Civic Film8. Reclaiming the Local Film: Artifacts, Archives, and AudiencesConclusion: See Your Town Disappear: The Historicity of the Local FilmFilmographyBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisFrom Twin Peaks (including the 2017 return) to Girls, a veteran critic and scholar draws on decades of industry expertise and exclusive interviews with renowned creators to examine the rise of art television.Trade ReviewNochimson's book is well worth reading not only for its insights but for the dialogue and reflection it opens up among readers. * Lost in the Movies *Television Rewired is an essential contribution to the still-crystallizing critical definition of auteur television…from the unique perspective of a critic who has engaged with the medium in profound ways. * 25 Years Later *This book details the creative process of each of the series [that developed the concept of the television auteur], based on interviews and detailed research by the author…Recommended. * CHOICE *A lively and fascinating book...Throughout Nochimson is thoroughly consumed by the question of what constitutes television art, and what plausibly counts as a defense of its achievements; her prose is utterly compelling in its gentle unfolding of such complex and challenging questions. * New Review of Film and Television Studies *[Nochimson provides] solid, but accessible, insights into the process of auteur television expression....After reading Television Rewired, I learned a new vocabulary for television viewing. The book is not a judgment of what is good or bad. Nochimson expanded my appreciation for television by explaining exactly what it is I am watching. * Popular Culture Studies Journal *Table of Contents Introduction: The David Effect The Founding Titans: Men without Formula Chapter 1. David Lynch, Twin Peaks Chapter 2. David Chase, The Sopranos Chapter 3. David Simon, The Wire The Legacy: New Options, New Questions, Retooled Formulas Chapter 4. David Simon and Eric Overmyer, Treme Chapter 5. Matt Weiner, Mad Men Chapter 6. Lena Dunham, Girls Chapter 7. Backlash! Formula 2.0 Coda: The Return of David Lynch Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA study of a decade's native Russian film production through the 1917 Revolution. Showing how these films appealed to a new middle class, the author examines the organization and evolution of the industry and looks at genres, motifs and themes in 65 of the most important surviving films.

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Book SynopsisReveals the author's experience of Hollywood in its golden days and tells the stories of the stars who appeared in his films, including Natalie Wood, John Wayne, Peter Sellers, Sidney Poitier, Steve McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, and many others.

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Book SynopsisFilm Finances’s role in filmmaking was little known outside the industry until 2012, when it opened its historical archive to scholars. Drawing on these previously private documents as well as interviews with its executives, this book tells the company’s story through seven decades of postwar cinema history.Table of Contents Preface In the Beginning Swinging London Global Expansion Going Hollywood Indiewood Afterword Acknowledgments Notes Illustration Credits Index

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Book SynopsisChristine Gledhill is Professor in Film Studies, at the University of Sunderland, UK.Trade Review'In this rich collection, a large and varied group of prominent scholars covers the state of the field in Film Studies. The book presents the reader with a dynamic tissue of discussions, positions and proposals that are methodological, theoretical, historiographic, aesthetic, and political. This is the kind of constellation that originally energized the relatively young discipline of Film Studies, but even in its references to the history of film scholarship there is nothing nostalgic about Reinventing Film Studies. Its writers are some of the most innovative and influential figures in the field, and their accounts of the present are fundamentally aimed at mapping future directions. Their contributions are at once authoritative, rigorous and polemical. This volume will be a central reference point for anyone concerned with film and media scholarship for years to come.' Professor Philip Rosen, Department of Modern Cultu 'At this moment of technological change, film studies is entering an exciting new phase in which it faces many challenges, not least the demand that it reinvent itself once again. This stimulating anthology will play an indispensable part in that process, and I have no hesitation in recommending it.' Pam Cook, Professor of European Film and Media, Un 'I found the articles to be informative and theoretically sophisticated. I would highly recommend this anthology to both students and scholars interested in exploring theoretical frameworks which are 'really useful' in analysing film today.' Film-PhilosophyTable of ContentsPart 1: Really useful theory; from aesthetics to semiotics and half-way back again; why theory?; film theory and the revolt against master narratives; case study - "Singin' in the Rain" - a study of interpretation; who (and what) is it for? Part 2: Film as mass culture; dream factory; the publicness of cinema; case study - the political culture of address in a "Transitional Cinema" - Indian popular cinema; reception theory and audience research - the mystery of the vampire's kiss; re-examining stardom - questions of texts, bodies, and performances. Part 3: questions of aesthetics; after the classic, the classical and ideology - the difference of realism; rethinking genre; case study - judging audiences, the case of the trial movie; introducing film evaluation; "Style" posture and idiom - Tarantino's figures of masculinity. Part 4: The return to history; what is film history?; "Animated Pictures" - tales of cinema's forgotten future, after one hundred years of film; the mass production of the senses - classical cinema as cenacular modernism; case study - discipline and fun - psycho and postmodern cinema. Part 5: Cinema in the age of global multi-media; film theory and spectatorship in the age of the "posts"; case study - digging an old well - the labour of social fantasy in a contemporary Chinese film; facing up to Hollywood; the end of cinema - multi-media and technological change.

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Book SynopsisThis book is about the practical realities of the film market today and how to make a film while minimizing financial risk. Film is a risky investment and securing that investment is a huge challenge. The best way to get investors is to do everything possible to make the film without losing money. Featuring interviews with film industry veterans - sales agents, producers, distributors, directors, film investors, film authors and accountants - Daniel Harlow explores some of the biggest obstacles to making a commercially successful film and offers best practice advice on making a good film, that will also be a commercial success. The book explores key topics such as smart financing, casting to add value, understanding the film supply chain, the importance of genre, picking the right producer, negotiating pre-sales and much more. By learning how to break even, this book provides invaluable insight into the film industry that will help filmmakers build a real, continuing career.A vital resource for filmmakers serious about sustaining a career in the 21st century film industry.Table of ContentsIntroduction PART 1 One small problem 1 A surprising discovery 2 The journey begins PART 2 The obstacles 3 The culture of secrecy 4 Fear and loathing: commercial is a dirty word? 5 This stuff is complicated 6 Falling revenues: falling demand for indies 7 The downside of festival culture 8 Trends in film journalism PART 3 How films make money 9 Rubber, meet road 10 The players 11 Monetization 12 How much to DIY 13 Promotion and publicity – who’s selling this thing, anyway? PART 4 Making profitable films 14 Sell the sizzle 15 Development: crafting a commercial success 16 Genre 17 Rising above genre 18 More film elements 19 Drafting 20 Casting 21 Producers and producing 22 Financials 23 Raising money the traditional way – beg 24 Before you start begging 25 Reducing the risk when presales don’t work 26 Press – the gift that keeps on giving Conclusion Top ten lessons Appendix: case studies, interviews and producer profiles Case study: micro- budget filmmaking – Marcus Mizelle Interview with legendary film school teacher Dov Simens Case studies: niche moviemaking – Tom Malloy Case studies: low-risk, low-budget sci fi – Jeffrey Giles Case study: making 70 films with Daniel Zirilli of PopArt Film Factory

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Book SynopsisThoroughly revised and updated, this second edition offers a fundamental and comprehensive treatment of how mobile systems operate in a variety of scenarios. This unrivalled approach concentrates on the properties of the radio channel, a vital and central feature that places fundamental limitations on the performance of radio systems. Bringing the reader completely up-to-date, this book: * Features two new chapters: ''Multipath Mitigation Techniques'' and ''Radio System Planning'' * Surveys various alternative methods of predicting the mean signal strength and its variability, and discusses their applications * Introduces ray-tracing methods in connection with indoor propagation * Discusses multipath and its effects on narrowband and wideband systems * Describes channel sounders and reviews methods of hardware and software simulation * Examines man-made noise and interference and discusses the resulting performance degradation By equipping the reader witTrade Review"In a textbook for a graduate course and reference for systems designers and researchers, Parsons...synthesizes from technical papers basic information about the mobile radio channel itself..." (SciTech Book News Vol. 25, No. 2 June 2001)Table of ContentsPreface. Preface to the First Edition. Introduction. Fundamentals of VHF and UHF Propagation. Propagation over Irregular Terrain. Propagation in Built-up Areas. Characterisation of Multipath Phenomena. Wideband Channel Characterisation. Other Mobile Radio Channels. Sounding, Sampling anf Simulation. Man-made Noise and Interference. Mitigation of Multipath Effects. Planning Radio Networks. Appendix A: Rayleigh Graph Paper and Receiver Noise Figure. Appendix B: Rayleigh Distribution (dB) and CNR in a Rayleigh Fading Environment. Appendix C: Deriving PDFs for Variables in Logarithmic Units. Appendix D: Effective Signal Envelope. Index.

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Book SynopsisOffers a comprehensive account of film production in the Third World. This work considers the paradoxes of social structure and cultural life in the post-independence world, where even such basic concepts as 'nation', 'national culture', and 'language' are problematic.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Titles Introduction Part One The Social, Cultural, and Economic Context 1. Third World Societies 2. Culture and National Identity 3. Cinema and Capitalism Part Two Theory and Practice of Third World Film Making 4. The Beginnings of Non-Western Film Production 5. Individual Authorship 6. "Third Cinema" Part Three National Film Industries 7. The Indian Subcontinent 8. East and Southeast Asia 9. Latin America 10. The Middle East and Africa Part Four Cinema Astride Two Cultures 11. Satyajit Ray 12. Youssef Chahine 13. Glauber Rocha 14. Y1lmaz GOney 15. Ousmane Sembene 16. Jorge Sanjines Conclusion Notes Bibliography Sources for Photographs Index

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Book SynopsisOffers readers a look at the time when sound was a vexing challenge for filmmakers and the source of contentious debate for audiences and critics. Donald Crafton presents a panoramic view of the talkies' reception as well as an in-depth look at sound design in selected films, amongst other issues.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 1 Introduction: The Uncertainty of Sound PART 1: A NEW ERA IN ELECTRICAL ENTERTAINMENT 2 Electric Affinities 3 Virtual Broadway, Virtual Orchestra: De Forest and Vitaphone 4 Fox-Case, Movietone, and the Talking Newsreel 5 Enticing the Audience: Warner Bros. and Vitaphone 6 Battle of the Giants: ERPI and RCA Consolidate Sound 7 The Big Hedge: Hollywood's Defensive Strategies 8 Boom to Bust 9 Labor Troubles 10 Inaudible Technology 11 Exhibition: Talkies Change the Bijou PART 2: THREE SEASONS: THE FILMS OF 1928-1931 12 The New Entertainment Vitamin: 1928-1929 13 Taming the Talkies: 1929-1930 14 The Well-Tempered Sound Track: 1930-1931 15 The Sound of Custard: Shorts, Travelogues, and Animated Cartoons 16 Outside the Mainstream 17 Foreign Affairs PART 3: HEARING THE AUDIENCE 18 The Voice Squad 19 Constructive Criticism: The Fans' Perspective 20 Buying Broadway: THE JAZZ SINGER's Reception 21 "The Great Ninety Per Cent" Appendix 1: Selected Box Office Grosses, 1928-1931 Appendix 2: Academy Awards Related to Sound, 1927-1931 List of Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Picture Sources General Index Index of Films

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Book Synopsis''The only book that will give you a hangover'' Chris Evans Breakfast Show---The hilarious, no holds barred autobiography from sporting legend and broadcaster Alan Brazil.As Alan recounts tales from his extraordinary life, he relives the sporting occasions, radio broadcasts and famously long drinking sessions that have defined his career. He takes readers inside the talkSPORT studio for a behind-the-scenes view of his most memorable interviews, and talks for the first time about the on-pitch rivalries and dressing room debriefs of his footballing career.With his typically outspoken and irreverent delivery, Alan shares everything from his thoughts on how the sports he loves have changed to his top tips for picking winners (and many losers) at Cheltenham. And he revels in wine-soaked jaunts in the South of France and late-night supermarket sweeps with Ray Parlour - if you can keep up.Packed full of never-before-told stories, Trade ReviewThe only book that will give you a hangover. * Chris Evans Breakfast Show *Brazil is a natural raconteur. * The Times *A breathless romp, a highlights reel of Men Behaving Badly with a bit of football and broadcasting sandwiched between boozing sessions. * Mail on Sunday *It's fantastic! * Chris Evans *A snapshot of a life well lived. * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisThis book shows how, beginning in the 1950s, a largely predictable business has been transformed into a volatile and complex multimedia enterprise now commanding over 80 percent of the world’s film business. Waterman asks how the economic forces leading to this success have combined to change the kinds of movies Hollywood produces.Trade ReviewHollywood's Road to Riches focuses on the details and peculiarities of the film business with a depth and breadth that no one else provides. Combining knowledge of facts and institutions with insightful economic analyses makes the book exceptional. -- Steven S. Wildman, Michigan State UniversityHollywood's Road to Riches is informative, intelligent, and even entertaining. -- Michael Riordan, Columbia UniversityWith box office returns slumping, Waterman has produced a timely study of Tinseltown's development since the end of World War II. -- Roy Liebman * Library Journal *[Hollywood's Road to Riches] provide[s] a thorough economic account of how American film studios and their predecessors have exploited our appetite for movies over the past 60-plus years. -- David Ondaatje * Times Higher Education Supplement *No less artful are the inspired, often Byzantine economics that have sustained the film industry for more than a century, which prove a surprisingly engrossing topic in David Waterman's Hollywood's Road to Riches. -- J. David Slocum * Playboy *

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Book SynopsisTakes us through the highs and lows of the screen trade, from high-powered dinner tables to obscure backlots, from the centres of power to far-flung locations, with a cast of characters that includes Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Jeffrey Archer, Steven Segal and many others.

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Book SynopsisThussu brings to this project the passion for news of a socially committed former journalist, the political economy of his international relations education and a formidable assembly of global detail, examining the recent explosion of 'infotainment'.-John Downing, Southern Illinois UniversityThussu's account of war as infotainment, the Bollywoodization of news and the emergence of a global infotainment sphere is as compelling as it is alarming. This is a significant and essential book for anyone interested in exploring the connections between news journalism, informed citizenship and democracy. - Bob Franklin, The Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural StudiesRichly detailed and empirically grounded, this first book-length study of infotainment and its globalization by a leading scholar of global communication, offers a comprehensivTrade ReviewThussu brings to this project the passion for news of a socially committed former journalist, the political economy of his international relations education and a formidable assembly of global detail, examining the recent explosion of ′infotainment′. -- John DowningThussu′s account of war as infotainment, the Bollywoodization of news and the emergence of a global infotainment sphere, is as compelling as it is alarming. This is a significant and essential book for anyone interested in exploring the connections between news journalism, informed citizenship and democracy. -- Bob FranklinTable of ContentsIntroduction The evolution of Infotainment The infrastructure for global infotainment Global circulation of 24/7 infotainment Indian infotainment the Bollywoodization of TV news War as infotainment Infotainment and ′neo-liberal imperialism′ A global infotainment sphere?

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Book SynopsisFor the completist, The Ultimate Binge Guide is a challenge: a bingeable bucket list of all the shows you need to see before you die (or just to be super-informed at your next dinner party). For all readers, it''s a fascinating look at the evolution of TV.The guide is broken down into several sections that speak to each series'' place in TV history, including:** Classics That Made the Molds (And Those That Broke Them):? The Jeffersons, All in the Family, Sanford and Son, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Get Smart, Cheers, Golden Girls, Happy Days...* Tony, Walt, Don, and the Antiheroes We Loved and Hated?: Oz, Mad Men, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Americans, Peaky Blinders, Ozark, The Shield, Boardwalk Empire, How To Get Away With Murder...*Game-Changing Sitcoms and the Kings and Queens of Cringe: Insecure, Community, 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Fleabag, Black-ish, Party Down, Veep, Catastr

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Book SynopsisRefuting the conventional scholarly view that Hollywood studios are basically interchangeable, this history of the contemporary American movie industry argues that we can see the individual studios' fingerprints on even the smallest aspects of their films.Trade Review"Connor structures his analysis of product - Jaws, Footloose, Saturday Night Fever, and Flashdance, to name a few - around the idea of corporate auteurship. In each film one can find a link between the artist and the production committee . . . Recommended." -- A. Hirsh * CHOICE *"Connor offers interpretations of key films from the 1970s and 80s that are often highly original and unexpected, making sure that The Studios After the Studios has many thrilling moments of discovery (and surprise). As an important contribution to film studies, it will be especially productive in re-opening the debate on Hollywood and authorship." -- Thomas Elsaesser * University of Amsterdam *"It certainly is a very welcome contribution not just to Hollywood cinema studies but also to media industry studies and film studies more generally." -- Yannis Tzioumakis * New Review of Film and Television Studies *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractEvery movie is "on some level about the business," according to Academy Award winner Robert Towne. The introduction examines that claim in light of Towne's film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, and finds it to be true. 1Logorrhea, or, How to Watch a Hollywood Movie chapter abstractThis opening chapter shows the reader how to approach a Hollywood film. The key is the studio logo at the beginning. In dozens of cases, those logos bleed into the story world of the film. The Paramount mountain turns into the landscape of Raiders of the Lost Ark; the X in "Fox" glows at the beginning of X-Men; and the ice cap on the Universal globe melts at the beginning of Waterworld. In these evanescent images, studios are tying their stories to their corporate identities, encouraging us to see these movies as studio stories. The remainder of the chapter discusses various reasons why scholars believe that studios don't matter and shows why that kind of thinking is wrong. Alternative theories include those of Horkheimer and Adorno, Jerome Christensen, and John Thornton Caldwell. 2The Literal and the Littoral: Jaws chapter abstractEveryone knows Jaws invented the blockbuster. Because of marketing? The story? Some connection to our primal fears? Half of the audience saw Jaws as a knowing throwback to the cheesy monster movies of old; the other half just saw it as a monster movie. That split audience—one sophisticated, one not—would be the key to the studio renaissance. Jaws isn't yet the story of its studio, but it is the story that teaches the audience how to look out for what lies beneath. 3Paramount I: From the Director's Company to High Concept chapter abstractThe seventies were supposed to be the glory days of the director, the auteur era. Yet even when the studios were at their weakest, directors such as George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Roman Polanski were terrified of them. Paramount did all that it could to turn auteurism into a business plan, but the paranoid auteurs would have none of it. Everyone, from studio chief Robert Evans to Coppola, was trapped in a fantasy of the 1930s. This nostalgia for the classical era gave rise to some of the studio's greatest hits—Rosemary's Baby, The Godfather, The Conversation—but it was only when they put the thirties aside and turned to the present that the studio found a way out of the cul-de-sac. The solution was Saturday Night Fever. 4Our Man in Armani: The Ovitz Interregnum chapter abstractThe most important new player in Hollywood in the eighties was Mike Ovitz's CAA. A relentless packager of films, CAA preyed on weak studios, turning movies like 5Paramount II: The Residue of Design chapter abstractUnable to make auteurism into a model, Paramount turned away from directors and complex narratives toward production designers and clean, hyperlegible images. "High-concept" style conquered substance, but it was a style that stayed true to the studio's history of extreme production design. The studio capitalized on the success of Saturday Night Fever by making a series of "popsicals" like Flashdance and Footloose and by turning Eddie Murphy into a movie star. But as Gulf + Western remade itself as Paramount Communications, the studio was under tremendous pressure to justify its role. Barry Diller argued that the movies were the heart of the new, synergistic conglomerate. Still, the changes at Paramount chased away the inventors of high concept. Left behind were Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, and their next film, Top Gun, showed how the paranoid gaze of the seventies could meld with the high finish of the eighties. 6Let's Make the Weather: Chaos Comes to Hollywood chapter abstractThe Hollywood mantra is "Nobody Knows Anything." Faced with a bottomless pit of risk, studios are always looking for insurance policies—hot writers, stars, genres; complex financing deals; accounting scams. In the nineties, one of the most comforting visions of risk management was "chaos theory," and the key idea was the "butterfly effect," the belief that the slightest change could make all the difference. Nothing was more reassuring to assemblers of talent than the notion that their smallest decisions were world shaping. This chapter discusses Groundhog Day, Jurassic Park, and Pocahontas. 7That Oceanic Feeling: One Merger Too Many chapter abstractThis chapter looks at two colossal corporate meltdowns—the destruction of Vivendi Universal and the catastrophic corporate losses at AOL TimeWarner—in order to understand what happens to the movies when the synergy goes terribly wrong. At Vivendi, the crucial story is the failed attempt to turn Curious George into a company mascot on the order of Mickey Mouse. At Warners, the essential story was Steven Soderbergh's valiant attempt to generate, via the Ocean's 11 series, enough corporate momentum to keep the dream alive. 8The Anxious Epic and the Qualms of Empire: Conglomerate Overstretch chapter abstractThe wave of epics that followed Gladiator—King Arthur, Alexander, Kingdom of Heaven, 300—became think pieces for conglomerate overstretch. The epics of the new millennium weren't like the roadshows of the fifties. These were not tales of empires on the march but of empires in retreat. Directors who wanted to tell stories about the perils of empire during the Iraq War found themselves dependent upon far-flung international megacorporations that looked an awful lot like the imperialists they were opposing. Criticism of the war started to look like criticism of the company, and the studios began to lose their hold on the corporate imagination.

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsPrologue Manifest Destiny Incorporation, Innovation, Triumph, and Tragedy Battling Depression, Censors, and Stars Fighting Fascism, America Firsters, and the US Senate The War Years Postwar Politics, HUAC, and the Blacklist Last Gasp of Old Hollywood End of the Studio, End of the Family A New Hollywood Rises Coda Afterword Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisContains twenty in-depth studies of prominent New Zealand directors, producers, actors, and cinematographers. This book displays the diversity of filmmaking in New Zealand and highlights the specific industrial, aesthetic, and cultural concerns that have created a film culture of international significance.

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Book SynopsisThese essays represent some of the best cultural studies historical research on broadcasting in the US. The collection that represents scholarship, cultural and historical, on the intersection between the medium of broadcasting and American cultural, political, and economic life

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Book SynopsisHelps to learn the secrets of successfully marketing and selling your film at more than 1,000 film festivals around the world, including the best ones for indie, documentary, short, student, digital, animation and more. This title reveals how to get a film accepted and what to do after acceptance.

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Book SynopsisAn unorthodox autobiography detailing a 50 year career in the music, entertainment and film industry.Trade ReviewA few years ago I was at a North East Film Festival of which I'm the patron. We discussed a post-screening interview with a visiting guest."Who will moderate?" I asked, and was told - Chris Phipps. ;I then asked who Chris Phipps was and was told - "Oh, he's very good." They were right, Chris is not just a very good moderator, he is exceptional, as was proved again this year when he chaired a discussion with myself, my partner Dick Clement and director David Batty following a showing of our latest film My Generation. ;He's exceptional, not just because he does his homework, which is easier these days if you plunder Wikipedia, but because he cares so much about his subject, especially if it involves film or music. ;Those twin passions are certainly the glue that fortifies our friendship. We usually end up after a couple of drinks in intense discussions, especially involving music trivia. I won't try to compete with Chris on this, he's just too clued in. ;Yes, I could name the first Kinks' single but Chris could name every track on their debut album. Yes, I know the Proclaimers were the Scottish Everly Brothers but he probably knows where their births are registered. After all he was a producer of the seminal, coolest of cool rock shows The Tube. Apart from that show he has always had a great respect and affection for North Eastern culture and heritage.; A true Northern soul - it always surprises me that he has a Brummie accent. ;Chris's book is suffused with his customary wit, wisdom and humour. ;And if Chris Phipps is dropping names, these are names really worth dropping. ;Ian La Frenais

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Book SynopsisExamining the independent film sector as a business on an international scale, author Angus Finney addresses the specific skills and knowledge required to successfully navigate the international film business.Finney describes and analyses the present structure of the film industry as a business, with a specific focus on the film (and entertainment) value chain and takes readers through the status of current digital technology, exploring ways in which this is changing the structure and opportunities offered by the industry in the future. The textbook provides information and advice on the different business and management skills and strategies that students and emerging practitioners will need to effectively engage with the industry in an international context. Case studies of films and TV, including Squid Game (2021), Parasite (2019), Game of Thrones (2011-2019) and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), are supplemented by company case studiesTrade ReviewPraise for the first edition:"This really is the complete guide to today's film industry. Right up to date, but with a real understanding of the journey that the industry has taken to get here. Comprehensive and well researched; erudite and very readable. Quite simply the book that all practitioners and industry players alike have been waiting for. Many, I suspect, may pretend to themselves that they know it already, but privately will keep the book near at hand for constant reference and self assurance. I know I will."Ken Dearsley, Partner, DLA Piper Middle East LLP"This book successfully accomplishes what many others on the same topic have failed to do. It not only captures the excitement of the international film industry, but it also delves deeply into its structure and practices. The author uses to full advantage his first-hand knowledge of the film business to develop a comprehensive analysis that will have enduring value for both film insiders and readers that are fascinated by this industry."Joseph Lampel, Professor of Strategy and Innovation, Cass Business School, City University London"At last a book for the professional practitioners of filmmaking but accessible to the interested layman. The business of film, past, present and future, are researched in meticulous detail, helpful case studies and valuable personal observations. The book is full of insights into the digital age of distribution and production with a road map for the future development of the film business. If you are going to buy one book on the international business of film, this is it!"Sandy Lieberson, former President of Production, Twentieth Century FoxPraise for the first edition:'This really is the complete guide to today's film industry. Right up to date, but with a real understanding of the journey that the industry has taken to get here. Comprehensive and well researched; erudite and very readable. Quite simply the book that all practitioners and industry players alike have been waiting for. Many, I suspect, may pretend to themselves that they know it already, but privately will keep the book near at hand for constant reference and self assurance. I know I will.'Ken Dearsley, Partner, DLA Piper Middle East LLP'This book successfully accomplishes what many others on the same topic have failed to do. It not only captures the excitement of the international film industry, but it also delves deeply into its structure and practices. The author uses to full advantage his first-hand knowledge of the film business to develop a comprehensive analysis that will have enduring value for both film insiders and readers that are fascinated by this industry.'Joseph Lampel, Professor of Strategy and Innovation, Cass Business School, City University London'At last a book for the professional practitioners of filmmaking but accessible to the interested layman. The business of film, past, present and future, are researched in meticulous detail, helpful case studies and valuable personal observations. The book is full of insights into the digital age of distribution and production with a road map for the future development of the film business. If you are going to buy one book on the international business of film, this is it!'Sandy Lieberson, former President of Production, Twentieth Century FoxTable of ContentsList of illustrations, Introduction, Acknowledgements, PART 1: The film value chain, 1. The Winds of Change, 2. The Film Value Chain, 3. Development and the producer's role, 4. Development: The Writer and the Agent, 5. Green lighting films, 6. Sales and markets, 7. The Festival Circuit, 8. Film Finance, 9. Financing: The $20m investment case, 10. Risk Management: the role of the completion guarantor, 11, Co-production and co-financing, 12. Exhibition and the changing cinema experience, 13. Production: global challenges and change, PART 2: Users and the changing digital market, 14. Users, changing behaviour and market knowledge, 15. Marketing: from traditional to digital, 16. The Streaming Wars, 17. "Catch Me If You Can": The rise and rise of Netflix, 18. "Fandom land": The Chinese Star System, 19. "Winter is Coming": The Game of Thrones case study, 20. The "Metaverse": Generation Z and the Ticking Tok, PART 3: Business, leadership and management strategies, 21. The Legal Masterclass;, 22. Project Management and cognitive bias, 23. Business strategy, 24. Entrepreneurs and investors in the film industry, 25. Business Models 2.0, 26. The challenge of creative management, 27. "To Infinity and Beyond": The Pixar Case Study, 28. The Entrepreneur: interview with Simon Franks, Redbus Group, 29. Conclusions, Appendices: (1) The international sales agents and (2) International TV Distributors, Glossary, Bibliography, Index

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The Live Event Video Technician covers terms, format types, concepts, and technologies used in video production for corporate meetings, concerts, special events, and theatrical productions.The book begins by providing a history of the industry and an overview of important roles and functions therein. It then discusses various display technologies such as LED walls and video projection, as well as video systems for converting and switching of various types of sources. Presenting the cornerstone formats, connectors, and methodologies of visual technology, this book offers a strong foundation to help readers navigate this ever-changing field. Written in an accessible tone, the book clarifies jargon and is an overarching source of knowledge for the role of the video technician, for which there has previously been little formal training.The Live Event Video Technician provides a wealth of practical information for students of media and communications courses

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Book SynopsisSuccessfully entering the TV industry can be difficult to navigate. Breaking into Factual TV will guide you through the process from how to get your first job to how to make it at the top. Written in a clear and accessible way, author Zenia Selby demystifies the TV industry for new entrants and covers all the key roles including runner, researcher, assistant producer, producer and director. Selby reveals what no one ever tells you when you start working at a TV production company the chain of hierarchy, the most effective ways to network, and the best way to structure your work. The book will travel with you up your career ladder: as you progress from runner to researcher to producer to director, each section provides you with the blueprint you need to excel with every promotion and warns you of the pitfalls to avoid. Perspectives from industry professionals are provided throughout, with interviews with Mitchell Langcaster-James (The Only Way is Essex, QI, and Celebs Table of Contents1. Breaking In 2. Working as a Team 3. Runner 4. Researcher 5. Assistant Producer 6. Producer 7. Director

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Book SynopsisThis book presents a compelling case for a paradigmatic shift in the analysis of television drama production that recentres questions of power, control and sustainability. Television drama production has become an increasingly lucrative global export business as drama as a form enjoys increased prestige. However, this book argues that the growing emphasis on international markets and global players such as Netflix and Amazon Prime neglects the realities of commissioning and making television drama in specific national and regional contexts. Drawing on extensive empirical research, Producing British Television Drama demonstrates the centrality of public service broadcasters in serving audiences and sustaining the commercial independent sector in a digital age. It attends closely to three elements-the role of place in the production of content; the experiences of those working in the sector; and the interventions from cultural intermediaries in articulating and ascribing value to Trade Review“McElroy and Noonan offer an eloquent and persuasive defence of PSB. … This is a timely, well-argued analysis of the ecology of contemporary television that, in exploring and championing the ‘local’ in drama production, has much to add to current debates.” (Stephen Lacey, Critical Studies in Television, Vol. 15 (2), 2020)Table of Contents1. Introduction.- 2. What Makes TV Drama Special?.- 3. The Ecology of TV Drama Production.- 4. Locating Regional Production.- 5. Building a Sustainable Labour Force.- 6. Cultural Intermediaries and the Value of Game of Thrones.- 7. Power and sustainability in TV Drama Production.

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Book SynopsisReading Contemporary Serial Television Universes provides a new frameworkâthe metaphor of the narrative ecosystemâfor the analysis of serial television narratives. Contributors use this metaphor to address the ever-expanding and evolving structure of narratives far beyond their usual spatial and temporal borders, in general and in reference to specific series. Other scholarly approaches consider each narrative as composed of modular elements, which combine to create a bigger picture. The narrative ecosystem approach, on the other hand, argues that each portion of the narrative world contains all of the main elements that characterize the world as a whole, such as narrative tensions, production structures, creative dynamics and functions. The volume details the implications of the narrative ecosystem for narrative theory and the study of seriality, audiences and fandoms, production, and the analysis of the products themselves.Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsList of Figures and TablesList of ContributorsEditors’ IntroductionPart I – TheoryChapter 1: New Paths in Transmediality as Vast Narratives: The State of the FieldMatthew FreemanChapter 2: Crossing the Boundaries: Narrative Ecosystems as SemiospheresMarta BoniChapter 3: Evolution in Vampire-Centered TV EcosystemsHéctor J. Pérez and Fernando CanetChapter 4: Audiences and Fan Studies: Technological Communities and Their Influences on Narrative EcosystemsPaul BoothChapter 5: Spin-offs, Crossovers, and World Building "Energies"Derek JohnsonChapter 6: The Evolution of Characters in TV Series: Morphology, Selection and Remarkable Cases in Narrative EcosystemsVeronica Innocenti and Guglielmo PescatorePart II – AnalysisChapter 7: An Italian Ecosystem: GomorraIlaria A. De PascalisChapter 8: Thank God I'm a Country Series. Interacting Environments and Networks in NashvillePaola BrembillaChapter 9: You’re Sherlock Holmes, wear the damn hat! Character Identity in a TransfictionRoberta PearsonChapter 10: The Specificities of the North-European Seriality: Strong Local Voices in a Global Media-WorldHeidi PhilipsenChapter 11: Event TV Drama within Narrative Ecosystems: Extended Seriality and Differing Paratextual Orientations in the 50th Anniversaries of Cult TVMatt HillsChapter 12: The Game of Game of Thrones: Networked Concordances and Fractal DramaturgyAndrew Beveridge and Michael Chemers

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Book SynopsisThe winner of the 2019 Peter C. Rollins Book AwardThis is the first comprehensive history of MGM from its origins in 1905 to the present. Following a straightforward chronology corresponding to specific periods of film industry history, each chapter describes how successive managements adjusted their production strategies and business practices in response to evolving industrial and market conditions.As the production subsidiary of the Loew's Inc. theatre chain, MGM spent lavishly on its pictures and injected them with plenty of star power. The practice helped sustain MGM's preeminent position during the heyday of Hollywood. But MGM was a conservative company and watched as other studios innovated with sound and widescreen, adjusted to television, and welcomed independent producers. By the 1960s, the company, sans its theatre chain, was in decline and was ripe for a takeover. A defining moment occurred in 1969, when Kirk Kerkorian, a Las Vegas entrepreneur, madeTrade Review"Tino Balio, pioneering researcher into the structure and conduct of the American film business, offers a sweeping, in-depth account of a studio that is known for Hollywood’s most glorious rise and most shameful fall. This book will become a standard reference source on the studio that was for a time the supreme name in movie entertainment."David Bordwell, University of Wisconsin-Madison"Tino Balio, the well regarded author of numerous books on the motion picture business, including the definitive two volume history of United Artists, has written the best and clearest history of MGM, the most famous of the motion picture studios during the classical studio era. Drawing upon his extensive knowledge and research over many years, he has by-passed the sensationalistic and anecdotal stories to present a fascinating description of the motion picture business. No one could have done it better."Steve Jarchow, Regent EntertainmentTable of ContentsList of Figures Series Editor’s Preface Introduction Chapter 1: Marcus Loew and the Founding of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1905-1924) Chapter 2: Building a Prestige Studio (1924-1928) Chapter 3: MGM According to Irving Thalberg (1929-1932) Chapter 4: Louis B. Mayer Reorganizes (1933-1939) Chapter 5: MGM at the Home Front (1940-1946) Chapter 6: Dore Schary: ‘A New Thalberg’ (1947-1958) Chapter 7: Adjusting to the Sixties (1959-1969) Chapter 8: Kirk Kerkorian and the Buying and Selling of MGM, Part 1 (1969-1985) Chapter 9: Kirk Kerkorian and the Buying and Selling of MGM, Part 2 (1985-2004) Chapter 10: MGM Holdings: The Coda (2004-2015) Bibliography

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Book SynopsisA Los Angeles Times Bestseller Winner of the Best Non-Fiction Book Prize at the 2018 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards “Ben Fritz crafts an electrifying and essential book that carefully chronicles how Hollywood tradition is collapsing and new models are fueling the future. A must-read.”—Ava DuVernay, director of A Wrinkle in Time, Selma, and 13th The stunning metamorphosis of twenty-first-century Hollywood and what lies ahead for the art and commerce of film Ben Fritz chronicles the dramatic shakeup of America’s film industry, bringing equal fluency to both the financial and entertainment aspects of Hollywood. He offers us an unprecedented look deep inside a Hollywood studio to explain why sophisticated movies for adults are an endangered species while franchises and super-heroes have come to dominate the cinematic landscape. And through interviews with

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