172 research outputs found
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Transforming television drama through dubbing and subtitling: sex and the cities
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Crossing broadcasters: the transatlantic exchange between Sylvester âPatâ Weaver and Sir Ian Jacob, 1955-1956
This article is interested in the long-standing exchange visits by broadcasters across the Atlantic, as these give insight into the developing relationships between British and US broadcasting. Informed by original archive research at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., and the BBC Written Archivesâ Centre, Caversham, the article focuses on the charged rhetorical exchange of then-President of NBC Television, Sylvester âPatâ Weaver (1908-2002), and then-Director General of the BBC, Sir Ian Jacob (1899-1993), in London and New York in 1955-1956. The article identifies this altercation as a foundational moment when the identities of British and US broadcasting became highlighted, performed and negotiated. Jacob and Weaverâs transatlantic exchange illuminates the move from war-time cooperation to post-war global competition between the two broadcasting systems and helps to uncover the thus far marginalised history of the US pressure and influence on the arrival of commercial broadcasting in Britain. The historiographical analysis further demonstrates that Ian Jacob deserves more scholarly attention and recognition than he has received so far
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Exploring the casting of British and Irish actors in contemporary US film and television
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Bringing the battle to Britain: Band of Brothers and television runaway production in the UK
This article explores the development and pre-production history of the 2001 HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. It does so via a combination of original archive research (conducted at the BFI Reuben Library) and interviews with several industry figures with relevant professional experience, including John Barclay, the current Head of Recorded Media for the UK trade union Equity, and Roger Harrop, the former director of regional film commission Herts Film Link. Using these methodologies, the article identifies Band of Brothers as the first significant US runaway television production in the UK, and uncovers how this HBO programme came to benefit from British film tax relief. Here, close attention is paid to dubious practices concerning tax policy and contractual agreements for actors, especially Damian Lewisâs pay. The article demonstrates the impact Band of Brothers has had on television production in the UK in terms of providing Equity with a useful precedent when negotiating for subsequent international productions such as Game of Thrones (2011â19). Band of Brothers offers important and timely lessons to be learned, especially given the recent growth of US television runaway productions in the UK
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Shameless, the push-pull of transatlantic fiction format adaptation, and star casting
Fiction format adaptations have scored notable successes in recent years and been attracting increasing scholarly attention. The US version of Shameless has been one of the most conspicuous: based on Paul Abbottâs series (C4 2004-2013), Shameless USA (2011-present) has become a signature series for Showtime. While Shameless USA has attracted a good amount of coverage in criticsâ and press discourses, it has, compared to its British progenitor, received scant mention in scholarship.
This article provides a detailed examination of Shamelessâ transatlantic move, because this offers the opportunity to capture the complex push-pull of textual and contextual factors that impede or facilitate fiction format adaption. The article traces the protracted pre-production process for Shameless USA and considers the ways in which this format adaptation engages with issues concerning the politics of representation, especially in terms of the family and social class. Via a comparative analysis of the presence of actors David Threlfall and William H. Macy in their respective versions, the article furthermore pays attention to star casting. Building on Christopher Hoggâs (2013) discussion of âcontested cultural space,â the article argues that star casting is crucial to, yet has thus far received insufficient attention in scholarship on fiction format adaptations
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Phil Davis: the process of acting
Phil Davis has had a distinguished career, receiving widespread acclaim for his âinvisibleâ acting. This article illuminates Davisâ approach to acting via a transcribed interview conducted at the âActing on Televisionâ symposium at the University of Reading in 2016. This material is framed by a contextualising introduction that proposes that John Flausâ concept of lamprotes is useful for understanding Davisâ acting. The interview is structured by four case studies exploring Davisâ work across a range of medium/genre contexts: feature film Vera Drake, docudrama The Curse of Steptoe, drama serial adaptation Bleak House and crime drama Sherlock
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Texture, realism, performance: exploring the intersection of transtexts and the contemporary sitcom
Contemporary US sitcom is at an interesting crossroads: it has received an increasing amount of scholarly attention (e.g. Mills 2009; Butler 2010; Newman and Levine 2012; Vermeulen and Whitfield 2013), which largely understands it as shifting towards the aesthetically and narratively complex. At the same time, in the post-broadcasting era, US networks are particularly struggling for their audience share. With the days of blockbuster successes like Must See TVâs Friends (NBC 1994-2004) a distant dream, recent US sitcoms are instead turning towards smaller, engaged audiences. Here, a cult sensibility of intertextual in-jokes, temporal and narrational experimentation (e.g. flashbacks and alternate realities) and self-reflexive performance styles have marked shows including Community (NBC 2009-2015), How I Met Your Mother (CBS 2005-2014), New Girl (Fox 2011-present) and 30 Rock (NBC 2006-2013).
However, not much critical attention has so far been paid to how these developments in textual sensibility in contemporary US sitcom may be influenced by, and influencing, the use of transmedia storytelling practices, an increasingly significant industrial concern and rising scholarly field of enquiry (e.g. Jenkins 2006; Mittell 2015; Richards 2010; Scott 2010; Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013). This chapter investigates this mutual influence between sitcom and transmedia by taking as its case studies two network shows that encourage invested viewership through their use of transtexts, namely How I Met Your Mother (hereafter HIMHM) and New Girl (hereafter NG). As such, it will pay particular attention to the most transtextually visible character/actor from each show: HIMYMâs Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris, and NGâs Schmidt, played by Max Greenfield.
This chapter argues that these sitcoms do not simply have their particular textual sensibility and also (happen to) engage with transmedia practices, but that the two are mutually informing and defining. This chapter explores the relationships and interplay between sitcom aesthetics, narratives and transmedia storytelling (or industrial transtexts), focusing on the use of multiple delivery channels in order to disperse âintegral elements of a fictionâ (Jenkins, 2006 95-6), by official entities such as the broadcasting channels. The chapter pays due attention to the specific production contexts of both shows and how these inform their approaches to transtexts.
This chapterâs conceptual framework will be particularly concerned with how issues of texture, the reality envelope and accepted imaginative realism, as well as performance and the actorâs input inform and illuminate contemporary sitcoms and transtexts, and will be the first scholarly research to do so. It will seek out points of connections between two (thus far) separate strands of scholarship and will move discussions on transtexts beyond the usual genre studied (i.e. science-fiction and fantasy), as well as make a contribution to the growing scholarship on contemporary sitcom by approaching it from a new critical angle.
On the basis that transmedia scholarship stands to benefit from widening its customary genre choice (i.e. telefantasy) for its case studies and from making more use of in-depth close analysis in its engagement with transtexts, the chapter argues that notions of texture, accepted imaginative realism and the reality envelope, as well as performance and the actorâs input deserve to be paid more attention to within transtext-related scholarship
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The unwitting pioneer of transatlantic format adaptation: Beryl Vertue
This article explores the transatlantic work of Beryl Vertue (b. 1931), whose distinguished career includes selling the format for Till Death Us Do Part (BBC1, 1965-1975) and Steptoe and Son (BBC1, 1962-1974) to American television, as well as producing the Upstairs, Downstairs format adaptation Beacon Hill (CBS, 1975) in the USA. I map how her crucial involvement in the genesis of All in the Family (CBS, 1971-1979) and Sanford and Son (NBC, 1972-1977) has been neglected in existing accounts, which have tended to focus on Norman Lear. I contrast these with Vertueâs own recollection, drawing out her role in the creation of these two seminal programmes. I then locate Vertue within a broader transatlantic movement of British television production personnel during the 1970s. I explore Vertueâs decision-making process for Beacon Hill, a programme that deserves a more prominent place in accounts of US television history, not least because of its connections to discourses on quality. I uncover how her creative agency was informed by her difference and productive Otherness whilst also subject to tensions and limitations present within complex industrial structures. Informed by an original in-depth interview with Vertue, the article considers her an unwitting pioneer of transatlantic format adaptation
Towards Neutrino Mass from Cosmology without Optical Depth Information
With low redshift probes reaching unprecedented precision, uncertainty of the
CMB optical depth is expected to be the limiting factor for future cosmological
neutrino mass constraints. In this paper, we discuss to what extent
combinations of CMB lensing and galaxy surveys measurements at low redshifts
will be able to make competitive neutrino mass measurements
without relying on any optical depth constraints. We find that the combination
of LSST galaxies and CMB-S4 lensing should be able to achieve constraints on
the neutrino mass sum of 25meV without optical depth information, an
independent measurement that is competitive with or slightly better than the
constraint of 30meV possible with CMB-S4 and present-day optical depth
measurements. These constraints originate both in structure growth probed by
cross-correlation tomography over a wide redshift range as well as, most
importantly, the shape of the galaxy power spectrum measured over a large
volume. We caution that possible complications such as higher-order biasing and
systematic errors in the analysis of high redshift galaxy clustering are only
briefly discussed and may be non-negligible. Nevertheless, our results show
that new kinds of high-precision neutrino mass measurements at and beyond the
present-day optical depth limit may be possible.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
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