no shit
06.12.2009
Waern, A et al ~ On the Edge of Reality
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , , , , ,

Waern, Annika
Denward, Marie

The fact that the project played with consumers’ perception of what is real lead to quite some controversy.

“In the terminology of Cindy Poremba, Sanningen om Marika was a ’brink game’, a game in which the activities are so real that it cannot fully be considered to be just a game. The brink effect was created through the combination of the alternate game aesthetics, the emphasis on ‘pushing your personal boundaries’ inspiring participants to do things they might want to do but never would have done otherwise, and the lack of off-game.”

“The central goal of successful immersive game design is to communicate to players that a cage is in place, while making it as easy and likely as possible for the players to pretend that they don’t see the cage.” Quoting McGonigal.
“Sanningen om Marika did not achieve this effect, and as discussed above we do not believe that the producers intended it to. SVT wanted SOM to be deliberately confusing to television viewers, and P wanted to create a brink game experience.”
“The authors of this report believe that the effect [of not achieving McGonigal's effect] was both unfortunate and unethical. It was unfortunate because it made some potential participants afraid to participate, and created unnecessary conflicts between players and newcomers which in turn harmed the game experience for the players. It was unethical because it made some participants engage in a mission that they believed to be serious, and then made them very disappointed when it was not.”

15.11.2009
Ellis, John ~ Visible Fictions
category: PhD sources
tags: , , ,

1
“broadcast TV cannot wipe out cinema any more than cinema was able to wipe out theatre.” But every next generation is bigger: theatre is tiny, cinema bigger, TV huge

10
“Sophisticated new technology always seems to provoke a flurry of wild and naive speculation about its effects.”

11f
“The technology alone does not create the use to which it is put: technology is implemented (or, as with most inventions, never implemented) according to the prevailing patterns of use into which it can be fitted, and according to the emerging forms of social organisation with which it can align itself.”

12
“TV lines up with (and inflects) the increasing domestic use of technology, the emphasis on home and family as site of consumption; cinema lined up with (and superseded) public forms of entertainment like vaudeville and music hall, the sites of public enjoyment and of the development of non-religious mass ideologies.”

16
TV & newspapers feed off each other.

24f
“The form of the entertainment film is one reason for the confusion between cinema and broadcast TV. The entertainment film can be broadcast on TV, hence it seems as though there is little real difference between the two media. Two immediate objections can be made to this assumption. First, a film on TV yields a very different experience to its viewer, unless that viewer is able to suspend the sense of watching TV and imagine instead the sense of being in a cinema. Second, it is not possible to show broadcast TV material in a cinema in the way that it is possible to show films on TV. Broadcast TV has developed its own forms, those of the serial and the series, which resist showing in the ‘single work’ form that cinema imposes.”

25f
“Cinema marketing sells two rather distinct things: the single film in its uniqueness and its similarity to other films; and the experience of cinema itself. Cinema and film are both sold at the same point, at the point of sale of an admission ticket. It is not the film that is sold at this point, it is the possibility of viewing a film or films; it is not cinema as an object that is sold, but cinema as an anticipated experience.”

26
“tickets are sold [...] on the expectation of pleasure.”
“What is bought in the cinema is the possibility of a pleasurable performance: the performance of a particular film and the performance of cinema itself, both together.”

26f
“Cinema in this way becomes a very precise urban experience, that of the crowd with its sense of belonging and of loneliness. Alternatively, cinema in smaller communities tends to perform a different function when most of the audience are acquainted with each other. Here the entertainment is related to particular characteristics of individuals or of the place itself. The film comes from outside, the cinema belongs to the particular place. However, such group experiences of cinema are becoming more and more rare, and cinema is now characteristically an urban phenomenon, [especially in Britain].”

27
“‘picture palaces’ [are] now the subject of nostalgic photo-books: simple brick shells decorated in bizarre and rich styles, and usually of a massive size to emphasise the grandeur of the cinematic experience.”

28
1920s: “The couple visiting the cinema during this period experienced cinema as an integrated succession of entertainments that went far beyond the simple experience of viewing a film together in a more or less anonymous crowd.”

30
“An idea of the film is widely circulated and promoted, an idea which can be called the ‘narrative image’ of the film, the cinema industry’s anticipatory reply to the question ‘What is this film like?’” => The narrative image is the promise -> the film is the realisation of that promise.
“Payment for a ticket is not an endorsement of a film, nor is it an endorsement of a particular performance of a film in a particular place. It is an endorsement of the narrative image of the film, together with the general sense of the cinematic experience.”
“Cinema demands single films, complete in themselves and distinct from other films.”

37
“The experience offered is one in which an individual film will complete the enigma of the narrative image. The experience of cinema that is offered is one of the public viewing of images with their supporting sounds. These images and sounds, viewed in the particular circumstances of the cinema, produce a particular kind of spectating that is intense and sustained.” Is this any different from TV / home cinema nowadays?

38-61
Ellis uses psychoanalysis to describe the relationship between cinema & viewer? Interesting, but I don’t agree.

38
Cinema is constructed in another time & place => absent from the place in which the viewing takes place => yet it is (very) present.

40
“Commercial cinema, in increasing its scale and scope as far as possible, tries to standardise its audiences to the same kinds of attention to the screen.”
In cinema everybody is alone and in near-darkness => particular kind of mental state: “a concentration of psychic activity into a state of hyper-receptivity”: dream-like, close to sleep => “what is seen is not subject to the usual expectations of plausibility that we apply to everyday life.”

41f
Cinema provokes identification with:

  1. apparatus of projection (beam of light from projector = imagined beam of light from spectators’ eyes),
  2. narcissistic identification with any figure on screen.

42
“[the] partial suspension of the judging function of the ego [is] necessary for the activities of day-dreaming and the construction of fantasies.” The ghost and the shell are not unified anymore -> one looks at oneself from the outside.

43
“Both dreaming and fantasy deal with fragmented and contradictory representations of figures” (oneself)

45
The spectator is looking at something that doesn’t look back at him = voyeurism.

47
Voyeurism is what constitutes the pleasure & fascination with cinema. I don’t agree, it’s about story.

50
“Gazing is the constitutive activity of cinema. Broadcast TV demands a rather different kind of looking: that of the glance. Gazing at the TV is a sign of intensity of attention that is usually considered slightly inappropriate to the medium.”
“As the conventions for the depiction of reality change, so audiences tend to deride what once was taken as ‘the real’ as being spectacular or a fake.” Perhaps why I don’t like classic films that much?

51
“entertainment cinema has been concerned [...] to play between the [spectacle and reality], to make the real spectacular and the spectacle plausible.”

53
“The cinema image is routinely more elaborate and detailed than the TV image.”

12.11.2009
Ben Shaul, N ~ Hyper-Narrative Interactive Cinema
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , ,

15
“Hyper narrative interactive cinema refers to the possibility for users or “interactors” to shift at different points in an evolving film narrative to other film narrative trajectories.”

16
“we strive to construct out of a given audiovisual flow a causal goal oriented trajectory that starts at some point and reaches somewhere.”

17
“Cognitive constructivist narrative film theory maintains that narrative films deeply engage and sustain the attention of viewers/listeners since they allow them to construct coherent narratives leading to closure. That is why an overall continuous editing style, synchronized or otherwise cohering audiovisual formations, spatial constructions arranged around the logic of the narrative succession, narrative re-centering and closure have become tropes of popular mass film artifacts.”

21
“It is only because texts offer you a notion that they are going somewhere that you are willing to follow.” PoMos say there is no constant => that’s why PoMo books/films are frustrating to read/watch.

23
“avant-garde modernists presumed a centered self whose confidence they wished to reassess through alienating worldviews and respective textual strategies, whereas post-modernists often presume a computer determined de-centered and split self, whose non-confidence, distraction and alienation they reassure through neutralized split narratives projecting neutralized and inconsequential split worldviews.”

29
“Just like television, computerized interactive films need not replicate cinematic narrative strategies to engage attention.”
“Based upon constructivist narrative film viewing theories, I contend that for non-game, complex, multi-narrative aspiring, audiovisual interactive texts to be deeply engaging, the computerized ‘hyper-linked nature’ from which these works spring has to be consonant with, rather than alien to human cognitive, affective and sensual faculties.”
“For digital based films to generate deep cognitive, affective and sensual engagement rather than shallow distraction, the human cognitive strive for coherence must be taken into account.”

30
Major hyper-narrative split-attention stumbling blocks:

  1. non-restriction of narrative threads,
  2. incoherent transitions within and between different narrative threads,
  3. non resolution of multi-threaded narratives.

31
“while the calculative power of computers may generate endless forking story possibilities, and while the philosophical, social or scientific implications of such narrative idea are intriguing, attempts to actually devise such a labyrinth will divert the viewer’s or interactors’ attention towards memorizing and puzzle-solving cognitive activities.” Films should not turn into puzzles!
“for hyper-narratives to be comprehensible, coherence within narrative threads and between them must be maintained.”

31f
Only give consumers choice at crucial points, points that have moral, survival, or emotional consequences (shoot or not, betray loving husband or not, etc.).

39-58
Interaction in hyper-narratives should not be an end in itself (like in many games which concentrate on skill acquisition) but be used to deepen the consumers’ engagement. Strategies to achieve that:

  • primacy & recency
  • interaction limited to crucial “what if” or “if only” moments
  • look up

39ff
Contrary to psychoanalysis viewers do not identify themselves with protagonists, but empathise with them.

44f
“beyond restless distraction inhering in the possibility of change at will, why should the interactor care to change ‘at will’ if unpredicted change or the entertainment of ‘what if’ possibilities are what fascinates him/her in non-interactive narratives to begin with? Moreover, narrative change, when pre-meditated by the author, deeply engages the viewer, whereas if change is given into the hands of the interactor or the ‘poacher’, who cannot himself devise complex cohering trajectories, whether for lack of talent, knowledge, experience or time, the result will most certainly be shallow, distracting and game-like.”

46ff
Ben Shaul says that Jenkins says that film (narrative) & gaming are combinable, but that this would then lead to films comparable to slapstick or Bruce Lee where story only serves to link gags or fighting scenes. But perhaps Jenkins is not talking about the successor of film, but an additional genre/form?

50
“It seems therefore that interactive hyper-narratives should pay little attention to skill acquisition for that enhances a shallow gaming attitude, avoid automating interaction for that enhances redundancy, and refrain from offering intermittent gaming transitions between behavioral interaction and cognitive construction, for that arrests the engagement that dramatic narrative succession engenders.”

47
“environmental storytelling” -> Ben Shaul’s or Jenkins’ idea from First Person?

49
split attention = “[the] split between mastering the skills needed to perform effective interventions and his/her cognitive construction of the narrative trajectories.”

69
“what sustains our engagement and attention in narratives is a dramatic succession underlined by causal logic and a sense of moving towards a goal rather than spatial immersion.” 3D is nice, but not necessary for a narrative (film) to be successful. Yes, perhaps, but if you see cinema as an experience, then offering more may be better.
“amazement counters deep emotional and cognitive narrative engagement and generates split attention” Not sure about that!

78
“for reciprocal interfaces to be hyper- narrative engaging, they should lead to unexpected protagonist reactions and narrative developments.”

84
“Based upon a cognitive-constructivist approach to narrative and the viewer’s activity it has been suggested that film narrative is designed in such a manner that it rewardingly plays with the viewers’ strive to construct a cohering, intelligible, goal oriented trajectory out of the film’s audiovisual flow, by introducing surprises, distractions, diversions and postponements along the way. Moreover, cognitive and emotional viewer engagement results from the cumulative effect achieved by the narrative’s temporal dramatic succession of events that leads to closure.”

84f
“The book identified the points at which interactive hyper-narratives threaten narrative coherence, dramatic succession and closure. It then suggested feasible ways to turn these deficiencies into advantages. Hence, rather than allowing for the computer-enabled design of many intersecting narrative threads that lead to interactor cognitive confusion and disengagement, it has been suggested, following Bordwell’s analysis of ‘forking path’ narrative films (e.g., Run Lola Run), that optional narrative threads be restricted, and that transitions between narrative threads be confined to crucial decision points, arrived at after a causal coherent dramatic build-up and followed by a causal coherently built narrative thread. Moreover, the viewer should be allowed to construe meaningful interrelations between different threads, evoked through inter-narrative-thread temporal, spatial, action and character recurrence, parallelism or variation. Also, in order to overcome the disengagement and confusion posed by hyper-narrative transitions between options that lead to different outcomes, it has been suggested that the maintenance of a cumulative effect derived from a narrative temporal dramatic succession that leads to closure, can be achieved through the use of repetition and return to scenes where temporal constrains are introduced, and through using primacy and recency effects.”

85
“a rewarding and narrative-engaging design of the relation between the interactor’s behavioral action and its audiovisual figuration may be achieved when there is a coherent reciprocal correspondence between the figured audiovisual evolution and the type of behavioral action applied to this figuration.” Depending on how the consumer interacts with device/narrative, the narrative evolves/reacts differently.

31.10.2009
Cuban, M ~ Sports Ratings Records
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , ,

“THe longer the shelf life, the more likely that there is a lower perceived participation value. Sure you may want to talk about your favorite TV show with others, but there is no rush. You can get to it when you get to it. More importantly, networks and production companies should work a lot harder at creating realtime participation around their content. If you can increase the value of participation, you increase the value of the show and the desire to watch the show at the same time as others. [Which is exactly what is happening with sports in record numbers.}
You cant stop people from recording shows on their DVRs, and you shouldnt try. But you should try to give them as many reasons as possible to take advantage of the increased entertainment value of participating with others. High participation equals high viewership. [That is exactly what record ratings for sports are telling us.]”

Cuban, M ~ Sports Ratings Records (31.10.2009)

19.10.2009
Tryon, C ~ Reinventing Cinema
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Very good introduction and conclusion!

29f
“Reworking the adage that “all screenplays are also business plans,” John T. Caldwell observes that any screenplay being considered for production

    “generates considerable attention and involvement at the earliest story sessions and producers’ meetings by personnel from the firm’s financing, marketing, coproduction, distribution, merchandizing, and new media departments or divisions. Such discussions and analysis seek to ensure that any new film or [television] series will create income-producing properties (reiterations of the original concept) that can be consumed via as many different human sensory channels as possible.” Caldwell, J ~ Production Culture, 2008, 232f

This vast expansion of the original film text suggests that the narratively contained world of the feature film is now the exception, as target audiences are encouraged to extend their consumption into other outlets beyond the initial theatrical screening. To be sure, this process of cross-promotion has existed for some time, whether through fast-food tie-ins or action figures; however, the process of incompleteness suggested by DVDs has helped to reconceptualize film narrative in ways that tie together the fictional world of a film with the economic goals of a studio.”
DVD was an earlier step to / a preparation of audiences for storytelling in an entarch.

57
“Thus, while digital effects provide filmmakers with new tools for telling stories, the true reinvention of cinema is taking place on the margins, often outside of Hollywood, where innovative filmmakers seek new ways to distribute their work.”

64
“[In 2007 each cinema] screen was watched by an average of one hundred people over the course of a single week, typically on weekend evenings.”

78
“less than 15 percent of feature revenues now comes from theatrical box office income” (Caldwell, J ~ Production Culture, 2008, p9).

85
“portable entertainment [iPod/iPhone] may offer new models of attention more associated with distraction and with extending the narrative world of a movie or television show beyond the confines of the larger screens.” The iPhone is not a new outlet for movies, but for extensions of movies. A step towards entarch.

86
“The idea that we’re all going to abandon the multiplex for the supermobile is nothing more than one generation’s fantasy of another.” (Longworth, K ~ Distribution Wars, 2007)

90f
“Blurring the boundaries between promotional and entertainment content, webisodes call for a new language for thinking about the definition of a film text and for thinking about our relationship to this material.”

91f
“digital media have also contributed to the dissolution of a vibrant, unified cinema culture, explaining that “when people prefer to identify themselves as members of ever-smaller cohorts – ethnic, political, demographic, regional, religious – the movies can no longer be the art of the middle.”" Gabler, N ~ The Movie Magic Is Gone, LA Times, 25.02.2007

92
“what might be called the era of “desktop distribution” has actually ushered in new models for the engaged film audiences that watch and discuss films in a variety of public and private contexts, even while providing new avenues for major media conglomerates to reach those same audiences.”

102
“independent filmmakers begin to find new platforms that may place less emphasis on theatrical premieres.”

123
“While crowdsourcing may very well help filmmakers build an audience, it can also shut down possibilities for others, particularly the middlebrow films that may depend upon a gradual, platformed release in order to manage expectations. These shifts have had particularly devastating implications for the major indie studios.”
“Good buzz spreads quickly, bad buzz even faster.” (http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2008/06/laff-mark-gill.html)

148
“film blogs are perhaps the most significant evidence yet of a vibrant and engaged networked film audience.”

153
“These shorter videos should not be seen as a substitute for longer-form entertainment, whether movies or television, but instead complement, promote, and in many ways depend on the feature films and TV shows they parody.” He’s quoting Miller, Nancy; 2007; Minifesto for a new Age; Wired 15.3.

173
“whatever else digital cinema is doing, it is also quite clearly a means for expanding the sites where cinema can be commodified, for bringing movies to the widest possible audiences.”
“However, the reactions within the entertainment industry to these forms of fan activity cannot be separated from the industrial, social, and historical conditions that shape film exhibition, distribution, production, and consumption. While a number of media companies, including Viacom, have attempted to contain these fan productions, others, such as Fox Atomic, have sought to co-opt them by providing fans with material for creating their own videos.”

174
“the ongoing shift to digital exhibition challenges traditional economic models and exhibition protocols, altering not only the selection of movies available but also our relationship to film as a medium.”

174f
“film is defined not merely as a technological apparatus, but also as Lisa Gitelman reminds us, in terms of the social practices associated with it. Watching a movie in a theater, at home on a DVD player, or on the subway on an iPod enteils far more than the activity of looking at a screen, and in some cases the uses of new technologies, especially portable media players, upset normative definitions of public and private space, requiring people to develop new codes of etiquette to match the new technologies.” check out Gitelman

175
“this anytime, anywhere distribution model also has the effect of reshaping theatrical distribution model based on scarcity, in which there are only a limited number of screens available at any given time.”
“[Nicholas] Rombes observed that with the inclusion of extras on the DVD, audiences were given the perception that movies are infinitely malleable or expandable.” More recently, of course, film texts are expanded even further through additional scenes posted to the web, allowing viewers to broaden their experience of a film well beyond the initial textual boundaries, while also ensuring a seamless mix of entertainment, marketing, and branding. Or course, these supplemental do more than promote specific films; they also promote a specific relationship with the film industry itself, addressing us on DVDs in particular, as connoisseurs, as experts on film culture.”
“these textual materials present an important site for the ongoing definition and “self-theorization” of the production cultures associated with film and television.” see Caldwell

176f
“we are witnessing a vast expansion of DIY and ultra-low-budget film production, due in part to inexpensive production and distribution equipment, leading to a significant transformation of the practices associated with film exhibition. Thus, even though Hollywood blockbusters are breaking box office records, indies face the recognition that many films that had historically played in theaters would now be unlikely to receive theatrical exhibition, except perhaps at a few festival screenings.”

177
“Hollywood studios continue to produce massive blockbusters seen by millions of people, but the sheer volume of movies may have the effect of fragmenting audiences seen while providing individuals with precisely the films they would most enjoy.” He calls this “the loss of a common culture” p177.
“cinema remains defined primarily in terms of theatrical distribution.”

178
“In fact, while studio filmmakers and theater owners continued to criticize day-and-date-releasing, characterizing it in some cases as a threat to the very definition of film, a number of indie filmmakers have recognized it as a viable option for getting their films seen. These models have been successful in helping some low-budget filmmakers find a wider audience, but it remains unclear how these models will be used.”
“blogs in particular at least maintain the imagined experience of the communal experience of watching with a crowd.”

179
“cinema continues to play a vital cultural role, no matter when, where, or how we watch.”

05.10.2009
Svahn, M ~ Marketing the Category of Pervasive Games
category: PhD sources
tags: , , ,

Svahn, Mattias
Lange, Fredrik
2009
Marketing the Category of Pervasive Games

Chapter 11 in Montola, M et al ~ Pervasive Games

Very good marketing article! Good overview of marketing pervasive games, but applies to all new products. Worth reading again when I’m writing about marketing the entertainment architecture.

219
“It is safe to say that some of the more extreme pervasive games, such as Momentum, can neber be mainstream hits.”
“We propose that the way to mass-market a pervasive game successfully is to stop thinking only about mainstream game launches, such as Halo 3 and World of Warcraft, and instead look more to the launches of brands such as iPod, Starbucks, or Jamie Oliver. Pervasive games are not really new. It is just that the mass market cannot really grasp them. They are where the mp3 player was before the iPod, where coffee shops were before Starbucks, or where cooking shows were before Jamie Oliver – they lack the one prototypical product that defines the whole product category for the mass market.”
“Categorization is fundamental in human life. People categorize things automatically, even without being aware of it. The human ability to group instances into categories is automatic and critical in everyday life.”

220
“Product history shows that it is highly important to consier categorization when creating business moels for nevel products. What use, situations, needs, and solutions already exist that our product is replacing or adding to? These questions are central to marketing strategy decisions, such as what advertising style to use, and where to put the product on sale.”
“Thus, a new product should attempt to catch the eye of the market’s leading consumers. If the first impression regarding a new product comes from an association with a down-market-associated category, then the new product will inherit the associations from that category.”

222
“However, the launch of a truly new product, a rare opportunity, offers some opportunity to shake up perceptions.”

224
“The Majestic case [EA pervasive game that was marketed alongside video games] also demonstrates how important it is to avoid using category essences from a different category (in this case major computer games) if these essences make people perceive the product as something different.”

225f
Pervasive games do not fit into domain of “entertainment”, because they are not the reward after work and chores like film, TV, or a rock concert are. They are with a player all the time. That’s why they need to be marketed as part of a different domain, for example “specialized hobbies and interests” which “can turn into mass-market products if they manage to establish themselves as “designer lifestyle” products.” They can be the next Harley-Davidson or iPod.
All of this applies to the entarch!

226
“Human consumers carry around a primeval feeling of there being a time and a place for everything and unaware participation goes agains that feeling.”
-> ARGs and entarch have to be VERY carful not to disturb that feeling!

228
“This quality of “while doing other things” contrasts the domain of [engrossing] entertainment and its members such as literature and the cinema.”
The domain of “reward” encompasses “entertainment” (a disruptive activity) and “leisure” (non-disruptive). An entertainment product cannot be marketed as a leisure product. But the entarch is doing exactly that! Can the entarch be sold as the matter that glues various forms of entertainment together, but itself if not “entertainment” but “leisure”, a “designer lifestyle product” that channels consumers to “entertainment” products?? If it were a “reward” product, we wouldn’t have this problem, but can you market something as “reward” or is that too abstract?

229
If their concept is sound, “it means that the competitors for the mass-market consumers’ wallet and attention are personal fashion items and visiting “fashion-places” rather than newly released titles for PlayStation 3. It means that in the short term it may be wiser to design a pervasive game for the iPhone than for the PlayStation Portable, even if the former is a technologically inferior platform.”

01.10.2009
CNBC ~ The New Screen Test
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , , , , , ,

“Among the truisms that infect film-business thinking, two have endured longer than most. First, when making movies, always spend someone else’s money. And, second, cinema is as close to recession-proof as it gets: when money’s tight, there is nothing quite like a darkened movie house to provide a cheap, diversionary fix.”

“co-finance equity investors are not the studios’ ‘partners’ at all… they’re prey”

“They [European film financiers] see in the recent worldwide box office takings of The Dark Knight, and the phenomenal success in France of the €10m Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (€130m in revenues and counting) evidence not of a persistent appetite for cinema-going, but of growing discrimination on the part of ticket-buyers.”

“Most of Europe’s independent film industry is dependent on television underpinning its funding. Over the last few years, with broadcasters suffering acute market share fragmentation due to new competitors, TV licence fees have dropped. Worse still, many non-studio, non-quota films simply don’t get bought. With a recession hitting TV advertising, these problems will only be exacerbated. So traditional sources of indie film financing will likely be hit even harder. What gives the myth some credence, however, is that film is cheaper than other forms of entertainment including videogames and restaurants. If you look at supermarkets, special offers are doing well and so are the luxury items. Sales of beef fillet have gone up exponentially since it beats dining out – it’s the middle that suffers in recessions.”

“150 of the films made in France [227 in total] were watched by fewer than 100,000 people last year; their box office grosses covering a pitiful 2% of their production costs.”

“…investment in French films reached a record-breaking €1.2bn in 2007.”

“…without a plausible shot at a Best Actor/Actress Oscar nomination, films in the €5m-€10m budget range are operating in a dead zone and are harder to recoup.”

“…we think European film is still a sound investment.”

CNBC ~ The New Screen Test (01.10.2009)

01.10.2009
Screen Daily ~ 3D needsfully-rounded pictures
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , , ,

“[Upcoming 3D productions] could be the commercial salvation of a movie-going experience that, depending on one’s source, has stagnated or experienced the most tremulous of growth.”

Screen Daily ~ 3D needsfully-rounded pictures (01.10.2009)

01.10.2009
Trendwatching ~ Status Stories
category: PhD sources
tags: , , ,

“Needless to say, ‘exclusive access’ is the next big thing for anything related to status, and thus for STATUS STORIES.”

Trendwatching ~ Status Stories (01.10.2009)

01.10.2009
Trendwatching ~ Transumers
category: PhD sources
tags: , ,

“TRANSUMERS are consumers driven by experiences instead of the ‘fixed’, by entertainment, by discovery, by fighting boredom, who increasingly live a transient lifestyle, freeing themselves from the hassles of permanent ownership and possessions. The fixed is replaced by an obsession with the here and now, an ever-shorter satisfaction span, and a lust to collect as many experiences and stories as possible. Hey, the past is, well, over, and the future is uncertain, so all that remains is the present, living for the ‘now’.”

Trendwatching ~ Transumers (01.10.2009)