Recently in Media Category

Now I'm a big fan of the gray lady, and I'm also a big fan of long, complicated sentences, but Manohla Dargis should be taken aside and given a strict talking-to for this doozy in today's review of Baz Luhrmann's Australia:

Though "Australia" is narrated by a young boy of mixed race, Nullah (the newcomer Brandon Walters), the illegitimate son of an Aboriginal mother and a white father, who is trying to escape the authorities, and while it opens in 1939, shortly before World War II blasted Australian shores, the film isn't a bummer.

My mother always taught me that, while complexity can be a good thing, the most critical aspect of writing is to not jar the reader out of their flow and make them back up to reread a sentence. I was quite happily zipping along this review until I hit that number, and though I can parse it quite clearly now, I had to reread it twice to figure it out. Yeesh.

A bit of a hiccup in my NaNoWriMo scribblings, due to this turning out to be an incredibly tempestuous week (and it's only Tuesday). Big news is breaking here in the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT, which I'll link to as soon as it is officially announced... And now the cat is out of the bag: Henry Jenkins III, my friend and mentor and advisor and academic hero, is leaving MIT for USC. After that announcement, suffice it to say that I didn't feel much like writing yesterday.

Oh, I still banged out about 500 words, but that didn't happen until after midnight, and the scene that resulted is likely to be the first thing that I've ever written that I may wind up self-censoring out of a project. Most of the evening yesterday was devoured by a freelance consulting project I'm working on, for which I've been mucking about in the wonderful and woolly world of online video, so between that and the weird vibes here at the office, yesterday was a wash for NaNo'ing.

Today, however, has been an altogether different kettle of fish. I woke up with a little click in the back of my head, and like the tumblers in a lock, several very important pieces fell into place for the story. I realized that something I'd put in as more or less a throwaway concept was actually the cleverly-disguised key to making the third act work and giving my protagonists a way to defeat the villains, which is awesome, and that I suddenly had a very strong idea about how Children of Winter, Children of Wolves will end, and I even had an idea about what the main plot of the third book, tentatively titled The Wild Hunt, will be and how it will unfold – and until this morning I didn't even know that there was a third book in the wings. That was fantastic all on its own...

And then I checked my e-mail.

This morning a press release went out announcing the Media Lab's new Center for Future Storytelling. Just like that, my various plans and schemes for possible directions for my Ph.D research were completely upended, like that scene in Ghostbusters: "The flowers are still standing!" There's also a write-up in the New York Times under the title "Saving the Story (the Film Version)", but there's very little additional content about the actual 'labette' than in the original press release. Believe me, I'm watching this with both eyes. The best thing about this possibility to my mind so far is that it won't officially launch until 2010, which gives me a year to get certain other massive projects done or well underway, but, as always, we'll see what happens...

Plus, now USC has a very definite allure for obvious reasons! So now I have multiple programs that could provide a great home for my Ph.D research whereas before this last year I was still wandering in the desert. The Media Lab, USC, Ohio State, Georgia Tech, Queensland, Madison... Dang!

So, yes. Wild, crazy times – and the week's just started. Heaven only knows what will come of the Futures of Entertainment 3 Conference coming up this weekend, aside from getting to see some friends absent too long... But I do realize that this means I have to get some serious writing stockpiled before Friday morning!

I have just discovered that, in addition to Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, Pratchett's Nation, Link's Pretty Little Monsters and Carroll's The Ghost in Love, Louis De Bernieres' new book A Partisan's Daughter hit shelves today.

I yield! I yield! My poor wallet! What else could this fall possibly throw at me?

(Well, there's this, this, this, and this, not to mention this, this, this and this. Arrrgh.)

Consider this a public service announcement that Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, Terry Pratchett's Nation AND Jonathan Carroll's The Ghost in Love are out today. TODAY. Go! Stop reading this and go, dammit! Hie thee to a bookstore! Or Amazon!

I could also note that the 2-disc Blu-Ray set of Iron Man is out today, but I suspect that will take care of its own sales figures, thankyouverymuch.

Two additional things I will note, however, is that Jonathan Carroll's jonathancarroll.com has received an astonishingly beautiful makeover, using a palette similar to my own and a design that I wish I'd thought of (and may indeed lift bits of at some point in the future, especially the gorgeous blend of blacks and parchment and breathtakingly beautiful photography); and that Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters is out next week, so you might as well pre-order that while you're clicking away at Amazon. I mean, it's just the efficient thing to do.

(I myself would be clicking away if I weren't so damned impatient. Off to the mall I go ASAP after work, I suspect...)

I don't have time to respond to the piece in-depth at the moment, but a very intriguing piece has appeared on the blogosphere that argues the "Death of the Niche Market" is upon us. Besides a couple of small annoyances with the author in general (an infestation of "it's / its" mistakes and his billing himself as only 'Whiskey, A Politically Incorrect Blogger looking at Politics and Culture" from "Somewhere, California") I obviously disagree with his verdict but have to give him props for some very insightful observations.

The piece is extremely long, so I've cherry-picked the key points below. Basically, Whiskey is arguing that a niche market for entertainment (like ours) is doomed in a recessionary economy (again, like ours) because:

• The niche market exists partly because "consumers, with rising wages, and lowered costs for food and energy (in real, inflation adjusted terms) were willing to pay extra to possess goods that differentiated them from everyone else."
• "Advertisers would pay money to reach selected demographics, mostly young people, and consumers were eager and able to pay money to listen to niche music, watch niche television, and buy niche products."
• "...Niche plays for audience or shoppers don't work in economic downturns."
• "Retailers and manufacturers are weeding out niche products that don't have mass appeal. Some retailers are already dropping suppliers and products that don't generate big sales."
• "Broadcast radio, free and over the airwaves, may well attract more advertisers looking to reach the masses [than satellite radio], since the niche market simply won't exist in many cases."
• "Musically, popular bands are going to get older. Audience wise at least. There simply won't be enough disposable income to be spread over untried, unknown bands."
• "Film makers like Judd Apatow are likely to be successful, with more culturally conservative messages (carefully hidden behind profanity), while edgy/hip film makers like Steve Soderburgh will find that audiences are not in a mood to be shocked with edgy material, but will demand entertainment satisfaction. With discretionary income limited, a few movies will be mega-hits, the rest will have to eke out small box office receipts and DVD rentals."
• "In television, the CW is doomed unless it can broaden it's [sic] appeal beyond teen age girls. ...NBC's "Heroes" is likely to show continued declines, with a convoluted storyline, and lack of central and compelling characters who provide an enjoyable escape from ordinary life. Even worse is Fox's mid-season "Dollhouse," a new offering by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer's" Joss Whedon. It would have been a tough sell in 1997, and this is not 1997. Niche, trendy-hip posturing just won't sell in a recession. Not with profound consumer shifts in spending and corresponding changes in advertiser spending.
• "Likely to improve in ratings are sports, including the NFL, College Sports, and Baseball, as people seek cheap and relaxing entertainment. ...Men are likely to spend more time watching TV, and shows that can capture the male audience are likely to do well. NBC's "Chuck" is likely to do quite well in this regard, as are any other show featuring an idealized "average guy" as the hero."
• "It's quite likely that most other networks will avoid these niche shows as their fall lineup inevitably fails and pursue the "CBS formula" as epitomized by "NCIS" and the various "CSI," "NUMB3RS," and so on. A strong, forty year old plus male character leads a team that includes a strong, capable female character or characters. Fighting crime, restoring order, or something of that nature. The goal being to attract men plus women with elements that appeal to both and don't repel either."

His final, summary paragraph sums up his take on all this quite nicely:

That is, quite likely, a good thing. Lack of unified and unifying culture makes bonds across divisions, racial, sexual, class, regional, and income much more difficult. A common culture, valued and defended, protects against both usurpation of power at home by unchecked elites, be they political, cultural, judicial, or corporate, as well as a stout defense of the nation and it's people abroad. When everyone has seen the game last night, or understands the catch phrases of the latest sitcom, or watches the same hour long drama on television, social bonds increase, as do the ability for ordinary people to band together to demand or force action on issues where they hold common ground.

I've heard similar arguments here at MIT before from Professor David Thorburn, who laments the loss of common cultural reference points like I Love Lucy and Friends. I'm still not sure I buy this argument, and I'd actually argue the inverse – the days when such popular entertainment was widespread led to even starker cultural divides within the mainstream. While the Democrats and Republicans might be extremely upset with each other right now, I think our current everything-goes culture of niche entertainment fosters a greater degree of acceptance across the board, and thus defuses things like racial riots, social boundaries, and the kind of "hippies versus conservatives" culture that ran rampant in the 1960s and 1970s. When everyone is accepted into some niche or another, you don't get dominant culture versus counterculture – and you don't get Nazis versus Jews. If that's true, then keeping the niche market alive and well is a very important thing.

Of course, in the words of Dennis Miller, "that's just my opinion – I could be wrong."

Transmedia narratives are really hot right now, especially if the San Diego Comic-Con is any barometer. DC Comics' Wildstorm is leading the charge, as the imprint announced Resident Evil and Devil May Cry comics, which may or may not be considered canonical; the Wildstorm Gears of War comic is definitely a transmedia extension; Prototype may or may not be; Mirror's Edge may or may not be; the Dead Space comic prequel definitely is...

From the yes-it's-canon-we-think department: Dark Horse announced the continuation and then conclusion of Buffy Season 8; another Firefly miniseries that will explain the backstory of Reverend Book; and a comics expansion of the backstory behind the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed videogame. Meanwhile, Boom! Comics announced a comics continuation of the Jim Henson Company's Farscape, which is right in line with the JHC's continuation of Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal in manga already.

From the unsure-if-it's-canon-or-not department: IDW announced a comic book prequel to the upcoming Terminator: Salvation as well as an immediate comic follow-up to Ghostbusters II, a prequel to next year's G.I. Joe feature film, and a prequel comic to the upcoming Transformers 2: The Revenge of the Fallen.

Add to this the massive amount of new media experiments such as direct-to-video transmedia extensions like Batman: Gotham Knight; the Watchmen video game prequels; "motion comics" like Stephen King's N and the Warner Premiere Motion Comics; and the art-inspires-art cross-media cross-pollination of Tori Amos' Comic Book Tattoo and this year's SDCC was probably the biggest, murkiest, most cross-media and transmedia-centric con ever.

However.

As we all know by now, anytime anything gets this big this fast, we're in danger of having another bubble burst. I can already predict the wailing and rending of expensive Armani garments that will follow when – not if, but when – some of these transmedia franchises fail. When I was writing my master's thesis on transmedia narratives last year, one section I really wanted to dive into but would have required a lot more field research (and a lot more pages) was the idea of how to best deploy a transmedia narrative – and in what order a story should use different media elements. Should a narrative show up in a TV show first? A film? How about a book? Or a comic? Or a game? Right now we're seeing a massive number of new case studies explode onto the scene, and believe you me, I'm watching all this like a hawk.

If I had to put money on which franchises are the most likely to tank, however, I'd say that the easy bet are those franchises that are exploding onto the scene all at once. Dead Space is the one I'm really watching keenly because there's so much already tied into it – the comic, the video game (which is the central component to the franchise) an animated comic, and even a (possibly ill-conceived, if Kotaku is to be believed) straight-to-DVD animated prequel. Personally, I think Kotaku's Luke Plunkett sums up the two strikes this franchise has against it already pretty dang nicely:

Back in the day, a licensed property got itself a comic book series or a cartoon because the fans wanted it, and the property deserved it. Now? Why am I supposed to care about the back-story of a game I haven't even played yet? Especially when it's as boring as this?

That's what worries me: that instead of following up a successful primary component like The Matrix with transmedia expansions (a practice I chucklingly referred to as "soft" or "crunchy" in my thesis), Dead Space is a "hard" transmedia franchise, by which I mean it was apparently conceived as transmedia from the get-go. I think something like this can work very well, if it's already attached to some existing big name to draw the crowds. If it were Stephen King's Dead Space, Clive Barker's Dead Space, Stephen Spielberg's Dead Space or even, Heaven forfend, George Lucas' Dead Space then I think this kind of a sweeping launch might work. As it is, it's just Dead Space with no major reason why a brand-new audience should invest the intense amount of attention (and money) on engaging with it. A transmedia franchise needs a good, solid hook – and so far Dead Space doesn't seem to really have it. If there's no single primary entry point to the series, which so far there doesn't seem to be (both the comic and the animated movie seem to be prequels, so which one comes first?), and at least one of the possible entry points proves to be, as Plunkett says, "boring", the franchise is in trouble – and the main game hasn't even launched yet!

Me, I think a transmedia franchise should build up a core audience in a manner appropriate to the context in which it's being created: if you have a big name or a big budget, go for a wide-audience open in a media form like film or television. If you don't have a big name or a big budget, I think the best way is to start small and build up a rabid fanbase in a more niche media like comics or novels (of course, the notion that novels are a niche media is a fun one to bat around, but we can debate that in the comments or in another post). Dead Space has apparently invested a lot of money in what is essentially a shotgun-blast marketing effort, doing all the media forms more or less at the same time, and I'm concerned that all the transmedia extensions may simply be perceived as little more than marketing fluff for the central video game instead of quality narrative components. (Worse, I'm afraid they may be little more than marketing fluff.)

I've said it over and over, and I'm sure I'll keep on saying it: Rule One: Don't Suck. I haven't seen the animated Dead Space prequel yet, but it seems like it's teetering on the edge of sucking. The prequel comics so far have been okay, but I don't know how fragile a from-scratch transmedia franchise might actually be. Dead Space is one to watch for all kinds of reasons, but the big thing that the industry has to remember is that all of this stuff right now is experimental – don't wring your hands and cry that transmedia storytelling as an entire form fails when one or two (or twenty) of these early experiments crash and burn. It's a learning process – the best thing we can do is take careful notes, keep experimenting and keep trying out hypotheses.

Me? I've been investing some time learning how to write comics. :)

First it was the buy-one-get-one-free sale on Criterion Collection DVDs at DeepDiscount (which concluded as of midnight last night, thank God), but now Apple has launched a $6.99 and $7.99 sale on Classical and Jazz albums. My wallet! My poor, innocent, empty wallet!

I mean, seriously – Hilary Hahn! Yo-Yo Ma and Ennio Morricone! Joshua Bell! Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jamie Cullum and Thelonious Monk! Damn you, Jobs!

Luckily, I already own most of these classics, but there's a couple I'm eyeing cautiously. If those of you in my reading audience pick up nothing else, the Yo-Yo Ma playing Ennio Morricone is a must-have – it's one of my favorite go-to albums whenever I need some great background music for work or writing or whatever.

Oh, well. Think of the money you'll save on gas at $4+ per gallon by staying in and watching movies or listening to MP3s. Yeah, that's the ticket...

Maybe it's because I'm just getting back into it after letting it lie dormant for so long, or maybe it's because it had been gathering hype for a ridiculous amount of time (approximately 3.5 years) before shipping, or maybe it's because my imagination almost always outstrips what reality finally serves up on a chipped, faded platter... But Delicious Library 2 isn't delivering on its hype yet.

I still love the premise of Delicious Library, which is part of the problem – a gorgeous app that packs amazing potential, such as the ability to not only catalog my vast collection of media but make it available online to help me find out whether or not I already own a hardcover copy of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (I don't) or Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (I do), and enable my friends peruse that collection to see if there's anything they'd like to borrow (and, honestly, hopefully gape at the wide array of awesome that I've managed to accumulate over the years) AND help me track which of those friends have borrowed what, so I can remember whose fingers I need to break for never giving me back that copy of The Arabian Nights that my grandfather gave me before he died (I'm looking at you, Yvonne).

Delicious Library 1 suggested that these features were coming, but Delicious Library 2 only delivered a half-baked (and incredibly download-heavy) web publishing system that, as near as I can tell, won't let me sort or search my published library from my iPhone, nor does it include any component of social networking whatsoever. What would be awesome is if I could search my library for a book and have it give three tiers of results: first, whether or not I own a copy; second, whether or not any of my friends own a copy that I could borrow; and third, what the going price for that book is currently on Amazon, Powell's, eBay or wherever. I cannot, as near as I can tell, use the camera on my iPhone to scan a barcode in the store and have the software give me any of that data, which is ludicrous. Granted, the iPhone camera is notoriously bad, but similar services have existed in other phones for years now and not having it in what is supposed to be the flagship library management software for the Mac (it even has an entire "Delicious Generation" named after it, for crying out loud!) is frustrating in the extreme. It doesn't even have a custom iPhone icon included in the published pages. This is amateur hour.

Yo! Wil Shipley! What gives? Is all this stuff still coming down the pike, or is Library doomed to remain a half-baked shadow of the glorious golden exemplar that its potential suggests it could be?

Update: well, I guess Shipley warned us:

Mike and I have talked a lot about Delicious Library 2.0 on wired.com and slashdot.com, respectively. I'd like to weasel a bit here and point out that although we have a ton of lofty goals that we're calling "2.0," not all of them will actually be in "2.0" the product. We'd love it if they were, but PLEASE don't buy the app based how cool you think 2.0 might be. If you like what 1.0 does, buy it now, and if you think 2.0 sounds like the first version that will be useful to you, then go ahead and wait.

Weasel, indeed. If you check out the original Wired interview, you find this:

Matas and Shipley have big plans. Delicious Library is now a cataloging program, appealing to those with an obsessive, Nick Hornby-esque desire to catalog every song, book and movie on their living room shelves.

But from the start, the software was planned to be social, allowing friends, neighbors and colleagues to see what's in each others' media libraries, and turn collections into personal lending libraries.

Version two, due later this year, will allow users to browse each other's libraries. It will be location-aware, letting users know who has what in their neighborhood or city.
It will also work on local networks (using Apple Computer's Rendezvous), so people can browse their colleagues' or fellow students' collections, just as Apple's iTunes exposes other users' playlists.

The current version already has a checkout manager for keeping track of loans.

As well as running personal lending libraries, the software can set up social connections: What better barometer of someone's personality than their taste in books and film?

"If you look at my movie collection, you can learn a ton about me," said Matas. "It's like a personal profile on Friendster listing interests and hobbies, but it's much more natural. It's not done consciously. It's a natural profile of yourself."

The software also includes a recommendation engine built on Amazon.com's recommendation system.

Matas said the company talked to Amazon about a partnership, but the retailer didn't like the lending feature. Why would people buy when they could borrow?

Matas said he convinced Amazon that people buy movies expressly to lend them out. They watch a movie two or three times, but want to own it so they can lend it to family or friends.

"I love the movie Baraka," he said. "I've seen it three times but I've lent it out a million times. And my friends have bought it also because they also want to spread the word."
Matas said cataloging books is just a first step in the grand scheme.

"The bigger picture is social idea sharing," he said. "Right now it's for obsessive-compulsive collectors, but we're going to flip a switch in the next version and it will turn into social software."

I bought both versions of this software, and so far I don't see any switch having been thrown. There's an ability to mark what books you've loaned people, and you can e-mail a book to your friends, and you can email your friends the URL of where you've posted your stuff (my work-in-progress library is up at http://homepage.mac.com/geoffreylong/deliciouslibrary/ but is woefully incomplete) but all of this does not social software make. I could do much the same thing with simple cut-and-paste in Safari, Excel and Mail.app -- so what gives, Shipley? What happened to the Delicious Library 2 we were promised?

I would be remiss if I didn't point out to all my media-loving friends out there the buy one get one free sale currently going on over at DeepDiscount.com. My picks:

Box Sets
Monsters and Madmen (4 films)
Olivier's Shakespeare (3 films)

Akira Kurosawa
Sanjuro
Seven Samurai

Frederico Fellini
La Strada
8 1/2

Ingmar Bergman
The Magic Flute
Fanny and Alexander
Sawdust and Tinsel

Others
Mr. Arkadin
Carnival of Souls
Thief of Bagdad

These aren't on the AFI list I've been plowing through in my sort of Film Studies 101 "independent study" but many are classics nonetheless – and I'm also always interested in the artful depiction of magic and wonder, and a number of these are known for doing that really, really well. There are all kinds of other finds on the list – such as The Threepenny Opera, The Third Man, Sullivan's Travels, The 39 Steps, Beauty and the Beast, Brazil, M, Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, all of which I own; Charade, Withnail and I and Yojimbo, which I don't own but have seen recently enough to postpone their purchase, and Bowie's The Man Who Fell to Earth, which Criterion is putting out on Blu-Ray this fall.

More blog posts are pending – I have all kinds of things I want to write about, including the ITRA Conference and our trip to Greece, as well as my thoughts on a number of recent events in the media universe. Right now, though, I must run off to the lab for a meeting.

One last parting thought: likeminded souls in the Boston area should check out Readercon this weekend, where I'm hoping to meet up with some old acquaintances (like Ellen Kushner and Nick Mamatas) and meet a few of my favorite authors (like John Clute, Kelly Link, and James Morrow). It'll be the first time in the three years I've been here when Readercon falls on a weekend where I'm actually in town, so I'm thoroughly excited to go.

Oh, and one last thing: other likeminded souls in the Boston area should check out the midnight showing tonight of The Dark Knight at The Somerville Theater in Davis Square. That's where all the cool kids will be (namely myself, Laura, Matt and Clara).

Stay tuned!

For those of you not following my Twitter stream, I have just posted a short essay featuring my (bemusement/excitement/fascination) that Warren Ellis is writing G.I. Joe webisodes over at the C3 blog. The article also features Joss Whedon's new project Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and Seth MacFarlane's upcoming Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. Check it out.