Chuck Tryon

Covers a variety of developments, from new methods of financing films to the effect of digital projection on cinemas (it’s expensive to switch from physical reels, even if it may save money in the long run) and the impact of new dissemination models like Netflix on cinema attendance, and then on to the role of film blogs and film remixes in constituting a film-going and -understanding public. Interesting to see these things taken together, since they’re usually considered separately, but people fond of vidding might need to take a few deep breaths while reading that last chapter on remix. ([personal profile] cesperanza, I was thinking of sending a few pages to you just to watch you react!) Tryon has read Henry Jenkins, but took from him the idea that vidding is about “tributes” to the original, and he uses trailer mashups and film surveys (like the one where different movies count from 1 to 100) to survey the remix genre. While he takes time to note that somehow in the new developments in creating and financing film it’s the young white guys who get celebrated, and even mentions the gender implications of taking Brokeback Mountain mashup trailers as a focus of one’s analysis of remix culture, he then … continues to focus on Brokeback Mountain mashup trailers, while not spending any time explaining what gets left out. Tryon might point out that his interest is in movies, not television, which is somewhat fair (except … Vogue! The Mountain! Handlebars! Beethoven’s Fifth Gold Digger!). But I was naturally drawn to the question of why he picked movies as compared to other forms of audiovisual production, which was not answered in the book.… (meer)