"They shall not grow old" and "Mimesis: African soldier"

This paper will examine and compare two recent visual explorations of the experience of soldiers in World War I. Director Peter Jackson’s documentary They Shall Not Grow Old has been called an immersive, haunting and often transcendent experience that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. By using modern digital film technology, he has restored the visuals and added sounds and speech via Automatic Dialogue Replacement, colorized, changed the speed, and brought 3D depth to the old footage from the Imperial War Museum. Jackson has either, using the terminology of William Guynn (Unspeakable Histories: Film and the Experience of Catastrophe), employed this technology to trigger “moments of heightened awareness in which the reality of the past may be recovered in its material being”. Or, do these computer generated technological affects, “….stand in for the ‘truth’ and obscure just how constructed the ‘history’ Jackson is telling actually is?” John Akomfrah’s video/sound three screen performance/display installation Mimesis: African Soldier uses silent actors, archive film and photographs, ethnographic sound recordings, new filmed footage with and without actors, and a sound track by Trevor Mathison, to document the experience of those, among many, left out of Jackson’s film: colonial subjects as soldiers. Akomfrah “does not put colour back in the cheeks of the dead”, but rather warns the viewer that remembrance can come in many forms, some of them unrealiable. All of this leads to a conclusion, as Avishai Margalit put it in Ethics of Memory, that “memory…is knowledge from the past. It is not necessarily knowledge about the past.”

Orphaned Films: Digital Film Practices by Today’s Children

As crianças atuais começam a criar filmes digitais muito cedo, pelo uso de smartfones, câmeras compactas e outros dispositivos de mídia digital. Para estes jovens cineastas, filmar é uma forma de brincar. Em geral, uma vez que o filme tenha sido gravado, a criança perde interesse nele. Nós propomos chamar gravações de vídeos digitais feitas por essas crianças de “filmes órfãos”, não apenas porque são geralmente destinados ao esquecimento, mas também porque não são reivindicados por seus próprios criadores. Ao invés de estudar esses “filmes caseiros” na tradição de práticas de mídia domésticas, nós o tomamos como ponto de partida para discutir a contribuição de crianças à arqueologia da mídia como uma prática, ou seja, um engajamento concreto com a materialidade e temporalidade da mídia. Examinando as fronteiras entre gravação e produto gravado, por exemplo, as crianças intuitivamente criam conexões entre o passado, o presente e o futuro da imagem em movimento. Elas estão resistindo à obsolescência planejada dos dispositivos tecnológicos atuais de forma a reaproveitá-los, transformando-os em ferramentas lúdicas e usando-os para explorar não apenas o mundo a seu redor, mas também as limitações e potencialidades da mídia.

The Digitalization of Motion Picture Production and Its Value Chain Implications

Technological change and development have been ongoing in the motion picture industry since its beginnings some 125 years ago. What further advancements of digitalization can be expected over the next decade and what are its implications for the industry’s value chain? To answer this question, we conducted an international two-stage Delphi study. The results suggested a more frequent use of smartphones as cameras, the emergence of full digital film sets and digital star avatars, as well as advancements in VR-based and interactive movies. The findings imply challenges for traditional players in the motion picture value chain. Production technology becomes both simpler and more complex, leading to the threat of new entrants.

Strategies and Challenges in Conventional and Digital Film Distribution and Exhibition in Indonesia

Today, media distribution and consumption can occur anytime, anywhere, anything, both conventional and digital. The change in media consumption behavior has brought many challenges for the Indonesian film industry, particularly distribution and exhibition. Film distribution should not just rely on the domestic market and film exhibitions through cinemas. The number of Indonesian cinemas and screens is not ideal, still concentrated in big cities, has low moviegoers, is dominated by foreign films, and lacks support from the government. This study intended to identify challenges and strategies for conventional and digital distribution and exhibition. Answer to that question, this study was carried qualitatively by conducting a literature review through meta-analysis related to history, experiences, and situations in some countries. Research findings indicate film distribution and exhibition need to run simultaneously conventional and digital. Digital distribution is urgent for expanding market size and cinemas revenue. The conventional distribution needs to be maintained because the highest film revenue still comes from cinemas exhibitions. Therefore, filmmakers should begin to organize their distribution strategy and expand cooperation with digital film providers. The government needs to build distribution infrastructures such as global film festivals and distribution agencies, also create policies related to exhibition incentives and tax rebates, especially for films with small audiences. Distribusi dan konsumsi media dewasa ini dapat dilakukan kapanpun, dimanapun, apapun, baik secara konvensional maupun digital. Perubahan perilaku konsumsi media membawa banyak tantangan bagi industri film di Indonesia, khususnya terkait aspek distribusi dan eksibisi. Distribusi film tidak boleh hanya bergantung pada pasar domestik dan mengandalkan eksibisi film melalui bioskop. Hal ini karena jumlah bioskop dan layar yang tersedia di Indonesia belum ideal, masih terpusat di kota besar, memiliki sedikit penonton, berada dalam dominasi film asing dan kurang mendapatkan dukungan dari pemerintah. Kajian ini dimaksudkan untuk mengetahui tantangan dan strategi dalam distribusi dan eksibisi film secara konvensional dan digital. Untuk menjawab pertanyaan tersebut kajian ini dilakukan secara kualitatif dengan melakukan kajian pustaka melalui analisis meta terkait sejarah, pengalaman, situasi yang terjadi di beberapa negara. Temuan penelitian menunjukkan bahwa distribusi dan eksibisi film perlu dilakukan secara simultan. Distribusi digital penting untuk memperluas pasar dan meningkatkan pendapatan. Distribusi konvensional perlu dipertahankan karena pendapatan film terbesar masih berasal dari distribusi melalui jalur bioskop. Oleh karena itu, pembuat film harus mulai mengatur sendiri strategi distribusinya dan meningkatkan kerjasama dengan provider film digital. Pemerintah perlu membangun infrastruktur distribusi seperti festival film dan agensi distribusi di tingkat global, dan membuat kebijakan terkait pemberian insentif eksibisi dan potongan pajak, khususnya bagi film dengan sedikit penonton.

ESTETIKA GASTRONOMI NUSANTARA DALAM MEDIA DIGITAL

The development of the digital technology affects how humans perceive aesthetics in digital media. Including how the Indonesia gastronomic presentation is perceived in digital media both visually and audio. Gastronomy is the study of food and food culture. The development of digital information technology creates a space that is full of information, how can information about the Indonesian gastronomy continue to exist in the midst of cross-cultural information on today's digital media. People's behavior is influenced by the perceptions of netizens formed from digital information media, be it social media, television media, film media, even entertainment media on demand. This study uses a phenological approach to describe how the Indonesian gastronomic aesthetics are presented in various digital media platforms, namely social media Instagram, social media Facebook, social media Youtube, digital television media, digital film media, and entertainment digital media on demand. The data was obtained through observation of these various digital media platforms. This study produces a comparison of the aesthetic elements used in each of these digital media and how the existence of Indonesian gastronomy is presented in it.

Evaluation of approaches to the regulation of digital film distribution

The article considers approaches to the state regulation of digital film distribution, evaluates them. The paper generalizes them in the form of proposals for anti-piracy regulation, promotion of original content of online cinemas in international markets, as well as for effective interaction of online cinemas with the Ministry of Culture and the Cinema Foundation. This will resolve the issue of serious competition to traditional cinemas, since the viewer has the opportunity to watch their favorite films without leaving home, and also related to the start of work on their own exclusive content of a large number of digital platforms. The state obliges digital platforms to provide information about the number of views of their content in a single automated information system. This information helps to assess the effectiveness of budget support for cinema, since there are examples of films that did not collect a large box office at the box office but were able to gain more than one million views on the Internet.

The shifting conception, construction and consumption of celebrity

How have relatively new technologies changed the way in which the celebrity system and tabloid culture function in North American culture? With access to technologies, such as the internet and digital film and photography, and websites, such as Youtube.com, the average citizen is now able to actively participate in the world of celebrity and even turn themself into a celebrity figure. The world of celebrity (online, at least) has become do-it-yourself and has, in many ways, democratized the process of fame. Through the rise in online readership and recognition, even the creators of online tabloids have themselves become celebrities and active members in the star system they seek to critique. This thesis will demonstrate that the technologies used to demystify the celebrity through perpetual surveillance have, at the same time, succeeded in turning ordinary people into celebrities, thus placing them squarely within the star system they never intended to inhabit.

The shifting conception, construction and consumption of celebrity

How have relatively new technologies changed the way in which the celebrity system and tabloid culture function in North American culture? With access to technologies, such as the internet and digital film and photography, and websites, such as Youtube.com, the average citizen is now able to actively participate in the world of celebrity and even turn themself into a celebrity figure. The world of celebrity (online, at least) has become do-it-yourself and has, in many ways, democratized the process of fame. Through the rise in online readership and recognition, even the creators of online tabloids have themselves become celebrities and active members in the star system they seek to critique. This thesis will demonstrate that the technologies used to demystify the celebrity through perpetual surveillance have, at the same time, succeeded in turning ordinary people into celebrities, thus placing them squarely within the star system they never intended to inhabit.