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Informationen zum Autor John Thornton Caldwell is Professor and Chair of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television; editor of Electronic Media and Technoculture; and coeditor of New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality. He is the producer and director of the award-winning documentaries Rancho California (por favor) and Freak Street to Goa: Immigrants on the Rajpath. Klappentext In Production Culture, John Thornton Caldwell investigates the cultural practices and belief systems of Los Angeles–based film and video production workers: not only those in prestigious positions such as producers and directors but also many “below-the-line” laborers, including gaffers, editors, and camera operators. Caldwell analyzes the narratives and rituals through which workers make sense of their labor and critique the film and TV industry as well as the culture writ large. As a self-reflexive industry, Hollywood constantly exposes itself and its production processes to the public; workers’ ideas about the industry are embedded in their daily practices and the media they create. Caldwell suggests ways that scholars might learn from the industry’s habitual self-scrutiny.Drawing on interviews, observations of sets and workplaces, and analyses of TV shows, industry documents, economic data, and promotional materials, Caldwell shows how film and video workers function in a transformed, post-network industry. He chronicles how workers have responded to changes including media convergence, labor outsourcing, increasingly unstable labor and business relations, new production technologies, corporate conglomeration, and the proliferation of user-generated content. He explores new struggles over “authorship” within collective creative endeavors, the way that branding and syndication have become central business strategies for networks, and the “viral” use of industrial self-reflexivity to motivate consumers through DVD bonus tracks, behind-the-scenes documentaries, and “making-ofs.” A significant, on-the-ground analysis of an industry in flux, Production Culture offers new ways of thinking about media production as a cultural activity. Zusammenfassung An investigation of the cultural practices and belief systems of Los Angeles based film and video production workers. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Industry Reflexivity and Common Sense 1 Chapter 1: Trade Stories and Career Capital 37 Chapter 2: Trade Rituals and Turf Marking 69 Chapter 3: Trade Images and Imagined Communities (Below the Line) 110 Chapter 4: Trade Machines and Manufactured Identities (Below the Line) 150 Chapter 5: Industrial Auteur Theory (Above the Line/Creative) 197 Chapter 6: Industrial Identity Theory (Above the Line/Business) 232 Chapter 7: Industrial Reflexivity as Viral Marketing 274 Conclusion: Shoot-Outs, Bake-Offs, and Speed Dating (Manic Disclosure/Non-Disclosure 316 Appendix 1: Method: Artifacts and Cultural Practices in Production Studies 345 Appendix 2: A Taxonomy of DVD Bonus Track Strategies and Functions 362 Appendix 3: Practitioner Avowal/Disavowal (Industrial Doublespeak) 368 Appendix 4: Corporate Reflexivity vs. Worker Reflexivity (The Two Warring Flipsides of Industrial Self-Disclosure) 370 Notes 373 Works Cited 433 Index 445...
