From Cinematography to Mobile Online (up-and- down

Transcription

From Cinematography to Mobile Online (up-anddown-loading of) Images Re-Production:
Two Logics of Glocal (Re-)Production of Asian
Local Idiosyncrasies?1
On-Kwok Lai / Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan.
Abstract
Asian cultural products are becoming popular in various media representations: Hong Kong’s Kung Fu
movie, Korean TV drama and Japanese anime and magna…. Highlighting the process and impact of the
en-culturalization of, and for, the narration of specific geo-national experience / identity through new
media choreography of motion pictures and local images, this paper attempts to draw the contours of
and contradictions in, multiculturalism, diversification and hybridization, in Asia’s new media space.
Thanks to new media technologies, the monopolistic position of global motion pictures production, and
cultural representation of the localness, by the "big seven" major Hollywood studios, is being
challenged by individual producers who use new media (Internet and/or mobile technologies via cyberspace) to convey their stories (mostly freely) to society at large, say, the phenomenal popularity of
YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/) is just one of such initiatives.
This paper has four parts. After an introduction on the global re-production of local cultural
idiosyncrasies, represented by the blockbuster film production of the motion pictures giants (of Motion
Pictures Association America), Part 2 examines the emergence of new media enhanced audio-visual reproduction of local images (footages) and stories, highlighting the real time or timely representation of
local uniqueness. Part 3 critical discusses the two logics of motion picture / local story production,
respectively by multinational corporations (MNCs) and cyber-producers, with specific reference to the
intensification and differentiation processes of cultural re-production in the contesting media spaces.
The paper ends with critical remarks on the processes of free-production / broadcasting of local stories
and their impacts on glocal cultural spaces.
1.Globalization and Industrialization of Local Cultural Idiosyncrasies?
Motion pictures developed at the beginning of last century and since then, the industrialization
of motion pictures (film industry) becomes a dominant force in shaping and redefining cultural meaning
1
This paper is derived from an on-going project funded by Special Research Fund, Kwansei Gakuin University
(KGU). The author would like to thank KGU, collegial supports from The University of Hong Kong (Social Work &
Social Administration), as well as continuing support from Prof. Shin-Dong Kim. The normal disclaimer applies.
Asia Culture Forum 2006 /
Mobile and Popular Culture
Session 6 “Extension of Mobile Media”
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of local, regional, as well as national, identities of many ethnics and racial groups, gender and humanity at
large. Yet, in the 21st Century, new media, informational and communication technologies (ICT) and the
Internet, are reshaping the landscape of audio-visual re-presentations, in terms of video footages. How the
emergence of new media challenges the old media industries is our focus of this paper. In the following
sections, an exploration takes place.
1.1 Political Economy of Global Cultural - Media Industries
Though motion pictures shown in cinemas have a long history, the recent development of film
industry has been attempting to capture, or to couple with other means of multi-media services, as the
main content provider for leisure and entertainment. But compared with other media presentations of
visual art, film industry is a large scale teamwork production with large capital, labor and technologies
intensive inputs, usually attached with movie stars and celebrities, and more recently, it has been making
more special multi-media effects with computer animation; all these make the production cost (and the
financing of film production) increase substantially beyond the reach of single producer (Germann 2005).
In addition, to distribute or release a film, it is a tortuous process which is following mostly
the outdated network of mass audience based cinemas in the region. It is a one-to-many targeting exercise.
The redundancy of is that one single film to cater many audiences in the regional or global network
within a specific (two weeks) time frame for screening and the extended lead time for production limit the
flexibility, as well as the adaptability, of film production.
Contradictory to the calling for more competition and economic liberalization in a globalizing
world, cultural and media industries have been consolidating to a handful of major global players for
content provision. One of the major changes for the communication and media industries in last few years
is the concentration of control (cross-)over the ownership, production and delivery channels, through
mergers and acquisitions – this is one of the key features for the first decade of 21st Century information
age! Hence, the coupling of media content (news, films, TV shows) with media distribution (TV or radio
networks, cable, Internet services and alike) further reinforces the control of global media oligarchies
over the audience, as they use their sales and network power to champion their way into personal spaces
(through your iPod, MP3 and/or mobile phone).
Film production in 21st Century has to be globally financed and more importantly, globally
marketed and released. With the US sluggish cinema market (Fig.1), worldwide box office held steady at
$23.24 billion in 2005, down 7.9% from 2004’s peak, the worldwide box office reflected a 46% growth
over 2000 (Fig.2). Yet, US box office for 2005 saturated at $8.99 billion. For the fourth straight year, the
cumulative box office continues to hold near $9 billion. What is interesting is the decrease in US
admission paralleling the increase in Asia Pacific: US admissions were down 8.7% in 2005, dropping to
1.40 billion (from 1.54 billion in 2004), Asia-Pacific went up 4% (19 million), in spite of the decrease of
global admissions of almost 2% to 7.45 billion.(Fig.3 and 4; see MPAA 2006)
--------------------------------Fig.1, 2, 3, 4 about here
--------------------------------Asia Culture Forum 2006 /
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Making money in the old media (motion pictures) and new media age requires more than
capital and wealth-in-reserve: despite its world class expertise, media guru like Steven Spielberg and his
capital financing in making blockbusters, in December 2005, DreamWorks, Hollywood's youngest studio,
sold itself to Viacom, It made some money, but could not afford to keep its over billion-dollar investment
in films (The Economist, 19.January 2006).
Despite these structural limitations, film industry is still the powerhouse for entertaining and
leisure activities, as it captures most of the investment for the mediated cultural reproduction, visual
stories, as well as the imagination of the creative artists and professionals.
1.2 The Making of Asian Popular Culture: Iconography and Styles
Thanks to Asian economic miracle, people in the Asia’s newly industrializing economies
(NIEs) can enjoy better quality of life, with an increasing appetite for leisure and cultural consumption
(Chua, Ed. 2000; Mathew and Lui, Ed. 2002). More specific, the increasing demands for cultural products
are nurturing the emergence of popular culture: pop music and other mediated cultural experience with
the mass media like cinemas, TV and radio, and more recently the use of MP3 and iPod for multimedia
enjoyment.
In the last few decades, the popular cultural productions made in Asia and/or made by Asian
producers, available in various forms of media and channels, are important not just in terms of their
competitiveness with their Western (foreign) counterparts in the global market place, but also they
represent their own identity and idiosyncrasies for creativity on their way(s) to modernization: Japanese
animations by Osamu Tezuka (Fig.5) and the more recent ones by Hayao Miyazaki (Fig.6), side-by-side
with the characters of Hello-Kitty (Fig.7) and the Pokemon (Fig.8); Hong Kong’s Kung-Fu / Triad movies
from 1970s:
Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu, Jackie Chan’s Kung-Fu comedy, John Wu’s triad chivalry action film, and Stephan
Chow’s computer-graphic enhanced Kung-Fu comedy; Taiwan’s Edward Yang (楊德昌)and Hau HsiaoHsien(侯孝賢); , and Ang Lee’s (from Taiwan) Crouching Tiger – Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍, Columbia
Pictures, 2000; Fig.9), Bruce Lee’s (Hong Kong) Kung Fu, Jackie Chan’s (成龍 ) Kung Fu comedy, and
Stephen Chow’s C-G Kung-Fu Hustle (功夫, Columbia Pictures 2004) comedy (Fig.10), and the recent
‘Korean wave’ in film and music (Leong 2003, Shim 2006). For the animations by Takezuka and
Miyazaki, they have social and environmental messages and concerns regarding social future,
respectively; whereas the Hello-Kitty, matching many elements of Japanese culture, displays the
simplicity and a strange allure that invites individual representation (Richardson 2004).
---------------------------------------------Fig.5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 about here
----------------------------------------------
2. Local Do-It-Yourself Re-Production of Cultural Idiosyncrasies: YouTube and Beyond
New media is about the flow and trafficking of digitized products and information, as well as
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the bandwidth for media traffic. Here, media traffic is the new currency, while content (which ranges
from multi-million Hollywood blockbuster movie to the home-grown, users-self-produced videos
available for free in YouTube, Myspace, etc.) is the new wealth. For instance, YouTube, based in San
Mateo, California, specializes in serving up short videos created by everyday people. Its popularity is
with more than 100 million video showings daily. This section examines the dynamics in this emerging
cyberspace and dynamics.
2.1 The Contours of Videoscape in Cyberspaces
Recent US media statistics show that 3 out of 5 Internet users are watching online videos,
typically twice a day. On MySpace, its audience on average watches 39 videos a month, or just over 1
times a day. From the comScore Media Metrix (2006/9/27), it has been confirmed that , without doublecounting, in July 2006, 37.4 million unique individuals watched a video on MySpace, and collective they
collectively watched 1.4 billion videos. By comparison, the audience on Yahoo! watched 812 million
video streams, making Yahoo! the No. 2 most popular video site as measured by video streams; followed
by YouTube, which generated 649 million video streams. Yet, Yahoo! came first as measured by unique
streamers (similar to unique visitors), though barely beats out MySpace (Fig.11).
--------------------------Fig.11 around here
--------------------------Contrasting to the sluggish global (US in particular) market for cinema admission trend
(Fig.??), online video becomes a source for entertainment in and beyond cyberspace. Video streamed or
downloaded become a norm in the cyberspace. For instance, more than 106.5 million people, or about 3
out of every 5 U.S. Internet users, streamed or downloaded video during the month of July 2006. In total,
nearly 7.2 billion videos were streamed or downloaded by U.S. Internet users for an average of 67
streams per streamer, which means the typical video streamer viewed an average of more than two
streams per day (comScore 2996/9/27). Comparatively, Yahoo! Sites ranked as the top property by unique
U.S. streamers with 37.9 million, followed very closely by MySpace, which attracted 37.4 million U.S.
streamers. Fast-rising YouTube ranked third with 30.5 million U.S. streamers, followed by the Time
Warner Network (25.7 million U.S. streamers) and Microsoft Sites (16.2 U.S. million streamers).
The internet site for Social Networking, MySpace led the number of streaming among U.S.
internet users (comScore 2006/9/27; Francisco 2006): the site ranks first among all sites in individual
video streams initiated by U.S. users with nearly 1.5 billion streams, which represented 20 percent of all
videos streamed by U.S. Internet users in July 2006. The typical U.S. streamer on MySpace initiated an
average of 39 streams during the course of the month, or slightly more than one per day. Yahoo! Sites
ranked second in total streams initiated by U.S. users with 812 million, followed by YouTube with 649
million (See Fig.11).
For YouTube, ranked No. 3, it has generated 649 million video streams in July 2006. So
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dominant was MySpace that it accounted for 20% of the 7.2 billion video streams across the Web,2 (only
after six month launched into video market since late 2005 (Fig.12, 13, 14).
---------------------------------Fig.12, 13, 14 about here
----------------------------------
2.2 MySpace versus YouTube?
Recently, and most noteworthy, however, is the popularity of online video, which continued to
gain steam in July, as Youtube.com broke into the comScore Media Metrix Top 50 for the first time,
debuting at number 40 with 16 million visitors, a 20-percent increase from June to July 2006. Videomania also drove a two-fold increase in traffic to MySpace Videos, which had 20 million visitors, trailing
only Yahoo! Video with 21.1 million visitors up 28% during the same period (comScore, 2006/8/15).
According to the comScore Media Metrix’s press release (2006/8/15) “Consumers clearly
view video as one of the most accessible, interesting and entertaining sources of content on the Web.”
Furthermore, the trends of/for in the cyberspace indicate that online video is emerging from its infancy
and entering the mainstream. Hence, the further popularization of online video – under the condition that
it is gaining popularity among people, and emerges as parity with tradition mode of motion pictures
broadcasting at cinema and theatre. More producers for multimedia, and advertisers anchoring the media,
are responding to this trend, which means advertising dollars will continue to migrate online where
consumers can be targeted with efficiency; all these engender the further commercialization of online
video with differential contents produced by international media giants and their counterparts of the
home-made one.
A problem for traditional media conglomerates, like Warner Brother and its diversified
entertainment peers is that there was probably no way to predict the dynamics and fluidity of cyberspace,
as what a phenomenon MySpace an YouTube would become. These sites are somewhat unique with a
collection of simple yet somewhat unfocused layouts, but they still have been attracting such a large
number of visitors. In short, the successful stories of new media platforms or gateways, like YouTube and
Facebook, within the larger context of social networking sites, are still largely either unknown or
incomprehensible.
In the meantime, however, the traditional film industries (like Time Warner) must still compete
not just for mass media of TV broadcasting cabled and/or wireless, cinema’s admission and DVD sales,
but also the new media of cyberspace for online (up-and-downloadable) video and film. Hence, the still
un-even media economy (that with new media but an old oligarchy structure) and the further
fragmentation of media market will shape the course of new media transformation in the coming decades.
2
There is no double counting for comScore Media Matrix: MySpace's figures do not include YouTube videos viewed
on MySpace. The views are only of the site's own videos viewed either on their property or embedded across the Web
on blogs or on distribution partners. So, YouTube's 649 million video streams count the videos viewed on YouTube as
well as blogs that might have embedded a YouTube video. (Francisco 2006)
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2.3 Commercialization of DIY Re-Production of Cultural Idiosyncrasies
There are two major dynamics which will be shaping the development of the online video
market, namely, the user-generated content and the pricing – business model(s).
For the user-generated contents, they range from individual narcissistic video footages to event-based
professional production (available as a preview version). It has been often asserted that ICT empower
individuals to be seen and demonstratively powerful in the cyberspace.
By the same token, media and event-organizing giants are now catching up, attempting to
colonial the cyberspaces. For instance, Frito-Lay (snack food company) and Chevrolet (car maker), the
sponsors for US Super Bowl, will capitalize on the footages and ideas created by user-generated content,
with advertisement-making contexts, with winners getting money and prizes, and their spots used as part
of Super Bowl XLI campaigns. Some of the spots will also appear on-and-offline, giving them a chance
to be spread around. In addition, the National Football League expects to announce rules for its own
advertisement contest in the same period. So it is fair to say that it is a matter of short time before
homemade commercials appear during the Super Bowl (Story 2006/9/27).
For the online video exchanges and their marketization processes, in late August 2006, Sony’s
US$65 million acquisition for Grouper, a profitless video-sharing company with negligible (1%) market
share, has helped establish a benchmark price-tag for other online video portals, not least is the online
video market leader YouTube (43% of the market share) may be worth. The San Mateo, Califonia-based
YouTube, which was founded in February 2005 (since 10.October, solely owned by Google), had over 16
million unique users per month in August 2006 was therefore estimated worth over US$1 Billion
(Sandoval 2006). The estimation was based on another estimation that Facebook, the second-largest
social networking site next to MySpace, has a monthly audience of more than 9 million and has rejected
an offer of $750 million from Viacom, (Facebook was holding out for $2 billion, according to report). But
the real question is, if YouTube is really worth over US$1 billion, then that reduces the number of
companies that could afford to buy it – this pricing should be read against the risks associated with the
costing for dealing with lawsuits from IP infringements (see below).
Google’s complete take over of YouTube with US$1.65 billion highlights the likely synergy
between the searching machine (with its text sensitive advertisement sense) and the video-exchange
regime. For YouTube, it has 100 million videos are available on any given day, with 65,000 new videos
added every day and it cited numbers from Nielsen Net Ratings, claiming 20 million unique visitors a
month (Krazit 2006/10/10).
Pricing the emerging online video portals become a new investment game for not just venture
capitals but also the old and new media giants, against the context that over 200 online video portalcompanies are providing free to up-and-downloading sites for user-submitted-contents /videos for
exchange, in the bourgeoning market of online video sharing, allowing the public to post homemade
videos to the Web, where the videos' creators can be seen audio-visual performance of various kinds.
One major obvious problem of the online video portals business practice is the quest for
business model(s) which enables profit-making. Since the barriers to enter the cyberworld for video
exchanges are relatively few, how to be commercially viable is the challenge for the portal providers. Two
dominant business models are in place: advertisement sponsorship and/or subscription (fee charging
membership and/or payment per viewing). Recently, YouTube offers advertising through promotion,
sponsorship and banner advertisements, and more options for public relation related campaign will be
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offered.
But up-to-now, even the YouTube and MySpace are still not at the preferred profitable ones.
Yet, critics of online video business cautioned against investing heavily in this medium, and more
specifically, the so-called viral advertising campaigns that are spread by users beyond their initial point of
distribution on YouTube or other video-sharing sites (Retuers 2006/9/29).
In spite of the difficulties to generate good profits for market leaders like YouTube and
MySpace, the online video exchanges are an exploding one, and there is more competition than ever. For
instance, in September 2006, Yahoo and Current TV had teamed up to create a site Yahoo Current
Network, for both user-generated contents, and the professional studios, with service revenues generated
from advertisement sales (Reuters 2006/9/20a).
At the same time, YouTube is recruiting performers for its mainstreaming into music and video
industries, teaming up with major marketing and media partners for the competition, with it new
initiatives for YouTube Underground, a portal for music video sharing (Reuters 2006/9/20b), whilst
Microsoft's new Soapbox on MSN Video site challenges the YouTube, with no advertisements, offering
services for upload home-made videos, integrating with Windows Liver Messenger for video, text and
blogs sharing, in addition to its live webcasts for concerts via MSN (Mills 2006/9/19; Fig.15).
------------------------Fig.15 about Here
-------------------------
2.4 Intellectual Property Rights as Boundaries of Borderless New Media
The more fundamental structure sets the limits of online video market is that online videos are
against the tightening up of the intellectual property regime at global level, as championed by TNCs of
old and new media and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
A step forward than the (ab)normal form of piracy of films and videos in Asia (Taiwan and
mainland China in particular, Shiu 2006; Wang et al. 2003), the piracy practices in user-generated
contents take a more common one; in fact it is a default common practice to use copyright protected
images and sound-track without proper license nor acknowledgement – it should be fair to say that the
regime for application and granting for rightful use of copyrights materials is historically outdated, if not
dysfunctional!
Crtics on online video sharing, or more specifically on the YouTube, highlights that “they are
just breaking the law…. The only reason it hasn't been sued yet is because there is nobody with big
money to sue." (Retuers 2006/9/29).
One of the major problems for the present online video regime, due to the home-made nature,
is that users often post copyright materials, including audio sound track and/or video footages produced
by established media companies. In short, the media or portals for online video exchanges, like YouTube,
are at the fringes of intellectual rights (IP) violations or infringement. One such as lawsuits is the one
against YouTube that a TV journalist in Los Angeles alleged that it violated copyright by posting without
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permission a 1992 video he shot of the beating of trucker Reginald Denny (Sandoval, 2660/7/19).
In short, it is a norm in online video that many users post copyright works without recognizing
nor acknowledging their potential infringement of intellectual property – which in some instances, could
lead to the expensive battles among involving agencies. Perhaps because of the phantom of IP, YouTube,
which has nearly one-third of the U.S. Web video audience, three times that of Google, or twice that of
News Corp.'s MySpace, has been working on signing licensing deals with music companies and TV
networks to ensure they are paid when users view their content. In September 2006 YouTube unveiled its
first deal to distribute music videos legally from a major music company by agreeing a deal with Warner
Music Group (Reteurs 2006/9/29).
As user-generated video exchange will still dominating cyberspace, and seemingly borderless,
one of the limits to set the boundaries of these practices is the regime of IP. Yet, the online exchange
based upon user-generated videos as a business model, it is rightly to note that, for the portals and
companies concern, “a time bomb and a gold mine waiting to happen” (Sandoval 2006/8/24).
The success of online video sharing, the YouTube case in particular, is as enigmatic as the everexpanding cyberspace, it is more like a black hole of the information and the addiction of it… more and
more people are drawn into it. It is phenomenal as well as historical, yet no full account can address the
whole and fully story of its ascendancy. With the full acquisition from Google, YouTube-Google will
enjoy the advantages over text and video searches, as well as their text and image sensitive advertising
sense. Thanks to new media technologies, three markets (or spheres of inter-facing) are developing:
online videos sharing (for profit or just exchange solely) – the MySpace and YouTube, high-quality cableInternet TV and home cinema with video-on-demand, and (versus) the high-tech portable mobile video
broadcasting and sharing. Undoubtedly, the high-quality in terms of better technology, interface, content,
and the flexibility (video-on-demand) for, and the mobility (mobile digital broadcasting) of, audio-visual
experience and enjoyment will shape the development of online video production and consumption.
3.Two Logics and Regimes of Global Re-Production of the Localness?
From the phenomenal YouTube(-Google) and MySpace, we witness the trend of the new
media enhanced audio-visual production of local images (footages) and stories, with real
time and round-the-clock re-presentations of local uniqueness. Contrasting to the TNCs driven cultural
reproduction logics and regimes, there are alternatives from cyber-users-producers; all these facilitate the
intensification and differentiation processes of cultural re-production in the contesting media spaces.
3.1. Contesting Media-scape: DIY Challenges TNCs Media Production
On- and off-line, round-the-clock and in real time, cyber-cultural activists are critical in
shaping the media-scape, in and beyond the cyberspace. This is also contributory to local idiosyncratic
cultural (re-) production, ranging from narcissistic self imaging, to just-in-time socio-political events
reportage.
Three of the most important aspects of online video exchange regime are: its spontaneous
timeliness (real time and just-in-time), it coverage and repercussion at global scale, as well as its
longevity to keeping the video images and footages (archiving function) for a long term beyond optimal
attention span of viewers.
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Despite the low capital and low-tech (mostly phone-camera or low definition video-camera)
production, or in most cases, no-post-production of audio-video footage, the multiplying effect and the
impact of this type of home-made or user-generated contents in and beyond cyberspace should not be
underestimated, as these have positive outcomes in two major ways: for the producers themselves, a form
of self-expression, and the viewers, a closer appreciation of the producer’s re-presentation of his/her/their
life world, from which stimulations and/or ideas for artistic cultural production evolves.
The fact that online video exchanges as part of the social reciprocity and/or market dynamics
reflects the cyberspace of its related image of individualism, profit-seeking, self-promotion and greed….
The ever increasing of both wired and wireless communications in volume, bandwidth and frequency can
help to develop the size, power base and influence of a critical mass for new alternative cultural
reproduction in cyberspace.
Cyberspace provides good information with hyper-links to other informative sites, and a safe
haven as well as embryo for people to have imaginative and innovative (sometimes humorous) encounters,
social learning, with cultural differences in/through visual choreographies. This new features are very
different from the established mass media, cultural industries driven mass popular culture (under the
capitalist hegemonic media regime). It was not possible for people to be actively engaged in (even in the
local cultural production), except passively fed by the mass media and cultural industries. In other words,
the cyberspace (for novice as well as experienced cultural images producers) is a mutual learning by/with
doing, user-generating-content -oriented media at both individual and collective levels – they can act with
just a few clicks, up-and-download their own (or other’s) cultural re-production.
More specific, YouTube-Google and MySpace highlight the importance of e-platform or
network where visual as well as local cultural idiosyncrasies in terms of communicative symbols, images,
ideas, messages and knowledge are archived and exchanged, online and during real time, for viewers.
They can produce and develop new stories and video footages, asking questions, exchange views and
even using other media (like blogs) to engage onto the specific user-content production. Hence,
cyberspace serves as an interactive communication media for local video culture(s) producers at the
global scale. Apart from online video exchanges, cyberspace is also strategically instrumental for
globalization of local ideas and images, challenging the established regime of mass media and cultural
industries (like MTV and film production). In this way, user-generated videos are at least to some extent
first and foremost, new communicative identities for the video producers, second, a new re-production
mode of local cultural idiosyncrasies, and last but not least making new contents and transferring them for
the glocal enlightenment project.
3.2 The (New) Media Transformation: Chaotic mediated Cultural Re-Presentation?
The processes of the transnationalization of new media, cross-cultural representations and the
mediated cultural artefacts in/from export and hosting localities can be demonstrated in not just the cyberpowered YouTube(-Google) and MySpace, but also the recent ‘Korean wave’. Contrasting to the
Hollywood Big Sevens, the success of South Korean movie and TV drama series in Asia though largely a
positive result of the reengineering of the film making machinery, with timely governmental intervention,
business interests and the availability of media professionals and good management, it has been heavily
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also dependent on the hosting countries’ favourable socio-economic and political conditions, with the
emergence of people’s curiosity about (North-South) Korean culture and the shift of consumers’ taste.
Perhaps, the hosting countries socio-economic conditions are important in shaping the acceptance of the
mediated representation of the foreign ‘local idiosyncrasies’.
The Korean wave is challenging the established prejudices and bias towards local culture(s) by
revitalizing the ethnicity (and in some cases, cultural hybridity) of a particular geo-social space.
Like the prejudice of ‘Orientalist scholar’, outsider-film makers tend to make explicit their
claim about the originality (a form of creative expression?) at the expense of cultural authenticity and
validity, or implicitly use the seven digits budget to top-up their project with the best available costumes,
animations or as in the movie Sayuri (Memoir of a Geisha, SONY Pictures) project, the recreation of the
Geisha district – resembling that of Gion in Kyoto. This logic of global film makers is similar to what
Edward Said (1983) has shown that, despite differences in appearance, the Other reminded a blind spot
on their epistemological map. I think there is equivalence between the Orientalists and global film
makers that:
To specialise in a culture and produce monographs on it does not automatically yi
eld an understanding of that culture. At times the lack of empathy and dehumanisa
tion of the Other were latent and camouflaged in the arduous work the Orientalist
s undertook in editing, classifying and translating Arabic texts. There is no reason
to belittle these contributions. However, Said draws our attention to the larger pictu
re: where such scholarly works are embedded and how they are used not to fatho
m the culture of others but to dominate them. Said points out how Orientalism is
a branch of knowledge maintained and supported as part of a colonial policy, not
as a component of a humanist vision. Thus the motivation itself is suspect. Orienta
list works, grosso modo, confirmed biases and created certain negative images of t
he so-called Orient, Arabs and Islamic peoples (Ghazoul 2004: 124).
Making cultural sensitive motion pictures by the oligopoly of seven big Hollywood studios is
a daunting, if not failing or impossible, task. Yet, the most terrible form of cultural reproduction under the
global oligarchy could be the further cultural misunderstanding and that, shaping the likeliness of cultural
clash. Conversely, online video production regime with user-generated (DIY) content enables an
alternative mode(s) of articulating the specificity (hence sensitivity) for localness, and perhaps there is
more likelihood that the production itself is self-referential and reflexive too.
3.3 Cultural Industries’ driven Hybridity versus DIY Uniqueness?
The dominant cultural industries are characterised by a distinctive set of production and
distribution relations, concentration of capital with a good network of human expertise and marketing
catchments. They are also represented by their output of commercialised, unique or branded, products
with a high aesthetic orientation and symbolic content, reflecting ‘‘the tendency in modern capitalism for
cultural production to be increasingly commodified, while commodities themselves become increasingly
invested with symbolic value’’ (Scott, 2000: 3). For film production, the geo-spatial clustering of the
production functions in certain localities, say, Hollywood in the Southern California is juxtaposing and
Asia Culture Forum 2006 / 10
the geo-spatial fixity anchoring upon the real story-line(s), and eventually to attach with a network of film
distribution across different socio-spatial localities.
But new media production in and beyond cyberspace is distinctively different from the
established one, in terms of its idiosyncrasies, localness, spontaneous-timeliness, and in some case,
narcissism!
For TNCs driven cultural production, in spite of their systematic differentiation (in terms of
scripts and genres), the production side can never fully comprehend the dynamics and sentiments of the
receiving ends (viewers at large), if compared with the users-generated content.
For cyber-cultural producers, they might not work in an industrial mode and is low capital and low tech
(not much computer-generated animation or graphics), but their attempts are made to facilitate the
communications, exchanges and debates between the producers and audiences, in the cyberspace (tags,
blogs or discussion-list).
In other words, given the mega scale and logistic impossibility for the TNCs production team,
and there is no ‘take-2’ after finishing the film (post-)production, the incompatibility between the global
project (for profit making) and the local (as consumers for leisure and entertainment but at the same time
as culture bearers) social agencies is more than obvious.
The thick sophisticated, context specific elaboration of the story might not be the best strategy
for million-dollar film making project, as this might step over the cultural (taboo) mine fields, in the
landscape full of socio-cultural and religious fault-lines, within or between different cultural groups. Our
study of the Sayuri (Memoir of a Geisha) case confirms this (Lai 2006). Perhaps a more cultural sensitive
approach of film making is back- to-the-field, local communities, as demonstrated by the success of
Korean film making or, taking the insights from the exploding cyber-video exchanges.
Referring to South Korean government’s interventionist approach for cultural industries since
the mid-1990s, Jin (2006) observed rightly that Korean film industry has been developing its national
capacity, in terms of scale, media technologies and expertise, themes and stories which are compatible to
the experience of the producing teams (casting and the natural bondage between the story-line and sociocultural logic), to compete with their counterparts in Hollywood. To articulate this strategy more explicitly,
and put it onto the context (and dynamics) of cyberspace, the project of YouTube(-Google) and MySpace
(though some sense of profit-making) has been enabling the nurturing of the embryonic form(s) of
alternative media re-production a glocal domain.
3.4 From Playing Video Games to DIY Hybrid Video Production
Video production for YouTube(-Google) and MySpace represents a cost-effective of
distribution, media choreography of life experience across time and space. The DIY model is historically
gifted by the cyber-fan early exposure to video game – a more creative one, if compared with the scriptsdriven drama TV and film production. In the choreography of video images, and by default, the making or
remaking cultural (re-)presentation in a globalizing world is in actuality facilitating the hybridity of
cultures, unlike the preservation of national heritage or preserving indigenous culture to its pure form (To
mlinson, 1999). The real question is what form and how the hybridity should be structured, and under
what terms (producer’s imagination or creativity, at the expense of authenticity and social norm?) Cultural
diversity resulting from cyberspace is more likely, vis-à-vis the Hollywood one.
Hence, the more creative end of cultural industries, represented by video games production
(for profit or freeware), highlights a more dynamics, flexible, adaptive and tailor-made to consumer
demands, with frequent upgrading of the game versions, with new characters and genres. This is
especially true for the growing spread of pan-Asian culture that transnational culture can move in
many directions, with nomadism between the West and the East, as well as within the Asian region
(Consalvo 2006). The Chinese legends of ‘Three Kingdoms’ (Fig.16) and Journey West - Saiyuki (Fig.17)
have been successful hybrid into Japanese mode of video-interactive game.
-----------------------------Fig.16, 17 about here
-----------------------------Here, it should stress that the extent of the hybridity varies across different media for the (re-)
presentation of culture. Perhaps, popular culture is more ready for the hybridization process, whereas the
more articulated presentation, like film, is yet to be hybridized without the loss of cultural purity /
correctness as seen by local people. For comparison, video game industry is a relatively high hybrid form.
The hybridity in the video game case is: to encompass two types of fusion: the melding of business and
culture, as well as a convergence between Japanese and US interests in these areas. Just like different
national identities have been mixed in the hybrid, so too the realms of business and culture are converging
in novel ways (Consalvo 2006, p.120).
4. Multiculturalism and Diversity in Asian Media Landscape?
Asia has been, and still, the battle ground for cultural struggles against he imperialist powers.
The calling for cultural diversity, or multiculturalism, hence has a historical legacy to confront, on the one
hand. But
for cultural reproduction in various media and be readily available to the general public,
there are yet different regimes for broadcasting-communication in Asia, ranging from open to semiclosure, which are mirroring the extent of the nation state’s interests (for censorship), on the other. The
part ends the paper with several critical remarks.
4.1 Contours of Cultural and Media Landscape in East Asia
Since 1895, Asian states have been in tensions (Jacques 2005), this is the backdrop of the
media landscape in the region. Creativity and innovation for cultural industries need the nurturing of an
open and free society at local level. Despite its fervent promotion of the Internet and attaching an "e" to
virtually all aspects of Singaporean life -- as in e-banking, e-commerce, e-government, e-homes, epoliticking and e-political campaign, the use of the new media (Internet and mobile phone) is still
regulated with the state’s terms.
In Malaysia, most forms of media are tightly controlled through broadcasters and newspapers
hold licenses, which can be revoked at any time if 'undesirable' reports or photographs are published;
whilst in Japan, in spite of its high-tech based society, the regulatory framework for new media and the
cultural industries is still too rigid for advancing its impact on global level.
China presents another paradox: in spite of its national goal for speeding up the modernization
process with advanced and state-of-the-art ICT application, China has a strategic position with a selective
closure for global media, in spite of its WTO membership, that the government requires an advanced d
omestic media system that is controllable for ideological purposes, leading to political and social s
tability. The ban on various films highlights such problem (Barbodza 2006; New24.com 2006). Once est
ablished, the media infrastructure essentially creates a centralized portal in which propaganda strate
gically promotes nation-building programs under the banner of national identity, contributing to ma
intenance of social harmony. In short, the Chinese regime is uneasily positioned against the context of
its dynamic economic growth (Lai 2004; Weber 2005: 798).
Comparatively speaking, South Korea and Taiwan represent a relatively liberal regime of
regulation over new media and the contents they carry. This is might be attributed to a liberalizing regime
of political governance and the political activism at the societal level. In spite of the different regimes of
control over new media in Asia, each regulatory regime suffers from some difficulties. The dynamism of
economic development and the volatility of new media and the wired/wireless communication, as in the
case of China, are incompatible with a straitjacket of nation state’s control. In other words, the
effectiveness of censorship is questionable and the control itself constitutes barriers for national economic
development.
4.2 Local Production + Consumption of Whose Culture(s)?
Gifted by its early modernization, Japanese pop cultural production (anime, comics, characters
and games, even karaoke) has been leading the related consumerism (fordist mode of pop-cultural
production?) in hyper-modernising Asia. Whilst, despite their differential success in making their
economic miracles, Hong Kong and Taiwan have been losing their production-marketing niches for
cultural industries in general and motion pictures in particular.
Historically, for Chinese and overseas Chinese cinema market, Taiwan and Hong Kong
productions are very important (- a street study for China Towns in different parts of the world can show
this, even today). Gifted by it mainland Chinese legacy, Taiwan had achieved high level of film making
(mostly in Mandarin Wuxia-pan, led by King Hu; and Qiong-yao’s romantic love melodrama) in 1960s70s. Hong Kong once achieved its dominance in film production for overseas Chinese cinema market in
1970s and 1980s, demonstrated by Shaw’s Brother and Golden Harvest global strategies for making Hong
Kong movie global.
Yet and despite their gifted celebrity movie stars and directors (mostly brain-drain to
Hollywood’s Big Sevens), as well as the high quality of productions, from Hong Kong and Taiwan,
motion pictures and their cultural industries have never been so poorly strategically organized: the locally
produced films account for less than 20% of the box office – in Taiwanese case, it is estimated that less
than 10% of the motion pictures shown were locally produced. For future: how to revitalize motion
pictures and to promote cultural industries become a real challenge, this is particularly the case for
Taiwan, a greening silicon island in East Asia.
In contrast, the South Korean interventionist approach to cultural industries, as well as the
attempt to synergizing hard and software of the new media (say, mobile digital broadcasting for locally
produced contents). Thanks to its information society approach, in both hard ware production of ICT
production and its application in terms of wireless and wired communication networks, South Korea’s
cultural industries have been further facilitated by the state’s aggressive policy for innovative cultural
industries in media and communication; the most obvious case is the Pushan Film Festival and the project
to making Gwanju city, from the capital of democracy to Asian Capital of Cultural Industries (Lee 2006):
Gwangju Biennale, its aim is the globalization of art and celebrates the diversity. Furthermore, the
Gwangju 2010 city development plan (aided by the C-Korea 2010 of the Ministry of Culture and
Tourism) for future synergy of global-local cultural industries should have demonstrative effect on other
economies in the region. Put it shortly, can Science Parks (in Taiwan and Hong Kong) rejuvenate their
respectively cultural re-productions: the rejuvenation of cultural diversity, as well as the (post)industrialization of diversifying cultures?
4.3 ICT Enhanced Nomadic Flexible Media Production Regime?
Driven by nomadic movements of people, East Asian culture(s) has been historically hybrid
naturally in some form(s), Buddhist praxis, Confucian ideas, and Chinese language(s) are not
unidirectional but interaction and exchanges with reciprocity, like the modern Chinese / Taiwanese is
enhanced by the modern Japanese (in borrowing and translating new foreign words) to comprehend
Western concepts….
But what the present globalization regime shapes in the remaking and reproduction of cultural
representations, aided by the new media, is the hybridity of Asian cultures under a non-Asian processing,
as highlighted in our case study of YouTube(-Google) + MySpce and mega film production. External
forces demonstrated by high-tech media and global financing, achieving global production and
consumption purpose per se, shape and reformulate a new form of ‘alienated’ hybridity; resulting in hightech and high priced media production with low relevance for cultural specificity (and purity?). For
instance, the average cost for the production of ‘Blockbuster’ film was US$96.2 million in 2005, this
includes US$60 million in negative costs (movie stars and production cost) and US$36.2 million in print
and advertising (p&a) costs.
The strong p&a money power drive out competition from other smaller production or there is
no network for the smaller producers to distribute their film (MPAA 2006, Germann 2005). But the new
media might provide alternative platform and spaces for small (non-marketable) productions available for
the public, this is recently also strengthened by the emergence of local film and media festivals, over 600
in 2005, as recorded by the British Council (2006) and one of he obvious candidate is 10-year old Pusan
film festival (http://www.piff.org/).
On the other hand, new media, the internet and mobile communication in particular, threaten
not just the old media of film production and delivery, as shown in the 7% decrease of the Hollywood box
office in 2005 than in 2004 and the slowing growth DVD sales, but also challenging the satellite and
cable systems of companies such as News Corporation and Time Warner (The Economist, 19.January
2006).
Given the advanced application of ICT towards ubiquitous communication network, all
producers and firms in the cultural industries will face with uncertainties over the impacts of new
constellation of ICT such as mobile digital broadcasting, YouTube(-Google), MySpace, MSN-Soapbox,
high definition TV, interactive TV, mobile phone TV and the convergence of wired and wireless, satellite
and terrestrial TV, film, multi-media contents on-and-offline (in the cyberspace) at large, and the mergers
of content and conduit agencies, which would enable programs of choice to be downloaded at will in any
order. Therefore it is impossible to predict the future with any certainty, making investment decisions for
cultural images and media production increasingly risky.
It has been rightly argued that the local should not be seen in distinction to the global,
but that instead both are mutually constitutive – the process of glocalization (Robertson 1995). At this
historical conjuncture, five different yet inter-related aspects of this new epoch of cultural hybrid
representation and nomadic flexible mode cultural re-production of can be highlighted here.
First, the organising and orchestration process for the cultural reproduction is no longer just a
place + national specific, nor solely by the oligarchy of Hollywood’s Big Sevens, it transcend in a global
space of communication (in and out of the cyberspace) – representations to a wider global/regional/local
spaces; and the dynamics of such endeavours are derived from global capitalism. Digital capitalism is one
of such characterisations for the new epoch of development. How to nurture multiculturalism and sociocultural diversity is an imminent challenge for sustainable of cultures and their reproduction.
Second, movie industry (or cultural reproduction at large) is no longer a single medium
enterprise with one input-output, namely, film, that you were only view and consume the movie in cinema,
but it becomes available in many forms: VCD, DVD, YouTube(-Google), MySpace, Podcasting… and
video clips available for on-demand downloadable unto mobile device like PDA and phone (Sylvers
2006).
But the new media has exacerbated the problem of multiple re-presentation of culture(s),
they create a variety of channels, decentralized networks, through which the differences in terms of the
interpretations and images of culture(s) can be exchanged, debated and re-interpreted with ubiquitous inf
ormation flow. Some of the user-generated videos are symbolically, in terms of footage-montage and
mosaic, equivalent to the renowned movie from Wong Kar Wai’s Chung Hing Express (Fig.18)
Whether the global production agency like it or not, transnational media corporations are
more visible to more people and more closely scrutinized than they ever were in the past; and at
the same time, they are more exposed to the socio-cultural (correct?) risk that their representation
of “alien” cultures and religions (Asian, European, American or Islamic) – the recent Islamic
communities protests against the Danish cartoon highlights such reactionary forces against the global
project for the selective hybridity (The Economist, 9.February 2006).
Third, perhaps it is more contextual specific for cultural-linguistic hybridity for ethnic groups
in Asia, the important distinction between ‘local’ and ‘alien/foreign’ though can be systematically blurred
or transcended through an advanced techno-financing global media production regime with new faces
(Asian actresses) and English (as lingua franca), new locality (non Asian), resulting in a blockbuster
film production; but for the audiences at their cultural milieu, the essence and logics of the ‘local
experiences the local’ (being Asian) are in place: they cannot accept their local experience to be
represented in a hybrid form, undermining their socio-cultural ideas and ideals; and the reactionary forces
are obvious exploded onto the cyberspace in and beyond which people can show their own
indigenousness.
Fourth, the point of sale or delivery of the film and the demands of local people (as well as the
government) still shape the destiny of the cultural products as they travel, or being surfed, around the
world. In spite of the ownership, access and digital divides, cyberspace provides the perfect media for
interactive, communicative cultural production of various forms (formats). Yet, it should be point out
that, to be marketable, or available in the cyberspace, in mainland China, Asian (Hong Kong locally
produced, the famous trilogy movie since 2002: Internal Affairs I,II and III, Fig.19) film productions have
changed the name, story-line, characters and the epilogue of the film to suit ‘taste’ of local people and
authority --- perhaps this is one of signatures of Asian cultural landscape!
------------------------Fig.19 about here
------------------------Last but not least, the oppositional forces at the local (regional or national) level are more than
ever to be reactive and mobilized in the struggles with the globalizing forces, using various forms of
protests of video power, as shown or available in the cyberspace, of the Internet and mobile
communication.
Our case studies also points towards some of the difficulties faced by global producers in
making local people to accept the mediated story lines, nor as consumers, to spending their money to vote
for the mega project for the reproduction of the local idiosyncrasies. Perhaps, this is the underlying
dynamics of what makes YouTube(-Google) and MySpace such a phenomenal one. To conclude, the local
interpretation and reproduction of culture in the informational age still counts, as the authenticity,
collective memory and history of the local is the foundation for sustainable culturing of humanity –
people will champion their cultural mission!
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Fig.1: US Box Office
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fig.2: Worldwide Film Industry: Box Office
Fig.3: Worldwide Cinema Admission
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fig.4: US Cinema Admission Trend
Fig.5:
Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka
( Source: http://routt.net/Gelfling/manga/astroboy.html )
http://ja-f.tezuka.co.jp/home.html
Fig.6: Hayao Miyazaki’s Animation
Hayao Miyazaki’s
Howl's Moving Castle
(Hauru no Ugoku Shiro)
( Source: http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/howl/ )
Fig. 7: Hello Kitty (Sanrio Characters)
( Source: http://www.sanrio.co.jp/game/welcome.html )
(Source: http://www.gigglepotz.com/hello_56.jpg )
Fig.8: Pokemon
( Source: http://faqsmedia.ign.com/faqs/image/animelee_pokemon-r-s_engl.gif )
Fig.9: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
( Source: http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00005AVUD.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg)
Fig.10: Kung Fu Hustle (Stephan Chow)
Fig.11
Numbers of Streaming by Internet Sites
Streams initiated
Unique streamers
Streams per
(mm)
(000)
streamer
Total Internet
7,182
106,534
67.4
MySpace
1,459
37,422
39
Yahoo sites
812
37,934
21.4
YouTube
649
30,538
21.2
Time Warner Network
258
25,675
10.1
ROO Group
186
5,841
31.9
Microsoft sites
156
16,227
9.6
Viacom Digital
322
14,077
22.9
Google sites
60
7,520
7.9
Ebaumsworld
67
7,143
9.4
MLB
30
6,442
4.6
Property
( Source: comScore Media Metrix; quoted by B.Francisco, 2006 )
Fig.12: YouTube
Fig.13: YouTube
Fig.14: YouTube in Action!
Fig.15: MSN Soapbox
Fig.16: Video Game ‘Three Kingdom’ (Sino-Japanese Hybridity)
( Source: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00082ZQWW.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg )
Fig.17: Video Games – Journey West Sayuki (Sino-Japanese Hybridity)
( Source: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005ME8O.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg )
Fig.18: WONG Kar-Wai’s ChungKing Express (1994)
( Source: http://www.brigittelin.com/CKEldCover2.jpg )
Fig.19: Internal Affairs I, II, II (2002,2003,2003 Hong Kong, by Andrew Lau)
( Source: http://www.kfccinema.com/reviews/drama/internalaffairs/infernalcover.jpg )
and http://www.infernalaffairs.com/
On-Kwok LAI, Dr. rer. pol., is Professor at the School of Policy Studies,
Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan, honorary professorship in Social Policy and
fellowship in Urban Planning at The University of Hong Kong.
He has taught/researched policy studies and sociology in Germany, China (Hong Kong and Shanghai), and
New Zealand. He publishes over 100 journal papers and book-chapters on environmental, social and urban
issues and policy in Asia and Europe, and has been invited as speaker for conferences of UNESCO, WHO,
iCat Hallym University and Asia’s Future Initiative.

From Cinematography to Mobile Online (up-and- down

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