Links for January 24th 2010:

• What Does China Censor Online? [Information Is Beautiful] - Provocative infographic illustrating some of what China blocks online.
• The Director of Downfall Speaks Out on All Those Angry YouTube Hitlers [Vulture - New York Magazine] - "When the Conan-Leno debacle began, two things were certain: One, it would change the face of late night, and two, someone would apply it to the Downfall Hitler meme. When Oliver Hirschbiegel staged the famous bunker scene in his 2004 movie, with Bruno Ganz as Hitler, he wasn't expecting it to be appropriated for comedy; a dramatic recreation of Hitler's last stand is not exactly a laugh-out-loud subject. And yet the German filmmaker is pleased, nay, thrilled that YouTube enthusiasts have taken it upon themselves to reinterpret it to address anything from Hillary Clinton's loss to the Taylor Swift-Kanye West feud. "Someone sends me the links every time there's a new one," says the director ..."
• Phone texting 'helps pupils to spell' [BBC News] - "Children who regularly use the abbreviated language of text messages are actually improving their ability to spell correctly, research suggests. A study of eight- to 12-year-olds found that rather than damaging reading and writing, "text speak" is associated with strong literacy skills. Researchers say text language uses word play and requires an awareness of how sounds relate to written English. This link between texting and literacy has proved a surprise, say researchers. These latest findings of an ongoing study at the University of Coventry contradict any expectation that prolonged exposure to texting will erode a child's ability to spell."
• Serial Boxes [Just TV] - A draft of Jason Mittell's “Serial Boxes: The Cultural Values of Long-Form American Television” essay which gives a very clear account of the different ways viewers engage with television, especially long-form serial television, in light of the shifts from live viewing as the only (or primary) choice to a market where box-set DVDs and the like encourage quite different modes of reception. Mittell also looks at the 're-watch' projects and notes why they usually fail to sustain their initial enthusiasm and momentum.
• Facebook sites inciting anti-Indian sentiment continue to flourish [The SMH] - "Facebook sites inciting anti-Indian sentiment continue to flourish despite protests from Indians in Australia. Groups such as I think Indian People Should Wear Deodorant, Stop Whinging Indians, and Australia: Indians, You Have a Right to Leave, have not been removed. Gautam Gupta, secretary of the Federation of Indian Students, said: "These sites must be shut down but, on the other hand, we must keep track of these hate groups being formed. They can be online or offline. When they're offline we call them gangs. These are essentially online gangs." More than half a dozen Australian groups that are specifically anti-Indian are still active on Facebook. On top of that, there are many broadly racist groups, including F--- Off – We're Full and Speak English or Piss Off!!!, which has 54,000 members and is growing at a rate of about 2000 people a week. "I don't think it's just a Facebook problem – it's a social problem, a problem in the society," Mr Gupta said."

Links for December 3rd 2009 through December 6th 2009:

• Panic Attack and YouTube Discovery [The Chutry Experiment] - Great post from Chuck Tryon about Fede Alvarez's sudden appearance on the Hollywood radar thanks to his YouTube short “Ataque de Pánico,” (Panic Attack!), 4 minute special effects driven extravagnaza in which a city is destroyed and a career created: "One of the underlying narratives associated with Hollywood mythology is the “discovery story,” the idea that a talented newcomer emerges by chance, out of nowhere, to become a Hollywood “star.” Lana Turner was discovered, so the legend goes, on a barstool at Schwab’s drugstore. Now, as the tools of filmmaking and film distribution have been democratized, those discovery stories have expanded to filmmakers as well. And although it is the case that such stories can be read ideologically, it is also true that YouTube and other video sharing sites still offer us the opportunity to be astonished by the talents of an aspiring filmmaker."
• Memories of a paywall pioneer | Media | guardian.co.uk - Scott Rosenberg reflects on Salon's experiments with a paywall, suggesting it's not the model for future news media: "I'm not hostile to the notion of people paying for online content. I do so myself. I'm glad people stepped up and paid for Salon. But the value of stuff online is usually tied to how deeply it is woven into the network. So locking your stuff away in order to charge for it means that you are usually making it less valuable at the moment that you are asking people to pay for it. And that's why people so often respond with: "No thanks.""
• Vampire Politics by Lisa Nakamura et al [Flow TV, 11.03, 2009] - "True Blood is socially conservative, gesturing towards a radical politics (or any social movement based politics) that it cannot (or will not) deliver. Likewise, the form of the medium itself is conservative. Like its vampires, True Blood is a relic - it airs on television, not the Internet, and it is broadcast rather than streamed. Though HBO claims “it’s not television, it’s HBO,” we know better. Like the credit sequence’s time-delayed decayed foxes and possums, True Blood is a memento mori - to the Civil Rights South, to broadcast television, to civil rights organizing and “unsexy” rights-based movements. True Blood pursues vampire politics, which are all about sexy self fashioning. Were it not for the exquisite Godric’s self-immolation in season two, the program’s credo might be “survival of the sexiest.”"
• Networking Families: Battlestar Galactica and the Values of Quality by Jordan Lavender-Smith [Flow TV, 11.03, 2009] - "Galactica’s interrogation of post-nuclear family mechanics and what it means to be human was potentially groundbreaking, but by the show’s end the reconstitution of the family breaks down, and a thick line is drawn between the natural and artificial, delivering an outmoded humanism through posthuman technologies."
• Identity Wars: Google & Yahoo! Bow to Facebook & Twitter [RW Web] - "Yahoo! announced this morning that it is adding Facebook Connect across many of its properties. This afternoon Google Friend Connect announced the inclusion of Twitter as a top-level log-in option. These moves will be convenient for users, but may not be good for the future of the web." (This is a really interesting article looking at what happens when Facebook and Twitter become default identity authentication systems - so much power then resides in these systems, and what happens to attempts at standards like OpenID?)

So, in the wake of the much-discussed and widely downloaded leak of the Wolverine workprint,  the direct-to-DVD BSG prequel pilot Caprica has also found its way online over a week prior to any official release (on DVD or via direct download).  Yet, while media corporations decry the sales supposedly lost and the evils of piracy, any real evidence that these leaks will hurt either the film or the prequel series pilot is hard to come by.

The Wolverine workprint is an unusual case, as the leaked version is unfinished – while it is feature length, many of the special effects shots are either absent or only partial and a series of pick-ups shot earlier this year are missing.  While one Fox reviewer got the boot after admitting downloading, watching and liking the workprint, some reports suggest that the leak has actually worked as great publicity amongst the key demographics most likely to see Wolverine in theatres.  More importantly, in my view, this unfinished and thus can-be-improved-upon version may just lead some people to review the film more favourably – while folks won’t admit seeing the workprint, if the official release is better, and reviewers’ expectations were lowered by the workprint, I’d guess they’re going to give relieved and thus warmer reviews.  More to the point, the workprint might also function as the most in-depth audience screener ever, which has resulting not just in mixed reviews, but in useful advice on how the film might be improved. A canny producer might just collate these suggestions and get some free tips on what the film-going public would really like to see in Wolverine!

Caprica is a different beast altogether – anyone who believes that any distribution of the Battlestar Galactica prequel series pilot will hurt its sales of the series are fooling themselves.  It has long been argued that the US release of Battlestar Galactica was aided by the enthusiastic word-of-mouth generated by peer to peer sharing of the first episodes when they were released in the UK before the US.  The direct-to-DVD pilot (no, it’s not a movie any more than Razor made sense as a standalone movie; it’s clearly a pilot) is there to do one thing: get audiences interested in the coming series. The DVD release is happening primarily because of the success of Battlestar Galactica, and the desire of BSG’s fans for something new in that franchise, albeit a very different sort of show from BSG.  From the studio’s perspective, it’ll also help gauge the level of audience interest. Yet Caprica is, more than anything else, an advertisement for the coming series. The fact that the Caprica pilot DVD will clearly make money (it was 22 on Amazon’s best selling DVD chart today, for example) is candy, and perhaps one way the producers could get a special-effects heavy pilot created, but this is definitely an addition to the normal process of shooting a television pilot.  Sharing the pilot on bittorrent will produce another metric by which the studio can see how popular the coming series will be.  That word of mouth (presuming it’s positive) will be amongst the best advertisements Caprica can have.

Update: The workprint leak clearly didn't hurt X-Men Origins: Wolverine: it clocked an impressive $AU221 million globally during its opening weekend!

Links for March 31st 2009 through April 3rd 2009:

• Internet traffic in Sweden plummets on first day of law banning web piracy [Guardian] - Internet traffic in Sweden – previously a hotbed of illicit filesharing – has fallen dramatically in the first day of a new law banning online piracy. The country – home to the notorious Pirate Bay website, whose founders are awaiting a court judgment on whether they have broken the law by allowing people to find films, games and music for illicit downloads – has previously been seen as a haven for filesharing, in which people can get copyrighted content for free. As many as one in 10 Swedes is thought to use such peer-to-peer services. But the so-called IPRED law, which came into force on Wednesday, obliges internet service providers to turn over details about internet users who share such content to the owners of copyrighted material, if a court finds sufficient evidence that the user has broken the law. ... internet traffic in Sweden had fallen by about 30% compared with the previous day."
• New Wolverine film leaked online [BBC NEWS | Entertainment] - "An almost finished copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine starring Hugh Jackman has been leaked online a month before its cinema release. The high quality copy of the film has been uploaded to several file sharing and streaming video websites. The movie is incomplete, with some special effects still in need of fine tuning and green screens and wires attached to actors still visible." (It took less than 24 hours for this workprint to appear for sale in Jordan's pirate DVD markets and C20th Fox are on the warpath. While a leak like this might be good for publicity, given that a workprint - which means unfinished special effects more than anything else - tends to emphasise the quality of the plot and dialogue, this could really hurt the box office.)
• Obama Depressed, Distant Since 'Battlestar Galactica' Series Finale [The Onion - America's Finest News Source] - "According to sources in the White House, President Barack Obama has been uncharacteristically distant and withdrawn ever since last month's two-hour series finale of Battlestar Galactica. "The president seems to be someplace else lately," said one high-level official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Yesterday we were all being briefed on the encroachment of Iranian drone planes into Iraq, when he just looked up from the table and blurted out, 'What am I supposed to watch on Fridays at 10 p.m. now? Numb3rs?'" "I haven't seen him this upset since Admiral Adama realized that Earth was actually an uninhabitable wasteland," the official continued. "Or at least that's what he told me. I don't actually watch the show. It's not really my thing.""
• Victim Of Wikipedia: Microsoft To Shut Down Encarta [ paidContent.org] - "Microsoft will discontinue both its MSN Encarta reference Web sites as well as its Encarta software, which have both been surpassed by rising competitors, like Wikipedia. In a message posted on the MSN Encarta Web site, Microsoft says, “Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.""

For anyone interesting in the convoluted social world of the soon-to-return Battlestar Galactica, you must check out the hilarious Battlestar Book which tells the tale of BSG in Facebook status updates.  A snippet:

See the full Battlestar Book [Via io9].

Incidentally, does anyone know of an online generator or tool which can quickly knock out icon-driven status updates like these?  After the Battlestar Book and the earlier  hilarious Facebook Hamlet, I'm toying with the idea designing a project in which students summarise either a key article or perhaps episode of television using this style.  I'm thinking it would get them to think critically about the sort of data Facebook gathers and shares about people while also encouraging students to brush up on their skills in terms of finding the key points and ideas in texts.  Or is that nuts?

Links for December 30th 2008 through January 1st 2009:

• Principles for a New Media Literacy by Dan Gillmor, 27 December 2008 [Center for Citizen Media] - "Principles of Media Creation: 1. Do your homework, and then do some more. ... 2. Get it right, every time. ... 3. Be fair to everyone. ... 4. Think independently, especially of your own biases. ... 5. Practice and demand transparency.""We are doing a poor job of ensuring that consumers and producers of media in a digital age are equipped for these tasks. This is a job for parents and schools. (Of course, a teacher who teaches critical thinking in much of the United States risks being attacked as a dangerous radical.) Do they have the resources — including time — that they need? But this much is clear: If we really believe that democracy requires an educated populace, we’re starting from a deficit. Are we ready to take the risk of being activist media users, for the right reasons? A lot rides on the answer."
• Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies by Howard Rheingold [Freesouls, ed. Joi Ito] - "Literacy−access to the codes and communities of vernacular video, microblogging, social bookmarking, wiki collaboration−is what is required to use that infrastructure to create a participatory culture. A population with broadband infrastructure and ubiquitous computing could be a captive audience for a cultural monopoly, given enough bad laws and judicial rulings. A population that knows what to do with the tools at hand stands a better chance of resisting enclosure. The more people who know how to use participatory media to learn, inform, persuade, investigate, reveal, advocate and organize, the more likely the future infosphere will allow, enable and encourage liberty and participation. Such literacy can only make action possible, however−it is not in the technology, or even in the knowledge of how to use it, but in the ways people use knowledge and technology to create wealth, secure freedom, resist tyranny.
• How to Do Everything with PDF Files [Adobe PDF Guide] - Pretty much anything you can imagine needing to do with PDF files, without needing to buy Acrobat!
• The 100 Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials 2008 [Photoshop Lady] - Many useful photoshop tutorials from fancy fonts to montages and entirely new creations!
• Israel posts video of Gaza air strikes on YouTube [Australian IT] - THE Israeli military has launched its own channel on video-sharing website YouTube, posting footage of air strikes and other attacks on Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. The spokesman's office of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it created the channel -- youtube.com/user/idfnadesk -- on Monday to "help us bring our message to the world." The channel currently has more than 2,000 subscribers and hosts 10 videos, some of which have been viewed more than 20,000 times. The black-and-white videos include aerial footage of Israeli Air Force attacks on what are described as rocket launching sites, weapons storage facilities, a Hamas government complex and smuggling tunnels. One video shows what is described as a Hamas patrol boat being destroyed by a rocket fired from an Israeli naval vessel."
• No terminating the Terminator ... ever [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] - "Time will not be allowed to terminate The Terminator, the US Library of Congress said overnight. The low-budget 1984 action film, which spawned the popular catchphrase "I'll be back", was one of 25 movies listed for preservation by the library for their cultural, historic or aesthetic significance. Other titles included The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Deliverance (1972), A Face in the Crowd (1957), In Cold Blood (1967) and The Invisible Man (1933). The library said it selected The Terminator for preservation because of Arnold Schwarzenegger's star-making performance as a cyborg assassin, and because the film stands out in the science fiction genre. "It's withstood the test of time, like King Kong in a way, a film that endures because it's so good," Patrick Loughney, who runs the Library of Congress film vault, said."
• Webisodes Bridge Gaps in NBC Series [NYTimes.com] - Takes a look at the late 2008/early 2009 webisodes from NBC (particularly for Heroes and Battlestar Galactica) and the way these online stories are used to keep fans engaged with television series (or, really, television-spawned franchises) during breaks.
• Nintendo to offer videos on Wii [WA Today] - "Nintendo will start offering videos through its blockbuster Wii game console, the latest new feature for the Japanese entertainment giant. Nintendo said it would develop original programming which Wii users could access via the internet and watch on their television. It is considering videos for both free and fees. The game giant teamed up with Japan's leading advertising firm Dentsu to develop the service, which will begin in Japan next year, with an eye on future expansion into foreign markets."

As the countdown to the final (half) season of Battlestar Galactica ticks down in the US, SciFi are in the middle of a final run of webisodes (‘The Face of the Enemy’) which, as usual, are getting good press both on their own terms and as models of successful webisode content in relation to existing franchises.  The New York Times, for example:

“The Face of the Enemy,” on the other hand, could serve as a model of the Webisode genre. It’s not something you need to watch if you’re not already a “Battlestar Galactica” fan, but those who are will appreciate the serious treatment this minidrama has received, the same kind of care taken with the cult-favorite series itself. The lead writer of “Enemy” was Jane Espenson, a “Galactica” co-executive producer and television veteran with “Gilmore Girls” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” on her résumé, and its performers include series regulars like Grace Park, Alessandro Juliani and Michael Hogan.

The Webisodes, which will conclude on Jan. 12, just before the television series returns, are a self-contained murder mystery set aboard a small spacecraft that has been separated from the fleet. But they also expand on the “Galactica” mythology, through flashbacks, and flesh out major characters. Fans who had wondered whether Lieutenant Gaeta (Mr. Juliani) was gay found out in Episode 1 of “Enemy.” Or they thought they did, until his close encounter with a Cylon 8 (Ms. Park) a few episodes later clouded matters.

Along with the regular Webisodes the Sci Fi Channel is providing “enhanced” versions featuring commentary by Ms. Espenson. They’re a revelation in their own right. While commentary tracks on movies or even television episodes tend to get boring or crazy-making long before the show is over, commentary tracks on four- or five-minute Webisodes can actually be entertaining.

Ms. Espenson describes the chaotic, and poignant, circumstances in which the Web serial was filmed: with the television series’s final season already completed, the “Enemy” scenes were often the last things filmed on the “Galactica” sets. After a scene was completed, its set would be torn down for good.

Other tidbits — Ms. Park plays two parts in “Enemy” because the “Galactica” star Tricia Helfer turned out not to be available after the story had already been developed — might seem like too much information to have while the serial is still unfolding. But it’s really just a sign that NBC Universal is getting at least one thing right. In a world where the possibilities for elaborating your shows online are endless, the true fan wants to see and hear everything.

As per usual, the webisodes aren’t accessible for those living on the wrong end of the tyranny of digital distance (outside the US), but other avenues are readily available for those willing to look, and the webisodes certainly aren’t shying away from interesting and timely issues.  Until it gets pulled, here’s the first webisode on YouTube:

(You can catch the same webisode with Jane Espenson’s audio commentary, too.)

As a dedicated Battlestar Galactica fan I can’t wait for the final episodes to start in January and I’m already enjoying the countdown webisode series, ‘The Face of the Enemy’ which features Felix Gaeta, two Cylon Eights (Sharon’s model) and a few very desperate, very lost, BSG crew.  The first webisode went live today and sets up an pretty engaging storyline. It also featured one other bit of story that’s sure to get a reaction:

On his way off the Galactica, to catch a raptor to another ship of a bit of leave, Felix Gaeta says goodbye to Hoshi and they lock lips which is the first visible and openly gay male relationship in the series.  (There are other mentions of gay couples, although the most notable lesbian relationship was between Admiral Cain and the poor Six who eventually turns up horribly tortured on the Pegasus; this left more than a few questionable readings possible about the consequences of non-heterosexual relationships!) I’m very much in two minds about the outing of Gaeta; I’m delighted that his sexuality is basically treated as completely normal – the big issue is Hoshi smuggling some painkillers to Gaeta, while their relationship seems normalised (or as normal as anything gets on the rag tag fleet).  That said, I wonder if Ron Moore and the producers are playing it too safe leaving this sort of material for the webisodes?  Their nature as online add-ons might just mean that the writers are allowed to push boundaries they can’t during the actual episodes (and kudos to Jane Espenson and Seamus Kevin Fahey for writing this webisode series), but for this to be a powerful and clear statement about the normalisation of same sex relationships in the world of Galactica, I’d really like to see this thread continue into the final episodes and actually screened on television, not just pushed to one side on the web.

For international viewers, we’re once again victims of the tyranny of digital distance as the webisode are geo-locked and only visible to those with US IP addresses; there will be lots of workarounds, no doubt, but for a short time until it’s pulled, the first webisode is available on YouTube.

Update: Apparently in the run of webisodes we find out Gaeta is bisexual, not gay; I’m not sure if this depletes the overall message or not … probably not.

Links of interest for October 23rd 2008 through October 24th 2008:

• Musician defends Sony game song [BBC NEWS | World | Africa] - "The Malian musician whose song is being removed from a Sony video game because of concern it may offend Muslims has denied the music was blasphemous. Grammy award-winning Toumani Diabate said the song celebrated the Koran. "In my family there are only two things we know - the Koran and the kora [West African harp]," he told the BBC. The release of the much-anticipated LittleBigPlanet was delayed when it was found that a background music track included two phrases from the Koran. Copies of the game are being removed from shops around the world." (I don't know enough to comment on the religious implications, but I'm fascinated by the power and seriousness with which the politics of in-game music.)
• Apple Goes McCain On Microsoft With Mocking Attack Ads [TechCrunch] - "The advertising war between Apple and Microsoft continues. Apple’s latest TV spots mock Microsoft’s $350 million ad campaign for Windows Vista, suggesting that some of that money would be better spent fixing Vista. The ad is funny (see above), but it does seem petty and elitist." (See the ad.) I'm not sure this was a smart move by Apple - while they have the hearts and minds of a significant user base, the the demographic for whom 'it just works out of the box' is the main selling point probably don't see themselves as 'better' than PC users; the elitism just might rub a few people the wrong way (that said, the critique seems fairly accurate!).
• Our media freedom lags behind most other democracies [PerthNow] - "Australia trails other democracies in media freedom due to "outrageous" anti-terror laws and lack of protection for journalists' sources, a report says. Australia is ranked 28th in the annual Press Freedom Index released this week by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders. Australia's ranking is the same as last year's and puts it behind New Zealand (ranked 7th), the United Kingdom (23), Canada (13) and Scandinavian countries. Iceland, Luxembourg and Norway were jointly named the nations with the most press freedom, while Eritrea was named as the country with the least media freedom. "
• The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and the Meta-Silly Season in Politics: Agenda Setting in the Contemporary Media Environment by Jennifer Brundidge [Flow 8.10 October 16, 2008] - A look at the role of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report in discussing, reporting and debunking other reporting regarding the political process and, most notably, the 2008 US presidential election: "...the particular format by which The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are able to pose a challenge to mainstream media agendas and frames. By being “silly,” they are able to effectively challenge “silly season in politics.” Indeed, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that through this process, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report play an important role in advancing the political sophistication of their audiences."
• Tigh/Roslin 2008: When Politics Turn Fictional by Emily Regan Wills [Flow 8.10, October 16, 2008] - Great article exploring the Tigh/Roslin parody by Battlestar Galactica fans regarding the McCain/Palin ticket. An excerpt: "... Battlestar Galactica is sufficiently complex, and sufficiently political, that it is possible to interpellate political positions for its characters. Fans know where Roslin falls on abortion policy: the plot of an episode revolved around her decision whether or not to make abortion illegal in the fleet, and included arguments based on religion, civil liberties, and population structure. Her general style of governance, her position on separation of church and state, even how she feels about wildlife conservation: it is plausible to deduce political positions for Roslin on each of these contemporary political questions. " (There are a bunch of other great articles in the special issue of Flow about Sarah Palin, too. )

While I generally find American elections a bit bizzare, they always produce the most quotable cultural artifacts and observations. 2008 has already had some corkers, but my geeky side just couldn't let "John McCain is a Cylon" pass! The evidence:


The campaign:

[Via]

So, Australia is finally getting Battlestar Galactica season four on television: TV Tonight reports that the season will kick off with the ‘Razor’ double ep-cum-telemovie on September 4th.  Given my interest in the tyranny of digital distance, I find it noteworthy that Razor will arrive eight and a half months after it was screened in the US (and will, in fact, be released on DVD in Australia just over a fortnight before it’s televised down under)!  Presuming that the entire season is played thereafter, the rest of  BSG season four will be five months behind the US.

Ten will be playing BSG exclusively on their High Definition channel (great for those who get it, no doubt infuriating for those who don’t) but, really, the audience they’ll pull will be infinitesimal compared to the eyes they’d get if BSG was concurrent with the US schedule.  Meanwhile, a few people might just have downloaded BSG via BitTorrent given the series is amongst the most downloaded TV shows of this year (and last).

Interesting links for April 6th 2008:

• Study: Violent Games Relax Players [Next Generation - Interactive Entertainment Today, Video Game and Industry News - Home of Edge Online] - "People who play violent videogames online generally feel more relaxed and less angry after they have played, according to a new study by psychologists at Middlesex University" (Lets see if this one gets mainstream news coverage!)
• Battlestar Galactica: Join the Fight | Battlestar Galactica Social Network [SCIFI.COM] - The SciFi network have launched the "Battlestar Galactica social gaming experience" ... you can be either human or Cylon (oddly enough). The "game" seems a little clunky in the layout and interface, but I'll have to give it a try...
• The art of the teleprompter [Presentation Zen] - Some interesting thinking about the art of using teleprompters (esp looking at US politicians). John McCain doesn't fare very well!
• How does the new, free online Photoshop match up with its free competition? [OJR] - "In summary, I didn't find any functionality in Photoshop Express that Web users didn't already have available to them in Picasa, Picnik and Splashup."

I'm very pleased that the 'Beyond Broadcasting' issue of Media International Australia is out, not only because it features some excellent articles asking some great questions about the future of television in the era of digital communication, but also because it features an article of mine that I've been thinking about on and off for a number of years. My article, 'Watching Battlestar Galactica in Australia and the Tyranny of Digital Distance' has ideas that will already be familiar to readers of this blog (and, indeed, my old blog Ponderance) as the concepts in this paper have slowly built up over time and appeared sporadically in blog form (such as here and here). When I started writing up these fragments into the final paper and posted the abstract in this blog, I was delighted that it provoked a conversation with some of my blog's readers. A larger number of people seem to have found their way to that post after hitting NBC's “We’re sorry, but the clip you selected isn’t available from your location” message and punching it into Google, and a few of them offered a comment on this post before heading elsewhere (quite possibly in search of a proxy so they can watch the US-hosted geo-blocked content).

While the article has taken a couple of years to evolve from the initial idea to this published version, the ideas still seem current. Indeed, there was an engaging debate recently in th US between the New York Times Vulture blog (and here, and here) and film and media scholar Michael Newman over the issue of newspapers and blogs posting spoilers about current TV shows when audiences are increasingly time-shifting and either watching their shows a few days later on TiVO, or a few months later on DVD. As I argue in my paper, the problem of avoiding spoilers becomes even harder for viewers in other countries, when the broadcast (or the option to download legally) is often delayed by a number of months - an issue indicative of what I've called the tyranny of digital distance.

I'm also pleased that the editors of this themed issue, and the general editor of Media International Australia were kind enough to give me permission to put up a post-print of my article here. (A post-print, for those interested, is the final version of the article submitted to the journal after the peer review process and final changes to the article have been made, but before the article is page-made and the layout done for the journal itself.) So, if you fancy reading the whole paper and you don't have access to Media International Australia through your library, you can still read the full paper here.

If you can get hold of the journal, there are a number of other papers which are a great read. One of these, Axel Bruns' 'Reconfiguring Television for a Networked, Produsage Context' can be accessed over at his blog.

As always, any comments or thoughts on my paper or the issues it touches on are most welcome!

First thought: if we've learnt anything at all from Battlestar Galactica, shouldn't we know better than to make a Cylon? (Intelligent machines evolving and rising up against their human oppressors and so on...)

That said, when MAKE, DVICE and the SciFi Channel team up and recruit Cylon actors Tricia Helfer (Number Six) and Grace Park (Boomer) to judge a competition in which entrants must physically construct (not just photoshop) a Cylon, I'm intrigued to see what emerges!  Let's just hope the entries aren't too realistic. Details here.

The WGA Writer's Strike is now in its third week, so I thought I should finally get around to blogging a few thoughts.  First off, I have to say, it's fantastic to see the issue of online content finally being taken seriously - as more and more material hits the web, I completely agree that writers should be getting their (usually very small) cut.  I find the claims by the media conglomerates that the web offers no solid business model disingenuous - and, as many writers have argued, a small percentage of nothing is still nothing: residuals only get paid if money gets made.

Also, for me the Writer's Strike coincided with my final revisions on my Tyranny of Digital Distance paper which looks at the way online content and networked communication change the expectations and possibilities of media (especially television) distribution.  The series that formed my case study was Battlestar Galactica (BSG) and so I was intrigued to see show-runner Ron Moore talking about BSG's first webisodes (The Resistance from 2006) in relation to the strike.  He noted that despite being put together by the same crew and cast as the regular episodes, the studio didn't want to pay for this 'promotional' content, which wouldn't involve paying anyone; Moore held out and got people paid, after some industrial action, but the studios still wanted to run the webisodes without credits and eventually did.  From this, Moore came to one conclusion:

"If there's not an agreement with the studios about the internet, that specifically says 'This is covered material, you have to pay us a formula - whatever that formula turns out to be - for use of the material and how it's all done,' the studios will simply rape and pillage."

One of the stumbling blocks in getting the studios to agree to share the profit from online content is the fact that writers are simply not the most visible people in the whole world, and thus lack bargaining power.  Actors are, and film directors, but writers are rarely well known and that's one of the things the strike has changed somewhat.  Or rather, an increased visibility of writers is one of those things that happened leading up to the strike, in some corners, at least, and has worked in favour of the writers' cause.  Ron Moore, I think, is a great case study here: sure, he's the show-runner for BSG as much as a writer, but across the last few years Moore has amplified the voice of the writer to BSG's fans and beyond.  The episodic BSG commentary podcasts have occasionally featured actors from the show, but the podcasts have most frequently focused on discussions of the writing process and have even featured additional raw recordings of writers' meetings.  The fact that the podcasts are released synchronously with the episodes means that fans have often linked the writers perspectives with the show as much as the actors and CGI that make the visual experience.  If nothing else, I would argue, Moore helped fans 'hear' the writers in an explicit way which highlighted the ongoing creative role of the writing team.  Indeed, if Joss Whedon had been podcasting during the filming of Buffy, he'd probably have filled this role, and his DVD commentaries certainly talk about the writers and the process of writing, but the immediacy of Moore's podcast are, I think, key to their success.

Ron Moore has also maintained a blog and, like the podcasts, this was hosted by SciFi.com and centrally branded.  However, one of notable things about the strike has been that Moore wanted to blog outside of the corporate umbrella and has thus started writing at his own domain.  On his second post he noted that when the much-anticipated Battlestar Galactica: Razor airs next week, the podcast commentary will be a little different: it's a recordings of the writers' room when the Razor story was broken.  Again, the writers are in the spotlight.  Now, wearing both his writer and show-runner hats, Moore has blogged about BSG's uncertain future, a post sure to have the full sympathy of (albeit anxious) fans:

Production wrapped on episode 413 late last night, and there’s no certain date to resume shooting.  No more scripts exist.  My office staff has been laid off.  My cast has been suspended, without pay.

I refuse to believe that we won’t finish, that we won’t be back to film our final stories, but I know and accept there is that possibility.  The strike will be a seminal event for many of us in this business as it’s put literally everything we care about in the balance (if only for a short time so far) for something we all believe is important.

Writers talk a lot about the strike, about the reasons we’re out on the picket lines and our feelings and experiences in the business.  It’s been an interesting three weeks.  I’ve connected with more scribes in the last few weeks than in many months before and I come away from it to date with a sense of optimism about the solidarity of the membership and admiration for my peers.

Galactica’s coming back, I frakking promise you that.  But I am ready to put the rest of the story on the table and take the risk that I’ll never be able to tell it, in support of this strike.

Like Adama says, you make your choices and then you live with them. 

Still. 

A helluva gamble.

It's a gamble that fans might have been unprepared to accept in the past, but with the visibility of writers thanks to Moore, and thanks to the strike, it's a gamble which fans will likely support.  That said, I think the writer's have probably gotten all of the sympathy that viewers are likely to give - things will get harder as the episodes already in the can run out and shows stop abruptly mid-season. Lets just hope that as talks between the WGA and the studios resume next week, a reasonable outcome can be reached.

Until then, for an accessible and convincing explanation of the WGA's position, watch this 'Why We Fight' clip.  However, if you prefer your news just a little funnier, then this clip from Daily Show writer Jason Rothman (with a characteristically odd cameo from John Oliver) in the style we've come to love, is for you:

Incidentally, I think this clip is brilliant, because Rothman does such a good job of showing how much of The Daily Show comes directly from the writers' pens.

Visit United Hollywood for more, or to show support click on Fans4Writers.

I'm attending four conferences or symposia across the next four weeks.  In a perfect world, each will come with details blogging; however, if I don't get around to writing much for a few weeks, here's why ...

[X] Learning Futures Symposium - 10 & 11 September, Canberra - This is a two-day symposium held at ANU looking at the changing shape of education, pedagogy and learning in general in the face of changes brought on by digital communication under the web2.0 umbrella.  The programme (pdf) looks pretty interesting, with showcases of Australian social software educational efforts and some great sessions which are more centred around conversations than too many formal presentations.

[X] Thinking Society, Thinking Culture - 13 & 14 September, Perth - This is an interdisciplinary forum organised by the Institute for Advanced Studies at UWA with the aim of bringing WA's many academics, researchers, artists across the range of historical and cultural studies, and other social sciences, together the share their work and build fruitful interdisciplinary networks and exchanges.  I'm giving my paper "‘We’re sorry, but the clip you selected isn’t available from your location’: Watching Battlestar Galactica in Australia and the Tyranny of Digital Distance" in 'A Digital World' session which takes place on Friday, 14 September starting at 10.30; this panel will also feature Toby Burrows talking about 'e-Research and the Humanities: Current Directions', Ethan Blue talking about 'Prison Medical Photography in Early 20th-Century California' and Jeremy Blank speaking on 'Past,Present,Futures:Integrating practice in Visual Art studies'. 

The keynote is being delivered on Thursday (13th) evening by Ross Gibson from UTS talking on "The Aesthetics of Repletion"; this talk is open to the public, so if you're in Perth, come along!

[X] PerthDAC - Digital Arts & Culture - 15 to 18 September, Also Perth - DAC has a history of being at the cutting edge of digital arts and media studies and this year looks to be no exception.  There's lots to look forward to, from talks on blogs in education to Axel Bruns on produsage to a host of key names in game studies talking about everything from Second Life to the Wii. DAC is concurrent with BEAP (the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth) so the theory of DAC will mix with the performance and exhibitions of the latest in digital art which will no doubt be a very rich and exciting four days!

[X] The Australian Blogging Conference - 28 September, Brisbane (Free!)- Sessions will include The Politics of Blogging; Researching Blogging; Blogs, Creativity and Creative Commons; Legal Issues; Citizen Journalism, Blogs and Education; Business and Corporate Blogging; and Building a Better Blog.  I'll be facilitating part of the Blogs and Education session, although I'm not sure how many people will be there since I suspect the concurrent Citizen Journalism session, which includes a focus on YouDecide2007, might prove quite a draw-card.  That said, Blogging in Education is certainly fun to talk about and there's a lot going on in the world of edublogging, so I trust we'll have some great exchanges in our session, too! To see who's already confirmed they're attending, click here; that list will grow substantially across the next few weeks, I suspect!

I'm also chuffed it's September because that means Jill Walker Rettberg will be joining us at UWA for the month! And let's not forget that October will also include Australia's first Podcamp which will also be held in Perth!

The US release date for the much anticipated Blade Runner: The Final Cut DVD has been set at 18 December 2007 (I hope the same date will be true for Australia, but I can't find anything to confirm that yet). There are sets from 2 to 5 discs in size, including the package pictured, which comes in briefcase in the style of one holding the the Voight-Kampff test in the film. It all looks very exciting, and, unlike, say, George Lucas' Star Wars Special Editions, the Blade Runner sets will contain all the versions of the film, from the 1982 release, the first Director's Cut, the new Final Cut and, for those getting the 5-disc pack, a work-print (which I've never seen) which has all sorts of changes that never made it to any cinema screens at any time.

One of the best parts of this collection will have to be the new 'Dangerous Days' documentary which seeks to be a 'definitive' look at the film, but really will just add more to the film's ongoing mythology. Yahoo! has a few preview clips up, which include footage showing new interviews with most of the cast and crew, including James Edward Olmos and Harrison Ford. I thought the previous Blade Runner documentary put together by Mark Kermode was pretty good, so I'm hoping to be dazzled by 'Dangerous Days' if it has even more to show about the film and its cultural impact.

I'm quite pleased this set is on its way - when I was lecturing earlier this year on Blade Runner I was really starting to think it would be the last time this film would seem relevant to students, but I think this re-release will spark further interest in the film, its peppered production history and the importance of the questions it provokes. Yes, I think Deckard is a replicant in every cut, but I'd be pleased to hear why you disagree ... or agree! [Via AICN]

For Harrison Ford fans, you can also check out the Comicon report from Ford, Spielberg and others from the set of Indiana Jones 4!

Update: Blade Runner: The Final Cut will get a cinematic premiere on September 1st at the 64th Venice Film Festival!

Since I've just signed off on editors' proofs for my chapter in the forthcoming Cylons in America edited collection, I thought I'd paste this little advertisement from Continuum's 2007 Pop Culture catalogue to remind myself (and anyone else interested) that it should, in fact, be out before the end of the year ...

[Click image to enlarge.]

This is my first book chapter (as opposed to a journal article, of which there are a few) and I'm quite excited to see the collection in print in the near future!

Update (15 Sept 07): The publication date for this collection has now been confirmed as January 31 2008 (for the US) and Cylons in America: Critical Studies of Battlestar Galactica is available for pre-order from Amazon.

Update 2 (26 November 07): It looks like the US version will now get a December 10th release! Check out the cover:

Update 3 (7 Dec 07): As a few people have asked about this book, I thought I'd add the Table of Contents to this post, so you can get a sense of what's under the cover:

“I see the patterns”: Battlestar Galactica and the Things That Matter - C. W. Marshall and Tiffany Potter

I. Life in the Fleet, American Life

1. (Re)Framing Fear: Equipment for Living in a Post-9/11 World” - Brian L. Ott
2. Torture, Terrorism, and Other Aspects of Human Nature - Erika Johnson-Lewis
3. Alienation and the Limits of the Utopian Impulse - Carl Silvio and Elizabeth Johnston
4. The Cain Mutiny: Reflecting the Faces of Military Leadership in a Time of Fear - Rikk Mulligan
5. Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know? Negotiating Stereotypes of Science - Lorna Jowett
6. “Pyramid, Boxing, and Sex” - Kevin Wetmore

II. Cylon/Human Interface

7. The Cylons, the Singularity, and God - C.W. Marshall and Matthew Wheeland
8. Sharon’s Choice: The Role of Decision in the Self-Constitution of Personhood - Robert Moore
9. Uncanny Cylons: Resurrection and Bodies of Horror - Alison Peirse
10. “Humanity’s Children”: Constructing and Confronting the Cylons - Tama Leaver
11. Hybridity’s End - Matthew Gumpert
12. Erasing Difference: The Cylons as Racial Other - Christopher Deis

III. Form and Context in 21^st-Century Television

13. When Balance Goes Bad: How Battlestar Galactica Says Nothing” - Chris Dzialo
14. “This Might be Hard for You to Watch”: Salvage Humanity in “Final Cut” - Kevin McNeilly
15. “Long Live Stardoe!”: Can a Female Starbuck Survive? - Carla Kungl
16. Authorized Resistance: Is Fan Production Frakked? - Suzanne Scott
17. Of Duduks and Dylan: Negotiating the Aural Space - Eftychia Papanikolaou
18. “All this has happened before”: Repetition, Re-imagination, and Eternal Return - Jim Casey

I just submitted an abstract for the Media International Australia special issue 'Beyond Broadcasting: TV for the Twenty-first Century'. Here it is:

“We’re sorry, but the clip you selected isn’t available from your location:” Watching Battlestar Galactica in Australia and the Tyranny of Digital Distance

[Figure 1. Screen-capture from http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/, 11 September 2006]

In the late 1960s, conservative Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey coined the term "the tyranny of distance" to describe how the geographic gap between Australia and the centres of the Western world (US, UK) played a fundamental role is shaping the Australian psyche and character (Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance, Sun Books: Melbourne, 1966). Thirty something years later and the world is far more widely considered a global village; the world wide web, email and a million other applications have made real-time information-heavy communication and commerce the norm. However, while information transfers have made ‘distance’ much less of a concern in a number of ways, many policies, practices and systems of commerce still operate as though they are centred on goods moving at the speed of physical shipping, not allowing for information moving at the speed of light down a copper or optical wire. In an era when ‘the tyranny of distance’ means so much less in many contexts, this paper will argue that in the multimedia markets of contemporary society there is, rather, a prevailing tyranny of digital distance which marks out those areas of communication and commerce in which the potential and, indeed, expectation of synchronous global culture (at least for English-speaking countries) leads to constant state of confusion and annoyance – on both personal and legal levels – when those expectations are not met.

The North American-produced television series Battlestar Galactica, re-imagined for the twenty-first century (from an original 1970s series), has consistently been at the cutting edge of television and cross-media. Executive producer Ronald D. Moore and the Battlestar team utilise not just blogs and production-side video-blogs, but also create episodic commentary podcasts, make deleted scenes available online, and have even put two full episodes online for free for viewing. Likewise, Battlestar was one of the first shows available via Apple’s online iTunes Store. Given the amount of extra online content, and the show’s science fiction genre, Battlestar has a large and very active fan community who consume both the television show itself and the officially produced extra material, as well as actively creating and discussing their own derivative ‘fannish’ works ranging from blog commentaries to fan-created videos. Thus, when the show’s producers launched a series of 3 to 4 minutes ‘webisodes’ to re-build interest in the show prior to the launch of its third season, fans across the (wired) globe were understandably excited. However, when citizens of Australia, the UK, Canada or any other country outside the US tried to view these webisodes, they were met with a notice saying: “We’re sorry, but the clip you selected isn’t available from your location.” The owners of Battlestar (NBC) elected to restrict these webisodes to residents of the US only. This decision upset fans across the global Battlestar audience, with US fans quickly circumventing the restrictions and passing copies of the webisodes to their international fellows. In this paper, I will contend that this moment typifies the tyranny of digital distance, exemplifying the legal, ethical and practical issues raised when a globally-promoted television series ‘centres’ on a single national audience. I outline the difficulties of ‘watching’ Battlestar from Australia, and argue for distribution modes which are more in keeping with the technological (and fan-led) potential of digital distribution.

As you might imagine, this paper will draw together my previous thinking about the tyranny of digital distance which you can read about here and here. I'm also finishing off another Battlestar-related paper that stopped being written for a year, but is now being finished off for a new collection. It's going to be a busy month, but I'm hopeful both of these will be well polished before Emily and I get married on June 9th (presuming this abstract is accepted). Wish me luck!

Update (8 May 2007): The abstract has been accepted! Thankfully, though, full papers aren't needed until August 1st so I'll be writing this after Emily and I return from our honeymoon (in Venice!!) .

Update 2 (21 September 2007): The full version of this paper has been accepted after peer review, and will appear in Media International Australia issue 126, which is scheduled to be released in February 2008.

Update 3 (26 March, 2008): You final version of this paper has appeared, and you can read it following the link from this post.

As part of their ever-expanding interaction with the fan community, the producers of Battlestar Galactica have announced a competition allowing fans access to selected BSG clips, sounds and music which they can mix with their own footage to create new videos. As their instructions explain:

Be a part of Battlestar Galactica!

We're giving you sound and visual effects and music clips that you can use to create and share your own four-minute Battlestar videos.

Create your own mock commercials, short scenes or even mini-episodes — funny or dramatic. Choose from more than 30 visual effects, 20-plus audio effects and cuts from the show's soundtrack, specially selected to help give your videos the Battlestar look and sound. Use them to make your video, add the required promo clip at the end, and send it to us!

Battlestar Galactica executive producer David Eick will choose one video to broadcast in full on SCI FI Channel during an upcoming Battlestar episode.

This sounds fantastic off the bat. Certainly I'd love to have a play and try out my sorely under-used editing skills. However, the instructions also come with these rules:

Your video can't be longer than four minutes. Don't use footage you don't create yourself or that you didn't get from the Battlestar Videomaker Toolkit.

Do not use any music for which you don't have the rights.
Do not include images, photos, logos or artwork that you did not create or to which you don't hold the rights (such as pictures from magazines, books and other Web sites).

No inappropriate content. If we can't show it on network TV in prime time, don't put it in your video.

Do not post your film on other sites, such as YouTube, MySpace, Google, etc.

You must be a legal resident of the United States and over the age of 18.

So, once again, the Battlestar Galactica franchise is treated as a purely US property. While I sympathise with the demands and difficulties of copyright, I have to concur with the forums in my disappointment that these wonderful fan-engaging opportunities are not open to the wider, global BSG community. This is another instance of what I have called the tyrrany of digital distance.

Also problematic is the notion that these videos can't be uploaded elsewhere - be it YouTube, MySpace or similar. I imagine such restrictions disuade some fans or simply get ignored (and its not like YouTube currently lacks BSG fan-made films).

All of that said, I commend the producers of BSG for this initiative, I just hope they can widen both the level of participation and allow fans broader rights to distribute (not profit from, just distribute) the fan films they'll be creating.

[Via Rex]