Category: Book News

Unique Video Resource

[Update, February 23, 2017: 

Due to persistent hacking, we’ve had to remove the list of links, but we have kept our link shortener going. So, individual links to sites should still work. We’re sorry for an inconvenience.]

We’ve just launched a unique online resource that enhances the printed textbook: a listing of all the Web links in the book, with embedded thumbnail versions of video links.

Instructors and students may now sample virtually all the video clips from a single Web page:

  • tvcrit.com/find

Television: Critical Methods and Applications is the first media-studies textbook, to my knowledge, to shorten all the book’s video links to make them much easier to type into a Web browser. For example, you can browse to an All My Children clip by entering the following into your browser:

And you don’t have to struggle through the full URL:

  • http://criticalcommons.org/Members/jbutler/clips/allmychildren.mov/view

Instead, that short URL bounces you over to the clip’s location. Easy peasy.

The listing of all these shortened links–with embedded video–on a single Web page makes it even simpler for instructors and students to check out Television‘s video resources.

We hope this will enrich your experience of Television. Please contact us if you find a broken link.

P.S. Thanks go to Lily Wang for helping prepare the embedded video.

 

Companion Website Launched

Television‘s companion Website has been launched at:

www.routledge.com/cw/butler-9780415883283/

Please note, this link is different from the one originally advertised and the one printed in the book itself. (Hopefully, this will be corrected in future printings.)

The Television companion website offers a full array of online resources for both students and instructors.

Student Resources

  • A Do-it-Yourself Video Editing Exercise allows students to rearrange the order of shots from a TV commercial using video editing software to see how shot order has an impact on the story.
  • A Do-it-Yourself Sound Exercise allows students to apply different music clips to a TV commercial to show how sound impacts images.
  • Tutorials on capturing stills from video and high-definition video, and a clip-DVDtutorial.
  • Glossary of key terms used throughout the book.
  • Interactive Flashcards help students to learn key terms.
  • Full-color Image Gallery of nearly 300 images in the book.
  • Video Links that correspond to the links highlighted in the book.

Instructor Resources

  • PowerPoint Presentations provide lecture outlines for each chapter, and include every image in the book.
  • Sample Chapters from the Third Edition and Fourth Edition.
  • Sample Syllabi help instructors design their course and incorporate the text into their teaching.
  • Sample Student Papers, including narrative analyses and critical analyses of popular television shows.

 

The Fourth Edition Has Arrived!

Television: Critical Methods and Applications has been called the “best textbook on television available today” (Ellen Seiter, USC). Its main goal is to encourage readers to think critically about TV. Written by Jeremy G. Butler and originally published in 1994, its fourth edition was released in December 2011.

Television cover.
Cover for the fourth edition.

Videography, editing, acting, set design, lighting and sound are analyzed and explained in terms of how they are used to tell stories, present news, and sell products to TV viewers.

This student-friendly text provides critical and historical contexts, discussing how critical methods have been applied to the medium and highlighting the evolution of television style through the decades.

Television is illustrated with hundreds of frame grabs from TV programs. A companion Website, hosted by Routlege, presents color versions of these black-and-white figures and augments them with video clips, sample student papers, syllabi, and other material. It is available at:

www.routledge.com/cw/butler-9780415883283

Highlights of the fourth edition include:

  • New chapter and part organization to reflect the current approach to teaching television—with greatly expanded methods and theories chapters.
  • An entirely new chapter on modes of production and their impact on what you see on the screen.
  • Discussions integrated throughout on the latest developments in television’s on-going convergence with other media, such as material on transmedia storytelling and YouTube’s impact on video distribution.
  • Over three hundred printed illustrations, including new and better quality frame grabs of recent television shows and commercials.
  • A companion website featuring color frame grabs, a glossary, flash cards, and editing and sound exercises for students, as well as PowerPoint presentations, sample syllabi and other materials for instructors. Links to online videos that support examples in the text are also provided.

With its distinctive approach to examining television, Television is appropriate for courses in television studies, media criticism, and general critical studies.