(M)apping film in Scotland: Film tour maps, apps and ‘real’ engagements with virtual place

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of film tour apps and maps, exploring the different functionalities they offer, how these functionalities contribute to shaping engagements with place in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the specific role of film in this process. We find that while they possess similar functionalities to more general tourism apps – for example, providing information and offering travel advice – film tour apps and maps also connect the real world to the ‘reel’ world through games, active engagement, and prosumerism. The specific functionalities of film media apps, we argue, have ramifications for film tourism experiences, potentially extending the touristic experience of a destination to a multi-mediated, multi-layered experience of a ‘patchwork’ place through the lens of film. Additionally, functionalities of film tour apps facilitate new types of behaviours and interactions with place.

Performativities, pandemic pressures and ‘patchwork’ tourism places: Editor-in-Chief notes

“…The roles of smart technology, filmic and social media texts and tourism place performances connect our next two articles. Schiavone and Brandellero (2024) examine apps and maps as deployed in film tours and their utilities in shaping film tourism experiences and experiences with place in Edinburgh, Scotland. Via games, travel advice and active engagement, film media apps are found to extend film tourism experiences into rich multi-layered ones.…”

“…Resonating with the critical, interpretive and qualitative orientation of the journal, the metaphor of a ‘patchwork’ had also been employed, in Schiavone and Brandellero’s (2024) interrogation of the multi-mediated and multi-layered aspects of experiences of Edinburgh’s app-based film tourism and Di Matteo and Daminelli (2024) conceptualisation of their fieldwork at Lesvos’ refugee camp as a ‘comparative patchwork autoethnography’. Such ‘patchwork’ approaches signal the incompleteness of any given standpoint, the need for layers of meanings and meaning-makings and the complicated richness of our tourism worlds.…”

“…While taking place in diverse geographical regions and political-social situations from lockdown China to pre-viral Scotland, these four articles converge on at least two significant research trajectories. Two of these articles (Schiavone and Brandellero, 2024; Tham et al, 2024) are united in their examinations of film and social mediated tourism place practices while the remaining two (Di Matteo and Daminelli, 2024; Ren et al, 2024) converge on critical interrogations of worker-volunteer agencies and struggles. The notion of a ‘patchwork’ had also been employed, in two divergent localities in most of our tourism imaginations – Schiavone and Brandellero (2024) taking on the multi-mediated and multi-layered aspects of experiences to discuss Edinburgh’s app-based film tourism while Di Matteo and Daminelli (2024) conceptualised their fieldwork at Lesvos’ refugee camp as a ‘comparative patchwork autoethnography’.…”

“…Two of these articles (Schiavone and Brandellero, 2024; Tham et al, 2024) are united in their examinations of film and social mediated tourism place practices while the remaining two (Di Matteo and Daminelli, 2024; Ren et al, 2024) converge on critical interrogations of worker-volunteer agencies and struggles. The notion of a ‘patchwork’ had also been employed, in two divergent localities in most of our tourism imaginations – Schiavone and Brandellero (2024) taking on the multi-mediated and multi-layered aspects of experiences to discuss Edinburgh’s app-based film tourism while Di Matteo and Daminelli (2024) conceptualised their fieldwork at Lesvos’ refugee camp as a ‘comparative patchwork autoethnography’. We trace these convergences and diversity here and acknowledge their connections with existing corpora of work in the journal.…”