Category: General

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Item of Interest The Technology of Production

How Hollywood killed the movie stunt

How Hollywood killed the movie stunt http://tinyurl.com/24oxk7k

An interesting article that is really more about changes in editing style than it is about stunts in movies – including early “movies” that were essentially a shot of a stunt.

I ask because in looking at that image of the stuntman diving into the Hudson, and running through a mental checklist of my favorite movie stunts, I realized that almost none of them occurred in films released during the last 10 years.

What’s the significance of that time frame? Well, for one thing, it’s the approximate start of the Digital Era of cinema — the point where video started to replace film and practical effects (meaning effects that were created in order to be photographed just like any other physical object) started being subsumed by computer-generated effects. And for another (and this is surely related) the late ’90s/early aughts marks the point when classical or “old-fashioned” editing — which dictated that every cut should be dramatically and aesthetically justified — was supplanted by what the film theorist David Bordwell calls the “intensified continuity” or “run and gun” style. The latter seeks to excite viewers by keeping them perpetually unsettled with computer-enhanced images, fast cutting and a camera that never stands still.

If you’re an editor,  writer or producer, you should read this.

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Item of Interest

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 13

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 13 is out http://tinyurl.com/22o6o4f

Terry starts the discussion about audio levels and the perception of loudness, in the wake of the recent FCC ruling. This leads to the main discussion of deliverables: aka “pining for PAL vs NTSC”! Formats and deliverable metadata add to the complication that delivering a program has become.

The discussion veers into the endless discussion of generalist vs specialist before ending on the value of value.

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Item of Interest

20 Years Ago Today: The Web Was Proposed.

20 Years Ago Today: The Web Was Proposed http://tinyurl.com/25hp2k6

Only 20 years! That is, sadly, not even close to half my life ago! I joined in May 1995 with my first ISP account, with our first website following not long after. I’d heard from the (short lived) Sydney Media 100 User Group that there was an email list for Media 100 users, and that’s why I purchased a modem and got an account with an ISP.

Think how 1990 was. No Google, Amazon, YouTuvbe, Facebook, online banking, online shopping, research, wikipedia, etc, etc, etc. I can’t imagine the massive loss of productivity that losing the Internet would mean.

Here’s Tim Berners-Lee proposed the web:

HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will. It provides a single user-interface to large classes of information (reports, notes, data-bases, computer documentation and on-line help). We propose a simple scheme incorporating servers already available at CERN. 

The project has two phases: firstly we make use of existing software and hardware as well as implementing simple browsers for the user’s workstations, based on an analysis of the requirements for information access needs by experiments. Secondly, we extend the application area by also allowing the users to add new material. 

Phase one should take 3 months with the full manpower complement, phase two a further 3 months, but this phase is more open-ended, and a review of needs and wishes will be incorporated into it.

Categories
Item of Interest Media Consumption

Nielsen – Small Minority Of Viewers watching True HD

Nielsen – Small Minority Of Viewers Watching True HD http://tinyurl.com/3xghhq6

Nielsen are not saying – as you might think from their headline – that only 13% of those with an HD set are watching HD, but overall the number of views in HD is still only 13%.

Only 13 percent of total day viewing on cable and 19 percent of viewing on broadcast television is “true HD” viewing, the audience measurement company said. That means, despite the billions of dollars that was spent buying HD sets, more than 80 percent of television viewing is still a standard definition experience.

The short article then goes on to explain the reasons why the time viewing HD is so low compared to total viewing.

Categories
Business & Marketing Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

Who Needs TV Networks?

Who Needs TV Networks? Mattel Grabs Whitney Port and Goes Right to Hulu http://tinyurl.com/2ej52pz

In what I think will become the dominant trend, Mattel are creating their own programming and going public with it via Hulu. Traditionally Advertisers/Brands rented the eyeballs that Networks and Cable aggregated (in a neat bait and switch to the viewer).

But why should Brand “rent” an audience when they can buy their own? It’s generally cheaper and more effective.

The real story here is the end-around the brand is playing here, bypassing a large spend on traditional TV with a non-trivial spend sent right to an online network (Hulu) for an original web series. Hulu and other online networks like YouTube have proven they have the scale of audience to deliver on what the brand wants to reach. So why bother with bloated TV budgets? The significance of this isn’t lost on Hudsun Media’s CEO Michael Rourke.

“What we are doing with Mattel and Genuine Ken is a complete game changer, ” said Rourke. We have created a wildly compelling, network-quality reality show that, for the first time, can be distributed directly to the viewer in a non-traditional but very effective way.”

All those charts that get marched out in board meetings about how ad spending for online video is shooting up, have projects like this to thank for such lofty forecasts. With some $70 billion spent by brands on Television, the measly $1.4 billion or so in online video seems marginal, but the shift is on.

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Item of Interest

QuickTime Pro: About the “Conform Aperture to” setting.

QuickTime Pro: About the “Conform aperture to” setting http://tinyurl.com/39xqu5c

QuickTime Player Pro 7 introduced a new conform setting – basically an overscan for video played back on computers, something I’d prefer it didn’t do.

Fortunately it can be changed with the QuickTime 7 player (not the QuickTime X player) as the instructions in the linked Knowledge Base article show.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Item of Interest

So, Edit to Tape in FCP survives?

So, Edit to Tape in FCP <next> survives? http://tinyurl.com/26ojoyp

So it seems my hypothesizing abut the need for Log and Capture might have been way off – as people told me at the time. Apple have filed a patent application for an improved (simpler) method of laying off to tape. At least that’s what the headlines say. LIke most patent applications this one is a little impenetrable!

Categories
3D Item of Interest

Has 3D bubble burst?

Has 3D bubble burst? 3 reports slowing acceptance and ESPN 3D’s failure (so far). http://tinyurl.com/2374ezl http://tinyurl.com/26pb5nt and the third link is http://tinyurl.com/2cljev2

I remain a 3D skeptic. Undoubtedly when designed into an appropriate project and created in 3D it can enhance the experience. When it’s a 2D-to-3D conversion to “cash in” on the craze, the results don’t fool many people who won’t pay the premium for bad 3D, which then leads to a rejection of all 3D because the public aren’t expert enough to understand the difference. In other words, the 2D-3D scammers are ruining it for real 3D.

TVB Europe reports:

ESPN’s 3D channel is half way through a one year trial with which to prove a business case or it may be pulled from the air, writes Adrian Pennington. The network, which launched in June carrying 25 FIFA World Cup matches and plans to produce 94 live events in its first year, will have its future reviewed in early 2011.

The first link at Business Insider is really a rehash and pointer to the TVB article (third link) that has the real information.

The CrunchGear weighs in:

Is 3D already in trouble? Quite possibly, and there’s a few data points to back up that claim. As you know, Christopher Nolan has announced a few things pertaining to the next Batman movie, namely its name (the Dark Knight Rises), that The Riddler won’t be in it (much to fans’ chagrin), and that it won’t be filmed in 3D. I’m pretty sure the previous Batman movie, the Dark Knight, was a gigantic success, so to not film it in 3D is quite the snub. Sorry, 3D, but the prettiest girl at the dance wants nothing to do with you. (Stupid metaphors are stupid.)

3D isn’t nothing. It’s another tool in the visual storytelling toolbox, but not every tool should be used on every project.

Categories
HTML5 Item of Interest

Microsoft Has Seen The Light!

Microsoft Has Seen The Light. & It’s Not Silverlight. http://tinyurl.com/32jyufv

My primary reasons for disliking Flash were that it was proprietary (only one vendor/source) and that it has horrendous performance on OS X (definitely improving but still bad). I disliked Silverlight for the first of those reasons: any development only comes from Microsoft.

Well, it seems that Microsoft have had a “shift of strategy” :

During last week’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC),ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley asked Bob Muglia, Microsoft’s SVP of the Server and Tools Business, why the company failed to highlight Silverlight in a meaningful way this year. His answer was rather surprising.

“Silverlight is our development platform for Windows Phone,” he said. And while he said that the technology has some “sweet spots” for media applications (presumably like Netflix, which uses Silverlight on the web), its role as a vehicle for delivering a cross-platform runtime appears to be over. “Our strategy has shifted,” is how Muglia put it.

Instead, as they made clear during PDC, Microsoft is putting their weight behind HTML5 going forward. Hallelujah.

Further convergence on a single standard. Now if we can get everyone on the same page for HTML5 audio and video, it would be a big step forward. (I’m looking at you Mozilla!)

Categories
3D Item of Interest

Wasn’t 3-D supposed to be cooler than this?

Wasn’t 3-D supposed to be cooler than this? http://tinyurl.com/2cv8nyo

While it seems the entire industry is rushing to 3D, perhaps it’s time to step back a little and see if it actually enhances the movie-going experience.

The author’s headings probably tell you all you need to know about the article with my summary of the intent:

Shoddy technical work insults audiences (Most 3D is not well done)

No one asked for a 3-D ‘My Soul To Take’ or ‘The Last Airbender’ (A lot of 3D adds nothing)

That’ll be one $16.50 ticket for ‘Alpha and Omega’ (3D is expensive even if it adds nothing)

Would you like an eye infection with that? (Recycling glasses isn’t always done with meticulous cleanliness.)