Visible Fictions: Cinema: Television: Video

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Review: When I originally wrote this book in 1982, I never thought that the year 2000 would see it still in print as one of the very few books that deal centrally with the differences and connections between cinema and TV. I had been teaching film studies, but was increasingly interested in understanding TV. So I tried to apply some of the aesthetic theories derived from 'Screen' magazine and elsewhere to TV. Several of the concepts floated here are still in use today.

'Visible Fictions' was published in the same month as my first TV programme as producer was broadcast: between delivering the manuscript and publication, I had, along with some friends been commissionedto make the first cinema series on the new Channel 4 in Britain. For the next 18 years, I worked as an independent producer making TV documentaries on subjects as various as cinema, food, Hong Kong and religious imagery.

Now I am Professor of Moving Image Studies at the Bourenmouth Media School, Bournemouth University, and have just published SEEING THINGS (I.B.Tauris, London & New York, 2000) which explores the many developments in TV, from the era of scarcity to the era of availabliltiy and beyond, taking in such questions as scheduling and graphics, as well as the nature of the medium once again.