1. Introduction – Jonathan Wroot and Andy Willis.- 2. I. The Continuing Significance of Discs in Film Consumption - Jason Scott, ‘Disneyizing Home Entertainment Distribution’.- 3. Andrew James Myers, ‘“Now I am the Master:” Home Video, Canon, and Authorship among George, Lucasfilm, Fox, and Fans’.- 4. Christopher Holliday, ‘Combining Nemo: Pixar Home Media and the DVD of Narrative Integration’.- 5. Jonathan Wroot, ‘Letting the Fans Be Involved: Third Window’s Cultivation of an Audience for Disc Releases’.- 6. Ruari Elkington, ‘The Education Market for Screen Media: DVD in a time of Digital Abundance’.- 7. II. Contexts: Patterns of Distribution, Exhibition and Consumption - Roderik Smits, ‘Film Distribution: A Changing Business’.- 8. Shane O’Sullivan, ‘The Rise of the Feature Documentary – Fact or Fiction?.- 9. Matthew Freeman, ‘Up All Night: The Shifting Roles of Home Media Formats as Transmedia Storytelling’.- 10. Samuel Ward, ‘Between Box Sets and the Set-top Box: The Promotion of On Demand Television in Britain’.- 11. Oliver Carter, ‘A Labour of Love: Fantrepeneurship in Home Video Media Distribution’.- 12. Ksenia Frolova, ‘”To Own or Not to Own?..”: Video on Demand, DVD and Family Everyday Viewing and Consumption Practices’.
Jonathan Wroot is a Lecturer at the University of Greenwich, UK. He teaches classes within film and media studies. His previous research concerns the distribution and marketing of Japanese cinema and he has published numerous journal articles on the topic in Arts and The Market, The East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, Frames, and Participations.
Andy Willis is a Reader in Film Studies at the University of Salford, UK, and Senior Visiting Curator for Film at HOME, Manchester, UK. He is a co-author of The Cinema of Alex de la Iglesia (2007), and the editor of Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond (2004). He is also the co-editor of Defining Cult Movies (2003), Spanish Popular Cinema (2004), East Asian Film Stars (2014), and Chinese Cinemas: International Perspectives (2016).
This book demonstrates, in contrast to statistics that show declining consumption of physical formats, that there has not been a mass shift towards purely digital media. Physical releases such as special editions, DVD box-sets and Blu-Rays are frequently promoted and sought out by consumers. And that past formats such as VHS, Laserdisc and HD-DVD make for sought-after collectible items. These trends are also found within particular genres and niche categories, such as documentary, education and independent film distribution. Through its case studies, this collection makes a distinctive and significant intervention in highlighting the ways in which the film industry has responded to rapidly changing markets. This volume, global in scope, will prove useful to those studying the distribution and exhibition of films, and the economics of the film industry around the world.