Browsing by Author "Smith, Justin"
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Item Open Access Absence and Presence: Top of the Pops and the demand for music videos in the 1960s(Edinburgh University Press, 2019-09) Smith, JustinWhilst there is a surprising critical consensus underpinning the myth that British music video began in the mid-1970s with Queen’s video for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, few scholars have pursued Mundy’s (1999) lead in locating its origins a decade earlier. Although the relationship between film and the popular song has a much longer history, this article seeks to establish that the international success of British beat groups in the first half of the 1960s encouraged television broadcasters to target the youth audience with new shows that presented their idols performing their latest hits (which normally meant miming to recorded playback). In the UK, from 1964, the BBC’s Top of the Pops created an enduring format specifically harnessed to popular music chart rankings. The argument follows that this format created a demand for the top British artists’ regular studio presence which their busy touring schedules could seldom accommodate; American artists achieving British pop chart success rarely appeared on the show in person. This frequent absence then, coupled with the desire by broadcasters elsewhere in Europe and America to present popular British acts, created a demand for pre-recorded or filmed inserts to be produced and shown in lieu of artists’ appearance. Drawing on records held at the BBC’s Written Archives and elsewhere, and interviews with a number of 1960s music video directors, this article evidences TV’s demand-driver and illustrates how the ‘pop promo’, in the hands of some, became a creative enterprise which exceeded television’s requirement to cover for an artist’s studio absence.Item Open Access Adaptation as Process: A Genetic Edition of Andrew Davies’ Middlemarch (BBC/WGBH, 1994)(Oxford University Press, 2023-07-11) Smith, Justin; Hobbs, LucyThis article reports on an interdisciplinary project to produce the first genetic edition of a television adaptation, drawing on the papers of screenwriter Andrew Davies who adapted George Eliot’s Middlemarch for the BBC in 1994. Combining methodologies from digital humanities, television history, and archival theory and practice, the digital resource places XML versions of Eliot’s novel and Davies’ scripts at the centre of an intertextual framework which enables close cross-referencing. Supported by primary sources derived from thorough production history research, the genetic edition opens up a potentially productive approach to adaptation which foregrounds the creative practice of the screenwriter at the heart of the collaborative process of producing television adaptations of classic novels. Following an outline of the case history, the project and the resource, the article then illustrates some preliminary findings based on new editorial commentary. It concludes that this genetic edition will not only be of interest to Eliot scholars, television historians and adaptations studies, but might have potential beyond the academy in the development of resources for education and heritage sites.Item Open Access Calculated risks: film finances and British independents in the 1970s(Taylor & Francis, 2014-02-14) Smith, JustinThis article examines three British films made at Shepperton Studios in the first half of the 1970s. It draws upon the reports filed by Film Finances’ assessor John Croydon to the Chairman Robert Garrett, and correspondence between Film Finances and the films’ producers, as well as scripts, schedules, daily progress reports and budgetary information. Two of the films, The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973) and ‘Don’t Look Now’ (Nicolas Roeg, 1973), were backed by the struggling independent British Lion. The third, Lisztomania (Ken Russell, 1975), was the second in a planned three-picture deal with Goodtimes Enterprises’ subsidiary Visual Programme Systems (VPS), and was supported by the National Film Finance Corporation (NFFC); but the deal collapsed in spectacular fashion, almost bankrupting its producers in the process. The focus of attention here will be on production histories, rather than the films themselves. I hope to be able to assess, thereby, what additional value the Film Finances Archive can provide in understanding the relations between capital and creativity in the British film industry in this period. One of the well-established tenets of the ‘new’ film history is that film culture cannot be explained in any straightforward way as a reflection of its time without taking into account the context of its industrial determinants and its authorial collaborations.11. See J. Chapman, H. M. Glancy, and S. Harper (eds), The New Film History (Basingstoke, 2007). This raison d’être for researching production histories remains persuasive, insofar as it may be possible to demonstrate how commercial, creative and censorial battles leave their marks on a film, or how studio regimes are organised in order to produce certain kinds of product. But the success of production history research is necessarily limited by two factors. Firstly, and most obviously, it depends (like all history) on the available primary sources (audio-visual material, interview testimony and archival documents). But secondly, and more profoundly, its methodological success depends upon the relative stability of the industrial apparatus and the cultural field. That is not to say that this approach is untenable in periods of rapid social and cultural transformation—witness the strength of Sue Harper’s work on Gainsborough in the mid-1940s, or Charles Barr’s seminal study of Ealing Studios.22. See S. Harper, Picturing the Past: the rise and fall of the British costume film (London, 1994), and C. Barr, Ealing Studios (London, 1977). Far less does it challenge the orthodoxy of the Marxian principle that the economic base determines the cultural superstructure. Rather, it is to observe that in some historical periods that causal chain is weakened by a dissociation between capital and creativity in the cultural field, such that its lines of operation are indirect, and its influence opaque. These were the conditions experienced in the UK in the early 1970s, when a number of industrial and cultural factors conspired, with remarkably unpredictable results in the film culture. In British Film Culture in the 1970s: The boundaries of pleasure, Sue Harper and I argued that the curtailment of the British film industry’s financial dependency upon Hollywood (which had reached its apotheosis in the late 1960s) created a kind of cultural vacuum in the first half of the 1970s.33. S. Harper and J. Smith, British Film Culture in the 1970s: The boundaries of pleasure (Edinburgh, 2011). View all notes Whilst economic constraints, typified by the number of one-picture deals, made it difficult to sustain creative momentum and continuity of personnel across projects, the reduction in studio space and cheaper, portable equipment afforded directors more flexibility to shoot on location. And although in practice this freedom was often restricted by tight budgets, and the creative relationships between key personnel were put under new pressure, these changes had consequences for the type of films directors were able to make, and there was a radical shake-up in the range of directorial autonomy. This resulted in a fragmented film culture characterised by extremes: on the one hand, a cinema of clumsiness and expediency, and on the other hand, one of sublime innovation. Above all, we suggested, this was a cinema of contingency; but contingent upon what? The role of chance in creative practice (be it accident or serendipity) would make for a compelling cultural history. But whatever its appeals may be, they defy empirical enquiry. Risk, however, is another matter. As suggested, the British film industry of the early 1970s was a precarious market in which the lines of communication between capital and artistic production were often remote and sometimes stretched to the limit, creating conditions of unpredictability and risk. For sure, film-making always involves risk. But in this period, arguably, the stakes were higher. This not only exposed (sometimes novice) financiers to greater risk on their investments; it also spawned a number of filmic ‘rogue-traders’ who seemed to thrive on the adrenalin of risk itself: from Roman Polanski and Sam Peckinpah, to Michael Winner and Ken Russell. The role that Film Finances played in this period, therefore, was particularly acute. As underwriters of risk, they handled some of their most testing cases at this time, presiding over the financial collapse of an old order (symbolised by British Lion), and the ambitious rise of a new (exemplified by Goodtimes Enterprises). Their carefully calculated risk assessments, as evidenced in their production files, provide an invaluable new source, which may enable the sometimes inchoate relations between capital and creativity to be calibrated with more clarity.Item Embargo Channel 4 and the red triangle(Edinburgh University Press, 2014-10) Smith, JustinThis article charts the history of an experiment, conducted during the autumn and winter of 1986–7, in which Channel 4 trialled an on-screen visual warning symbol to accompany screenings of a series of international art-house films. The so-called ‘red triangle’ experiment, though short-lived, will be considered as a case study for exploring a number of related themes. Firstly, it demonstrates Channel 4's commitment during the 1980s to fulfilling its remit to experiment and innovate in programme form and content, in respect of its acquired feature film provision. Channel 4's acquisitions significantly enlarged the range of international classic and art-house cinema broadcast on British television. Secondly, it reflects contemporary tensions between the new broadcaster, its regulator the IBA, campaigners for stricter censorship of television and policy-makers. The mid-1980s was a period when progressive developments in UK film and television culture (from the rise of home video to the advent of Channel 4 itself) polarised opinions about freedom and regulation, which were greatly exacerbated by the press. Thirdly, it aims to shed light on the paradox that, while over thirty years of audience research has consistently revealed the desire on the part of television viewers for an on-screen ratings system, the UK is not among some forty countries that currently employ such devices on any systematic basis. In this way the history of a specific advisory experiment may be seen to have a bearing on current policy trends.Item Open Access 'Comparable to MTV - but better': The impact of The Chart Show on British music video culture, 1986-1998(Liverpool University Press, 2017-07) Smith, JustinThe Chart Show was a weekly UK TV programme showcasing music videos from the Media Research Information Bureau (MRIB) Network Chart and a range of independent and specialist pop music charts. It began broadcasting on Friday evenings on Channel 4 in April 1986 and ran for three series until September 1988. Its production company, Video Visuals, subsequently found a new home for The Chart Show with Yorkshire Television on ITV, where it went out on Saturday mornings between January 1989 and August 1998. What made the show unique in the British broadcasting context was that it was the first presenter-less pop chart programme that showcased popular music exclusively in video form. Beginning at a time when MTV was still unavailable in the UK, The Chart Show was innovatory in consolidating music video as the lingua franca of the pop singles market. Drawing on archival sources from Channel 4, and the trade and popular music presses, this article shows how The Chart Show helped shape the form of music video, contributed to its commercial status, boosted singles sales, and drove industry demand and production schedules. It argues that an appreciation of music video is dependent upon the historical specificity of its broadcast context.Item Open Access Dancing & Dreaming: “Fifty Years of British Music Video” in Havana(University College Cork, Department of Film and Screen Media, 2020-07) Caston, Emily; Smith, JustinThis report reflects on a follow-on initiative from the AHRC-funded project “Fifty Years of British Music Video” designed to explore a collaboration between Cuba’s dance, film and music cultures to create non- performance-based dance videos. Facilitated by service company Island Pictures, we worked with a young director, Giselle García Castro, dancers at Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, and leading Cuban rap artist Telmary. The result was a single-shot video for Telmary’s “Soy el Verso” (2018), filmed in the dance studio, based on an improvisation guided by Giselle, and inspired by the José Martí poem in the song. The video fulfilled PI Caston’s ambition to break down the barrier between “dance film” and “music video” by building the choreography from the lyrics and making it the centre of the exercise. It endorsed Caston’s conceptual aim to encourage practitioners to identify and articulate their own narrative and iconography. The team also produced a fifteen-minute documentary of the process including interviews with filmmakers, teachers and students. The project demonstrated that academic collaboration with artistic communities can stimulate new creative practices and economic development. It also showed how creative industries researchers can use networks established by institutions such as the British Council and British Embassies to exchange media practice.Item Embargo Deference, Deferred: Rejourn as Practice in Familial War Commemoration(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018-12-07) Smith, Justin; Savage, KarenThis chapter examines the gestation of a film/performance multimedia project entitled The Birds That Wouldn’t Sing (2017) that draws on the experiences of Joan Prior, who served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), through war-torn Europe between 1944 and 1946. Working with a personal archive of photographs, letters and handed-down memories, the authors filmed a field trip (a ‘rejourn’) through France and Germany in 2011, this account of which is informed by and contributes to a body of work on war, memory and intermediality by Marianne Hirsch (2012), Michael Rothberg (2009), Rebecca Schneider (2011) and Diana Taylor (2003). It culminates in an account of an interactive installation that models new ways in which family history and personal testimony of war might coalesce into performance of, and as, (manifestations of) commemoration.Item Metadata only Fifty Years of British Music video: Introduction(Liverpool University Press, 2017) Caston, Emily; Smith, JustinItem Metadata only Introduction: British Cinema History(2017) Hunter, I. Q.; Porter, Laraine; Smith, JustinBook chapter.Item Embargo Power to the People: Fifty Years of British Music Video, 1966-2016(Thunderbird Releasing, 2018-03-05) Caston, Emily; Smith, JustinThis collection of 200 of the most influential music videos in Britain 1966 to 2016 is the result of a three-year University research project run in partnership with the British Film Institute and the British Library. The collection has been put together by a team of researchers in collaboration with a panel of over one hundred directors, producers, cinematographers, editors, choreographers, colourists and video commissioners from the business. Each video has been selected because it represents a landmark in music video history - a new genre, film technique, post-production method, distribution channel, or other landmark. Along with the 6 discs comes a booklet explaining the history of British music videos since 1966 and rare production credits: using archives, callsheets, interviews and trade press listings the researchers have identified credits for directors, producers, executive producers, directors of photography, editors, colourists, production companies and choreographers as well as information about the source material on which the video was shot where available. In order to protect the artistic integrity of each, the videos are presented in their original native aspect aspect ratio. The videos for Manfred Mann’s ‘Mighty Quinn’ and Flowered Up’s ‘Weekender’ have been digitally re-mastered for this collection from the original film prints dating back to 1967 and 1992.Item Embargo Routledge Companion to British Cinema History(Routledge, 2017-01) Hunter, I. Q.; Porter, Laraine; Smith, JustinA 39-chapter edited volume that offers a comprehensive and revisionist overview of British cinema as both a commercial entertainment industry and a series of institutions centred on economics, funding and relations to Government. The volume places emphasis on areas where scholarship has been especially productive and influential, such as early and silent cinema, or promoted new approaches such as audience and memory studies.Item Metadata only The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History(2017) Hunter, I. Q.; Porter, Laraine; Smith, JustinEdited collection on British cinema historyItem Open Access The Creative Industries for a Better Society – Editors’ Introduction(Informa UK Limited, 2024-05-03) Cateridge, James; Smith, Justin; Yelin, HannahThe creative industries both shape and reflect the power dynamics within our society. They house the gatekeepers who create the representations which reflect our lives back to us, give them meaning, and in the process can critique or perpetuate social norms, and reproduce or disrupt hierarchies of cultural value. They are also a set of cultural practices, roles, groups and organisations that are of our societies, and as such are built within structures which are always already steeped in social inequalities. The creative industries are frequently examined in relation to social contribution. This special issue seeks to expand how social contribution might be defined. Bringing cultural studies frameworks into dialogue with the ways the creative industries have traditionally been understood opens up avenues to consider these industries as microcosmic demonstrations of power dynamics, as shaped by and embedded in the politics of identity and inequality, as sites of contestation, negotiation, hegemonic reinforcement, or liberation.Item Open Access Transforming Middlemarch – What digital technologies can reveal about the creative process of literary adaptation(Learning on Screen, 2023-06) Smith, JustinWhat goes into turning a literary classic into popular TV drama? That’s the question at the heart of a DMU research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in partnership with the British Library. ‘Transforming Middlemarch’ traces the journey from book to screen of George Eliot’s groundbreaking novel, drawing on the scripts, notes and correspondence of celebrated screenwriter Andrew Davies, who adapted Middlemarch for the BBC in a 6-part series starring Juliet Aubrey, Douglas Hodge, and Rufus Sewell first aired in 1994. 2022 marked the 150th anniversary of the first, serialised, publication of Middlemarch, set in a fictionalised Coventry at time of the great Reform Bill. So it was a timely choice from the extensive back catalogue of the prolific Davies, who donated his personal archive to DMU’s Special Collections in 2015. Middlemarch (1994) also marked a watershed for the BBC. In partnership with WGBH (Boston), Michael Wearing (Head of Drama) gambled what was then a risky £6m on a lavish production shot on film and set on location (in Rome and the Lincolnshire town of Stamford) that was big on period detail. In turn, it spawned a raft of BBC Education resources, a (then unusual) ‘making of…’ documentary, and lively arts show critics’ debates; and it boosted Stamford’s tourist trade with location tours and a repertoire of visitor souvenirs. Following its success, Davies’ next BBC heritage adaptation was Pride and Prejudice (best remembered for that scene of Mr Darcy’s dip in the lake which doesn’t appear in Jane Austen). The rest, as they say, is history. This article summarises the project’s process and previews this open-access literary adaptation web resource for the benefit of Learning on Screen affiliates.Item Metadata only Transforming Middlemarch: A Genetic Edition of Andrew Davies' 1994 BBC Adaptation of George Eliot's Novel(De Montfort University, 2023-04-03) Smith, Justin; Hobbs, Lucy; Egan, Gabriel; Hayton, Natalie; Blackwell, AnnaWelcome to this 'genetic edition' of Andrew Davies' 1994 BBC adaptation of George Eliot's Middlemarch. This multimedia resource, believed to be the first of its kind, uses XML textual encoding - following the principles of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) - to enable comparative analyses charting the journey of a literary adaptation from source novel to script and screen. Users can navigate from the Shooting Script backwards (to the novel) and forwards (to the Post-production Script), following diamond icons leading to Notes, intertextual references, a range of assets and additional extended Commentaries on key scenes and adaptive moments. In this way, the genetic edition demonstrates both the creative skills of the screen adaptor and script editor, and (via additional production history research) the collaborative nature of classic serial television adaptation. The 'genetic edition' has been created by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at De Montfort University, UK, in partnership with the British Library and in consultation with the George Eliot Archive. The project (2022-3) was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.Item Metadata only Withnail and Us(I. B. Tauris, 2010-02-20) Smith, Justin