Tobacco imagery on prime time UK television

Background: Smoking in films is a common and well documented cause of youth smoking experimentation and uptake and hence a significant health hazard. The extent of exposure of young people to tobacco imagery in television programming has to date been far less investigated. We have therefore measured the extent to which tobacco content occurs in prime time UK television, and estimated exposure of UK youth. Methods: The occurrence of tobacco, categorised as actual tobacco use, implied tobacco use, tobacco paraphernalia, other reference to tobacco, tobacco brand appearances or any of these, occurring in all prime time broadcasting on the five most popularly viewed UK television stations during 3 separate weeks in 2010 were measured by 1-minute interval coding. Youth exposure to tobacco content in the UK was estimated using media viewing figures. Findings: Actual tobacco use, predominantly cigarette smoking, occurred in 73 of 613 (12%) programmes, particularly in feature films and reality TV. Brand appearances were rare, occurring in only 18 programmes, of which 12 were news or other factual genres, and 6 were episodes of the same British soap opera. Tobacco occurred with similar frequency before as after 21:00, the UK watershed for programmes suitable for youth. The estimated number of incidences of exposure of the audience aged less than 18 years for any tobacco, actual tobacco use and tobacco branding were 59 million, 16 million and 3 million, respectively on average per week. Conclusions: Television programming is a source of significant exposure of youth to tobacco imagery, before and after the watershed. Tobacco branding is particularly common in Coronation Street, a soap opera popular among youth audiences. More stringent controls on tobacco in prime time television therefore have the potential to reduce the uptake of youth smoking in the UK

Dallas Bower: a producer for television's early years, 1936-39

Having worked in the film industry as a sound technician and then director, Dallas Bower (1907-99) was appointed in 1936 as one of two senior producers at the start of the BBC Television service. Over the next three years Bower produced as well as directed many ground-breaking live programmes, including the opening-day broadcast on 2 November 1936; the BBC Television Demonstration Film (1937, his only surviving pre-war production); a modern-dress Julius Caesar (1938), in uniforms suggestive of a Fascist disctatorship; Act II of Tristan and Isolde (1938); Patrick Hamilton’s play Rope (1939), utilising extended single camera-shots camera-shots; numerous ballets, among them Checkmate (1938); and ambitious outside broadcasts from the film studios at Denham and Pinewood. Developing the working practices of producing for the theatre, film industry and radio, Bower was a key figure in defining the role of the creative television producer at the start of the medium. Among his innovations, according to his unpublished autobiographical fragment ‘Playback’ (written 1995), was the introduction of a drawn studio plan for the four cameras employed in all live broadcasts from Alexandra Palace. Using Bower’s writings (among them his 1936 book Plan for Cinema), his BECTU History Project interview, the BBC Written Archives and contemporary industry coverage, this article reconstructs the early development of the role of staff television producer in order to consider the questions of autonomy, agency and institutional constraints at the BBC in the pre-war years

Towards a Bourdieusian analysis of the social composition of the UK film and television workforce

This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page(http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm).The social composition of the workforce of the UK film and television industries does not reflect the diversity of the population and the industries have been described as white, male and middle class. While the lack of specific demographic representation in employment (for example gender or ethnicity) has been highlighted by both industry and academic commentators, its broader social composition has rarely been addressed by research. This article draws on the work of Bourdieu, particularly the concepts of field, habitus and capitals, to explore perceptions of the barriers to entry into these industries and the way in which individuals negotiate these by drawing on the various capitals to which they have access.Peer reviewe

Innovation in the Application of Digital Tools for Managing Uncertainty: The Case of UK Independent Film

This research investigates innovation in how film producers use social digital tools to engage consumers, reduce demand uncertainty and respond to the challenge of digital disruption that affects the traditional film value chain. Through three empirical case studies of film production and exploitation, we examine examples of innovation in product, service, distribution, marketing and process, each having important implications at the organizational level. Our findings show that innovations in one area have important implications for other areas, distribution impacting on concepts of product and service, for example. We also show that internal firm micro-process dynamics impact directly on external interactions between the firm, consumers en masse and partner firms. Our research thus lies at the nexus of innovation, social media and uncertainty management, and questions the boundaries found in innovation ‘types’ or dominant taxonomies in traditional R&D frames

Exploring the place of animation and the role of the classroom-based film-maker within a wider field of Scottish moving image education

Robert Munro - ORCID: 0000-0002-4755-9691 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4755-9691This article explores animation as a popular mode of moving image education in the wider field of Scottish film education, through a discussion with film education practitioner Jonathan Charles. We reflect on Jonathan’s pedagogic approach to film education, the way in which it is shaped and aligned with changing institutional and funding imperatives, and the affordances of animation, through a detailed look at a film-making project with a primary school in West Lothian, Scotland. We reflect upon the challenge to maintain in-depth film experiences for young people, with training and working with teachers to allow film experiences to be scalable and multiply to reach a wider range of young people. We also discuss the drive to give young people agency throughout the film-making process, and how film education practitioners and teachers can best facilitate that.https://doi.org/10.14324/FEJ.04.1.064pubpub

Rethinking cultural diversity in the UK film sector:practices in community filmmaking

© The Author(s) 2017. Academic, policy and industry debates have tended to focus on the mainstream film sector when discussing cultural diversity. One of the persistent challenges for the sector has been how to diversify cultural representation and participation. This article suggests that participatory modes of community filmmaking make an important contribution to cultural diversity. Drawing on an evidence base derived from qualitative research conducted in three English regions, the article shifts the spotlight away from the mainstream and onto the margins of the film sector in order to explore more ‘bottom-up’ approaches to cultural diversity. It examines how community filmmakers interpret and engage with questions of cultural diversity and how this connects to the participatory and business practices that they adopt. The findings highlight the significance of processes of practice in how mediated cultural diversity manifests itself and the value of community filmmaking in contributing to wider cultural diversity debates and practices.The authors thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) for funding the ‘Community Filmmaking and Cultural Diversity: Practice, Innovation and Policy project’ (2013–2014)

Reconceptualising the relationship between the creative economy and the city: Learning from the financial crisis

This paper uses the financial crisis as an opportunity to examine a number of key questions about the relationship of the creative economy and the city. We argue that weak conceptualisation of the nature of the relationship between the creative economy and the city, as well as a lack of clarity about what the creative economy is, has subverted debates about this important topic. This paper comprises four major sections: the first introduces the field of the creative economy, the second section seeks to clarify what exactly we mean by the term financial crisis; here we highlight the multifaceted character of the financial crisis and is variable impacts across the field of the creative economy. The third part outlines the range and diversity of the actually existing relations between the creative economy and the city. In the fourth section we reflect upon the earlier argument to consider what we can learn about the impacts (actual and expected) of the financial crisis on the creative economy and the city, and additionally to reflect upon what this might indicate about the changing and perhaps transformed relationship between the creative economy and the city in the last quarter century

Cinemaethnographic specta(c)torship: discursive readings of what we choose to (dis)possess

This article examines critical methodological issues emerging from the interstices of applied educational research, social science research, and arts-based research, bringing criticality into the field of childhood. The author aims to question how she might w(rest)le (un)comfortably with "what is worth looking at" when studying children. Maneuvering between observations of children in classrooms and representations of children in film, the author will not only consider ways she enacts discrete performances of specta(c)torship but also how she might resist revoking one performance for another within her "practices of looking" by conjuring the menace of ambivalent narratives. Rather than falling into familiar framing devices that serve to embrace some, but prohibit other ways of seeing, she will procure notions of colonialism and restless hybridity to incite antagonistic play on the edges of ethnographic specta(c)torship, drawing on Stronach’s notion of "lean-to" concepts

Faster, higher [exhibition]

Faster, Higher is a multi-screen installation commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and the British Film Institute. Staged as a solo show at BFI Southbank to coincide with the Beijing Olympics and act as an imaginative precursor to London 2012, the work was also exhibited at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, in Hit The Ground (2009), as part of the Great North Run cultural programme. A further solo staging coinciding will take place at The Gallery, Winchester Discovery Centre (2012). The work incorporates montages of Olympic archive material and rarely-seen Chinese documentary footage spanning the last century, with original footage shot near the London 2012 site. Despite China’s voluntary self-exclusion from the Games over three decades, and the avowed apolitical idealism of the latter as a global brand, Faster, Higher finds resonances and commonalities in the visual and cultural rhetoric around notions of nation, sport, patriotism and physical endeavour. New footage shot at the London Wushu Academy points to the mixed cultural identifications of young British athletes today, with martial arts serving as a (Chinese) national, internationally popular, and yet-to-be recognised Olympics sport. Opening with the rituals and symbols of state ceremony and international unity, flags jostle along a succession of parades, punctuated by the release of doves and balloons. Colour bars and countdowns signal a different ‘universal’, implicating the entwined histories of the Games and the moving image, while alluding to archival points of entry. The Olympic rings are echoed through clocks, archers’ targets, lassoes, and gymnasts’ hoops, while the ascent of pole-vaulters, mountaineers, balloons and lanterns invoke the movement’s motto: citius, altius, fortius. Meanwhile, the 2012 site is rendered paradoxically visible and invisible via its blue perimeter: a literal and metaphorical screen, barrier and defence, against which dreams may be projected, protests erased, and the labour behind the spectacle concealed