Publishing
Recently Amazon has launched its fourth imprint(which is a trade name), Montlake Romance, to compete in the romance-publishing sector. It’s Amazon’s first foray into genre-specific publishing, and could be the greatest.
Amazon's other three imprints makes traditional publishers worry. Amazon launched its AmazonEncore imprint in May 2009. The press release described it as a new program whereby Amazon will use information such as customer reviews on Amazon.com to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors with more potential than their sales may indicate. Amazon will then partner with the authors to re-introduce their books to readers through marketing support and distribution into multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon.com Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, Audible.com, and national and independent bookstores via third-party wholesalers.”
The AmazonCrossing was invented on May 18th 2010, and translated foreign titles into English. It used the same marketing approach as the Encore print.
Last December, Amazon made the Domino Project, which published a series of manifestos. Amazon also sells rights to some titles to Traditional Publishing houses. It recently sold rights to 10 titles from the Encore and Crossing imprints to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
What does this mean?
Well publishing was left to the professionals. Before an author had to look for a good publisher and this could often be a great hassle. Now thanks to Amazon and the kindle store anyone can write a book and get it published by themselves. Amanda hocking who is 26 years old has 9 self published books in her name and makes a lot of money from her book sales. There is no publisher out there which could offer Amanda better terms than the kindle store right now. Web fiction authors are releasing their works on the ebook store. So what does this mean for the future? Well more and more web fictional writers will move their work onto the ebook store. Some will be taken off the web. This is obviously going to change the community. Anyone can now be an author and publish their books with the kindle ebook store. So publishers have to buck up their ideas if their industry is going to stay or otherwise it will end up like the music industry after iTunes.
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
Copyright in the News
Currently a website called 'Zediva' is being sued by 6 major studios for copyright infringement, Zediva is an online movie streaming service which rents out movies for £2 online. This is a lot cheaper than the prices at companies such as blockbuster etc... These 6 studios are therefore suing because they believe they are losing business due to the 'illegal' website.
Copyright
Copyright - a statutory right to stop others copying or exploiting authors’ works in various other ways without permission.
Copyright is a part of everyday life, want to upload a Youtube video ? You have to check the copyright details. Want to write a song ? You have to check the copyright details. Want to create a mashup? You have to check the copyright details. To do any of those things and many more you have to check the copyright details, its hard to do much these days without being in danger of breaching the laws of copyright.
I chose copyright as my subject because I know so little about it and it is such a large subject with many different views.
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 creates several different categories of ‘work’ in which copyright can exist, and different owners or authors of works. The principal categories of protected work are:
-Original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works, including photographs.
-Sound recordings, such as tapes, CDs and digital files such as MP3s; films, television and sound broadcasts, and cable programmes.
-The typographical arrangements of published editions.
Copyright does not exist in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work unless it is original. This simply means that some limited work or effort must have gone into the work by its creator and that it was not copied from another work. Even street directories or television programme schedules can attract copyright as literary works.
Owning the copyright in a work gives the owner the exclusive right to:
-Copy the work.
-Issue copies to the public.
-Perform, show or play the work in public.
-Broadcast the work or include it in a cable programme service.
-Make adaptation of the work or do any of the above in relation to an adaptation.
Copyright is a part of everyday life, want to upload a Youtube video ? You have to check the copyright details. Want to write a song ? You have to check the copyright details. Want to create a mashup? You have to check the copyright details. To do any of those things and many more you have to check the copyright details, its hard to do much these days without being in danger of breaching the laws of copyright.
I chose copyright as my subject because I know so little about it and it is such a large subject with many different views.
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 creates several different categories of ‘work’ in which copyright can exist, and different owners or authors of works. The principal categories of protected work are:
-Original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works, including photographs.
-Sound recordings, such as tapes, CDs and digital files such as MP3s; films, television and sound broadcasts, and cable programmes.
-The typographical arrangements of published editions.
Copyright does not exist in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work unless it is original. This simply means that some limited work or effort must have gone into the work by its creator and that it was not copied from another work. Even street directories or television programme schedules can attract copyright as literary works.
Owning the copyright in a work gives the owner the exclusive right to:
-Copy the work.
-Issue copies to the public.
-Perform, show or play the work in public.
-Broadcast the work or include it in a cable programme service.
-Make adaptation of the work or do any of the above in relation to an adaptation.
Monday, 4 April 2011
Mashups
The below video is a mashup of 'Firework' by Katy Perry and 'Grenade' by Bruno Mars. Firstly, the singer has a great voice that is perfect for both of the songs and it pieces them together in a sense. The songs also go very well together because they're sang in the same key and also consist of the same chord progression on the guitar.
This next mashup consists of 'Love the Way You Lie' by Eminem and Rihanna, 'teenage dream' by Katy Perry and 'Dynamite' by Taio Cruz. It is by the same artist as in the first mashup.
Due to copyright, some mashups are taken off youtube. An example is the 'hitler mashups' these were clips of Hitler screaming in German taken from a film called 'downfall'. People would change the subtitles and upload the video translated as Hitler complaining about his xbox live,his wifi connection or any other issues they could think of. However all of the Hitler mashups were removed from youtube by the DMCA.
This next mashup consists of 'Love the Way You Lie' by Eminem and Rihanna, 'teenage dream' by Katy Perry and 'Dynamite' by Taio Cruz. It is by the same artist as in the first mashup.
Due to copyright, some mashups are taken off youtube. An example is the 'hitler mashups' these were clips of Hitler screaming in German taken from a film called 'downfall'. People would change the subtitles and upload the video translated as Hitler complaining about his xbox live,his wifi connection or any other issues they could think of. However all of the Hitler mashups were removed from youtube by the DMCA.
Monday, 7 March 2011
Stop Motion
For those of you that don't know stop motion is a filming technique. A picture is taken of an object and it is moved slightly then another picture is taken, when these are played as a continuous sequence a movement illusion is created.
Stop motion has been a huge part of filming for more than 100 years now, it was originally used in 1898 by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton in which they made a circus of animals come to life. Since then stop motion was used as an illusion technique in films (before CGI). For example in 'The Raiders of The Lost Ark' stop motion is used to create ghosts, or in 'The Terminator' stop motion is used for an alien spaceship scene. Stop Motion also played a huge part it children's animations, it was used in the pilot of south park which was made almost entirely out of construction paper. It was also used to create animation phenomenon 'Pingu' about a penguin.
CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) has effectively rendered stop motion obsolete as a serious special effects tool in feature film but many still use stop motion for its very low price and unique texture. For example Tim Burton used it over CGI in the making of his move 'The Corpse Bride' which was puppet animated in 2005.
To finish, although there are newer and probably more realistic ways of creating the same effect as stop motion they will never be the same and therefore stop motion still remains a key part of the film industry.
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