Vicki Mayer – författare

"Behind-the-scenes" stories of ranting directors, stingy producers, temperamental actors, and the like have fascinated us since the beginnings of film and television. Today, magazines, websites, television programs, and DVDs are devoted to telling tales of trade lore—from on-set antics to labor disputes. The production of media has become as storied and mythologized as the content of the films and TV shows themselves. Production Studies is the first volume to bring together a star-studded cast of interdisciplinary media scholars to examine the unique cultural practices of media production. The all-new essays collected here combine ethnographic, sociological, critical, material, and political-economic methods to explore a wide range of topics, from contemporary industrial trends such as new media and niche markets to gender and workplace hierarchies. Together, the contributors seek to understand how the entire span of "media producers"—ranging from high-profile producers and directors to anonymous stagehands and costume designers—work through professional organizations and informal networks to form communities of shared practices, languages, and cultural understandings of the world. This landmark collection connects the cultural activities of media producers to our broader understanding of media practices and texts, establishing an innovative and agenda-setting approach to media industry scholarship for the twenty-first century. Contributors: Miranda J. Banks, John T. Caldwell, Christine Cornea, Laura Grindstaff, Felicia D. Henderson, Erin Hill, Jane Landman, Elana Levine, Amanda D. Lotz, Paul Malcolm, Denise Mann, Vicki Mayer, Candace Moore, Oli Mould, Sherry B. Ortner, Matt Stahl, John L. Sullivan, Serra Tinic, Stephen Zafirau

"Behind-the-scenes" stories of ranting directors, stingy producers, temperamental actors, and the like have fascinated us since the beginnings of film and television. Today, magazines, websites, television programs, and DVDs are devoted to telling tales of trade lore—from on-set antics to labor disputes. The production of media has become as storied and mythologized as the content of the films and TV shows themselves. Production Studies is the first volume to bring together a star-studded cast of interdisciplinary media scholars to examine the unique cultural practices of media production. The all-new essays collected here combine ethnographic, sociological, critical, material, and political-economic methods to explore a wide range of topics, from contemporary industrial trends such as new media and niche markets to gender and workplace hierarchies. Together, the contributors seek to understand how the entire span of "media producers"—ranging from high-profile producers and directors to anonymous stagehands and costume designers—work through professional organizations and informal networks to form communities of shared practices, languages, and cultural understandings of the world. This landmark collection connects the cultural activities of media producers to our broader understanding of media practices and texts, establishing an innovative and agenda-setting approach to media industry scholarship for the twenty-first century. Contributors: Miranda J. Banks, John T. Caldwell, Christine Cornea, Laura Grindstaff, Felicia D. Henderson, Erin Hill, Jane Landman, Elana Levine, Amanda D. Lotz, Paul Malcolm, Denise Mann, Vicki Mayer, Candace Moore, Oli Mould, Sherry B. Ortner, Matt Stahl, John L. Sullivan, Serra Tinic, Stephen Zafirau

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Early in the twenty-first century, Louisiana, one of the poorest states in the United States, redirected millions in tax dollars from the public coffers in an effort to become the top location site globally for the production of Hollywood films and television series. Why would lawmakers support such a policy? Why would citizens accept the policy's uncomfortable effects on their economy and culture? Almost Hollywood, Nearly New Orleans addresses these questions through a study of the local and everyday experiences of the film economy in New Orleans, Louisiana-a city that has twice pursued the goal of becoming a movie production capital. From the silent era to today's Hollywood South, Vicki Mayer explains that the aura of a film economy is inseparable from a prevailing sense of home, even as it changes that place irrevocably.

In 2012–2013, one of the largest U.S. newspaper chains, Advance Publications, determined its main product was no longer newspapers but news, and switched from daily print publication of The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to three days a week, while upgrading its presence online (“Digital First”). More than two hundred employees, including half the newsroom, were laid off in one of the poorest U.S. cities with among the lowest literacy rates and percentages of households with Internet access. The decision raised a furor in New Orleans. Beginning with an historical overview of The Times-Picayune, from its 1837 founding through the present, The Times-Picayune in a Changing Media World: The Transformation of an American Newspaper describes the crucial role the dailies played in the 1960 school desegregation crisis, as well as the impact of the switch on print coverage of hard news in the context of media developments, and provides a detailed analysis of specific print editions of The Times-Picayune and its digital formats conducted before and after the switch. This study of the evolution of The Times-Picayune is instructive for all concerned with what the transformation might portend for the news profession and for the traditional role of the press in the digital age.

Below the Line illuminates the hidden labor of people who not only produce things that the television industry needs, such as a bit of content or a policy sound bite, but also produce themselves in the service of capital expansion. Vicki Mayer considers the work of television set assemblers, soft-core cameramen, reality-program casters, and public-access and cable commissioners in relation to the globalized economy of the television industry. She shows that these workers are increasingly engaged in professional and creative work, unsettling the industry’s mythological account of itself as a business driven by auteurs, manned by an executive class, and created by the talented few. As Mayer demonstrates, the new television economy casts a wide net to exploit those excluded from these hierarchies. Meanwhile, television set assemblers in Brazil devise creative solutions to the problems of material production. Soft-core videographers, who sell televised content, develop their own modes of professionalism. Everyday people become casters, who commodify suitable participants for reality programs, or volunteers, who administer local cable television policies. These sponsors and regulators boost media industries’ profits when they commodify and discipline their colleagues, their neighbors, and themselves. Mayer proposes that studies of production acknowledge the changing dynamics of labor to include production workers who identify themselves and their labor with the industry, even as their work remains undervalued or invisible.

This edited volume offers a global overview of the immediate impacts the COVID pandemic had on local and national film, television, streaming, and social media industries—examining in compelling detail how these industries managed the crisis.With accounts from the frontlines, Media Industries in Crisis provides readers with a stakeholder framework, management lessons, and urgent commentaries to unpack the nature of crisis management and communications. The authors show how these industries have not only survived, but often thrive amidst a backdrop of critical national and regional emergencies, wars, financial meltdowns, and climate disasters. This international collection—featuring case studies from 16 countries—examines how media industries managed all of these crises, successfully rebranding themselves as “essential” while making power plays in politics, economics, and culture. The chapters reveal key lessons for the meltdowns, tectonic shifts, and struggles ahead.This collection will be of interest to media and communication students, particularly those focused on media industries, crisis communications, and management, as well as to practitioners working in media industries.Introduction and Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This edited volume offers a global overview of the immediate impacts the COVID pandemic had on local and national film, television, streaming, and social media industries—examining in compelling detail how these industries managed the crisis.With accounts from the frontlines, Media Industries in Crisis provides readers with a stakeholder framework, management lessons, and urgent commentaries to unpack the nature of crisis management and communications. The authors show how these industries have not only survived, but often thrive amidst a backdrop of critical national and regional emergencies, wars, financial meltdowns, and climate disasters. This international collection—featuring case studies from 16 countries—examines how media industries managed all of these crises, successfully rebranding themselves as “essential” while making power plays in politics, economics, and culture. The chapters reveal key lessons for the meltdowns, tectonic shifts, and struggles ahead.This collection will be of interest to media and communication students, particularly those focused on media industries, crisis communications, and management, as well as to practitioners working in media industries.Introduction and Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Production Studies, The Sequel! is an exciting exploration of the experiences of media workers in local, global, and digital communities—from prop-masters in Germany, Chinese film auteurs, producers of children’s television in Qatar, Italian radio broadcasters, filmmakers in Ethiopia and Nigeria, to seemingly-autonomous Twitterbots. Case studies examine international production cultures across five continents and incorporate a range of media, including film, television, music, social media, promotional media, video games, publishing and public broadcasting.Using the lens of cultural studies to examine media production, Production Studies, The Sequel! takes into account transnational production flows and places production studies in conversation with other major areas of media scholarship including audience studies, media industries, and media history. A follow-up to the successful Production Studies, this collection highlights new and important research in the field, and promises to generate continued discussion about the past, present, and future of production studies.