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ClandesTime 155 – Production Assistance Agreements or How the Pentagon Broke the Rules for Transformers

Most government agencies sign contracts with Hollywood producers when they agree to provide support on a film or TV show. These are called Production Assistance Agreements, and set out the legal terms of the partnership between the government and the production company. In this episode I explore these contracts, how long they’ve been in effect, and the powers they grant to both parties. I use this as a basis for a case study of how the Pentagon has repeatedly broken the rules when it comes to the Transformers films.

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Subscriber Podcast #23 – The Merits and Demerits of Netflix

Streaming content on-demand has changed the way people think about their relationship with entertainment, and drastically changed people's viewing habits and behaviour. So in this episode we take a look at Netflix (and other on-demand platforms), the merits and demerits of the streaming model, and ask whether this development will ...
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How the Pentagon Rewrote Pitch Perfect 3

Pitch Perfect 3 appears on the surface to be a family-friendly piece of lighthearted, forgettable entertainment.  But beneath that surface lies a carefully-crafted piece of military PR, aimed at recruiting people the DOD usually finds it hard to attract.  Documents recently released by the US Air Force and the Pentagon ...
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ClandesTime 155 – Production Assistance Agreements or How the Pentagon Broke the Rules for Transformers

Most government agencies sign contracts with Hollywood producers when they agree to provide support on a film or TV show. These are called Production Assistance Agreements, and set out the legal terms of the partnership between the government and the production company. In this episode I explore these contracts, how ...
Read more

Change ‘One Male and One Female’ to ‘Two Male’ – Pentagon Production Notes for Transformers 3

Going back through some documents released by the Army on the Transformers films I noticed that some of the notes weren't script notes from pre-production, but were production notes from while Transformers: Dark of the Moon was filming.  They show that sometimes the Pentagon continues to rewrite the script while ...
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After Denying They Have Contracts with Hollywood, the US Navy Release Over 500 Pages of Them

Two and a half  years ago I asked the US Navy for various documents relating to their work with the entertainment industry, including the Production Assistance Agreements they sign with Hollywood producers.  After over a year's delay they responded saying that they don't keep any copies of these contracts.  Following ...
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ClandesTime 154 – Hollywood Goes to Space Command

As part of their outreach efforts the Air Force's entertainment liaison office has started running annual tours for dozens of Hollywood bigshots. Recently released documents detail last year's tour to US Space Command. In this focus episode I go through the documents page-by-page as an open source case study in ...
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Swiss Lab Spy Games Support the Theory that Novichok WASN’T Used in Salisbury

The last 24 hours of the Novichok saga has seen a new twist — European media are widely reporting that two Russian spies were caught attempting to either hack or break into the Spiez laboratory in Switzerland that was examining samples from the Salisbury poisoning. While this announcement of an event that ...
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Dezinformatsiya? The RT interview with Petrov and Boshirov

The disinformation war kicked into high gear this week with the release of an interview with Petrov and Boshirov by RT. Many people, even sceptics of the British government’s story about the Skripals, have expressed how unconvincing the interview is, leading me to ask: was this RT’s intention? Rather than ...
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CIA: Where Are Our Passes to Disney’s Magic Kingdom Club?

The story of the relationship between Disney and the various branches and agencies of the US government is long and complex.  A recently uncovered memo adds one more episode to the relationship between Disney and the CIA, and revolves around a question that was critical for national security: How would ...
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‘ollywood Propaganda – New edition of Reel Power in French

Reel Power broke the mould for books covering the role of Hollywood in promoting militarism, war and the political status quo.  It took the Chomsky/Herman propaganda model and adapted it to film and TV, showing how Hollywood's output varies, but tends to repeat and reinforce the same ideological priorities regardless ...
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The 9 Most Important Questions about 9/11 that Remain Unanswered

The pain of 9/11 remains unresolved because the crime of 9/11 remains unsolved. In 17 years no one has been prosecuted for carrying out the attacks, and the court of public opinion is very much a hung jury. The Range of Views about 9/11 The same range of interpretations that sprung ...
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Map to the Stars: Hollywood Insiders Tour US Space Command

The US Space Force took one step closer to becoming a hyperreality when nearly 40 major Hollywood players went on an 'Industry Leader Tour' of US Space Command.  Newly-released documents show that in the summer of 2017 dozens of writers, producers and executives signed up to participate in tour of ...
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