Description
Book SynopsisJohn Thornton Caldwell's landmark Specworld demonstrates how twenty-first-century media industries monetize and industrialize creative labor at all levels of production. Through illuminating case studies and rich ethnography of colliding social-media and filmmaking practices, Caldwell takes readers into the world of production workshopping and trade mentoring to show media production as an untidy social constructrather than a unified, stable practice. This messy complex system, he argues, is full of discrete yet interconnected parts that include legacy production companies, marketers and influencers, aspirant online producers, data miners, financiers, talent agencies, and more. Caldwell peels away the layers of these embedded production systems to examine the folds,fault lines,and fracturesthat underlie a risky, high-pressure, and often exploitative industry. With insights on the ethical and human predicament faced by industry hopefuls and crossovercreators seeking professional careers, Caldwell offers new interpretive frames and research methods that allow readers to better see the hidden and multifaceted financial logics and forms of labor embedded in contemporary media production industries.
Trade Review"The text is a wave to be surfed. . . . It will absolutely require Caldwellian levels of attention, vision, and language to measure up to the complexities of the world." * Film Quarterly *
Table of ContentsContents
Preface
List of Abbreviations
1 Ethics? Stress, Rifts, Bad Behavior
2 Framework: Spec, Folds, Leaks
3 Regimes: Craftworld, Brandworld, Specworld
4 Case: Warring Creator Pedagogies (The Aspirant’s Crossover Dilemma)
5 Folding: Stress Aesthetics, Compliance, Deprivation Pay
6 Case: Televisioning Aspirant Schemes
7 Fracturing: Rifts and Stress Points as System Self-Portraits
8 Case: Conjuring Microfinance to Overleverage Aspirants
9 Methods: Production Culture Research Design
Acknowledgments
Select Field Sites: Observations, Interviews, Transcriptions
Notes
Works Cited
Index
