application/pdf
2036-461X
19101
10
en
Roberto Braga
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - Regard: Collaborative Authoring for Audiovisual Archives 
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
8
Projects & Abstracts
2008-03-01
2022-11-26
2008-03-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Roberto Braga
2008/03/01
Università di Bologna
2036-461X
10
en
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - Regard: Collaborative Authoring for Audiovisual Archives 
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19101/16884
8
b3 C&Cn10 sez3 115-124 070208        7-02-2008   9:29    Pagina 119




          REGARD: COLLABORATIVE AUTHORING FOR AUDIOVISUAL ARCHIVES
          Roberto Braga, Università di Bologna




             Regard is a project sponsored by the Dipartimento di Musica e Spettacolo of Bologna University
          and coordinated by Prof. Guglielmo Pescatore. It responds to the necessity to develop a set of
          instruments that aims to empower the research and educational activities of all academic depart-
          ments and educational institutions which play a significant role in the audiovisual studies field.
             Regard is a composite technological framework consisting of two different, but strongly inte-
          grated, segments: it is a venue for the distribution of video contents over the Web, as well as a
          new way to handle databases and to use audiovisual contents for didactic and research purposes.
          In fact, it offers a simple and versatile up-dating database through which tabulation setting can be
          re-designed at any time, assuring a flexible cataloguing framework capable of undertaking new-
          fangled and unforeseen types of contents and supplementary implementations.
             Furthermore, the framework has been planned to be reused as a collaborative source for
          research teams and faculty members. Indeed, throughout a Wiki-way mark-up system, users will
          have at their disposal a set of tools for audiovisual editing and collaborative annotation over the
          Web. For example, the technological framework depicted before enables researchers to cut up
          movies, edit them and create new videos with sequences coming from audiovisual contents stored
          in the database. Professors will be in the position to set up detailed lectures focused on a specif-
          ic topic. A particular sequence of a movie, as well as a whole film, would be integrated with a set
          of comments and explanations directly noted down on the audiovisual text. Researchers, as well
          as teachers, will have the possibility to enclose their lessons or annotations related to an analysis
          path and to share them with all the teaching fellows involved in a project.
             On the other hand, students will access an audiovisual text which has been improved with a set
          of additional information and meta-texts that will enhance the study of a subject. Therefore, they
          could generate their own hyper-media path as a backup for term theses and essays. Moreover, the
          system administrator will be able to set up and coordinate a hierarchy of authorized contributors
          in relation to a specific context of annotations, while determining in each case the level of par-
          ticipation of other researchers and re-distribution restrictions of the produced contents. In fact,
          users will achieve the database through a log-in system and will receive video streaming on their
          own machine. Indeed, Regard aims at catering to the needs of students and faculty members who
          are required to handle and use audiovisual contents at any time in any way (for instance, differ-
          ent classrooms furnished with different machines, conference speeches and the like). In order to
          face the vast range of different devices which are widely used, Regard is completely developed
          with open source and free software. In fact, open standards will grant a long-lasting life and a
          powerful integration with the educational tools which are already available to all those educa-
          tional institutions that want to adopt Regard. The application is outwardly developed by Studio
          Baretta and will be released under a GPL license.

          CINÉMA & CIE, no. 10, Spring 2008                                                                119
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        ROBERTO BRAGA

           It is clear that Regard is strongly related to the highly innovative ways of approaching cultural and
        audiovisual products which are currently emerging and becoming more and more accessible through
        an increasingly wider range of different devices. One of the aims of the project is to face the chal-
        lenges offered by new methods of audiovisual fruition, as well as by industry production and distri-
        bution settings, both characterized by de-localization, multi-channel distribution and demand of
        scalability. In fact, Regard will be a perfect tool for the study of the new media arrangement in which
        emerging forms of distribution are re-shaping the audiovisual scenery. In addition to the develop-
        ment of powerful tool for didactic and research, this project would thus also highlight some guide-
        lines linked to two different ways of remediation: the first form of exchange between old and new
        media is strongly related to the preservation, availability and re-use of existing audiovisual heritage
        for new forms of distribution and fruition. Conversely, the second research guideline is related to
        possible ways of creating new contents and new narrative formats able to handle emerging needs of
        accessibility and scalability. The re-use of the audiovisual objects enlightens the necessity to rethink
        the idea of audiovisual museums and archives. Museums and archives are closed forms of preser-
        vation that must be rethought in the digital age, where contents can move away without a physical
        support and can be handled and remixed in very easy ways. In this context, how can the canonical
        way of shaping a museum or an archive be reconfigured? Which is the role of the final user? How
        the user become a pivotal element of new forms of entertainment related to the reuse of an audio-
        visual heritage? The emergence of re-mixed contents is both related to cultural heritage preservation
        and to possibilities of reworking offered by new technologies and digital media. The current inno-
        vation rate has put wide access and device capabilities in the hands of the final consumer of audio-
        visual contents. Media companies are becoming more aware of this transformation from a central-
        ized and hierarchic system of production and distribution to one which takes cross communication
        and bottom-up way of production and diffusion into account. The development of a technological
        framework will be a necessary support to the study and the testing of new narrative structures and
        solutions that are shaping the outlook of the media industry.
           In the ICT context “scalability” refers to the ability to expand a computing solution to support
        larger numbers of users without impacting performance. This term can be useful to describe the
        contemporary media landscape characterized by digital convergence/divergence and multiplat-
        form and multi-channel communication. In this landscape contents are able to flow through tele-
        vision sets, PCs, portable devices such as music players and handheld game consoles, PDA, set-
        top boxes: devices able to grant an increased interaction and personalization of entertainment
        schedules. The power of serialization works as a link between devices. But how could a movie
        migrate from one device to another? Is it just a technological matter or are narrative structures
        also involved in this process of migration? Do specific narrative forms exist in relation to a pecu-
        liar device? Which are the key points in cross-media narrative? And which are the ones which
        should be preserved in order to grant continuity over platforms?
           In this perspective the process of continuous and enduring remediation must be rethought in order
        to take into consideration the transformation of business, consumption and fruition models, which
        are highly linked to the outstanding roles played by consumers in determining the media scenery.
        Thus, the creation of a technological framework which will make the cataloguing of a wide range
        of media contents possible – thereby allowing to share information and to boost collaborative forms
        of research – will be the basis of the study of emerging forms of distribution over the Web that are
        deeply changing the economic model of international audiovisual industries, the entertainment
        structure, as well as cultural and consumption behaviours.

          For contacts and information: guglielmo.pescatore@ unibo.it; roberto.braga@unibo.it

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