Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence

Acknowledgments

v i i The genesis for this project began many years ago when I first began thinking about the role of digital media in unsettling traditional definitions of cinema. While the final version of the book bears little resemblance to its origins, I am very grateful to Richard Dienst, Siobhan Somerville, Dino Felluga, Arkady Plotnitsky, and Vincent Leitch for their comments and advice on my work. Other people who have offered suggestions and advice about the project at various stopping points along the way include my colleagues at the University of Illinois, Georgia Tech, and Catholic University: J. P. Telotte, Ramona Curry, Jason Jones, Jay Bolter, Rodney Hill, Lisa Gitelman, Alex Russo, and Susan George. More recently, at Fayetteville State, a number of colleagues have consistently provided steady encouragement, including Ed McShane, Eric Hyman, Dean Swinford, Alison Van Nyhuis, Sarah Frantz, Kim Kirkpatrick, Brenda Hammack, and Sonya Brown. Conversations at conferences and online have been incredibly helpful as I assembled the book in its current form. I am especially grateful to Jonathan Gray, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Jason Rhody, Tim Anderson, Avi Santo, Richard Edwards, Steven Shaviro, Alexandra Juhasz, Patricia Aufderheide, Julia Lesage, Chuck Kleinhans, Jason Mittell, Lisa Nakamura, Michael Newman, Elana Levine, Rachel Thibault, Michael Tucker, David Silver, Tara McPherson, Michele White, Michael Kackman, Nick Rombes, Derek Kompare, Matthew Gold, Chris Cagle, Amy Monaghan, Nels Highberg, and Tama Leaver. Acknowledgments v i i i A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S Toby Miller provided an insightful reading of the manuscript as the project was nearing completion, for which I am very grateful. The work in this book has been informed by the digital media it purports to study. I have made extensive use of blogs, social bookmarking sites, and wikis not only to store research but also to receive feedback and suggestions. To that end, I would like to thank a number of people who have commented on or linked to blog entries where I developed material for this book, including Agnes Varnum, A. J. Schnack, Cynthia Rockwell, Sujewa Ekanayake, Tom Watson, Lance Mannion, Anne Thompson, Karina Longworth, Billie Hara, and David Hudson. I am grateful as well to dozens of friends, old and new, who have always been supportive and even helped me get away form the computer for a few hours. I consider myself lucky to have cultivated so many warm, caring relationships. George Williams, Mike Duvall, Lara Vetter, and Renée Trilling have all remained a wonderful support system . Jessica Banov provided a number of useful suggestions about the cover image and frequently helped me think through some of the key ideas in the book. Andrew Martel, Myron Pitts, Jen Calhoun, Matt Leclercq, Corey Johnson, and the rest of the newspaper gang have provided much needed breaks from work. Antony Grow and Anca Stefan have shown me incredible friendship and warmth throughout my time in Fayetteville. Jim and Chris Hansen were the first people with whom I began having conversations about the movies, discussions that continue to this day. I’d also like to thank Leslie Mitchner at Rutgers University Press for her generous and enthusiastic support of my work throughout this process. I am also extremely grateful to the copyeditor, Eric Schramm, who not only cleaned up my prose considerably but also provided a thoughtful, attentive, and detailed reading that significantly improved the book. Different versions of the discussions on DVDs, portable media players , and special effects have appeared in Post-Identity 5.1 (Winter 2007), Film Criticism 28.2 (Winter 2003–04), and the Journal of Film and Video. I am grateful to the editors of these publications for permitting republication here. Finally, this book would have been impossible to complete without the help of my parents, Charles and Glenda Tryon, and my sister, Kristen, who have never wavered in their support. Reinventing Cinema ...