Materiality and mediation The extension “.mkv” and the resolution marker are reminders that films now exist as files: portable, copyable, and ephemeral. Unlike celluloid reels or DVDs that bear physical traces of handling and provenance, digital files can be duplicated perfectly, spread widely, and renamed to suit distribution networks. Filenames become metadata-laden contracts: they advertise quality, language, and source — and sometimes conflate these claims. They create new textual layers (the site tag, the resolution) that influence how a viewer judges the file before watching. The material form — compressed, containerized, renamed — therefore shapes consumption habits and expectations.