From Postmodern TVSeries to UGCs: A multimodal analysis

From Postmodern TVSeries to UGCs: A multimodal analysis

ilaria.moschini@unifi.itMoM: Multimodality on the Move Travelling Workshops

Scope of the seminar

1. Decode and encode some kinds of Digital Artefacts • Linguistic code (English language) • Other semiotic codes • Discursive practices

!2. Become familiar with a Toolkit to work with such Artefacts

• Analytical Tools • Technical terminology and jargon • Multimodality (see Reading List)

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

Why multimodality?This interdisciplinary approach anchors socio-cultural analysis to solid bases of linguistic and semiotic analysis

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

Cultural Level !

Culture : “set of semiotic systems, a set of systems of m e a n i n g , a l l o f w h i c h interrelate”

(Halliday and Hasan 1985, 4)

Textual Level !

Semiotic systems: “system[s] of meanings that constitute the ‘reality’ of the culture, […] the higher level stratum to which language is related”

(Halliday 1978, 123)

Digital artefactsFrom Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

From User Generated Contents (UGCs) To Fan Generated Contents

What is a Fan?From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

Fanatic: a person with an obsessive single-minded interest and enthusiasm for a particular activity or cultural object. It is a mid 16th cent. Term from Latin fanaticus ‘of a temple, inspired by a god’, from fanum ‘temple’. The adjective originally described behaviour that might result from possession by a god or a demon.

Fan: a person who has a strong interest in or admiration for a particular sport, art form or famous person. It is the abbreviation of FANATIC - late 19th century term (originally US)

Fan generated…From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

A Fan-fiction is a broadly defined fan labor term for stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction

A Song-fic is a fan-fiction interspersed with the lyrics of a relevant song.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songfic

A Fan-vid is a music video produced by intercutting clips of a movie or television show set to a particular song.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fanvid

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

Henry Jenkins, TED Talk, 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFCLKa0XRlw

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

New kind of relationships? New kind of language?

“Intimate strangers” (Gee and Hayes 2011)

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

Digital media have greatly changed the nature of strong and weak ties. People can be strangers and intimates at the same time.

Language is both an information and a social tool

Published on Sep 18, 2012 Watch it in HD, please!!!!! When I heard this song by "Journey" I thought it was perfect for Damon and Elena and when I found the version of Mariah Carey I decided to make the video. Those words seem to be the thoughts of Elena! :) I hope with all my heart that you'll like my job! W Delena! forever ♥

Fan textual and hermeneutic practices

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

“UGCs re-mediate and re-signify original material through the use of a range of discursive strategies such as imitation, repetition, modification and parody”

(Leppänen 2011)

Such fan artefacts integrate the hermeneutic tradition of fan communities with postmodern diegetic and editing style.

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

A good fanvid is one that is able to render the true spirit of the series or of its characters fo l lowing a hermeneut ic tradition dating back to early s c i ence fi c t i on f a ndoms (Coppa, 2008). !!

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

Fan videos differ from professional music videos because their emphasis is on the visual component, while in MTV videos, the leading semiotic code is music (Coppa, 2008). !

1980s: videotape recorders fostered the spreading of fan videos stemming from the tradition of slideshows projected during fan conventions. TV footages + Music as a comment

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

!Fan-Vid

!

• Music video

• Collage of Images

• Song

Digital Platforms

Meta-textual instantiation of fan-generated artefacts

!Song-Fic

!

• Story

• Characters/setting

• Music/lyrics

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

A Supernatural Music Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VIF_nDbJFI)

[…] When all you got to keep is strongMove along, move along like I know ya do

And even when your hope is goneMove along, move along just to make it through

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

[…] When all you got to keep is strongMove along, move along like I know you doAnd even when your hope is goneMove along, move along just to make it throughMove along(Go on, go on, go on, go on) When everything is wrong we move along(Go on, go on, go on, go on) When everything is wrong, we move alongAlong, along, along […]

Move Along, All American Rejects

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

DIGITAL CO-TEXT: Encoder’s Metatext

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

D I G I TA L C O - T E X T : Receivers’ Feedbacks and Encoder’s Answers

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

Memories, A Supernatural SongFic (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5327170/)

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

SongFics for Damon and Elena (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7206958/2/)

Main semiotic strategies

1. Intertextuality

2. Resemiotization

3. MTV-inspired editing

4. Use of music: lyrics as figure

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

IntertextualityFrom Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

“Horizontal intertextuality” (Kristeva 1986), or what Fairc lough (1992) cal ls “manifest intertextuality,” is the explicit quotation of a text within another text.

“Vertical intertextuality” (Kristeva 1986), or “constitutive intertextuality” (1992: 85), refers to the merging of prior texts into new texts which may assimilate, contradict, or ironically echo them.

ResemiotizationFrom Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

Resemiotization: how meaning making shifts from context to context, from practice to practice, or from one stage of a practice to the next” (Iedema 2003, 41).

CSI Miami, 2002-2012

MTV Style editingFrom Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

Celebration of pace and emotions/ abundant intertextual citations/ disjunctive sequences/ use of music

‘MTV Inspired’ use of musicFrom Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

• Use of hits instead of original themes;

• Foregrounding of the musical comment;

• Focus on both melodies and lyrics.

Miami Vice, 1984

Sound perspectiveFrom Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

Figure: the most important sound, the sound that the listener must identify with and/or react to and/or act upon

Ground: a sound still part of the listener’s social world, but only in a minor and less involved way

Field: a sound treated as existing not in the listener’s social world, but in his or her physical world

Van Leeuwen, 1999

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

CSI Miami, Season 3, episode 1 “The Lost Son”

Assignment guidelines

• Final outputs:

• a UGC

• a contextualising document

• a brief multimodal analysis

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

Analyse/Explain (phase 3)

Contextualise (phase 2)

Create a fanvid/songfic (phase 1)

FanVid: Create a video with a video-editing software, you can use the Supernatural Music Video as a model.

http://youtu.be/6VIF_nDbJFI

SongFic: Write a short SongFic (minimum 500 words - excluding quotations), you c a n u s e M e m o r i e s , A Supernatural SongFic as a model. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5327170/

Write a short presentation of your UGC, as if you were posting it on one of t he d i g i t a l p l a t fo rms (YouTube or Fanfiction.net). Try to reproduce the same kind of language used in the models.

Provide a short compendium of the shared knowledge necessary to decode your U G C ( u s u a l l y t h e s e messages are implicitly a d d r e s s e d t o h i g h l y specialized communities).

1. W h a t i s t h e m a i n communicative purpose of your text?

2. What are the different modes selected to create your UGC? Why you opted for them?

3. How do the chosen semiotic resources create meaning (use the categories from the reading list)?

4. Analyse the micro and/or m a c ro r e s e m i o t i z a t i o n processes we may find in our text (if any).

5. How does the combination of the different modes respect the discursive practices of the most relevant community?

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini

SUBMIT YOUR TEXT

Thank you!

ilaria.moschini@unifi.it

Video Editing Software

• http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/best-free-video-editing-software-9-top-programs-you-should-download-1136264

From Postmodern TvSeries to UGCs - I. Moschini