Film Industry Research Articles

‘Caution will get us nowhere’: manifesto writing as collective practice with a diverse film-making class

This article puts forth a number of ideas on co-creation with film-making students, which can both enhance their own practice and critically situate it within the wider film, television and creative industries. In the case study presented here, students on a second-year module called Independent Filmmaking Practices at the University of Greenwich in 2021 wrote a collective manifesto, titled the ‘Dismantle-festo’. The case study presented here is partly for educators seeking in-class exercises which depart from mainstream thinking about the film and television industries. However, in presenting and analysing both the exercises which led to the manifesto, and the manifesto itself, this article is also partly a record of the concerns and hopes of this cohort, condensed within the radical format of the manifesto.

How did South Korean multiplexes survive the pandemic?: A dynamic capabilities perspective

Purpose The film industry is going through a period of upheaval and crisis. This study aims to examine the movie theater industry’s survival strategies by analyzing South Korean multiplex management strategies during the pandemic from a dynamic capabilities perspective. Design/methodology/approach This study conducted a case study to analyze the management strategies of South Korean multiplexes using Teece's (2007) proposed components of sensing, seizing and transforming. Data was collected from business reports, websites, publications, news releases and interviews beginning in January 2020, when COVID-19 began to spread in South Korea, until June 2023. Findings South Korean multiplex theaters’ sensing capabilities have enabled companies to understand the changing demands of consumers and respond quickly. The seizing capability also enabled the development of distinctive business models, and the transforming capability contributed to equipping growth engines from a long-term perspective. Originality/value This study confirmed that the dynamic capabilities perspective and the three components conceptualized by Teece (2007) can explain the strategic choices of firms during acute crises such as pandemics. Additionally, these findings have practical implications for global film industry stakeholders.

Hoffmannian Traditions in David Lynch's TV series “Twin Peaks”

The article examines the refraction of Hoffmann's poetics in cinema by the example of D. Lynch's TV series “Twin Peaks”. It is argued that the Hoffmann tradition, which has found steady development in world literature, with the advent of cinema as an art form finds continuation in the film industry. Based on the methodology of the Hoffmann complex, the article highlights the features of Hoffmann poetics in D. Lynch's series and their role in revealing the postmodern concept of inevitable evil (the increase of entropy and chaos in modern society through modern media). The results of the study prove the presence of the Hoffmann intertext and its transformation in D. Lynch's TV series “Twin Peaks”.

Social Construct of Nollywood Films and Ethnocentrism in Southern Nigeria

In this paper, the study engages the post nationality of Nollywood, which is manifest in its traveling patterns and its transgression of cartographic boundaries to engage diasporic communities around the world. Of particular interest of the study are how Nollywood has emerged as the third biggest film industry in the world, after Hollywood and Bollywood, from its humble Nigerian beginnings and how this post national character has been acquired and sustained.

Intersemiotic Translations of Greek Popular Films in the Film Industry and Media

Abstract This paper examines cultural texts and their place in the Greek semiosphere. More particularly, it delves into intersemiotic translations or adaptations or remakes of masterpieces of, the so-called, Golden Age of Greek cinema, which are deeply engraved in the Greek collective cultural memory. These cultural texts assume yet further value many decades after they were created, through three semiotic choices involving a translational dimension: their colourisation, their cinematic adaptation, and their amateur remakes hosted on social media and other internet sites. Assuming that the original texts are located at the centre of the Greek semiosphere, this study aims to show whether these new texts, the metatexts, are placed next to their originals or whether they coexist along the periphery or near the borders of the Greek semiosphere, an element that will determine the extent to which they will be accepted by contemporary Greeks. The study shows that the popularity of new cultural texts, which belong to the comedy genre, is increasing due to the desire of film audiences to participate through these intersemiotic translations (metatexts) in the popularity of the original cultural texts (prototexts) that are considered cultural myths.

Text2NeRF: Text-Driven 3D Scene Generation With Neural Radiance Fields.

Text-driven 3D scene generation is widely applicable to video gaming, film industry, and metaverse applications that have a large demand for 3D scenes. However, existing text-to-3D generation methods are limited to producing 3D objects with simple geometries and dreamlike styles that lack realism. In this work, we present Text2NeRF, which is able to generate a wide range of 3D scenes with complicated geometric structures and high-fidelity textures purely from a text prompt. To this end, we adopt NeRF as the 3D representation and leverage a pre-trained text-to-image diffusion model to constrain the 3D reconstruction of the NeRF to reflect the scene description. Specifically, we employ the diffusion model to infer the text-related image as the content prior and use a monocular depth estimation method to offer the geometric prior. Both content and geometric priors are utilized to update the NeRF model. To guarantee textured and geometric consistency between different views, we introduce a progressive scene inpainting and updating strategy for novel view synthesis of the scene. Our method requires no additional training data but only a natural language description of the scene as the input. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our Text2NeRF outperforms existing methods in producing photo-realistic, multi-view consistent, and diverse 3D scenes from a variety of natural language prompts. Our code and model are available at https://github.com/eckertzhang/Text2NeRF.

Exploring the Training of Film and Video Talents in Higher Vocational Colleges under the Background of AIGC

With the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) technology, the film and video industry's production process and creation mode are profoundly transforming. This technological advancement has put forward new requirements for film and video talent cultivation in higher vocational colleges, prompting the education system to make targeted optimisation in key areas such as curriculum, practical teaching, teacher construction and school-enterprise cooperation. Based on the talent demand of the film and video industry in the context of AIGC, this study analyses the main challenges facing film and Video education in higher vocational colleges, including the disconnection between the curriculum content and the development of the industry, the insufficiency of practical teaching resources, and the weakness of the faculty. Because of these problems, the study proposes the strategies of building an interdisciplinary curriculum system, strengthening practical teaching, deepening university-enterprise cooperation and improving the ‘dual-teacher’ teaching team to provide effective references for the cultivation of high-quality film and video talents with innovative ability and practical skills in higher vocational colleges.

Screening trans narratives: representation of transwomen in Indian regional cinema

In India, the cinema industry has gotten a facelift with the absorption of regional cinema into its defined and confined boundaries, which was earlier a monopoly of commercial Bollywood films as well as award-winning Hindi films. One of the pertinent problems it deals with is the societal, political, and individual negligence towards the marginalised and underprivileged gender minority communities in different parts of the country. This essay traces how transwomen are represented in Indian regional cinema and how the two representative South Indian films, Nanu Avanalla Avalu (2015) and Njan Marykutty (2018), chosen for study, become visual texts which mark clear demarcation from the existing trans narratives and call for a progressive perception to the representation of transwomen in regional cinema. A critical analysis of these films brings forth the nuances and politics of the representation of transwomen on screen by emphasising the construction and contestation of transfemininity and its association with the visible and invisible cisheteronormative patriarchal power play prevalent in society. It also examines the cinematic construction of transphobia directed towards transwomen and concludes on how such progressive narratives can pave the way for an inclusive society through sensitisation of their experiences and issues to a mass audience.

Unveiling Femininity: Gender, Fame, and Success in Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

The main objective of this research article is to explore the intersections of fame, femininity, and identity in Taylor Jenkins Reid's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, examining how gendered power dynamics shape the life and choices of Evelyn Hugo, a fictional Hollywood icon. The narrative explores the cost of success for women in a patriarchal society as Evelyn navigates societal pressures and industry expectations through seven carefully chosen marriages and the maintenance of a glamorous, heterosexual public image. While Evelyn uses her relationships as strategic tools to rise in a male-dominated film industry, her true identity and love for actress Celia St. James reveal the limitations imposed by cultural and gendered expectations. Drawing on feminist theory, particularly the work of scholars like Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Betty Friedan (1963). This research examines Evelyn's complex struggle for power, examining how fame acts as both an avenue for empowerment and a restrictive force. The study further explores the novel's depiction of femininity, love, and bisexuality, considering how Evelyn's life reflects broader themes of identity and the struggle for authenticity within oppressive structures. This paper ultimately questions the cost of success for women in environments where public personas must often overshadow personal truth, offering insights into the challenges of achieving selfhood in spaces prioritizing image over individuality.

Cinematic Language under the Female Gaze: A Case Study of Li Yu

Abstract: This paper aims to discover the concept of the female gaze in the movie Lost in Beijing by Li Yu. The female gaze is a film theory that is in opposition to the male gaze, which is a way of viewing women as sexual beings and not as complex people. This paper posits that Li Yu uses the female gaze as a post-modernist technique to focus on the emotional and psychological aspects of the female characters, thus overturning the established Patriarchal gender norms and bringing to the fore the issues of gender inequality in contemporary Chinese society. Certain filming approaches, including those that include close ups and reflective shots, affect the experience of the film's main subject, who are women. The research also reviews the variance between the 'male gaze' and the 'female gaze' in movies, pointing out that the former is much more forthright and authentic in its portrayal of women. Lastly, the paper considers the further developments of the concept of the female gaze and possibilities to transform the film industry from the perspective of the female representation.

The Criteria of Actor and Actress Selection in Islamic Film: An Analytical Study

The lack of adherence to Islamic guidelines regarding gender interaction in the casting of actors and actresses for Islamic films is one of the primary issues facing the industry. This study aims to define film from Western and Islamic perspectives, explore Islamic views on the film industry based on Maqasid Shariah, and investigate the criteria and role of actor selection in portraying Islamic culture, values, and themes in films and its impact on audience reception. The researcher uses qualitative method through library research, as well as carried out an interview question to gather data and conduct an analysis. The main finding of this study is that the selection of actors with a religious background has a positive effect on the audience's acceptance of the message conveyed. The research also highlights the importance of actors maintaining high moral standards both on and off-screen. Furthermore, the study suggests that filmmakers and actors may choose to consult with Islamic scholars or advisors during the production of Islamic films. This collaboration ensures accuracy and sensitivity to religious nuances in the storytelling. To be able to create an Islamic film that truly adheres to Sharia law, actors, authors, and directors are required to work together.

Cross-Cultural Engagement and Audience Dynamics: A Critical Evaluation of the Alliance Française French Film Festival

Film festivals provide a platform for films to gain recognition and cultural legitimisation. Through selection, awards, and screenings, film festivals contribute to cultural exchange and the growth of the global film industry. The Alliance Française French Film Festival (AFFFF) is a major cultural event focusing on French cinema, touring across multiple Australian cities. This report will evaluate the AFFFF in the context of local and worldwide film festivals, exploring audience engagement, film programming, and marketing strategy. It will discuss the participant experience and how the event should be improved.

Translation as Transference of Identity and Resistance: (Re)presentations of Dalits in Pa. Ranjit’s Kaala

Translation is generally defined as the rendering of a text from one language to another. But in its broadest etymological sense, translation means something that is being carried across. When the process of translation is considered an act of creativity, translation is the transference of the self-identity of the creator from one language or medium to another. Therefore, the process of transferring the identity into creativity itself is a form of translation. Social identity theory proposed by John Turner and Henri Tajfel explains that a person’s social group will contribute to their sense of self as well. In India, Dalit identity is a social identity that aids a Dalit individual to form his personal identity as well. Dalit identity gets formed as an after-effect of not only the distinctive experience that they live through but also the discrimination and oppression that they face being socially marginalized groups. The revocation of their Dalit identity gradually leads them to engage in various forms of resistance through mediums such as politics, literature, and arts, by ensuring the representation and participation of Dalits in the respective fields. Cinema is one such medium, which had not opened its doors to Dalit representations until the twenty-first century. This discrimination resulted in creating an unspoken void in representing true Dalithood, their history, resistance, and representation in the field of cinema. Tamil cinema industry is an example of a brave exception regarding this from the recent past. A number of directors, claiming their Dalit identity and their politics behind making films, which honestly talk about Dalit issues in a collective sense have come up. This article tries to analyse how these filmmakers translated their identity into representation and resistance through their films, taking Pa. Ranjit’s Kaala as an example.

Putting academy awards and accounting together. Franco Cristaldi and his Italian film productions (1954–1992)

ABSTRACT This study aims to examine the accounting tools adopted in the filmmaking companies of Franco Cristaldi, specifically the mechanisms adopted in a selection of films in the period in which they achieved artistic success at a national and international level. Cristaldi’s biography, the events of his film production companies, the use of accounting in the production of films such as ‘The Name of the Rose’, ‘Cinema Paradiso’ amongst others are extensively illustrated. A comparative analysis with the practices of the Hollywood major studios during the 1940s, as described by the anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker, reveals both a reliance on accounting tools to balance creativity with profitability and distinctive features that shed light on Cristaldi’s entrepreneurial approach within the context of the Italian film industry. The research contributes to accounting history studies by presenting a case of accounting in film production. Specifically, the research demonstrates the role played by accounting tools in the quest for profitability in a context where it should be combined and harmonised with art creativity.

Value Chain Analysis in the Film Industry: A Literature Review

The film industry has undergone significant transformation due to technological advancements and shifts in consumer behavior. The original value chain concept was introduced by Porter (1985), and has been widely adapted to represent activities within the film industry, including production, distribution, and exhibition. This study employs a literature review to uncover the evolution of the value chain and use it as a theoretical framework for the film industry, which includes understanding the value chain dynamics, assessing competitiveness, adapting to digitization, and employing the concept of value networks. The methodology involves a structured search strategy across diverse sources, supplemented by snowballing, aiming to extract insights into integrating the value chain model with the industry. The findings demonstrate that the value chain concept signifies interconnections among different stages of the film industry, enhancing value creation and competitive advantage, with effects on digitization and digital distribution. By recognizing the activities within the value chain, the film industry can strategically optimize its processes, adapt to evolving trends, and make informed decisions that increase competitiveness. By connecting theoretical foundations with practical implications, the findings of the study contribute to an enriched understanding of film industry dynamics, value creation, and competitive strategies, offering valuable insights to practitioners, researchers, and stakeholders. Keywords: value chain, film industry, competitiveness, vertical integration, digital distribution

Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus in Movies: The Hollywood Effect

Introduction. Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D) is one of the most common chronic diseases with childhood onset. Cinematic films and movies have the capability to reach populations worldwide and effect their concept of this disease. This research examined the accuracy of these movies depicting T1D from childhood into adulthood. Methods. We conducted an internet search of several databases that resulted in a list of 39 movies from 2000 to 2022 with characters that had diabetes. We ultimately assessed 13 fictional movies that dealt with management of disease, character development, access to care, and complications. Results. Movies portray severe but rare diabetes manifestations such as comas. They emphasize access to basic diabetes supplies and cost of care. Only starting in 2020, a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and insulin pumps are shown. Female characters are presented as resilient and unaffected by the struggles of their T1D. Conclusions. This sample of fictional movies portrays extreme T1D symptoms and mostly outdated technology for monitoring and treatment. It would be beneficial if future movies reflected the advances in closed-loop CGM/insulin pumps. It is important for clinicians to be aware of how the movie industry is presenting the disease to their patients. Clinicians can use popular movies to start difficult discussions with their patients about topics pertinent to the comprehensive care of T1D.

Male jurors, male awards?

Film festivals are an added value to the film industry. The research of these events is growing, although it is limited in terms of jury committees, and less so in terms of gender bias. The initial assumption is that if juries are mainly made up of men, awards will be given mainly to men. In the context of Spain, this process is related to the fact that the most prominent jobs in the film process are still held by men (Arranz et al, 2007). This paper discusses the composition of the juries and the awards given at animation film festivals in Spain in 2022 as an approach to the study of juries from a gender perspective. The first results show that awards are predominantly made up of men (65%), despite the fact that, the juries are made up mostly of women (60.42%). This shows an imbalance: although there is more female presence on the juries, the majority of the awards continue to be given to men.

Application of Deep Learning in Sentiment Analysis Based on Movie Review Datasets

Abstract. With the rapid development of the Internet and social networks. user-generated content (UGC) has exploded on the Internet as an important form of user feedback, especially movie reviews, which are of great value to the film industry and market analysis, and can help relevant groups understand the reputation and evaluation of movies. As a natural language processing technology, sentiment analysis can effectively identify and extract emotional biases in text, providing a new perspective and method for sentiment analysis from film criticism. The results show that using deep learning can significantly speed up this work and make sentiment analysis more efficient and faster. The purpose of this article is to explore the application and specific process of deep learning in sentiment analysis of film criticism datasets, to find the most appropriate model by comparing and analyzing multiple models, and to present the rating data of some films from the perspective of display technology.

Application of Deep Learning in Sentiment Analysis Based on Movie Review Datasets

Abstract. With the rapid development of the Internet and social networks. user-generated content (UGC) has exploded on the Internet as an important form of user feedback, especially movie reviews, which are of great value to the film industry and market analysis, and can help relevant groups understand the reputation and evaluation of movies. As a natural language processing technology, sentiment analysis can effectively identify and extract emotional biases in text, providing a new perspective and method for sentiment analysis from film criticism. The results show that using deep learning can significantly speed up this work and make sentiment analysis more efficient and faster. The purpose of this article is to explore the application and specific process of deep learning in sentiment analysis of film criticism datasets, to find the most appropriate model by comparing and analyzing multiple models, and to present the rating data of some films from the perspective of display technology.

‘It used to be fix-it in post production! now it’s fix-it in pre-production’: how virtual production is changing production networks in film and television

This article examines how the development of virtual production is disrupting the film and television industry. Virtual production is a way of creating content which captures digital assets and environments ‘in camera’ and in real-time during shooting, rather than these assets being added in post-production. We review the use of the production network concept - a systematic way of examining a set of linked economic activities - to analyse film and television production, and present a new version which includes virtual production activities. We mobilise this model to explore how virtual production is creating a major shift in film and television production. We explore the movement of work from post- to pre-production and how virtual production is facilitating new business models that allow companies to shift their focus to other parts of the production network. Finally we examine how companies and individuals are responding to the emergence of gaps in the tradition film and television production network through entering it for the first time, mergers and acquisitions, and partnerships.