The Talent Management of Indie Authorship: From American Independent Cinema and Short "Films" to Pay-TV and Streaming

This book explores the role that talent intermediaries, including talent agents, talent managers and producers, play in packaging, marketing and selling screen media products, services and brands by constructing and positioning their clients and collaborators as indie-auteurs. Exploring several case-studies across a range of screen media during an era of media convergence, including American indie cinema, high-end television, music video, advertising and branded content, the book explores the strategies that talent intermediaries adopt and the industrial, cultural and social connotations and hierarchies that indie-auteurism as a promotional discourse and tool carries and reinforces. As a result, the book stakes out new ground that complicates popular ideas of indie-auteurs as highly autonomous and innovative filmmakers by exploring how this authorial discourse migrates between media and is constructed and reconfigured in relation to changing industrial and cultural contexts.

Dr. Andrew Stubbs is lecturer of Film Industries and Studies at Staffordshire University.