Thursday 19th May, 6pm-7:30pm
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When Game of Thrones aired its final season of six episodes in 2019, HBO’s Richard Plepler claimed that the creators of the show hadn’t made six episodes of TV, but rather that “[they] have done six movies…The reaction I had while watching them is, ‘I’m watching a movie’.” Because of its big budget, acting calibre, production scope and marketing pushes, Game of Thrones was frequently touted across its eight years as movie-like and cinematic in how it was made by HBO and enjoyed by audiences. It’s not the only show that is given this accolade, either: in addition to HBO’s other big-budget shows, including Westworld, Watchmen and Chernobyl, other series such as Breaking Bad, Stranger Things, Twin Peaks: The Return and The Mandalorian attract critical and commercial attention as television shows that are lauded for their “cinematic” qualities. Given the frequency and inaccuracy of how “cinematic television” is used in this manner, the term garners a mixed response in academia.
This presentation is based on my upcoming book, Cinematic Digital Television: Negotiating the Nexus of Production, Reception and Aesthetics, which tackles these and many other issues head-on. Taking the notion of cinematic television as a serious topic of study, my research assesses how we use and understand the term (or don’t) across a variety of areas and example series. From perspectives of academic criticism, industry and marketing discourse, and audience reception and response, I discuss what cinematic television can mean, how streaming and digital development are involved, and what the dissolution of previously longstanding boundaries between media forms – in this case, film and TV – can mean for how those forms are reconfigured and redefined in 2022 and beyond.
The presentation covers the major aspects of the book and my research project, as I finalise the manuscript for submission to be published at the end of this year. I invite all TV-loving audiences – those within and, especially, outside of academia – to hear my thoughts, and to offer your own. It’ll be a great night, but I can’t promise it’ll be cinematic.
Presenter: Chris Comerford is a Lecturer of Communication and Media at the University of Wollongong, specialising in screen studies, fan studies and digital media. His current research maps cinematic television in relation to production, reception and aesthetic aspects of screen studies, the influence of the digital turn in film and television storytelling, and the benefits of emergent media – including social media, video games and streaming television – in leisure and pedagogy.
Moderator: Brian Yecies