Symposium program
Thursday September 13
6-8pm, Opening Reception, Oakham House (corner of Gould and Church streets), Ryerson University
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14
9:30AM -(Oakham House, Thomas Lounge, RYERSON UNIVERSITY)
Welcome and Opening Remarks: David Tucker (School of Radio, TV Arts, Ryerson U.), Anastasios Venetsanopoulos (V.P. Research, Ryerson University), Greg Elmer, Ryerson U.
10:00-11:30 AM - PANEL 1
Pushing and Pulling Migrating Media: Enticement Tax Programs
Susan Christopherson (Cornell University, Department of City and Regional Planning)
"Producer Strategies in Different National Financial and Distribution Markets."This paper will expand on preliminary research to examine what role public subsidies play in the decisions of producers. The research will also illuminate how the strategic use of publicly-supported, culturally-based, media production programs by U.S. producers is affecting the efficacy of those programs and public support for them.
Charles Davis (Ryerson University, School of Radio and Television Arts)
Growth Pathways of Canadian Independent Television Production Firms
It has been a goal of Canadian public policy since the early 1980s to encourage, through deployment of a variety of regulations, incentives, and subsidies, the emergence and growth of a domestic independent television production industry. The rationale of this policy is to ensure the production of certain kinds of cultural goods that otherwise would not be produced. Specifically, the public benefits of having an independent domestic television production industry are believed to be improvement of Canadian television content along several dimensions: quality, creativity, flexibility, efficiency, and regional and cultural diversity. Television content with these features is believed to contribute to the overall goal of Canadian cultural sovereignty and sense of citizenship and national identity. The Canadian film and television production industry reported CDN $4.8B in production volume in 2006, of which $1.8B by independent production firms. The Canadian television policy regime supports hundreds of tiny production firms, as well as a population of three or four dozen larger production houses.
An underlying policy assumption is that an increasingly capable independent domestic television production industry will attain some degree of economic viability through the conquest of domestic and international markets. The growth of competitive national television production industries in countries with a small domestic market is challenging because the domestic market does not allow full recovery of production costs. This paper analyzes the business configurations of major producers in the principal product and service segments of the Canadian independent television production industry. Four principal growth pathways are discussed: export of products originally produced for the domestic market, horizontal integration with U.S. production and distribution interests, forward vertical integration (into domestic broadcast distribution or merchandising), and service production.
Greg Elmer (Ryerson University, School of Radio and Television Arts)
"Global Locations in Los Angeles: The Promotion of New Cinematic Spaces" This paper discusses the annual Locations convention in Santa Monica, California and its role in promoting international shot locations to Hollywood production houses and financiers.
11:30-1:00 PM
Lunch
1:00-2:30 PM- PANEL 2
The Look of Migrating Media: Aesthetics
Albert Moran (Griffith University, School of Arts, Media and Culture)
"Practicing Localization: New regimes of television production" This paper is concerned with production as one of several sites where the global meets the local. In particular, I am concerned with the newly-emergent international practice of format programming whereby local or national versions of programs such as "Survivor," "Big Brother," "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire!" and "(National) Idol" are customized for home consumption.
Janine Marchessault (York University, Department of Film)
"The Montréal Apartment: Cinematic Interiors and Global Cinema" While work on the globalizing effects of media has focused on the loss of local specificity, this paper looks at the effects of global media on a renewed and even nostalgic sense of the local as George Yudice has described it (2005). This paper takes as its focus the role that apartments and their fixtures (lights, doors, windows) play in making places either recognizable as distinct to a location or completely generic iterations.
Jen VanderBurgh (Queen's University) "Toronto's Turf War: The Look of Rival Film Policies"
In this paper I examine the discourse around two rival film aesthetics in Toronto. Since allocation of funding and resources to either camp is often perceived to be at the expense of its rival, the debate over Toronto's cinematic "look" has actual currency.
2:30-3pm break
3:00 – 5:00pm Panel 3
The Politics of New Mediated Spaces: Development, Regulation, Economics
Serra Tinic (University of Alberta, Department of Sociology)
"The Integration of Tourism and the Locations Industry in British Columbia" This paper concentrates on one sector that has become increasingly integrated with the government's goals for growing the locations industry: tourism. A recent, and much publicized, example of the integration of the two industries can be seen in the successful bid to produce the final segment of the 2005 Chinese version of Survivor in British Columbia.
Ben Goldsmith (Australian Film, Television and Radio School, Centre for Screen Studies and Research)
"If You Build It, Will They Come?" In this paper I will examine both film and non-film related rationales and rhetorics for the construction of production infrastructure such as film studios and the introduction of financial and other incentives to attract 'runaway' production to places that have not historically hosted international production. The paper will extend my recent work with Tom O'Regan on film studios, the twin 'design' and 'location' interests which fuel and promote film production activity, and the claimed 'locomotive' effects of production activity.
Susan Ward (University of Queensland, School of English, Media Studies and Art History)
"Creative Networks in a Greenfields Location" In this paper we will use the example of the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia to consider how international production simultaneously intersects with existing creative networks, infrastructures and capabilities in certain directions. Greenfields locations are, by definition, partial and at times radically incomplete film milieux. We argue that rather than seeing this incompleteness as something capable of being remedied over time the continuing dependence of such locations upon extra-local networks (international distribution, financing and "design" services) ensures a continuing "weakness" in their infrastructure despite growing infrastructure.
Barry King (Auckland University of Technology)
Global production and the re-composition of aesthetic labour in film
Utilising a production of Culture perspective, this paper will use a
case study of the Lord of the Rings trilogy to examine the impact of
global film production on the composition of and skill structure of
local film production, with particular but not exclusive attention to
acting and performance.
A key impact of global film production is the imposition of a
capital intensive short term pattern of production that drags in its
train particular modes of Government support and prevents the
formation of a craft-based simplex organisation of labour. The New
Zealand case may be unique in this regard given the far reaching
commitment to neo-liberal policies by the dominant National and Labour
as the main contenders for government, the fragmentary “learning by
doing” culture of film production and the metaphorical tensions
generated by the force field of the official bi-cultural policies of
ethnicity that define “New Zealandness” through metaphors of Maori and
Pasifika cultural practices.
5pm Open evening (dinner TBA, Film Festival)
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 15
9:30 AM (Oakham House, Thomas Lounge, RYERSON UNIVERSITY)
9:30-11:30am
Labour and New Avenues of Distribution
John McCullough (York University, Department of Film)
"Saskatchewan Television Labour, Global Hollywood, and the Representation of Canadian Space" This paper is organized around three objectives: an historical account of television labour patterns in Saskatchewan; a critical analysis of Global Hollywood's role in this history; and an archive of visual materials depicting the variety of ways that Saskatchewan space has been represented on television. Looking at the wide variety of television shows (e.g., First Nations work, children's shows, mainstream sit-coms, reali-tv, MOWs), the goal of the paper is to consider the ways in which Global Hollywood is given a signifying presence in the work that it distributes.
Nitin Govil (University of California, San Diego, Department of Communication)
"Transnational Spatial and Temporal Practices of the Indian Film Industries" The Indian film industries, particularly the Hindi-language commercial film industry centered in Bombay, has taken advantage of Hollywood distribution networks and Canadian training facilities (particularly in the area of post-production work) in order to export its films to a wider international audience. At the same time, India is becoming more popular as a location destination as well as a kind of back-office for all sorts of film-related work. What do such institutional and industrial alignments - and the spatial and temporal practices associated with them - tell us about the global media industries today?
Toby Miller (University of California, Riverside, Department of Sociology)
"Friction Between the Economy and Textuality of the Screen" My contribution will examine how, just as manufacturing fled the First World, cultural production has also relocated. This is happening in popular textual production, marketing, information, and high-culture, limited-edition work, because factors of production, including state assistance, lure cultural producers. I shall examine instances from film, TV, and the Internet that engage questions of labor, the state, the nation, transnational agencies, and the border-riding rituals that seek to separate culture from commerce and nation from nation.
Tamara Falicov (University of Kansas)
This paper will compare the contemporary film industries of Mexico and Argentina and
how Hollywood studios are shaping some of the production since the 1990s to the present. I will examine current strategies of co-production, protectionist state policies, the role of the state vs. the private sector, and how Hollywood investment is operating in the region currently as compared to past runaway productions.
11:30-1pm lunch
1:00-3:00 PM – [Closed Session] Roundtable Research Network Project Workshop
This roundtable will review the thematics of the workshop; focus on areas of collaboration and ways to develop research on new markets in Eastern Europe and South America; discuss the preparation of grant applications; discuss possible follow-up meetings in Los Angeles, New Zealand, or Australia; workshop ideas on resources that would make the group's research more accessible to international researchers.
3:00-7PM
Film festival and other Toronto free time
7:00 PM
Dinner at Restaurant
