To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Skyfall.

Journal articles on the topic 'Skyfall'

Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles

Select a source type:

Consult the top 27 journal articles for your research on the topic 'Skyfall.'

Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.

You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.

Browse journal articles on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.

1

Artemieva, Natalia. "Russian skyfall." Nature 503, no. 7475 (November 13, 2013): 202–3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/503202a.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
2

McMillan, Christopher. "Broken Bond: Skyfall and the British Identity Crisis." Journal of British Cinema and Television 12, no. 2 (April 2015): 191–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2015.0257.

Full text
Abstract:
This article argues that Skyfall (2012) was influenced by and responded to the contemporary debate over the future of the British Union and the referendum on Scottish independence. This is most evident in the film's preoccupation with Britain and Britishness; moreover, this article contends that Skyfall's overt patriotism and largely patriotic reception obscured its more contentious representations of Britain and British identity. Arguably no character symbolises Britain and British identity more than Bond, yet Bond's Britishness has assumed an overtly English form. Bond's Scottish origins, both literary and cinematic, thus problematise elements of the later Bond films which allude to Britain and Britishness. At this significant period in British history when issues of national and political identity are at the forefront of national consciousness, the release of another film starring what the Telegraph referred to as ‘Britain's favourite spy’ merits particular critical attention.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
3

Neha B., Naveen V., and Angelin Gladston. "Detection of Hands for Hand-Controlled Skyfall Game in Real Time Using CNN." International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies 10, no. 2 (July 2020): 15–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijicst.2020070102.

Full text
Abstract:
With human-computer interaction technology evolving, direct use of the hand as an input device is of wide attraction. Recently, object detection methods using CNN models have significantly improved the accuracy of hand detection. This paper focuses on creating a hand-controlled web-based skyfall game by building a real time hand detection using CNN-based technique. A CNN network, which uses a MobileNet as the feature extractor along with the single shot detector framework, is used to achieve a robust and fast detection of hand location and tracking. Along with detection and tracking of hand, skyfall game has been designed to play using hand in real time with tensor flow framework. This way of designing the game where hand is used as input to control the paddle of skyfall game improved the player interaction and interest towards playing the game. This model of CNN network used egohands dataset for detecting and tracking the hands in real time and produced an average accuracy of 0.9 for open hands and 0.6 for closed hands which in turn improved player and game interactions.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
4

Anderson, Patrick. "Neocon Bond: The Cultural Politics of Skyfall." Quarterly Review of Film and Video 34, no. 1 (April 7, 2016): 66–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2016.1144033.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
5

Garcés, Milton A., Daniel Bowman, Cleat Zeiler, Anthony Christe, Tyler Yoshiyama, Brian Williams, Meritxell Colet, Samuel Takazawa, and Sarah Popenhagen. "Skyfall: Signal Fusion from a Smartphone Falling from the Stratosphere." Signals 3, no. 2 (April 14, 2022): 209–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/signals3020014.

Full text
Abstract:
A smartphone plummeted from a stratospheric height of 36 km, providing a near-real-time record of its rapid descent and ground impact. An app recorded and streamed useful internal multi-sensor data at high sample rates. Signal fusion with external and internal sensor systems permitted a more detailed reconstruction of the Skyfall chronology, including its descent speed, rotation rate, and impact deceleration. Our results reinforce the potential of smartphones as an agile and versatile geophysical data collection system for environmental and disaster monitoring IoT applications. We discuss mobile environmental sensing capabilities and present a flexible data model to record and stream signals of interest. The Skyfall case study can be used as a guide to smartphone signal processing methods that are transportable to other hardware platforms and operating systems.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
6

Aron, Jacob. "Quantum skyfall puts Einstein's gravity to the test." New Scientist 217, no. 2906 (March 2013): 16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0262-4079(13)60533-3.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
7

Synenko, Joshua. "Geolocating popular memory: Recorded images of Hashima Island after Skyfall." Popular Communication 16, no. 2 (November 8, 2017): 141–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2017.1378891.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
8

Hasian, Marouf. "Skyfall, James Bond's Resurrection, and 21st-Century Anglo-American Imperial Nostalgia." Communication Quarterly 62, no. 5 (October 2, 2014): 569–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2014.949389.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
9

Brewster, Hayes, and Fenner. "Ozone Tolerance Found in Aegilops Tauschii and Primary Synthetic Hexaploid Wheat." Plants 8, no. 7 (June 28, 2019): 195. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants8070195.

Full text
Abstract:
Modern wheat cultivars are increasingly sensitive to ground level ozone, with 7–10% mean yield reductions in the northern hemisphere. In this study, three of the genome donors of bread wheat, Triticum urartu (AA), T. dicoccoides (AABB), and Aegilops tauschii (DD) along with a modern wheat cultivar (T. aestivum ‘Skyfall’), a 1970s cultivar (T. aestivum ‘Maris Dove’), and a line of primary Synthetic Hexaploid Wheat were grown in 6 L pots of sandy loam soil in solardomes (Bangor, North Wales) and exposed to low (30 ppb), medium (55 ppb), and high (110 ppb) levels of ozone over 3 months. Measurements were made at harvest of shoot biomass and grain yield. Ae. tauschii appeared ozone tolerant with no significant effects of ozone on shoot biomass, seed head biomass, or 1000 grain + husk weight even under high ozone levels. In comparison, T. urartu had a significant reduction in 1000 grain + husk weight, especially under high ozone (−26%). The older cultivar, ‘Maris Dove’, had a significant reduction in seed head biomass (−9%) and 1000 grain weight (−11%) but was less sensitive than the more recent cultivar ‘Skyfall’, which had a highly significant reduction in its seed head biomass (−21%) and 1000 grain weight (−27%) under high ozone. Notably, the line of primary Synthetic Hexaploid Wheat was ozone tolerant, with no effect on total seed head biomass (−1%) and only a 5% reduction in 1000 grain weight under high ozone levels. The potential use of synthetic wheat in breeding ozone tolerant wheat is discussed.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
10

김영일. "Skyfall and Geopolitics of Globalization: The relation of the national and Globalization." Film Studies ll, no. 73 (September 2017): 5–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.17947/kfa..73.201709.001.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
11

Dodds, Klaus. "Shaking and Stirring James Bond: Age, Gender, and Resilience in Skyfall (2012)." Journal of Popular Film and Television 42, no. 3 (July 3, 2014): 116–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2013.858026.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
12

Koumarianou, Anna, Efrosyni D. Manali, Archontoula Fragou, Panagiotis Katsaounis, Georgia Bouga, Sofia Karageorgopoulou, Marianna Christodoulou, et al. "Antibiotic exposure and risk of breast cancer: A causal association or a skyfall?" Journal of Clinical Oncology 31, no. 15_suppl (May 20, 2013): e12524-e12524. http://dx.doi.org/10.1200/jco.2013.31.15_suppl.e12524.

Full text
Abstract:
e12524 Background: Although it has long been hypothesized that the use of antibiotics may increase the risk of breast cancer, through effects on inflammation, immunity and gastrointestinal microflora that alter the metabolism of phytochemicals, clinical data on this association are sparse. Methods: Matched case-control study among 158 women with newly diagnosed primary invasive breast cancer from a single cancer unit and 158 age-matched controls (± 12 months) from healthy individuals accompanying patients to the outpatient clinics between January 1, 2006 and December 30, 2007. Clinical examination and a standard questionnaire for the collection of baseline characteristics and known aggravating factors, such as body mass index, smoking, age of menarche and menopause, parity, breastfeeding, history of respiratory, urinary or other infections and previous estrogen use, were carried out in all individuals. All antibiotic classes, such as β-lactams, amoxyl and clavulanic acid, cephalosporins, macrolides, quinolones, tetracyclines, trimethoprim, clindamycin and imidazoles, were recorded. Type of antibiotic and dose was ascertained from health insurance’s pharmacy records. Data were analyzed using multivariable conditional logistic regression models including adjustments for potential confounding factors. Results: The age matched groups of patients and controls were found to have statistically significant differences in the considered parameters such as delayed age of menopause, less parity and less smoking in the control group and more antibiotic intake in the patient population. The cumulative use for more than 21 days of any antibiotic classes were found to statistically significant correlate with increased risk of breast cancer [odds ratio(OR):3.5, 95%confidence interval(CI):1.7-7.3, p=0.001]. By subanalyses according to antibiotic class this increased risk was mainly associated with β-lactams (OR:11.4, 95%CI:3.8, 34.1, p<0.001) and less with macrolides (OR:2.8, 95%CI:1.1-7.5, p=0.039). Conclusions: Our study links β-lactam and macrolide consumption with increased breast cancer risk but further investigation of this association in large cohorts together with exploration of the underlying cause are needed.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
13

Lima, Francisco Elvys Silva, and Tiago Estevam Gonçalves. "Perspectivas geográficas na linguagem do cinema: a cidade de Londres em 007 Operação Skyfall." Geosaberes 10, no. 22 (September 1, 2019): 147. http://dx.doi.org/10.26895/geosaberes.v10i22.732.

Full text
Abstract:
Partindo de uma análise do filme 007 – Operação Skyfallsob a direção geográfica, tem-se como objetivo desse estudo explorar as relações entre geografia e imagens a partir da representação do espaço urbano da cidade de Londres no cinema, através de recortes de cenas. Buscando ir além dos estudos já produzidos, o artigo busca o entendimento das paisagens cinematográficas, interpretando-as em uma visão geográfica os elementos que a compõe, relacioná-las com a realidade e buscar compreender os fatores que podem possibilitar a mudança no seu significado com a manipulação das paisagens reais. Considera-se que é possível as aproximações entre a geografia e a arte cinematográfica, conduzindo os novos pesquisadores a uma reflexão interdisciplinar do conhecimento a respeito do espaço urbano londrino.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
14

Valls Oyarzun, Eduardo. "Lazos victorianos para la resurrección del Servicio Secreto de su Majestad." Amaltea. Revista de mitocrítica 9 (September 15, 2017): 43–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.5209/amal.55103.

Full text
Abstract:
El fenómeno James Bond ha sido abordado para discutir nociones de identidad británica, ética imperialista, revisiones de la masculinidad y comodificación de la clase media. Con todo, el canon crítico que ha tratado el fenómeno no ha explorado los orígenes ideológicos del mito, a saber, la teoría del Héroe de Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), patrón principal de la ideología victoriana de la norma. El presente artículo explora la película Skyfall (2012) de Sam Mendes como análisis profundo del mito Bond como constructo carlyleano (vale decir también, Victoriano), a través de la idea de “resurrección” (uno de los motivos más significativos del film). El artículo concluye que la película abraza y celebra la ideología Victoriana (con sus ideas de estabilidad y dependencia) integradas en el fenómeno James Bond como mito.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
15

Weinbauer, Markus G., Benjamin Guinot, Christophe Migon, Francesca Malfatti, and Xavier Mari. "Skyfall—neglected roles of volcano ash and black carbon rich aerosols for microbial plankton in the ocean." Journal of Plankton Research 39, no. 2 (February 2, 2017): 187–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/plankt/fbw100.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
16

Muir, Lorna. "Transparent Fictions: Big Data, Information and The Changing Mise-en-Scène of (Government and) Surveillance." Surveillance & Society 13, no. 3/4 (October 26, 2015): 354–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.24908/ss.v13i3/4.5378.

Full text
Abstract:
Working within the framework of a hypothesised shift between Michel Foucault’s model of discipline and Gilles Deleuze’s paradigm of the control society, this article considers the cinematic expression of emerging modes of monitoring in a surveillance society in which there has been an exponential increase in, and access to, information. In order to contextualise this interplay between these two models, three related areas are considered in this article. Firstly, the growing awareness of the consequences of Big Data, not only within teaching and research institutions, but through the dissemination of (sometimes erroneous) information in popular media and various news platforms is discussed. The British government’s response to such developments with a ‘rhetoric of transparency’, which has been critically undermined with the recent ‘leaks’ from whistleblowers affecting both British and American security agencies, in particular, is considered. Secondly, a brief outline of the changing theoretical models which can be employed to aid understanding of this situation is offered and, thirdly, in examining popular cultural responses to the rise of a Big Data discourse, two films are analysed, Sam Mendes's Skyfall (2012) and Tomas Alfredson's 2011 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, both of which seek to engage with these changing frameworks. These films in turn contribute to the fictions of transparency in relation to government espionage agencies.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
17

Smith, James. "“How Safe Do You Feel?”: James Bond, Skyfall, and the Politics of the Secret Agent in an Age of Ubiquitous Threat." College Literature 43, no. 1 (2016): 145–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lit.2016.0010.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
18

O’Donnell, Ruth. "M is for mother: Skyfall’s Kleinian phantasies of maternal destruction." Journal of European Popular Culture 5, no. 2 (October 1, 2014): 121–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jepc.5.2.121_1.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
19

Armand, Céline, and Francesca Calore. "Gamma-ray image reconstruction of the Andromeda galaxy." Journal of Physics: Conference Series 2156, no. 1 (December 1, 2021): 012096. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/2156/1/012096.

Full text
Abstract:
Abstract We analyze about 12 years of Fermi-LAT data in the direction of the Andromeda galaxy (M31). We robustly characterize its spectral and morphological properties against systematic uncertainties related to the modeling of the Galactic diffuse emission. We perform this work by adapting and exploiting the potential of the SkyFACT adaptive template fitting algorithm. We reconstruct the γ-ray image of M31 in a template-independent way, and we show that flat spatial models are preferred by data, indicating an extension of the γ-ray emission of about 0.3 — 0.4° for the bulge of M31. This study also suggests that a second component, extending to at least 1°, contributes to the observed total emission. We quantify systematic uncertainties related to mis-modeling of Galactic foreground emission at the level of 2.9%.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
20

Storm, Emma, Christoph Weniger, and Francesca Calore. "SkyFACT: high-dimensional modeling of gamma-ray emission with adaptive templates and penalized likelihoods." Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 2017, no. 08 (August 18, 2017): 022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2017/08/022.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
21

Kelley, Sarah. "Nostalgia, Nationalism and Notability: The Success of Skyfall." Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network 6, no. 4 (January 31, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.31165/nk.2014.64.319.

Full text
Abstract:
2012 saw the release of what has since been branded ‘the most successful British film to date’: Skyfall broke box office records by making £94 million in the first 40 days of its release. The positive reception from film critics would have undoubtedly gone some way to attracting patrons to its cinema run, however, the overwhelming commercial success of Skyfall indicates that there were more hooks at play here, amongst the promotional campaign for the film. This article argues that strong themes of nostalgia, nationalism and notability (of the cast and crew), present throughout the marketing and preview literature for Skyfall, played a significant part in generating audience interest for the film. Through textual analysis of a variety of artefacts circulated in anticipation of the film's release, this article aims to explore how these three themes engaged with the audience and helped to ensure a successful box office run for Skyfall.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
22

Teichmann, Andreas, and Raffael Menke. "Skyfall – Im freien Fall nach Nelson und Folkerts!" ReiseRecht aktuell 21, no. 3 (January 24, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/rra.2013.21.3.106.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
23

Hocking, Nick. "Letting the /Skyfall/ or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love James Bond." Studies in the Maternal 6, no. 1 (January 1, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.16995/sim.7.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
24

Staudinger, Ansgar. "Skyfall – oder warum man mit dem Urteil „Sturgeon II“ des EuGH teils aus allen Wolken fällt." ReiseRechts aktuell 20, no. 6 (January 1, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/rra.2012.20.6.261.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
25

Ward, Sam. "Introduction." Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network 6, no. 4 (February 3, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.31165/nk.2014.64.323.

Full text
Abstract:
This special issue of Networking Knowledge really showcases the breadth and richness of the research being done by MeCCSA’s postgraduate community. Based on papers given at the PGN’s annual conference at the University of East Anglia last year, the articles below cover topics ranging from the promotion of the latest Bond film to the movement of Baltic artists around Europe, and methodologies including original archival discoveries, various forms of discourse analysis, and interviews with industrial and creative professionals. This shows that, as media forms and methods of communication become evermore diverse, fragmented, converged and fast-changing in the digital age, the future of research in these fields promises a suitably multi-faceted and adaptable approach to the challenge of understanding it all. The issue stays true to this journal’s title, bringing together, as did the conference, a fascinatingly interconnected set of subjects. Indeed, networking knowledge in this way is, I think, an indispensable habit for all scholars within MeCCSAs subject, if we are to remain relevant and effective as researchers in the current climate of fragmentation: working with and through the links between our many various questions, fields, methodologies and institutional priorities, and seeing them as innovative opportunities, rather than inconvenient barriers. The issue starts with four articles that each add a different perspective on the broad theme of re- viewing cinema’s history. Julia Bohlmann’s contribution gives insight into a previously untouched moment in the history of film censorship debates, focusing the broad issue of moral panic about early cinema’s impact on children through the perspective of regional (Scottish) jurisdictions. Filipa Antunes then picks up nicely on the same topic, but in a quite different ‘transitional moment’, at the other end of the twentieth century. Her article considers the ambiguities surrounding a new film classification in the United States in 1980s that arguably created a new sub-genre, the ‘tween’ horror. Through a case study of a single film, the article opens onto a set of issues that have been hotly contested in media and film studies in recent years beyond classification itself: genre, demographics and fan discourse. Adam Scales’ article on Nightmare on Elm Street 2 continues on the theme of horror, synthesising analysis of textual and reception discourses in order to understand the complex and ambiguous construction of ‘alternative’ – in this case queer – audiences. Moving from horror to an even more slippery label, Michael Ahmed then gives a timely consideration of what the ‘exploitation film’ might be in the British context. Like Scales, Ahmed shows how our frameworks for understanding exactly how films are received and defined by audiences and critics must not be rigid, but instead allow for the inevitable overlaps, fluid interconnections and confusion between categories. The following three articles examine media paratexts. Stephanie Janes offers a detailed explanation of the promotional alternate reality game, with original interviews with some of the creators and players of these new multi-media marketing experiences. Her interrogation of the player and ‘puppetmaster’ roles shows a complex negotation of power, collaboration and ownership at work that unsettles previous distinctions made between producers and users. Boundaries are questioned too in Dolores Moreno’s article, which encourages the developing field of screenplay studies to consider the after-lives of film scripts – in terms of finished films, award recognition for writing, and published screenplay – as equally important a part of ‘screenplay discourse’ as the strictly pre- production process of conception. Again, negotiations of power and ownership sit behind Moreno’s discussion, especially powerful in her critique of the pedagogical consensus on how screenwriters should be trained. Concluding this section, Sarah Kelley gives a survey of the means by which Skyfall was made into a comeback hit for the James Bond franchise. Isolating the key themes of nationality, nostalgia and notability, this article is an engaging reminder of the way in which contemporary media promotion works dynamically across platforms and cultural contexts and simultaneously towards a multitude of strategic ends.We return to the economy of cultural capital at work in generic classification with Patrick Bingham’s article on the television series Pretty Little Liars. This article also returns to the topics of teenage audiences and homosexual narratives, the two intersecting in the question of how ‘drama’, ‘mystery’ and ‘teen TV’ have been set into a value-laden hierarchy by the programme’s promoters and critics. Emma Duester presents her detailed ethnographic study of artists based in the Baltics, arguing that a new conception of ‘mobility’, rather than ‘migration’, is needed to account for the trans-national and fluidly networked experience of her subjects. This shifts the focus to the art world and to geography, showing how the impact of globalisation on creative industries throws up complex forms of experience that resist simplistic oppositions like ‘liminal’ and ‘central’. Finally, Thomas James Scott brings the issue back to where it started, with the early decades of feature- length cinema. Scott considers the representation of another example of mobility – that of Irish nationals to the United States – drawing on numerous instances from the archives to trace how depictions of Irish immigrants was refined and adapted as the medium matured, leading us to consider how ethnic difference, and immigration itself, were gradually built in to Hollywood’s image of the American Dream. With such an eclectic mix of topics and approaches, there really is something for all scholars in this issue. With that in mind, it serves as a perfect launch-pad for the new policy at Networking Knowledge of inviting articles on an open basis, to complement its usual themed collections. It is hoped that this will allow for the publication of more ground-breaking postgraduate and early career research even if it doesn’t fit within any of the upcoming themes, and so broaden further the network’s discussions and discoveries. I also hope it provides ample inspiration for new postgraduates to join the network and all members to submit their work to this year’s PGN conference at the University of Leeds. It is sure to be just as dynamic and stimulating as the work represented here.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
26

Hunter, John C. "Organic Interfaces; or, How Human Beings Augment Their Digital Devices." M/C Journal 16, no. 6 (November 7, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.743.

Full text
Abstract:
In many ways, computers are becoming invisible and will continue to do so. When we reach into our pockets and pull out our cell phones to find a place to eat or message a friend on Facebook, we are no longer consciously aware that we are interacting with a user experience that has been consciously designed for our computer or device screen—but we are.— Andy Pratt and Jason Nunes, Interactive Design In theory, cell phones and other information and communication technologies (ICTs) are just a means for us to interact with people, businesses, and data sources. They have interfaces and, in a larger sense, are interfaces between their users and the networked world. Every day, people spend more time using them to perform more different tasks and find them more indispensable (Smith). As the epigraph above suggests, however, their omnipresence makes them practically invisible and has all but erased any feelings of awe or mystery that their power once generated. There is both a historical and functional dimension to this situation. In the historical advance of technology, it is part of what Kevin Kelly calls the “technium,” the ever-more complex interactions between advancing technology, our cognitive processes, and the cultural forces in which they are enmeshed; ICTs are measurably getting more powerful as time goes on and are, in this sense, worthy of our admiration (Kelly 11-17). In the functional dimension, on the other hand, many scholars and designers have observed how hard it is to hold on to this feeling of enchantment in our digital devices (Nye 185-226; McCarthy and Wright 192-97). As one study of human-computer interfaces observes “when people let the enchanting object [ICTs] do the emotional work of experience for them . . . what could be enchanting interactivity becomes a paradoxically detached interpassivity” (McCarthy et al. 377). ICTs can be ever more powerful, then, but this power will not necessarily be appreciated by their users. This paper analyzes recent narrative representations of ICT use in spy thrillers, with a particular focus on the canon of James Bond films (a sub-genre with a long-standing and overt fascination with advanced technology, especially ICTs), in order to explore how the banality of ICT technology has become the inescapable accompaniment of its power (Willis; Britton 99-123; 195-219). Among many possible recent examples: recall how Bond uses his ordinary cell phone camera to reveal the membership of the sinister Quantum group at an opera performance in Quantum of Solace; how world-wide video surveillance is depicted as inescapable (and amoral) in The Bourne Legacy; and how the anonymous protagonist of Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer discovers the vital piece of top secret information that explains the entire film—by searching for it on his laptop via Google. In each of these cases, ICTs are represented as both incredibly powerful and tediously quotidian. More precisely, in each case human users are represented as interfaces between ICTs and their stored knowledge, rather than the reverse. Beginning with an account of how the naturalization of ICTs has changed the perceived relations between technology and its users, this essay argues that the promotional rhetoric of human empowerment and augmentation surrounding ICTs is opposed by a persistent cinematic theme of human subordination to technological needs. The question it seeks to open is why—why do the mainstream cinematic narratives of our culture depict the ICTs that enhance our capacities to know and communicate as something that diminishes rather than augments us? One answer (which can only be provisionally sketched here) is the loss of pleasure. It does not matter whether or not technology augments our capacities if it cannot sustain the fantasy of pleasure and/or enhancement at the same time. Without this fantasy, ICTs are represented as usurping position as the knowing subject and users, in turn, become the media connecting them– even when that user is James Bond. The Rhetoric of Augmentation Until the past five years or so, the technologization of the human mind was almost always represented in popular culture as a threat to humanity—whether it be Ira Levin’s robotic Stepford Wives as the debased expression of male wish-fulfillment (Levin), or Jonathan Demme’s brainwashed assassins with computer chip implants in his remake of The Manchurian Candidate. When Captain Picard, the leader and moral centre of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, is taken over by the Borg (an alien machine race that seeks to absorb other species into its technologized collective mind) in an episode from 1990, it is described as “assimilation” rather than an augmentation. The Borg version of Picard says to his former comrades that “we only wish to raise quality of life, for all species,” and it is a chilling, completely unemotional threat to the survival of our species (“Best of Both Worlds”). By 2012, on the other hand, the very same imagery is being used to sell smart phones by celebrating the technological enhancements that allegedly make us better human beings. In Verizon’s Droid DNA phone promotions, the product is depicted as an artificial heart for its user, one that enhances memory, “neural speed,” and “predictive intelligence” (thanks to Google Now). The tagline for the Verizon ad claims that “It’s not an upgrade to your phone; it’s an upgrade to yourself”, echoing Borg-Picard’s threat but this time as an aspirational promise (“Verizon Commercial”). The same technologization of the mind that was anathema just a few years ago, is now presented as both a desirable consumer goal and a professional necessity—the final close-up of the Verizon artificial heart shows that this 21st century cyborg has to be at his job in 26 minutes; the omnipresence of work in a networked world is here literally taken to heart. There is, notably, no promise of pleasure or liberation anywhere in this advertisement. We are meant to desire this product very much, but solely because it allows us to do more and better work. Not coincidentally, the period that witnessed this inversion in popular culture also saw an exponential increase in the quantity and variety of digitally networked devices in our lives (“Mobile Cellular”) and the emergence of serious cultural, scientific, and philosophical movements exploring the idea of “enhanced” human beings, whether through digital tool use, biomedical prostheses, drugs, or genetic modifications (Buchanan; Savulescu and Bostrom; “Humanity +”). As the material boundaries of the “human” have become more permeable and malleable, and as the technologies that make this possible become everyday objects, our resistance to this possibility has receded. The discourse of the transhuman and extropian is now firmly established as a philosophical possibility (Lilley). Personal augmentation with the promise of pleasure is still, of course, very much present in the presentation of ICTs. Launching the iPad 2 in 2011, the late Steve Jobs described his new product as a “magical and revolutionary device” with an “incredible magical user interface on a much larger canvas with more resources” and gushing that “it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing” (“Apple Special Event”). This is the rhetoric of augmentation through technology and, as in the Verizon ad, it is very careful to position the consumer/user at the centre of the experience. The technology is described as wonderful not just in itself, but also precisely because it gives users “a larger canvas” with which to create. Likewise, the lifelogging movement (which encourages people to use small cameras to record every event of daily life) is at great pains to stress that “you, not your desktop’s hard drive, are the hub of your digital belongings” (Bell and Gemmell 10). But do users experience life with these devices as augmented? Is either the Verizon work cyborg or the iPad user’s singing heart representative of how these devices make us feel? It depends upon the context in which the question is asked. Extensive survey data on cell phone use shows that we are more attached than ever to our phones, that they allow us to be “productive” in otherwise dead times (such as while waiting in queues), and that only a minority of users worry about the negative effects of being “permanently connected” (Smith 9-10). Representations of technological augmentation in 21st century popular cinema, however, offer a very different perspective. Even in James Bond films, which (since Goldfinger in 1964) have been enraptured with technological devices as augmentations for its protagonists and as lures for audiences, digital devices have (in the three most recent films) lost their magic and become banal in the same way as they have in the lives of audience members (Nitins 2010; Nitins 2011; “List of James Bond Gadgets”). Rather than focusing on technological empowerment, the post 2006 Bond films emphasize (1) that ICTs “know” things and that human agents are just the media that connect them together; and (2) that the reciprocal nature of networked ICTs means that we are always visible when we use them; like Verizon phone users, our on-screen heroes have to learn that the same technology that empowers them simultaneously empowers others to know and/or control them. Using examples from the James Bond franchise, the remainder of this paper discusses the simultaneous disenchantment and power of ICT technology in the films as a representative sample of the cultural status of ICTs as a whole. “We don’t go in for that sort of thing any more...” From Goldfinger until the end of Pierce Brosnan’s tenure in 2002, technological devices were an important part of the audience’s pleasure in a Bond film (Willis; Nitins 2011). James Bond’s jetpack in Thunderball, to give one of many examples, is a quasi-magical aid for the hero with literary precursors going back to Aeneas’s golden bough; it is utterly enchanting and, equally importantly, fun. In the most recent Bond film, Skyfall, however, Q, the character who has historically made Bond’s technology, reappears after a two-film hiatus, but in the guise of a computer nerd who openly disdains the pleasures and possibilities of technological augmentation. When Bond complains about receiving only a gun and a radio from him, Q replies: “What did you expect? An exploding pen? We don’t really go in for that sort of thing any more.” Technology is henceforth to be banal and invisible albeit (as the film’s computer hacker villain Silva demonstrates) still incredibly powerful. The film’s pleasures must come from elsewhere. The post-credit sequence in Casino Royale, which involves the pursuit and eventual death of a terrorist bomb-maker, perfectly embodies the diminished importance of human agents as bearers of knowledge. It is bracketed at the beginning by the bomber looking at a text message while under surveillance by Bond and a colleague and at the end by Bond looking at the same message after having killed him. Significantly, the camera angle and setup of both shots make it impossible to distinguish between Bond’s hand and the bomber’s as they see the same piece of information on the same phone. The ideological, legal, racial, and other differences between the two men are erased in pursuit of the data (the name “Ellipsis” and a phone number) that they both covet. As digitally-transmitted data, it is there for anyone, completely unaffected by the moral or legal value attached to its users. Cell phones in these films are, in many ways, better sources of information than their owners—after killing a phone’s owner, his or her network traces can show exactly where s/he has been and to whom s/he has been talking, and this is how Bond proceeds. The bomber’s phone contacts lead Bond to the Bahamas, to the next villain in the chain, whom Bond kills and from whom he obtains another cell phone, which allows the next narrative location to be established (Miami Airport) and the next villain to be located (by calling his cell phone in a crowded room and seeing who answers) (Demetrios). There are no conventional interrogations needed here, because it is the digital devices that are the locus of knowledge rather than people. Even Bond’s lover Vesper Lynd sends her most important message to him (the name and cell phone number of the film’s arch villain) in a posthumous text, rather than in an actual conversation. Cell phones do not enable communication between people; people connect the important information that cell phones hold together. The second manifestation of the disenchantment of ICT technology is the disempowering omnipresence of surveillance. Bond and his colleague are noticed by the bomber when the colleague touches his supposedly invisible communication earpiece. With the audience’s point of view conflated with that of the secret agent, the technology of concealment becomes precisely what reveals the secret agent’s identity in the midst of a chaotic scene in which staying anonymous should be the easiest thing in the world; other villains identify Bond by the same means in a hotel hallway later in the film. While chasing the bomber, Bond is recorded by a surveillance camera in the act of killing him on the grounds of a foreign embassy. The secret agent is, as a result, made into an object of knowledge for the international media, prompting M (Bond’s boss) to exclaim that their political masters “don’t care what we do, they care what we get photographed doing.” Bond is henceforth part of the mediascape, so well known as a spy that he refuses to use the alias that MI6 provides for his climactic encounter with the main villain LeChiffre on the grounds that any well-connected master criminal will know who he is anyway. This can, of course, go both ways: Bond uses the omnipresence of surveillance to find another of his targets by using the security cameras of a casino. This one image contains many layers of reference—Bond the character has found his man; he has also found an iconic image from his own cultural past (the Aston Martin DB V car that is the only clearly delineated object in the frame) that he cannot understand as such because Casino Royale is a “reboot” and he has only just become 007. But the audience knows what it means and can insert this incarnation of James Bond in its historical sequence and enjoy the allusion to a past of which Bond is oblivious. The point is that surveillance is omnipresent, anonymity is impossible, and we are always being watched and interpreted by someone. This is true in the film’s narrative and also in the cultural/historical contexts in which the Bond films operate. It may be better to be the watcher rather than the watched, but we are always already both. By the end of the film, Bond is literally being framed by technological devices and becomes the organic connection between different pieces of technology. The literal centrality of the human agent in these images is not, in this disenchanted landscape, an indication of his importance. The cell phones to which Bond listens in these images connect him (and us) to the past, the back story or context provided by his masters that permits the audience to understand the complex plot that is unfolding before them. The devices at which he looks represent the future, the next situation or person that he must contain. He does not fully understand what is happening, but he is not there to understand – he is there to join the information held in the various devices together, which (in this film) usually means to kill someone. The third image in this sequence is from the final scene of the film, and the assault rifle marks this end—the chain of cell phone messages (direct and indirect) that has driven Casino Royale from its outset has been stopped. The narrative stops with it. Bond’s centrality amid these ICTS and their messages is simultaneously what allows him to complete his mission and what subjects him to their needs. This kind of technological power can be so banal precisely because it has been stripped of pleasure and of any kind of mystique. The conclusion of Skyfall reinforces this by inverting all of the norms that Bond films have created about their climaxes: instead of the technologically-empowered villain’s lair being destroyed, it is Bond’s childhood home that is blown up. Rather than beating the computer hacker at his own game, Bond kills him with a knife in a medieval Scottish church. It could hardly be less hi-tech if it tried, which is precisely the point. What the Bond franchise and the other films mentioned above have shown us, is that we do not rely on ICTs for enchantment any more because they are so powerfully connected to the everyday reality of work and to the loss of privacy that our digital devices exact as the price of their use. The advertising materials that sell them to us have to rely on the rhetoric of augmentation, but these films are signs that we do not experience them as empowering devices any more. The deeper irony is that (for once) the ICT consumer products being advertised to us today really do what their promotional materials claim: they are faster, more powerful, and more widely applicable in our lives than ever before. Without the user fantasy of augmentation, however, this truth has very little power to move us. We depict ourselves as the medium, and it is our digital devices that bear the message.References“Apple Special Event. March 2, 2011.” Apple Events. 21 Sep. 2013 ‹http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1103pijanbdvaaj/event/index.html›. Bell, Gordon, and Jim Gemmell. Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything. New York: Dutton, 2009.“The Best of Both Worlds: Part Two.” Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dir. Cliff Bole. Paramount, 2013. The Bourne Legacy. Dir. Tony Gilroy. Universal Pictures, 2012. Britton, Wesley. Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005. Buchanan, Allen. Beyond Humanity: The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement. Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Casino Royale. Dir. Martin Campbell. Columbia Pictures, 2006. “Data’s Day.” Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dir. Robert Wiemer. Burbank, CA: Paramount, 2013. The Ghost Writer. Dir. Roman Polanski. R.P. Productions/France 2 Cinéma, 2010. “Humanity +”. 25 Aug. 2013 ‹http://humanityplus.org›. Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking, 2010. Levin, Ira. The Stepford Wives. Introd. Peter Straub. New York: William Morrow, 2002. Lilley, Stephen. Transhumanism and Society: The Social Debate over Human Enhancement. New York: Springer, 2013. “List of James Bond Gadgets.” Wikipedia. 11 Nov. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_James_Bond_gadgets›. The Manchurian Candidate. Dir. Jonathan Demme. Paramount, 2004. McCarthy, John, and Peter Wright. Technology as Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004. McCarthy, John, et al. “The Experience of Enchantment in Human–Computer Interaction.” Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 10 (2006): 369-78. “Mobile Cellular Subscriptions (per 100 People).” The World Bank. 25 March 2013 ‹http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2›. Nitins, Tanya L. “A Boy and His Toys: Technology and Gadgetry in the James Bond Films.” James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films Are Not Enough. Eds. Rob Weiner, B. Lynn Whitfield, and Jack Becker. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 445-58. ———. Selling James Bond: Product Placement in the James Bond Films. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. Nye, David E. Technology Matters—Questions to Live With. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Pratt, Andy, and Jason Nunes Interactive Design: An Introduction to the Theory and Application of User-Centered Design. Beverly, MA: Rockport, 2012. Quantum of Solace. Dir: Marc Foster, Eon Productions, 2008. DVD. Savulescu, Julian, and Nick Bostrom, eds. Human Enhancement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Skyfall. Dir. Sam Mendes. Eon Productions, 2012. Smith, Aaron. The Best and Worst of Mobile Connectivity. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Pew Research Center. 25 Aug. 2013 ‹http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Best-Worst-Mobile.aspx›. Thunderball. Dir. Terence Young. Eon Productions, 1965. “Verizon Commercial – Droid DNA ‘Hyper Intelligence’.” 11 April 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYIAaBOb5Bo›. Willis, Martin. “Hard-Wear: The Millenium, Technology, and Brosnan’s Bond.” The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader. Ed. Christoph Linder. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. 151-65.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
27

Champion, Katherine M. "A Risky Business? The Role of Incentives and Runaway Production in Securing a Screen Industries Production Base in Scotland." M/C Journal 19, no. 3 (June 22, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1101.

Full text
Abstract:
IntroductionDespite claims that the importance of distance has been reduced due to technological and communications improvements (Cairncross; Friedman; O’Brien), the ‘power of place’ still resonates, often intensifying the role of geography (Christopherson et al.; Morgan; Pratt; Scott and Storper). Within the film industry, there has been a decentralisation of production from Hollywood, but there remains a spatial logic which has preferenced particular centres, such as Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney and Prague often led by a combination of incentives (Christopherson and Storper; Goldsmith and O’Regan; Goldsmith et al.; Miller et al.; Mould). The emergence of high end television, television programming for which the production budget is more than £1 million per television hour, has presented new opportunities for screen hubs sharing a very similar value chain to the film industry (OlsbergSPI with Nordicity).In recent years, interventions have proliferated with the aim of capitalising on the decentralisation of certain activities in order to attract international screen industries production and embed it within local hubs. Tools for building capacity and expertise have proliferated, including support for studio complex facilities, infrastructural investments, tax breaks and other economic incentives (Cucco; Goldsmith and O’Regan; Jensen; Goldsmith et al.; McDonald; Miller et al.; Mould). Yet experience tells us that these will not succeed everywhere. There is a need for a better understanding of both the capacity for places to build a distinctive and competitive advantage within a highly globalised landscape and the relative merits of alternative interventions designed to generate a sustainable production base.This article first sets out the rationale for the appetite identified in the screen industries for co-location, or clustering and concentration in a tightly drawn physical area, in global hubs of production. It goes on to explore the latest trends of decentralisation and examines the upturn in interventions aimed at attracting mobile screen industries capital and labour. Finally it introduces the Scottish screen industries and explores some of the ways in which Scotland has sought to position itself as a recipient of screen industries activity. The paper identifies some key gaps in infrastructure, most notably a studio, and calls for closer examination of the essential ingredients of, and possible interventions needed for, a vibrant and sustainable industry.A Compulsion for ProximityIt has been argued that particular spatial and place-based factors are central to the development and organisation of the screen industries. The film and television sector, the particular focus of this article, exhibit an extraordinarily high degree of spatial agglomeration, especially favouring centres with global status. It is worth noting that the computer games sector, not explored in this article, slightly diverges from this trend displaying more spatial patterns of decentralisation (Vallance), although key physical hubs of activity have been identified (Champion). Creative products often possess a cachet that is directly associated with their point of origin, for example fashion from Paris, films from Hollywood and country music from Nashville – although it can also be acknowledged that these are often strategic commercial constructions (Pecknold). The place of production represents a unique component of the final product as well as an authentication of substantive and symbolic quality (Scott, “Creative cities”). Place can act as part of a brand or image for creative industries, often reinforcing the advantage of being based in particular centres of production.Very localised historical, cultural, social and physical factors may also influence the success of creative production in particular places. Place-based factors relating to the built environment, including cheap space, public-sector support framework, connectivity, local identity, institutional environment and availability of amenities, are seen as possible influences in the locational choices of creative industry firms (see, for example, Drake; Helbrecht; Hutton; Leadbeater and Oakley; Markusen).Employment trends are notoriously difficult to measure in the screen industries (Christopherson, “Hollywood in decline?”), but the sector does contain large numbers of very small firms and freelancers. This allows them to be flexible but poses certain problems that can be somewhat offset by co-location. The findings of Antcliff et al.’s study of workers in the audiovisual industry in the UK suggested that individuals sought to reconstruct stable employment relations through their involvement in and use of networks. The trust and reciprocity engendered by stable networks, built up over time, were used to offset the risk associated with the erosion of stable employment. These findings are echoed by a study of TV content production in two media regions in Germany by Sydow and Staber who found that, although firms come together to work on particular projects, typically their business relations extend for a much longer period than this. Commonly, firms and individuals who have worked together previously will reassemble for further project work aided by their past experiences and expectations.Co-location allows the development of shared structures: language, technical attitudes, interpretative schemes and ‘communities of practice’ (Bathelt, et al.). Grabher describes this process as ‘hanging out’. Deep local pools of creative and skilled labour are advantageous both to firms and employees (Reimer et al.) by allowing flexibility, developing networks and offsetting risk (Banks et al.; Scott, “Global City Regions”). For example in Cook and Pandit’s study comparing the broadcasting industry in three city-regions, London was found to be hugely advantaged by its unrivalled talent pool, high financial rewards and prestigious projects. As Barnes and Hutton assert in relation to the wider creative industries, “if place matters, it matters most to them” (1251). This is certainly true for the screen industries and their spatial logic points towards a compulsion for proximity in large global hubs.Decentralisation and ‘Sticky’ PlacesDespite the attraction of global production hubs, there has been a decentralisation of screen industries from key centres, starting with the film industry and the vertical disintegration of Hollywood studios (Christopherson and Storper). There are instances of ‘runaway production’ from the 1920s onwards with around 40 per cent of all features being accounted for by offshore production in 1960 (Miller et al., 133). This trend has been increasing significantly in the last 20 years, leading to the genesis of new hubs of screen activity such as Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney and Prague (Christopherson, “Project work in context”; Goldsmith et al.; Mould; Miller et al.; Szczepanik). This development has been prompted by a multiplicity of reasons including favourable currency value differentials and economic incentives. Subsidies and tax breaks have been offered to secure international productions with most countries demanding that, in order to qualify for tax relief, productions have to spend a certain amount of their budget within the local economy, employ local crew and use domestic creative talent (Hill). Extensive infrastructure has been developed including studio complexes to attempt to lure productions with the advantage of a full service offering (Goldsmith and O’Regan).Internationally, Canada has been the greatest beneficiary of ‘runaway production’ with a state-led enactment of generous film incentives since the late 1990s (McDonald). Vancouver and Toronto are the busiest locations for North American Screen production after Los Angeles and New York, due to exchange rates and tax rebates on labour costs (Miller et al., 141). 80% of Vancouver’s production is attributable to runaway production (Jensen, 27) and the city is considered by some to have crossed a threshold as:It now possesses sufficient depth and breadth of talent to undertake the full array of pre-production, production and post-production services for the delivery of major motion pictures and TV programmes. (Barnes and Coe, 19)Similarly, Toronto is considered to have established a “comprehensive set of horizontal and vertical media capabilities” to ensure its status as a “full function media centre” (Davis, 98). These cities have successfully engaged in entrepreneurial activity to attract production (Christopherson, “Project Work in Context”) and in Vancouver the proactive role of provincial government and labour unions are, in part, credited with its success (Barnes and Coe). Studio-complex infrastructure has also been used to lure global productions, with Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney all being seen as key examples of where such developments have been used as a strategic priority to take local production capacity to the next level (Goldsmith and O’Regan).Studies which provide a historiography of the development of screen-industry hubs emphasise a complex interplay of social, cultural and physical conditions. In the complex and global flows of the screen industries, ‘sticky’ hubs have emerged with the ability to attract and retain capital and skilled labour. Despite being principally organised to attract international production, most studio complexes, especially those outside of global centres need to have a strong relationship to local or national film and television production to ensure the sustainability and depth of the labour pool (Goldsmith and O’Regan, 2003). Many have a broadcaster on site as well as a range of companies with a media orientation and training facilities (Goldsmith and O’Regan, 2003; Picard, 2008). The emergence of film studio complexes in the Australian Gold Coast and Vancouver was accompanied by an increasing role for television production and this multi-purpose nature was important for the continuity of production.Fostering a strong community of below the line workers, such as set designers, locations managers, make-up artists and props manufacturers, can also be a clear advantage in attracting international productions. For example at Cinecitta in Italy, the expertise of set designers and experienced crews in the Barrandov Studios of Prague are regarded as major selling points of the studio complexes there (Goldsmith and O’Regan; Miller et al.; Szczepanik). Natural and built environments are also considered very important for film and television firms and it is a useful advantage for capturing international production when cities can double for other locations as in the cases of Toronto, Vancouver, Prague for example (Evans; Goldsmith and O’Regan; Szczepanik). Toronto, for instance, has doubled for New York in over 100 films and with regard to television Due South’s (1994-1998) use of Toronto as Chicago was estimated to have saved 40 per cent in costs (Miller et al., 141).The Scottish Screen Industries Within mobile flows of capital and labour, Scotland has sought to position itself as a recipient of screen industries activity through multiple interventions, including investment in institutional frameworks, direct and indirect economic subsidies and the development of physical infrastructure. Traditionally creative industry activity in the UK has been concentrated in London and the South East which together account for 43% of the creative economy workforce (Bakhshi et al.). In order, in part to redress this imbalance and more generally to encourage the attraction and retention of international production a range of policies have been introduced focused on the screen industries. A revised Film Tax Relief was introduced in 2007 to encourage inward investment and prevent offshoring of indigenous production, and this has since been extended to high-end television, animation and children’s programming. Broadcasting has also experienced a push for decentralisation led by public funding with a responsibility to be regionally representative. The BBC (“BBC Annual Report and Accounts 2014/15”) is currently exceeding its target of 50% network spend outside London by 2016, with 17% spent in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Channel 4 has similarly committed to commission at least 9% of its original spend from the nations by 2020. Studios have been also developed across the UK including at Roath Lock (Cardiff), Titanic Studios (Belfast), MedicaCity (Salford) and The Sharp Project (Manchester).The creative industries have been identified as one of seven growth sectors for Scotland by the government (Scottish Government). In 2010, the film and video sector employed 3,500 people and contributed £120 million GVA and £120 million adjusted GVA to the economy and the radio and TV sector employed 3,500 people and contributed £50 million GVA and £400 million adjusted GVA (The Scottish Parliament). Beyond the direct economic benefits of sectors, the on-screen representation of Scotland has been claimed to boost visitor numbers to the country (EKOS) and high profile international film productions have been attracted including Skyfall (2012) and WWZ (2013).Scotland has historically attracted international film and TV productions due to its natural locations (VisitScotland) and on average, between 2009-2014, six big budget films a year used Scottish locations both urban and rural (BOP Consulting, 2014). In all, a total of £20 million was generated by film-making in Glasgow during 2011 (Balkind) with WWZ (2013) and Cloud Atlas (2013), representing Philadelphia and San Francisco respectively, as well as doubling for Edinburgh for the recent acclaimed Scottish films Filth (2013) and Sunshine on Leith (2013). Sanson (80) asserts that the use of the city as a site for international productions not only brings in direct revenue from production money but also promotes the city as a “fashionable place to live, work and visit. Creativity makes the city both profitable and ‘cool’”.Nonetheless, issues persist and it has been suggested that Scotland lacks a stable and sustainable film industry, with low indigenous production levels and variable success from year to year in attracting inward investment (BOP Consulting). With regard to crew, problems with an insufficient production base have been identified as an issue in maintaining a pipeline of skills (BOP Consulting). Developing ‘talent’ is a central aspect of the Scottish Government’s Strategy for the Creative Industries, yet there remains the core challenge of retaining skills and encouraging new talent into the industry (BOP Consulting).With regard to film, a lack of substantial funding incentives and the absence of a studio have been identified as a key concern for the sector. For example, within the film industry the majority of inward investment filming in Scotland is location work as it lacks the studio facilities that would enable it to sustain a big-budget production in its entirety (BOP Consulting). The absence of such infrastructure has been seen as contributing to a drain of Scottish talent from these industries to other areas and countries where there is a more vibrant sector (BOP Consulting). The loss of Scottish talent to Northern Ireland was attributed to the longevity of the work being provided by Games of Thrones (2011-) now having completed its six series at the Titanic Studios in Belfast (EKOS) although this may have been stemmed somewhat recently with the attraction of US high-end TV series Outlander (2014-) which has been based at Wardpark in Cumbernauld since 2013.Television, both high-end production and local broadcasting, appears crucial to the sustainability of screen production in Scotland. Outlander has been estimated to contribute to Scotland’s production spend figures reaching a historic high of £45.8 million in 2014 (Creative Scotland ”Creative Scotland Screen Strategy Update”). The arrival of the program has almost doubled production spend in Scotland, offering the chance for increased stability for screen industries workers. Qualifying for UK High-End Television Tax Relief, Outlander has engaged a crew of approximately 300 across props, filming and set build, and cast over 2,000 supporting artist roles from within Scotland and the UK.Long running drama, in particular, offers key opportunities for both those cutting their teeth in the screen industries and also by providing more consistent and longer-term employment to existing workers. BBC television soap River City (2002-) has been identified as a key example of such an opportunity and the programme has been credited with providing a springboard for developing the skills of local actors, writers and production crew (Hibberd). This kind of pipeline of production is critical given the work patterns of the sector. According to Creative Skillset, of the 4,000 people in Scotland are employed in the film and television industries, 40% of television workers are freelance and 90% of film production work in freelance (EKOS).In an attempt to address skills gaps, the Outlander Trainee Placement Scheme has been devised in collaboration with Creative Scotland and Creative Skillset. During filming of Season One, thirty-eight trainees were supported across a range of production and craft roles, followed by a further twenty-five in Season Two. Encouragingly Outlander, and the books it is based on, is set in Scotland so the authenticity of place has played a strong component in the decision to locate production there. Producer David Brown began his career on Bill Forsyth films Gregory’s Girl (1981), Local Hero (1983) and Comfort and Joy (1984) and has a strong existing relationship to Scotland. He has been very vocal in his support for the trainee program, contending that “training is the future of our industry and we at Outlander see the growth of talent and opportunities as part of our mission here in Scotland” (“Outlander fast tracks next generation of skilled screen talent”).ConclusionsThis article has aimed to explore the relationship between place and the screen industries and, taking Scotland as its focus, has outlined a need to more closely examine the ways in which the sector can be supported. Despite the possible gains in terms of building a sustainable industry, the state-led funding of the global screen industries is contested. The use of tax breaks and incentives has been problematised and critiques range from use of public funding to attract footloose media industries to the increasingly zero sum game of competition between competing places (Morawetz; McDonald). In relation to broadcasting, there have been critiques of a ‘lift and shift’ approach to policy in the UK, with TV production companies moving to the nations and regions temporarily to meet the quota and leaving once a production has finished (House of Commons). Further to this, issues have been raised regarding how far such interventions can seed and develop a rich production ecology that offers opportunities for indigenous talent (Christopherson and Rightor).Nonetheless recent success for the screen industries in Scotland can, at least in part, be attributed to interventions including increased decentralisation of broadcasting and the high-end television tax incentives. This article has identified gaps in infrastructure which continue to stymie growth and have led to production drain to other centres. Important gaps in knowledge can also be acknowledged that warrant further investigation and unpacking including the relationship between film, high-end television and broadcasting, especially in terms of the opportunities they offer for screen industries workers to build a career in Scotland and notable gaps in infrastructure and the impact they have on the loss of production.ReferencesAntcliff, Valerie, Richard Saundry, and Mark Stuart. Freelance Worker Networks in Audio-Visual Industries. University of Central Lancashire, 2004.Bakhshi, Hasan, John Davies, Alan Freeman, and Peter Higgs. "The Geography of the UK’s Creative and High–Tech Economies." 2015.Balkind, Nicola. World Film Locations: Glasgow. Intellect Books, 2013.Banks, Mark, Andy Lovatt, Justin O’Connor, and Carlo Raffo. "Risk and Trust in the Cultural Industries." Geoforum 31.4 (2000): 453-464.Barnes, Trevor, and Neil M. Coe. “Vancouver as Media Cluster: The Cases of Video Games and Film/TV." Media Clusters: Spatial Agglomeration and Content Capabilities (2011): 251-277.Barnes, Trevor, and Thomas Hutton. "Situating the New Economy: Contingencies of Regeneration and Dislocation in Vancouver's Inner City." Urban Studies 46.5-6 (2009): 1247-1269.Bathelt, Harald, Anders Malmberg, and Peter Maskell. "Clusters and Knowledge: Local Buzz, Global Pipelines and the Process of Knowledge Creation." Progress in Human Geography 28.1 (2004): 31-56.BBC Annual Report and Accounts 2014/15 London: BBC (2015)BOP Consulting Review of the Film Sector in Glasgow: Report for Creative Scotland. Edinburgh: BOP Consulting, 2014.Champion, Katherine. "Problematizing a Homogeneous Spatial Logic for the Creative Industries: The Case of the Digital Games Industry." Changing the Rules of the Game. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013. 9-27.Cairncross, Francis. The Death of Distance London: Orion Business, 1997.Channel 4. Annual Report. London: Channel 4, 2014.Christopherson, Susan. "Project Work in Context: Regulatory Change and the New Geography of Media." Environment and Planning A 34.11 (2002): 2003-2015.———. "Hollywood in Decline? US Film and Television Producers beyond the Era of Fiscal Crisis." Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 6.1 (2013): 141-157.Christopherson, Susan, and Michael Storper. "The City as Studio; the World as Back Lot: The Impact of Vertical Disintegration on the Location of the Motion Picture Industry." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 4.3 (1986): 305-320.Christopherson, Susan, and Ned Rightor. "The Creative Economy as “Big Business”: Evaluating State Strategies to Lure Filmmakers." Journal of Planning Education and Research 29.3 (2010): 336-352.Christopherson, Susan, Harry Garretsen, and Ron Martin. "The World Is Not Flat: Putting Globalization in Its Place." Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 1.3 (2008): 343-349.Cook, Gary A.S., and Naresh R. Pandit. "Service Industry Clustering: A Comparison of Broadcasting in Three City-Regions." The Service Industries Journal 27.4 (2007): 453-469.Creative Scotland Creative Scotland Screen Strategy Update. 2016. <http://www.creativescotland.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/33992/Creative-Scotland-Screen-Strategy-Update-Feb2016.pdf>.———. Outlander Fast Tracks Next Generation of Skilled Screen Talent. 2016. <http://www.creativescotland.com/what-we-do/latest-news/archive/2016/02/outlander-fast-tracks-next-generation-of-skilled-screen-talent>.Cucco, Marco. "Blockbuster Outsourcing: Is There Really No Place like Home?" Film Studies 13.1 (2015): 73-93.Davis, Charles H. "Media Industry Clusters and Public Policy." Media Clusters: Spatial Agglomeration and Content Capabilities (2011): 72-98.Drake, Graham. "‘This Place Gives Me Space’: Place and Creativity in the Creative Industries." Geoforum 34.4 (2003): 511-524.EKOS. “Options for a Film and TV Production Space: Report for Scottish Enterprise.” Glasgow: EKOS, March 2014.Evans, Graeme. "Creative Cities, Creative Spaces and Urban Policy." Urban Studies 46.5-6 (2009): 1003-1040.Freidman, Thomas. "The World Is Flat." New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.Goldsmith, Ben, and Tom O’Regan. “Cinema Cities, Media Cities: The Contemporary International Studio Complex.” Screen Industry, Culture and Policy Research Series. Sydney: Australian Film Commission, Sep. 2003.Goldsmith, Ben, Susan Ward, and Tom O’Regan. "Global and Local Hollywood." InMedia. The French Journal of Media and Media Representations in the English-Speaking World 1 (2012).Grabher, Gernot. "The Project Ecology of Advertising: Tasks, Talents and Teams." Regional Studies 36.3 (2002): 245-262.Helbrecht, Ilse. "The Creative Metropolis Services, Symbols and Spaces." Zeitschrift für Kanada Studien 18 (1998): 79-93.Hibberd, Lynne. "Devolution in Policy and Practice: A Study of River City and BBC Scotland." Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 4.3 (2007): 107-205.Hill, John. "'This Is for the Batmans as Well as the Vera Drakes': Economics, Culture and UK Government Film Production Policy in the 2000s." Journal of British Cinema and Television 9.3 (2012): 333-356.House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee. “Creative Industries in Scotland.” Second Report of Session 2015–16. London: House of Commons, 2016.Hutton, Thomas A. "The New Economy of the Inner City." Cities 21.2 (2004): 89-108.Jensen, Rodney J.C. "The Spatial and Economic Contribution of Sydney's Visual Entertainment Industries." Australian Planner 48.1 (2011): 24-36.Leadbeater, Charles, and Kate Oakley. Surfing the Long Wave: Knowledge Entrepreneurship in Britain. London: Demos, 2001.McDonald, Adrian H. "Down the Rabbit Hole: The Madness of State Film Incentives as a 'Solution' to Runaway Production." University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law 14.85 (2011): 85-163.Markusen, Ann. "Sticky Places in Slippery Space: A Typology of Industrial Districts." Economic Geography (1996): 293-313.———. "Urban Development and the Politics of a Creative Class: Evidence from a Study of Artists." Environment and Planning A 38.10 (2006): 1921-1940.Miller, Toby, N. Govil, J. McMurria, R. Maxwell, and T. Wang. Global Hollywood 2. London: BFI, 2005.Morawetz, Norbert, et al. "Finance, Policy and Industrial Dynamics—The Rise of Co‐productions in the Film Industry." Industry and Innovation 14.4 (2007): 421-443.Morgan, Kevin. "The Exaggerated Death of Geography: Learning, Proximity and Territorial Innovation Systems." Journal of Economic Geography 4.1 (2004): 3-21.Mould, Oli. "Mission Impossible? Reconsidering the Research into Sydney's Film Industry." Studies in Australasian Cinema 1.1 (2007): 47-60.O’Brien, Richard. "Global Financial Integration: The End of Geography." London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, Pinter Publishers, 2002.OlsbergSPI with Nordicity. “Economic Contribution of the UK’s Film, High-End TV, Video Game, and Animation Programming Sectors.” Report presented to the BFI, Pinewood Shepperton plc, Ukie, the British Film Commission and Pact. London: BFI, Feb. 2015.Pecknold, Diane. "Heart of the Country? The Construction of Nashville as the Capital of Country Music." Sounds and the City. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014. 19-37.Picard, Robert G. Media Clusters: Local Agglomeration in an Industry Developing Networked Virtual Clusters. Jönköping International Business School, 2008.Pratt, Andy C. "New Media, the New Economy and New Spaces." Geoforum 31.4 (2000): 425-436.Reimer, Suzanne, Steven Pinch, and Peter Sunley. "Design Spaces: Agglomeration and Creativity in British Design Agencies." Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 90.2 (2008): 151-172.Sanson, Kevin. Goodbye Brigadoon: Place, Production, and Identity in Global Glasgow. Diss. University of Texas at Austin, 2011.Scott, Allen J. "Creative Cities: Conceptual Issues and Policy Questions." Journal of Urban Affairs 28.1 (2006): 1-17.———. Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy. Oxford University Press, 2002.Scott, Allen J., and Michael Storper. "Regions, Globalization, Development." Regional Studies 41.S1 (2007): S191-S205.The Scottish Government. The Scottish Government Economic Strategy. Edinburgh: Scottish Government, 2015.———. Growth, Talent, Ambition – the Government’s Strategy for the Creative Industries. Edinburgh: Scottish Government, 2011.The Scottish Parliament Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee. The Economic Impact of the Film, TV and Video Games Industries. Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament, 2015.Sydow, Jörg, and Udo Staber. "The Institutional Embeddedness of Project Networks: The Case of Content Production in German Television." Regional Studies 36.3 (2002): 215-227.Szczepanik, Petr. "Globalization through the Eyes of Runners: Student Interns as Ethnographers on Runaway Productions in Prague." Media Industries 1.1 (2014).Vallance, Paul. "Creative Knowing, Organisational Learning, and Socio-Spatial Expansion in UK Videogame Development Studios." Geoforum 51 (2014): 15-26.Visit Scotland. “Scotland Voted Best Cinematic Destination in the World.” 2015. <https://www.visitscotland.com/blog/films/scotland-voted-best-cinematic-destination-in-the-world/>.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
We offer discounts on all premium plans for authors whose works are included in thematic literature selections. Contact us to get a unique promo code!

To the bibliography