[iDC] New Viewership

[Michael Dennis]

As this is my first post, here is a brief introduction:

My name is Michael Dennis and I am a graduate student in the Department of
Media Study at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Now that that's out of the way...

Film studies remains my academic focus and I am especially interested in the
classical tenets of film theory.  This of course is a somewhat uncommon and
even archaic focus in the face of what new media, as a field of study, is in
conversation with today.  Attempting to bridge this gap, I produced the
paper showing here.

http://www.molodiez.org/New_Viewership.pdf

It was my goal to undertake a discussion of the effects of new media on the
sociable aspects of film viewership.  This idea grew into a survey of the
status of moving image content on the internet and even some speculations on
the future of cinema.






*New Viewership*
The Cinema, the Internet, and the Audience

Michael T. Dennis

December 2006



In modern American society, so reliant on the technical practices made
possible by network technology, it is surprising to come across an instance
of cultural production that has not taken advantage of these new
possibilities to a high degree.  While it is anything but a marginalized
form of expression, one such example is commercial cinema.  Popular films
still find their primary exhibition in the movie theater, just as they have
for over a century.  Given the state of the internet and the history of film
distribution in America, one might well ask why there is not a large-scale,
stable system in place for online access to movies.  Meanwhile, film exists
online in different and sometimes innovative forms.  An analysis of current
and historical trends will reveal that the absence of commercial film from
emerging markets of distribution is affecting considerably the fundamental
nature of cinema and viewership.


*A Note on Methodology*

American filmmaking, while a decidedly narrow sampling, is the preferred
focus for a discussion of this sort.  The United States still dominates the
international film industry, perhaps more so than at any time in the past.
Techno-obsession and the recent emergence of an internet culture also make
America an ideal place to study the complexities and ambiguities of new
media.

Although the production of films in the United States is a major economic
practice, an approach to the question of film's relationship with
twenty-first century technology grounded in economic methods is less than
ideal.  As an emerging market, the internet possesses vast potential.  It
seems likely that from a purely commerce-oriented position any investigation
would result in a call for film to immediately be made available online.
The inertia that keeps movies in theaters and off personal computers is of a
socio-artistic nature; as will be discussed later, it is not the result of
corporations failing to notice a new space where their product might be
sold.  As such, the issues surrounding the future of film distribution
remain largely subjective.  Empirical data is far less useful than a
socially contextualized understanding of viewing as an essential part of the
cinematic experience.  Like most media, film can be positioned as a
commodified product.  It would be negligent, however, to forget that it can
also be artwork whose value is social rather than monetary.

The term 'film' itself is potentially problematic, and I will address it
here to avoid confusion later.  While 'film' can refer to a medium, a
specific instance of that medium's content, or a physical object, here it is
used in the most general sense.  It is not intended to necessarily imply a
motion picture (or body of motion pictures) produced on celluloid.
Conversely, 'video' is meant to explicitly denote motion picture content
produced electronically, or transferred to an electronic medium for
viewing.  'Cinema' may refer to the body of moving images that it could
reasonably be argued possess artistic merit, in opposition to (though often
overlapping) commercial, industrial production.


*The Internet as Content Carrier*

As the internet becomes more pervasive and use increases, it becomes a
carrier for content that may have once been resistant to being turned into a
network commodity.  An excellent example of this is the well-known story of
popular music and its relationship with the online world.  Long after
internet banking, shopping, and personal communication were established as
part of daily life for millions of Americans, music was still relatively
unavailable.  File sharing services were developed by intrepid individuals,
and quickly gained popularity in the late 1990's, allowing for the free
reproduction and transmission of music regardless of its copyright status.
This touched off a prolonged series of legal disputes between
representatives of the music industry, copyright holders, and individual
internet users who were accessing the material.  To outsiders, it soon
became clear that no comprehensive resolution could ever come to pass; the
internet had irrevocably transformed the market for music.  Few were
surprised, then, when the closest thing to a solution turned out to be the
opening of online music stores where songs could be downloaded simply and
securely for a nominal fee.  Artists who supported free availability of
their copyrighted material could still offer it elsewhere online, and
internet users had the convenient access they wanted without the fear of
legal action being taken against them.  The calming of rhetoric as well as
the millions of paid, fully sanctioned downloads facilitated by services
such as Apple's iTunes[1] speak to the success of this model.

Another instance of content with a history of reluctance to come online is
scholarly writing.  The culture of academic journals, founded on strictly
controlling access to published material, made internet research the realm
of amateurs for many years.  While at the moment this subject is much more
contentious than the question of downloading music, the open access movement
is a very real force in the publishing world.  Subscription services such as
JSTOR[2] make fee-based access available to many academic institutions and
countless publications make their own material available online concurrent
with or some time after (and now, sometimes instead of) appearing in print.
As in the case of music, the evolution of an industry does not happen
instantaneously.  New distribution models can, and sometimes must, come into
use, but at a much slower pace than the rate at which technology makes such
new practices possible.

Yet for all the growth of networks and the new tasks they become capable of
mediating, mainstream commercial cinema is still largely absent.  In the
past, this was often attributed to the limits of the network itself.
Bandwidth capacities were a reality for an internet composed of users with
dial-up access and primitive (by 2006 standards) computers.  These facts do
explain why text and audio, utilizing smaller file sizes and digital
compression, dominated the internet in its earliest incarnation.  For the
most part, and in asking why so little film appears online, these concerns
are a thing of the past.  Compared to just a few years ago, the vast
majority of middle- and upper-class American internet users have access to
faster connections, larger storage capacity hard drives, and, in many cases,
integrated household networks connecting television, computer(s), and other
peripheral devices.

More recently, television programming has become available online at an
ever-increasing rate.  Once digital recording (and, therefore, potential
online sharing) of television became achievable through affordable
technology – systems for connecting television and computer, or external
recording devices such as the popular TiVo[3]- major television networks
began to offer episodes of popular programs online shortly after their
initial airing for a per-download fee.  Combining aspects of the methods
used by the music industry and academic publishers, these efforts prevented
any major problems arising from "TV piracy" and also demonstrated that the
telecommunication infrastructure is advanced enough to facilitate the
distribution of high-quality video in thirty or sixty minute segments.

Ruling out the material constraints of technology, the reasons for film not
being online are instead to be found in the distribution trends of the
medium and the nature of the relationship between viewers and cinematic
content.  These are the factors that must undergo change in order for a
system of online distribution to become a reality.

*
Film Distribution: Historiography*

Since its inception, the cinema has distributed itself as both product and
art in a variety of media.  Change in the dominant method of distribution
has been characterized by attempts to embrace new technology, the need to
reinvigorate public interest in the film medium, and the desire to take
advantage of emerging commercial opportunities.

Moving images first appeared in a format that made commercial presentation
possible in the last decade of the nineteenth century.  Coin-operated
mechanical devices that presented a short movie (short in the strictest
sense of the word- these films were often under thirty seconds in duration)
attracted large audiences.  As this sort of presentation was only viewable
by one customer at a time, the market for large-scale theatrical exhibition
remained unfulfilled.

That market would find its answer as the turn of the century drew nearer.
The invention and innovation that characterized the era continued, including
advances in the study of electricity, which yielded Thomas Edison's light
bulb: the central element of the film projector.  Advancing camera and film
technology pioneered in France and the United States brought theatrical
exhibition even closer to reality.  In 1895, inventor-filmmakers Louis and
Auguste Lumiere curated the first public screening of a film.

Early films were exhibited directly by their creators with the filmmakers
renting a space, selling tickets, and often using projectors of their own
design.  Competition was intense between those who looked to profit by
advancing the state of cinematic technology.  Copyright battles raged,
particularly when the notoriously protective Edison took exception to work
being done by his European counterparts.  This only served to strengthen the
industry, however, as methods to shoot and project films became more and
more refined.  Access to equipment increased as competition forced costs
down and soon it was within the means of would-be individuals (and organized
film studios) to rent or own the machinery necessary for production and
exhibition.

By the 1920's, theatrical exhibition of films had reached the form it would
retain for many decades.  American studios continued the practice of
overseeing both the production and the distribution of a given work.  To
ease the task of finding and booking theaters, many studios built their
own.  These movie palaces, often accommodating several thousand audience
members, were as much a part of Hollywood's Golden Age[4] as the films and
movie stars themselves.  The eventual privatization of theaters did not
upset the model already in place, under which film prints were licensed to
theaters by distribution divisions of the studios and profits were shared
according to a prearranged schedule.

The rise of television in the 1950's posed the first major external threat
to the film industry.  As suburban sprawl physically moved Americans away
from theaters, television brought moving pictures (though not the movies
themselves) into the home.  Prospects initially looked bleak; in the ten
years following 1947, film profits fell 74 percent. (Thompson 375).
Filmmakers responded with more color films, wider screens, lavish, epic
subjects, and even 3-D films.  While some of these attempts proved mere
novelties, others served to differentiate film from television as a more
mature and technologically advanced medium.

Beginning in the late 1960's, film budgets grew as the Age of
Blockbusters[5] came to define contemporaneous film production.  Large-scale
productions offered the opportunity for previously unthinkable profits, but
also required substantial investments.  Revenue sources besides traditional
theatrical exhibition became a necessity in order for studios to compete in
the new economic climate.  Television and home video each offered the chance
to market a film long after its initial release, thus extending its time in
the marketplace and providing funds to invest in the next big-budget
production.  Intended or not, this practice led to a crucial change in the
relationship between films and viewers.

Bringing movies into the home – previously the realm of more intimate
technology such as radio and broadcast television - distanced the experience
of watching a movie from the spectacle it had been.  In his book Cinema
Without Walls, Timothy Corrigan explores this and other shifts in the film
industry during the latter half of the twentieth century.  The result
Corrigan calls, "two sharply distinctive but culturally bound patterns for
seeing and receiving movies: the fragmented domestic performance and the
public outing" (27).  With these two separate acts of viewership coexisting
in the lifestyles of millions of Americans, venturing outside the home to
see a film in a theater became, ironically, a device for escaping the
domestic, media-permeated space.

Psychological implications for the film/viewer relationship also flowed from
the residence movies took up in the home.  For filmmakers, the audience had
to be reconceptualized and made more inclusive.  Films that would appeal to
a wider range of viewers instead of a specific target demographic group had
better prospects for long-term success and, therefore, a better change of
being made.  VCRs (and their current incarnations: DVD players/recorders and
digital TiVo recorders) gave viewers a new level of control- one that never
existed in the theatrical model.  The ability to manipulate movies in simple
ways, including altering the volume, pausing in mid-film, and rewinding to
watch a scene multiple times, further demystified the spectacle element of
theatrical cinema.  Film producers stated with their complicity that this
was an equitable price to pay in order to receive the benefits of home video
profits and residual television licensing fees.  Today, it is not uncommon
for a moderately successful film to earn more gross income from video sales
than theater receipts.

Film content itself changed as a result of economic restructuring.  Studios,
many of which had been operated independently since their formation in the
1920's, were bought up by ever-expanding multinational corporations.  The
Coca-Cola Company purchased Columbia Pictures in 1982, followed by Rupert
Murdoch's News Corporation gaining control of 20th Century Fox in 1984.
This made facilitation of the huge production costs that major films
demanded possible, but it also brought filmmaking firmly under an economic
heading.  To profit even after incurring such large initial cost, films
needed to appeal to as large an audience as possible, both in the theater
and afterwards on television and in the home.  Content became streamlined as
commercial filmmaking entered what pundits have called an era of assembly
line production.

To balance films that strove for mass appeal (and often disappointed
critics), many studios began investing in foreign film industries, importing
"artistic" film for narrowly defined segments of the American public.  This
macro investing significantly affected film industries in smaller nations
while also establishing new subgenres that would grow into the
Hollywood-controlled (though so-called independent) film wave of the 1990's.

Once established, in-home screening of film became a comfortable reality for
viewers.  The internet, though not a primary carrier of film content, played
a part even in its immature state by opening up access for many users.
Rental services like NetFlix[6] made thousands of obscure films (including
many never stocked by local or franchised video rental houses) viewable to
anyone willing to take the time to find them.  The service has often been
credited with spurring the recent popularity of feature documentary film,
one of the most underrepresented genres on television.  Amazon.com[7] made
buying home video on all formats convenient and, in many cases, less
expensive than in-store purchasing.  These and related services reinforced
the relatively young institution of watching movies at home, all the while
existing alongside their traditional theater-based counterpart.

A current trend that extends in-home viewing is the increase in portable
devices.  Video game systems like Sony's PlayStation Portable include the
ability to play movies on a special compact medium.[8]  Portable DVD
players, whether handheld or installed in automobiles, have also increased
in popularity during the past several years.  These devices encourage movie
watching outside the home, but are a far cry from a return to the theater.
What they retain from the standard of home viewing is a sense of individual,
private media consumption.  Movies watched on a small screen (small enough
to comfortably accommodate only one viewer) in a car or waiting room are not
a shared experience but rather an introspective escape.


*Online Film in 2006*

As theatrical attendance hit a low point in the early 2000's, innovative
solutions to the balance between distribution formats were sought.  A
notable example is the most recent contract procured by director Steven
Soderbergh under which his films will be released in theaters, on cable
television, and on DVD simultaneously.  Although this eliminates the
exclusive rights to exhibition that theaters normally enjoy, it can be seen
as largely an experimental undertaking with hopes of understanding which
combination of distribution channels is likely to attract the most viewers.

Bubble, released in 2005, was the first film to employ this strategy.
Meeting with mixed critical reviews and lackluster sales, the pressure on
future films that use the 'day and date' release method are even higher.  In
light of Bubble's unique distribution, the old-fashioned way of releasing
movies can be seen as a system that,

has been challenged in recent years, undermined both by new distribution
technologies and growing levels of online piracy and counterfeit-DVD sales.
Movies are now routinely available online even before their premiere, and
can be found for sale on street corners for just a few dollars as the
curtain goes up in theaters. (Borland)

Even Soderbergh's progressive model, though, neglects to include provisions
for making the film directly available online.  While distribution has
conquered the problem of viewing at home (which would certainly include any
hypothetical viewing of network-sourced movies), in practice, its economic
model has not yet reached the internet.

It would be remiss to neglect mention of the cinematic content that is in
fact available online.  There is a large and varied field of video available
for download or viewing online that can be accessed by any internet user
with access to sufficient bandwidth.  Amateur video is also widely available
on privately managed web sites and video sharing services such as YouTube[9]
and Studentfilms.com[10].  News organizations such as CNN aggressively
promote their online video services[11] alongside traditional text-based
news stories.  Vlogging is emerging as an extension of blogging, replacing
text with even more amateur video[12].  A strategic alliance between Apple's
iTunes Store and The Walt Disney Company in 2006 made the studio's films
available for download concurrent with their release on DVD, once their
exclusive theatrical run had expired.  While this appears to be a step
toward integrated online distribution, it is more precisely an instance of
downloads taking the place of tangible home video formats, remaining
separated from traditional theatrical exhibition due to the timing of
availability.  It becomes apparent that the technology is capable, and
viewers are willing to download films for viewing at home.

File sharing software, central to much of the controversy surrounding the
legality of music and software copyright issues, is also a major source of
video content.  Television commercials, film clips, music videos, and
pornography are exceedingly available.  Peer-to-peer file sharing services
like LimeWire and BitTorrent[13] facilitate downloading of new films (those
still being shown exclusively in theaters), often in low quality versions
produced by moviegoers who smuggled a camera into the theater.  As a
decentralized and therefore relatively uncontrollable system for
distribution, video transmitted via a file sharing network often avoids
censorship and copyright issues.

As a carrier of creative content, the internet is very much a commercial
medium.  In this sense, it can be seen as a descendant of television; in
both cases, the majority of programming is offered freely with profits
coming from initial connection fees paid by users and residual income from
advertising that surrounds the primary content.  Advertisers wishing to
reach as many potential customers as possible are forced to focus on
empirical data as much as on the nature of the content they sponsor: ratings
shares on television, number of hits for a website.

Television, of course, is in many ways an extension of cinema.  Films
presented the first moving images and, though initially its content was very
different, television came to rely on the same form of audio-visual
presentation.  In this way, we can observe the more general reality of new
media as a shifting signifier.  What is new is just that; it builds upon
earlier media without destroying them and, in time, will become devoid of
novelty, perhaps transforming into a foundation for something else.  Crucial
differences between film and television deal with their social contexts:
television in the home, film in theaters.  This is the disjunction that the
internet appears poised to disrupt.  Furthermore, a recent convergence of
content styles troubles the notion of television and film each having a
clearly defined sphere of subject matter.  Since the mid-1990's, films have
become increasingly serialized as sequels, trilogies, and remakes encroach
on what once was a defining aspect of television.  At the same time,
television has developed into a more cinematic medium.  Programming, often
featuring large budgets and high production values, such as series on HBO's
subscription networks, air without commercials (one of the superficial
advantages of films) and surmount the strictly enforced content regulations
imposed by the Federal Communications Commission on non-subscription
broadcasting.  While television and movies remain distinct, the lines that
once defined them have begun to be called into question.

It is within this standard that film would seem such a likely candidate for
online distribution.  Commercially proven and in possession of a built-in
audience, film would come to the internet as pre-commodified content.
Instead, the presence most new feature films have online is related to their
promotion.  Movie trailers, short 'making of' documentaries, still images,
and interviews with cast and crew appear routinely on the official website
of a film weeks before it is released to theaters.  This content is
disseminated (much to the delight of the filmmakers) though personal
websites, message boards, and services dedicated to providing information
about upcoming films (including the popular Internet Movie Database[14].)
This free word-of-mouth approach is supplemented by paid advertising- ads on
websites are as much a part of the marketing campaign for a film as
billboards and television commercials.

A notable recent example of a new film's presence online is 2006's Snakes on
a Plane, directed by David R. Ellis.  Months before the film was released,
movie aficionados and fans of the film's star, Samuel L. Jackson, turned
S.o.a.P. (as the film was retitled for quicker online discourse) into a
minor internet phenomenon.  It became the subject of hundreds of personal
websites and was discussed heavily on film-related message boards.  All the
while, New Line Cinema withheld paid advertising and fed the frenzy by
actually calling for new scenes to be included in the film which contained
dialogue suggested by fans.

This sort of rudimentary interactivity speaks to an important difference
between the internet and other, older content carriers.  By virtue of its
technology, the internet encourages interactivity.  Some amateur video
content currently online takes advantage of the possibilities opened up by
real-time placement of moving images within a network that makes them easily
accessible.  Video "conversations" on YouTube, where viewer/posters create
ongoing discourses with other users, illustrate a new paradigm of
communication that would not be possible without the amalgamation of media-
film (video) to capture the image quickly and efficiently, and the internet
itself to display it for all to see.

Television, like theatrical film, is a spectatorial medium that uses
technology with fewer options for integrating participation with the
audience.  Modern television is in the process of making strides toward
adding interactive features, in part to keep pace with new activities
facilitated by the growing number of online applications.  Viewers choosing
not only when to watch a given program but also determining its appearance –
from how much text appears on the screen during a news broadcast to what
camera angles are used in a sporting event – offers the same kind of control
that is part of watching video clips online.  In 2006, Lorne Manly of The
New York Times took up the subject of interactive television, noting,

Grandiose promises of an interactive future circulated for decades, then
seemingly died out a few years back. But today more than 25 million homes
can engage with their television on something approaching their own terms.
The omniscient television programmer symbolized by the opening of "The Outer
Limits" — "For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you
see and hear" — has been humbled. (1)

Of course, television networks are able to offer these interactive features
because of digital technology – something the internet is based on and film
generally lacks.  Steven Spielberg, probably the most successful director of
the 20th century, understands interactivity as an element that will
inevitable come to movies, noting,

I think we are eventually going to get to a point where the audience is
going to want to make a choice: to go to a movie theater and let the movie
just roll over them, and they walk out having felt that a confident
filmmaker told them a really good story and that is really satisfying. But
also in the future there is going to be a movie theater that allows the
audience to be active members in the story-telling process. And I think the
audiences who are flocking to video games, which is an interactive
experience, are going to want to interact with movies as they play in real
time. And there will be room for both. There will be stories that allow the
audience to determine the outcome. (Philadelphia)

It could very well be that Spielberg's vision is in the process realization,
but that the interactive theater he speaks of is located within the walls of
the American home.

Online, film viewing could gain a reciprocal relationship with viewers for
the first time.  Manipulating playback as with a VCR, internet films could
also offer viewers choices about content in the form of multiple endings and
various edits of a film designed for specific audiences or age groups.
Filmmakers who embrace network-intended production could reasonably be
expected to devise specific facets of interactivity that would be difficult
to imagine today, while much film still sees the big screen as its ultimate
destination.


*The Effects of Film's Absence*

Just as computers have forced change in the media that preceded them, films,
by remaining in the theater, are in the process of transforming the ways
that audiences relate to cinema.  Part of this transformation comes in the
form of a punctuated shift in power as internet users find themselves
capable, for the first time, of creating and sharing content on a scale
previously attainable only to mass market distributors.  Independent
filmmakers of the past needed to make powerful friends if they wanted their
film to play outside of their own locality.  As electronic networks force us
to reconceptualize space, with less emphasis on limiting geographic
realities, a much broader field of practitioners gain the opportunity to
disseminate content digitally and at a low cost.

Digital video content, once online (and therefore classifiable, searchable,
and reproducible), brings other inventive ways of working to filmmakers.
Remix culture, previously the domain of artists working in older media such
as music, becomes a reality once artists have access to a large enough
stockpile of images that there is no need to create their own.  While
reusing images produced by others confronts questions of copyright legality,
distribution of content on the internet is, as noted earlier, notoriously
difficult to control.

The ease with which video can be put online means viewers have far more
options than ever before.  Video cameras put the means of motion picture
production in the hands of the masses as early as the 1970's, and the
popularization of digital video in the 1990's extended this to include the
ability to produce internet-ready video easily and affordably.  While much
of what is made available online today is of questionable quality, viewers
have been forced to develop new skills for searching, filtering, and
organizing content.  Consequently, predominance shifts away from centralized
means of distribution and the old system, under which a de facto monopoly on
moving image presentation was held by those with the resources needed to
make a film suitable for theatrical showing.

As power leaves centralized distribution, it is spread out over the much
larger group of filmmakers- those who make their work easily available
online.  Claims that video technology would democratize the medium are
finally coming to fruition.  Without being beholden to investors who demand
a profit, the creators of low-budget productions have more latitude in terms
of subject matter and filmic style than directors hoping to "break through"
and win power within the commercial film industry by bowing to convention.
Independent films no longer require approval from a major distributor if
they hope to achieve success, since producers can self-promote and
self-distribute their work online.

However the internet is not a gateway to a utopian era for cinema.  As with
any new technology, adaptation can be a difficult process.  While some
filmmakers embrace new methods and machines, others cling to romantic
notions of the past.  As to the question of offering films online, some
simply prefer the notion of a theatrical experience where some movies stand
to gain substantially when watched with a group.  Comedy is particularly
notorious for benefiting from the contagious laughter that a large audience
can succumb to.  Other filmmakers simply prefer to participate in an
historical tradition that involves leaving the home and entering a space
specifically dedicated to the viewing of film where, surrounded by
strangers, they might be expected to give more of their attention to what is
shown on the screen than they would if watching from an armchair in their
own, private domestic space.

Although young filmmakers tend to be quicker to embrace the newest
technologies, there are some notable exceptions.  One case in point is
83-year old experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas.  Known as "the godfather of
American avant-garde cinema", Mekas rose to prominence in 1960's New York as
an important filmmaker and media curator.  Begun in 2006, his latest
undertaking is a series of short videos which will be made available online,
to be purchased and downloaded to an Apple Video iPod[15].  In announcing
the project, Mekas spoke of the power of small images (the Video iPod screen
measures 2.5 inches diagonally), which deny the grandeur of the theater's
big screen:

It's very personal, you hold it in your hand, in your palm, there it is:
Life, cinema, art… in your palm.  Of course, that will change cinema
itself.  I think that cinema is becoming more and more like poetry, like
books, where it's just you and the image, just you and the poem. ("Short
Films.")

With these remarks, Mekas begins the process of speculating about what the
future may hold for the cinema and its viewers.


*The Future of Film Online*

As the internet continues to expand and mature, the nature of media will
remain an important social issue.  The film industry and the average viewer
will experience transformations large and small in the way they relate to
cinema, just as they have for the life of the medium.  One potential future
scenario supported by the current landscape is an even more divisive
separation between the commercial film industry and all other forms of image
production.  Two distinct factions would emerge, defined by where their
production will be shown: in theaters, or online.  In this scenario,
independent filmmakers would remain on the fringes of the industry,
responding to its trends and methods while occasionally crossing aesthetic
and economic boundaries.  (For instance, an internet filmmaker who achieves
fame and turns to larger-scale industrial production for theaters, just as
today successful television directors often earn a chance to try their hand
in Hollywood.)

It is also certainly within the realm of possibilities that the commercial
film industry will catch up to the potential and demands of the internet
culture.  The aforementioned distribution systems used by Steven Soderbergh
and the Disney/iTunes collaboration may be the first steps in a full
integration of the internet by film producers and distributors.  Given the
flexibility they have demonstrated in the past, this is not altogether
unlikely.

In any case, the current era is a time of change for film viewership.  In
considering the significance of early television, Marshall McLuhan famously
asserted that The Medium is the Message.  The internet is already a bringer
of social change in ways that television never was, even through fifty years
of maturation.  As the new medium in American life, the internet provides
for a radical transformation of cinema.  A film changes in a fundamental way
when it jumps between media, just as film produced with the internet in mind
will be unavoidably affected.  For viewers, new content is presented through
new conduits.  Collectively, the choices made about what to watch, and where
to watch it, will characterize the future of moving images as an art form
and a forum for social activity.



Works Cited


Borland, John. "Soderbergh does a DVD-theater release combo."  CNET News.com
.

12 Jan. 2006  <http://news.com.com/Soderbergh+does+a+DVD-theater+release+combo/2100-1025_3-
6026218.html>.

Corrigan, Timothy.  Cinema Without Walls: Movies and Culture After Vietnam.


New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991.

Gillmor, Dan.  We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the
People.

            Cambridge: O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2004.

Manly, Lorne.  "Your TV Would Like a Word With You."  The New York
Times

19 Nov. 2006, late ed., sec. 2: 1+.

Philadelphia, Desa.  "Spielberg at the Revolution."  TIME.com 14 Mar. 2006.
<http://


www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1173367,00.html?promoid=rss_arts>.

"Short Films Coming Soon to an iPod Near You."  All Things Considered.
Natl. Public

Radio.  5 Nov. 2006. <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=

6439426>.

Thompson, Kristin and David Bordwell.  Film History: An Introduction.  New
York:

McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994.

________________________________



[1] The iTunes Store, previously known as iTunes Music Store, is the vendor
service included in Apple's iTunes media player software.  iTunes, available
for free download, has been offered by Apple since 2001; the store component
first appeared in versions of the software released in 2003 and allowed most
popular, mass-distributed songs to be downloaded for 99 cents each.




[2] <http://www.jstor.org>.  JSTOR – The Scholarly Journal Archive appeared
in 1995.  The non-profit service provides archived academic publications to
subscribing libraries and research universities.


[3] Produced by TiVo Inc., the TiVo digital video recorder (DVR) was first
sold in 1999 and is the most popular product of its kind in the United
States, though similar devices are sold in other countries.  Owners pay a
monthly subscription fee and can access television programming stored on the
recorder's hard drive, thus enabling programs to be viewed at times other
than their initial broadcast.


[4] Alternately called The Golden Age of Hollywood, this term refers roughly
to the period from 1920 to 1934 during which film profits reached new
heights.




[5] The period of large-scale film production beginning in the late 1960's
and continuing, in some form, ever since; typified by Steven Spielberg's
Jaws (1975).


[6] <http://www.NETFLIX.com>.  Operating since 1998, NetFlix is a service
under which subscribers pay a fee to have DVDs they select from a massive
database sent to them via postal mail.  Popular rental chain Blockbuster
Video launched its Total Access service in 2006 as a direct response to the
growing popularity of NetFlix, offering online rental of many titles not
available for rent or sale in its stores.




[7] <http://www.amazon.com>.  Amazon, founded in 1995, was one of the first
major online retailers to emerge, selling primarily books, then music and
videos.  As of 2006, it sells a wide range of products and is consistently
among the top ranked online retailers in terms of sales figures.




[8] PlayStation Portable movie playback utilizes the Universal Media Disc
(UMD), also developed by Sony.  Introduced in 2005, the PlayStation Portable
is sold under the slogan "PSP: Entertainment Without Boundaries".


[9] <http://www.youtube.com>.  YouTube allows anyone to upload video clips
for free public viewing.  Launched in 2005, YouTube skyrocketed to
popularity and was acquired by Google, Inc. in 2006.




[10] <http://www.studentfilms.com>.  Similar to YouTube, Studentfilms.com is
intended for use only by students; submissions must be associated with an
academic institution.  Unlike YouTube, students pay an annual fee for their
film to be exhibited, often in hopes of gathering feedback from viewers.




[11] <http://www.cnn.com>, the online presence of Time Warner's Cable News
Network, offers video in several ways.  Short clips pertaining to recent
news stories can be viewed online free of charge, and during especially
newsworthy events such as the 2006 United States midterm elections, live
24-hour coverage is also viewable.  CNN Pipeline is a subscription service
offered by the website that gives viewers access to more content, including
archives of older video clips.




[12] Blogging is best defined as providing a continually updated journal
online, arranging entries in reverse chronological order.  Blogs (etymology:
'web logs') encourage readers to return frequently as new content is added.
Vlogging, then, is this same activity when video content is used in place
of, or to augment, written text.




[13] These programs, freely downloadable at <
http://www.limewire.com/english/content/home.shtml> and <
http://www.bittorrent.com> respectively, are just two examples of
peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing services.  "With technologies such as
BitTorrent… every downloader's computer is also a content server.  So the
more popular [content is], the less it costs" (Gillmor 37-38).
Collectively, programs of this sort constitute a sizeable percentage of the
world's internet traffic.


[14] <http://www.imdb.com>.  The Internet Movie Database, now owned by
Amazon.com, emerged in 1990 as a means of searching for film-related
information on the early internet.  As of 2006, it includes detailed
production information on most films ever made since the silent era, as well
as short clips, still images, and showtimes for current releases.


[15] The iPod is Apple Computer Inc.'s hugely popular portable music
player.  First sold in 2001, newer models include a video playback feature.
The iPod is meant to synchronize with Apple's iTunes media player software.
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