Paul Grainge | University of Nottingham (original) (raw)

Books by Paul Grainge

From the trailers and promos that surround film and television to the ads and brand videos that a... more From the trailers and promos that surround film and television to the ads and brand videos that are sought out and shared, promotional media have become a central part of contemporary screen life. Promotional Screen Industries is the first book to explore the sector responsible for this thriving area of media production.

In a wide-ranging analysis, Paul Grainge and Catherine Johnson explore the intermediaries – advertising agencies, television promotion specialists, movie trailer houses, digital design companies – that compete and collaborate in the fluid, fast-moving world of promotional screen work.

Through interview-based fieldwork with companies and practitioners based in the UK, US and China, Promotional Screen Industries encourages us to see promotion as a professional and creative discipline with its own opportunities and challenges. Outlining how shifts in the digital media environment have unsettled the boundaries of ‘promotion’ and ‘content’, the authors provide new insight into the sector, work, strategies and imaginaries of contemporary screen promotion.

With case studies on mobile communication, television, film and live events, this timely book offers a compelling examination of the industrial configurations and media forms, such as ads, apps, promos, trailers, digital shorts, branded entertainment and experiential media, that define promotional screen culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century

"This is a landmark study and a compelling account of productive fieldwork across media in the promotional screen industries. Sets a methodological standard for future production studies research. Its careful, interview-based, multi-year ethnography mines theoretical insights from complex creative labor and institutional practices rather than from textual theories. The book effectively underscores the clear value of scholar-practitioner interactions and systematically integrated cultural-industrial analysis. Well-written and astutely reasoned, a must-read for anyone studying the contemporary media industries."

John T. Caldwell, Professor of Film, Television, and Digital Media, UCLA

"This is a truly superb book that throws down a gauntlet to media studies to expand in interesting, vital ways, and that then picks that gauntlet back up and uses it with skill and panache, showing us how to study promotional screen industries. It’s pathbreaking, exciting, and excellent, full of raw information and smart, thoughtful ideas."

Jonathan Gray, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"Read as a guide to today’s hybridized marketing, branding and advertising screen industries this is undoubtedly an impressive book. But approached as an intervention in the field from two leading members of the ‘paratextual cohort’, it is even more dazzling. Drawing on international fieldwork and an instructive range of case studies, Grainge and Johnson convincingly make the case for just how creative, aesthetically vibrant, and culturally significant the work of the promotional screen industries can be."

Matt Hills, Professor of Film and TV Studies, Aberystwyth University

From the growth in merchandising and product placement to the rise of the movie franchise, brandi... more From the growth in merchandising and product placement to the rise of the movie franchise, branding has become central to the modern blockbuster economy. In a wide-ranging analysis focusing on companies such as Disney,
Dolby, Paramount, New Line and, in particular, Warner Bros., Brand Hollywood provides the first sustained examination of the will-to-brand in the contemporary movie business. Outlining changes in the marketing and media environment
during the 1990s and 2000s, PaulGrainge explores how the logic of branding has
propelled specific kinds of approaches to the status and selling of film. Analysing the practice of branding, the poetics of corporate logos, and the industrial politics surrounding the development of branded texts, properties and spaces – including
franchises ranging from Looney Tunes to Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter to The Matrix – Grainge considers the relation of branding to the emergent principle of ‘total entertainment’.
Employing an interdisciplinary method drawn from film studies, cultural studies and advertising and media studies, Brand Hollywood demonstrates the complexities of selling entertainment in the global media moment, providing a fresh and engaging perspective on branding’s significance for commercial film and the industrial culture from which it is produced.

From the television interstitials that appear between programmes to the brief clips and videos th... more From the television interstitials that appear between programmes to the brief clips and videos that proliferate on YouTube, contemporary screen culture is populated by short-forms that make claims for our attention. Ephemeral Media provides a unique focus on these fleeting but increasingly ubiquitous texts. Through case studies in television and web entertainment, this original book looks at the production of media at the edges, within the junctions, and that surrounds the output of networks and studios. Analysing promos and idents, emergent forms of online TV and web drama, and the burgeoning world of worker- and user-generated content, this new collection examines screen forms that circulate 'between', 'beyond' and 'below' the TV programmes and films traditionally privileged within screen studies. With essays by leading international scholars in television, film and new media studies, as well as interviews with key industry figures, Ephemeral Media explores the practices, strategies and textual forms helping producers (and viewers) negotiate a fast-paced mediascape. Examining dynamics of brevity and evanescence in television and new media, Ephemeral Media provides a new perspective on the transitory, and transitional, nature of screen culture in the early 21st century

Memory and Popular Film uses memory as a specific framework for the cultural study of film. Takin... more Memory and Popular Film uses memory as a specific framework for the cultural study of film. Taking Hollywood as its focus, this timely book provides a sustained, interdisciplinary perspective on memory and film from early cinema to the present.

A wide-ranging introduction to film history, this anthology covers the history of film from 1895 ... more A wide-ranging introduction to film history, this anthology covers the history of film from 1895 to the present day. The book is arranged chronologically, and each chapter contains an introduction by the editors on the key developments within the period, followed by a classic piece of historical research about that period. Various types of film history are undertaken in the articles, so that students can become familiar with different types of film historical research. For example, topics include the history of audiences; exhibition; marketing; censorship; aesthetic history; political history; and historical reception studies. The book is therefore designed to provide students with a narrative history spine while simultaneously introducing them to different approaches to the study and research of film history. Concentrating on the plurality of the 'historical turn' in film studies, this book demonstrates that film history is, and should be, about more than simply key films, directors and movements. Key features *Contains a preface that explains the structure and organisation of the book *Chapter introductions provide a chronological sense of international developments *Includes key articles of film history that illustrate differences in methodological approach, and which are devoted both to America and to a wide range of non-American contexts

Through a series of engaging and interlinked case studies on the news magazine, Hollywood film, b... more Through a series of engaging and interlinked case studies on the news magazine, Hollywood film, brand advertising, and movie colorization, this volume examines the resurgence of the black and white image in the 1990s. At a time when American culture was undergoing both diversification and demystification, the black and white image became the expression of nostalgia as a cultural style and was strategically used in the media to visualize a sense of American memory, heritage, and identity. Challenging the current definition of nostalgia as a mood connected to longing and loss, the author presents it as a cultural mode that commodifies and aestheticizes memory. By examining the politics of stylized nostalgia, this volume provides new insight into the construction, representation, and preservation of American national memory at the turn of the 20th century.

Papers by Paul Grainge

Critial Studies in Media Communication, 2017

This article considers the production of media paratexts beyond the bounds of the entertainment i... more This article considers the production of media paratexts beyond the bounds of the entertainment industry. Specifically, it examines the development of video content strategy by universities, and the paratextual function that video shorts serve in the construction of institutional identity. Taking a production studies approach, the article expands the scope of paratextual analysis by exploring the development of video content by university marketers, and the role of promotional intermediaries in selling video expertise to the education market.

Arts and the Market, 2015

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the professional culture of television marketin... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the professional culture of television marketing in the UK, the sector of arts marketing responsible for the vast majority of programme trailers and channel promos seen on British television screens. Design/methodology/approach – In research approach, it draws on participant observation at Promax UK, the main trade conference and award ceremony of the television marketing community. Developing John Caldwell’s analysis of the cultural practices of worker groups, it uses Promax as a site of study itself, exploring how a key trade gathering forges, legitimates and ritualizes the identity and practice of those involved in television marketing. Findings – Its findings show how Promax transmits industrial lore, not only about “how to do” the job of television marketing but also “how to be” in the professional field. If trade gatherings enable professional communities to express their own values to themselves, Promax members are constructed...

Screen, 2004

This paper considers the industrial and aesthetic function of the studio logos of major entertain... more This paper considers the industrial and aesthetic function of the studio logos of major entertainment companies such as Paramount and Warner Bros, and examines their brand function in responding to change in Hollywood history.

Promotional Screen Industries, 2015

Critical Studies in Television, 2017

This essay examines the promotion of the BBC’s online streaming and download service, iPlayer, as... more This essay examines the promotion of the BBC’s online streaming and download service, iPlayer, as it has been presented to audiences through broadcast television. Analysing transitions in the BBC’s representation of iPlayer, it consider the popular imagination of iPlayer within on-air promos during the 2010s, a period when the Corporation was striving to communicate its role as a digital public service broadcaster ahead of charter review. Examining the paratextual function of iPlayer interstitials, the essay considers the vernacular move from portals and platform mobility in the early 2010s to narratives increasingly based on the ‘need-states’ of audiences.

Screen, 2018

This article examines the ways in which the on-demand service BBC iPlayer became a site for navig... more This article examines the ways in which the on-demand service BBC iPlayer became a site for navigating what it means to be a public service broadcaster in a hybrid TV-digital world. Focusing on a key period of transition for the BBC - bracketed by the publication of the BBC’s strategy document Delivering Quality First (2011) and the anticipation of charter review in 2016 - we consider how BBC iPlayer helped mobilize a set of managerial discourses that informed thinking about the BBC’s online proposition in an age of public service media. Specifically, we argue that a new version of iPlayer, launched in 2014, can be understood as a staging point in the BBC’s attempt to understand and rationalise its role as a digital broadcaster. Reconceived from a catch-up service to an entertainment destination, we examine how the ‘new iPlayer’ catalysed thinking about the meaning of online television - from the internal implications for online commissioning practice and content curation to the broader managerial vision of ‘reinventing public service broadcasting through data’. Informed by critical media industry studies, the article draws on practitioner interviews with senior BBC managers and industry documents to consider the ‘discourses, dispositions and tactics’ that coalesced around BBC iPlayer in a moment when the Corporation was striving to recalibrate its identity, digital content offer, and sense of relevance in a period where distinctions between broadcasting and online were becoming, and remain, increasingly blurred.

Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2017

The purpose of this paper is to examine the professional culture of television marketing in the U... more The purpose of this paper is to examine the professional culture of television marketing in the UK, the sector of arts marketing responsible for the vast majority of programme trailers and channel promos seen on British television screens. In research approach, it draws on participant observation at Promax UK, the main trade conference and award ceremony of the television marketing community. Developing John Caldwell’s analysis of the cultural practices of worker groups, it uses Promax as site of study itself, exploring how a key trade gathering forges, legitimates and ritualizes the identity and practice of those involved in television marketing. Its findings show how Promax transmits industrial lore, not only about ‘how to do’ the job of television marketing but also ‘how to be’ in the professional field. If trade gatherings enable professional communities to express their own values to themselves, Promax members are constructed as ‘TV people’ rather than just ‘marketing people’; the creative work of television marketing is seen as akin to the creative work of television production, and positioned as part of the television industry. The value of the paper is the exploration of television marketing as a professional and creative discipline. This is especially relevant to marketing and media academics who have tended to overlook, or dismiss, the sector and skills of television promotion.

An Introduction and Reader, 2007

John T. Caldwell, Professor of Film, Television, and Digital Media, UCLA

Jonathan Gray, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Matt Hills, Professor of Film and TV Studies, Aberystwyth University

Critial Studies in Media Communication, 2017

Arts and the Market, 2015

Screen, 2004

Promotional Screen Industries, 2015

Critical Studies in Television, 2017

Screen, 2018

Critical Studies in Media Communication, 2017

An Introduction and Reader, 2007

This essay uses a striking example of digital remix promotion - BBC Radio 2’s Elvis ad - to exami... more This essay uses a striking example of digital remix promotion - BBC Radio 2’s Elvis ad - to examine developments in the contemporary branding and broadcast environment. Developing work by John Caldwell, it examines the Elvis ad as a ‘deep text’, a promotionally reflexive articulation by media industries about the nature of corporate media identity and aesthetics. Suggestive of the BBC’s attempt since the late 1990s to make its brand ‘sing’, and relating specifically to the visualization of radio in the digital age, the essay uses the Elvis ad to investigate the performance of network personality in the multi-channel era, the growing role of specialist brand/design companies such as Red Bee Media, and the operational and ontological transition of the BBC to a digital media world. More generally, the essay considers the relation of found-footage promotion to the ‘spatialization of audiovisual culture’.

This article considers the rise of branded entertainment within the contemporary marketing and me... more This article considers the rise of branded entertainment within the contemporary marketing and media environment. Specifically, it examines how mobile phone marketing in the UK has sought to engage consumers and perform the social use of mobile technology through multimedia ad campaigns with an inscribed entertainment value. Focusing on brand campaigns for 3G mobile services that borrow explicitly from reality television (T-Mobile) and Hollywood film (Orange), the article explores the concept of branded entertainment in relation to the ‘popular imagination’ of mobile communication in the late 2000s. In doing so, it examines the particular relation of flash mobs to the production of brand community.

This paper examines the 'promotional surround' of the television series LOST when it was launched... more This paper examines the 'promotional surround' of the television series LOST when it was launched on British television screens by the terrestrial broadcaster Channel 4.