burning at the centre of time

I would like to note, idly, that 'why don't they just make things available in every country, that would stop a lot of piracy' is, unfortunately, more difficult than it sounds. Mostly due to...DING...other parts of the entertainment industry and the government(s) involved!
( in case you're not interested. )

This internal bureaucracy nightmare is what's actually harming their revenue stream, and this is partially why I have very few problems wrt television and film piracy. (The other part is that honestly, your money is not going to most of the people who worked the hardest on the film or show. They've already been paid and they're not seeing anything more of it.)

They need to change the system before they can expect to see less piracy. Full stop. Open access (paid or not) is where things are going, and anyone who's not on that train will eventually be left behind, no matter how hard they kick and scream right now.

I made a note of that in nearly every paper I did as part of my MA, not that anyone important was listening.

Feeling disheartened about UK media, really, with the announcement that there will not be a full DW series in 2012 (though the 14 episode Matt Smith commission apparently still stands) and my suspicions that the Private Eye gossip expose had some truth in it.

It's disheartening to think that the management at BBC Wales is shitty, frankly, because that spells danger for a lot of other good things (e.g. Merlin, though Merlin has the benefit of having indie production company Shine behind it as well). If this is how you treat one of your big deals that's doing remarkably well abroad...idek.

Dumbassery, however, abounds on the exec producer level...those people never seem to actually know what a show needs or actually understand what the commissioners or public want either.

That said, to the person who thinks DW has a bunch of money because of the massive merchandising..that's not how it works. The BBC is in a bind, due to the economy and the Tories, a serious, serious cash bind. That merch money is first of all, planned for, and secondly, doesn't necessarily go back into the show. It goes into the BBC pot and maybe saves a Gardeners' World presenter from losing hir job, or funds a BBC Four docudrama, or prints another issue of Top Gear magazine.

So. Quite disappointed. Rarely before has my Karen Gillan vs. the camera image seemed more fitting. Though the DT 'arse' icon was a close second.

ETA: I should note that this comes hot on the heels of news that the BBC will be selling the iconic Television Centre building in London once they move to their new digs in Salford. Personally, I could care less about this bit, as I am so very for the decentralising of UK media production, and feel this would be a great step, but I'm not emotionally invested in TVC like a native Briton. In context, also having to admit to the UK public this week that you can't manage to put together another full series of one of your top-of-the-line and publicity/emotionally vital shows does not bode well for the sitch at the Beeb.

After posting a comment or two about it at facetofcathy's post the other day, I'm tempted to write a rebuttal to the _dahne_ bit about how talking about Leverage lighting Aldis Hodge badly is racist is ridiculous.*
Someone at Cathy's post figured out that this refers to thingswithwings' post here, though I don't entirely agree with Megan's logic, and darkrose and deepad make some good addendum and rebuttal points here.

However:
All of us, I think, would agree that the topic is not ridiculous and does reflect on the white-centric nature of Hollywood. Because this is actually a fucking issue in media production, that people are TAUGHT about. Because I was taught about it in theory, for fuck's sake, as an undergraduate.

Anyone who's done study of film/tv in the US knows about standard lighting (e.g. three-point lighting, key-lighting, etc.). These methods of lighting date from the earliest days of Hollywood studio cinema. It shouldn't be rocket science for me to tell you that the basic methodology of lighting for US film and television is only designed to make white people look good...because they weren't LIGHTING people of colour then.

Particularly 'difficult'...in a relative sense of needing to throw out the existing book...is lighting people with darker skin tones, because the play of light and shadow necessary to highlight their features is different due to absorption of light. For people of colour with lighter skin tones (and darker ones), one also must at the very least consider a change of the colour used to light them. Lighting white people often is done with a blue gel...which doesn't flatter a lot of POC.

Fun fact from my undergraduate reading (so of course I now can't find anything that cites it, sigh): Julie Dash had to dress her Daughters of the Dust cast in light pink instead of white, because the lighting she used for her all-black cast made the white not look white...where it would have looked white under a 'standard' blue gel.

Now, the question is--is your white US cinematographer gonna know or care?

Some Western ensemble television shows where one main character is a POC and the rest are white will probably not change their lighting for scenes with the POC or even just the POC hirself due to time constraints and/or budget. Figuring out how to light hir in scenes with white characters would be complex. (I'm not saying that is right. I am just speculating as to why.)

Leverage does have really bad lighting overall, imho. But where Aldis Hodge also looks absolutely TERRIBLE in comparison to non-POCs is in the intentionally-dark lighting/tint of Supernatural; it makes the white mains look edgy, but completely washes out his features. As I said in Cathy's post, I'm surprised it met network colour standards at all. My guess is that it didn't and was fixed to do so. Another example of lighting for a white cast that doesn't do particularly well: this CJ (Allison Janney) and Charlie (Dule Hill) shot/reverse-shot from The West Wing. The caps here look unaltered to me save for size.

Anyway, my point being: this is an actual area of discussion in film and television production. Has been for DECADES. It is not ridiculous or facetious.

And in my mind, poorly lighting people with dark skin tones is cheap or lazy. But it doesn't surprise me.

Disclaimer: I am not a lighting designer, though a good friend of mine is. My knowledge of lighting is for the screen and is fairly limited. If I have fucked anything up here, please let me know.

Right, remind me to never publicly criticise GRRM ever again.

Bash.

ETA: A bit of an explanation. GRRM made a post about how he needed to take a cold shower after getting the twelve casting tapes for a (female) Game of Thrones character. knitmeapony tweeted her disgust. I RTed mine, then went back and deconstructed my feelings about it, on Twitter. And I was engaged by some GRRM fans, not about misogyny, but about how it was okaaaaay for him to be so involved in the production, for a couple of BS reasons. (I do not refer to raanve's tweets, which were ace.)

DW readers, if you're interested in more discussion and explanation, there's stuff going on in the LJ crosspost's comments!