Stitching it all together: Service producers and the spatial dynamics of screen media labor

Abstract

The following draws attention to the rather messy and uncertain aspects of international production as well as the increasingly shared turmoil screen media workers face no matter their geographical location. I argue that international production is not just an inevitable consequence of cost cutting and public subsidy but a product of human labor obscured in both popular and scholarly accounts of runaway production. I furthermore highlight the contours of that labor by drawing attention to the work of service producers in Eastern Europe. Looking more closely at conditions ‘on the ground’ makes visible the demanding and vulnerable nature of that work, and underscores the shifting spatial dynamics of screen media labor worldwide.