Archive for the ‘Fandom’ Category
Skyler’s Nightmare
Last week I shared the epic five-part miniseries “Skyler’s Story,” retelling Breaking Bad from Skyler White’s perspective via a hybrid of women’s melodrama and experimental dual projection film. It took me weeks of work to assemble the 160-minutes from hours of footage, and thus I certainly felt a sense of accomplishment in completing the series, […]
Filed under: Fandom, Television, Videographic Criticism | 1 Comment
Tags: breaking bad, character, remix video, videographicBB
This weekend, a teaser dropped for what had been only rumored-about for the past year: the Breaking Bad movie! Named El Camino, presumably for the car that Jesse drives off to escape his Nazi prison in the series finale, the film presumably focuses on Jesse’s life after Breaking Bad. While we’ll have to wait until […]
Filed under: digital humanities, Fandom, Television, Videographic Criticism | 3 Comments
Tags: breaking bad, character, vidding, videographicBB
Wednesday was one of the more interesting days on Twitter I’ve ever seen, from the snarking about the new Pope (same as the old Pope), to the anger over Google mothballing Reader, to the more local disappointment of Wes Welker signing with the Broncos. But nothing generated more interest, excitement, and conversation amongst the TVitterati […]
Filed under: Fandom, Film, Film Industry, New Media, Television, TV Industry, TV Shows, Viewers | 8 Comments
Tags: Kickstarter, Veronica Mars
One of the reasons I most enjoy studying the fan culture side of media studies is that fans can come up with some fascinating stuff, a boggling array of creativity discovered through the contraints provided by the source texts. I document some of the most interesting examples I’ve found in my chapter on “Orienting Paratexts,” […]
Filed under: Fandom, Film, New Media, Not Quite TV | 2 Comments
Tags: fan fiction, Under Siege
It’s time for another chapter of Complex TV to go live on MediaCommons Press—this time, the topic is Transmedia Storytelling. It builds on work I have done in recent years about how television narratives expand into other media, especially around Lost and its ARGs, but very few of the chapter’s ideas have been published elsewhere. As […]
Filed under: Complex TV, Fandom, MediaCommons, Narrative, New Media, Television, TV Industry, TV Shows, Videogames, Viewers | 1 Comment
Tags: breaking bad, Lost, transmedia
Complex TV: Orienting Paratexts
I’m pleased to post the next chapter of Complex TV, focused on the topic of Orienting Paratexts. Here’s the abstract: Along with shifts in the television industry and technologies, viewer practices have adapted to the digital era with new developments in how people consume narrative television. This chapter explores the range of paratexts that have […]
Filed under: Books, Complex TV, Fandom, MediaCommons, Narrative, New Media, Television, TV Shows, Viewers | 1 Comment
Tags: complex television, Lost, lostpedia, paratext
Serial Orientations
Last week, I traveled to Bochum, an industrial city in northwest Germany, to serve as a keynote speaker at the conference (Dis)Orientations: (dis)orienting media & narrative mazes. I enjoyed my time in Bochum and at the conference, connecting with some interesting European media scholars and exploring another German city and university. My talk, “Serial Orientations: […]
Filed under: Fandom, Narrative, New Media, Television, TV Shows, Viewers | 3 Comments
Wikis and Participatory Fandom
One of my writing projects this summer was to write a book chapter for a forthcoming [now released!] anthology called The Participatory Cultures Handbook, edited by Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Henderson (forthcoming in 20112012 from Routledge). The handbook is designed to offer accessible introductions to a wide array of facets of participatory culture, suitable for […]
Filed under: Academia, Fandom, Media Studies, New Media, Technology | 5 Comments
Tags: wiki, Wikipedia
On Disliking Mad Men
As a scholar and fan of contemporary narratively complex television serials, one of my blindspots has been Mad Men, a show about which I’ve mentioned on this blog has little appeal to me. Thus it was a bit surprising months ago when I was invited to contribute to a forthcoming book of collected essays on […]
Filed under: Fandom, Media Studies, Narrative, Taste, Television, TV Shows, Viewers | 120 Comments
Tags: Mad Men
As I can’t seem to think about anything else, and it’s a fine distraction from grading, I’ve been engaging in a lot of conversation about Lost this week across a range of media. On Twitter this afternoon, my friend Derek Kompare commented in a discussion that no matter what the finale offers, a good portion […]
Filed under: Fandom, Television, TV Shows, Viewers | 25 Comments
Tags: Lost
Just a quick pointer to my newest publication: in the new issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, I’ve published “Sites of Participation: Wiki Fandom and the Case of Lostpedia.”Here’s the abstract: This essay explores the award-winning fan site Lostpedia to examine how the wiki platform enables fan engagement, structures participation, and distinguishes between various forms […]
Filed under: Academia, Fandom, New Media, Technology, Television, TV Shows, Viewers | 2 Comments
Tags: Lost, lostpedia, wiki
To Spread or To Drill?
I was invited by Henry Jenkins, Josh Green, and Sam Ford to contribute to a book project they are working on, Spreadable Media: Creating Value in a Network Culture.You can see an outline of the project posted serially on Henry’s blog, emerging from a research paper drafted as part of the Convergence Culture Consortium. The […]
Filed under: Books, Fandom, Media Studies, Narrative, New Media, Television, Viewers | 23 Comments
Tags: Battlestar, bsg, complexity, Lost, lostpedia
Producer vs. viewer bibles
In today’s NY Times, there’s an interesting profile of Gregg Nations, the script coordinator of Lost, whose job includes maintaining the continuity bible for the show. For me, the most interesting part is this paragraph: Had he a background in computer science, Mr. Nations now says, he might have approached the Lost project differently. “The […]
Filed under: Fandom, Narrative, Television, TV Shows, Viewers | Leave a Comment
Tags: Lost, lostpedia
The Texture of Remix
I’ve written some about vidding before – it’s an area of fan culture that I’m not too familiar with, but I’m interested when I find examples that speak to me. So I found this video, via Jason Sperb’s blog, quite interesting. It’s a vid of Punch Drunk Love set to Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” done by […]
Filed under: Fandom, Film, Viewers | 3 Comments
Tags: punch drunk love, radiohead, vidding
Just TV 