Ahead of a Hulu IPO Steven Levitan – a well respected and talented writer/producer – claimed that he and other content creators should get a cut of Hulu’s IPO. Funny I didn’t realize he got a cut of ABC’s profits when he provides them with content. Oh right, he doesn’t, but he’s effectively looking for the same thing.

What I found interesting though is this part of the article:

The more he argues, the deeper a hole Levitan seems to dig in his reasoning. He complains that if we don’t figure out a way to make his shows profitable, the only thing left to watch will be “sneezing pandas.” This is a version of the movie industry’s “$200 million myth.” It’s the “well, it costs me $x to make this, so if we can’t make that back, no one else could possibly make quality content for less.” It’s incredibly elitist and wrong. Not only is there good content made for less money out there (beyond the sneezing pandas), but if there’s really demand for his shows (and there appears to be), then there are smart business models you can pursue that don’t involve pissing off your fans or demanding an equity pay out from a company you didn’t actually invest in.

The emphasis is mine.

A group working under the guidance of the Entertainment Technology Center at USC is trying to create specifications for an interoperable set of master files and associated metadata. This will help interchange and automate downstream distribution based on metadata carried in the file. The first draft of the specification is now done based on (no surprises) the MXF wrapper. (Not good for FCP fans, as Apple has no native support for MXF, without third party help).

Main new items: dynamic metadata for hinting pan-scan downstream and “Output Profile List”:

“The IMF is the source if you will, and the OPL would be an XML script that would tell a transcoder or any other downstream device how to set up for what an output is on the other side,” Lukk explained.

The intention is to bring this draft spec to SMPTE, but first, ETC@ USC is urging the industry to get involved. “We need industry feedback and input on the work that the group has done thus far,” said ETC CEO and executive director David Wertheimer. “Anyone who has interest in this topic should download the draft specification and provide feedback to the group.”

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Zak Ray when I travelled to Boston. I like people who have an original take on things and Zak’s approach to picture editing – and his tying it to existing technologies (that may ned improvement) – is an interesting one.

And yet, despite such modern wonders as Avid Media Access and the Mercury Playback Engine, modern NLEs remain fundamentally unchanged from their decades-old origins. You find your clip in a browser, trim it to the desired length, and edit it into a timeline, all with a combination of keys and mouse (or, if you prefer, a pen tablet). But is this process really as physically intuitive as it could be? Is it really an integrable body part in the mind’s eye, allowing the editor to work the way he thinks? Though I can only speak for myself, with my limited years of editing experience, I believe the answer is a resounding “no”. In his now famous lecture-turned-essay In the Blink of an Eye, Walter Murch postulates that in a far-flung future, filmmakers might have the ability to “think” their movies into existence: a “black box” that reads one’s brainwaves and generates the resulting photo-realistic film. I think the science community agrees that such a technology is a long way off. But what untilthen? What I intend to outline here is my thoughts on just that; a delineation of my own ideal picture-editing tools, based on technologies that either currently exist, or are on the drawing board, and which could be implemented in the manner I’d like them to be. Of course, the industry didn’t get from the one-task, one-purpose Moviola to the 2,000 page user manual for Final Cut Pro for no reason. What I’m proposing is not a replacement for these applications as a whole, just the basic cutting process; a chance for the editor to work with the simplicity and natural intuitiveness that film editors once knew, and with the efficiency and potential that modern technology offers.

It’s a good article and a good read. Raises the question though – if Apple (or Adobe/Avid) really innovated the interface would people “hate it” because it was “different”?

Inevitably one of the tapes ends up with breaks every few seconds. Final Cut Pro always, always breaks HDV into individual clips, regardless of your settings, so parts of this interview were simply lost. So I tried capturing in Premiere Pro CS5. A little surprised to have to preview on the camera (not inside Premiere Pro CS5) but the capture happens and the entire interview is captured in one piece with no dropped frames.

I’m composing hymns to Premiere Pro’s greatness, until I try an export. (All captured media is being converted to ProRes 422 for the master and editing formats.) Adobe Media Encoder crashes when it hits one of the glitches that tripped up Final Cut Pro. Rinse and repeat and we’re not getting an export. Even an attempt to playback causes Premiere Pro to disappear.

Well, not of picture anyway, but AME will export the audio by itself without a problem. So, while it’s not perfect, I now have that important interview (and the one we travelled furthest to get) with about 99% of the audio intact and laid up with what video I have and I’ll be able to use the interview in the doc.

So thanks to the ability to capture all my HDV material Premiere Pro CS5 at least got me usable material.

There’s no positive benefit to spending more on a film than is going to be seen on the screen and yet the majors all talk about “$200 million movies”.

A few years back at a Cato Institute conference on copyright, a guy from NBC Universal challenged me with the question of “how will we make $200 million movies?” if content is freely shared. As I noted at the time, that’s really the wrong question. No one watching a movie cares about how much the moviecosts. They just want to see a good movie. The question for a good filmmaker or producer or a studio should be “how do I make the best movie I can that will still be profitable?” Starting out with a “cost” means that you don’t focus on ways to save money or contain costs. You focus on ways to spend up to those costs. That’s backwards, and it’s how you fail as a business.

The article goes on to talk about a new short film from Futuristic Films, which notes in the opening that the whole damn thing was shot with a Pentax K-7 DSLR, which you can find these days for around $800 or so!

Big difference from the $200 million movie, but trying to compare them is probably ridiculous.

There’s a lot out there beyond that original article – someone has a good publicist or is good at getting out to the media. The New York Times has After Drought, Hope for Shows Made for Web; there’s the Venture Beat article mentioned above and New TeeVee focus on the fund raising and expanding staff to “10 people”.

All three articles are worth the read. While there’s some duplication in content they give varying amounts of context and mentions of other similar mini-web-studios like Revision3, BlipTV and more, and how their shows “pay the bills”.

One step beyond branded media – custom movies! Content for one store only – harkens back to the early days of cinema where the studios also owned the cinemas. Kraft and P&G have jumped into the music business, so it’s only logical that Tesco will jump into the movie business. (Really, that’s logical?)

The supermarket giant that inhabits virtually every corner of our existence has this year moved into film-making with a straight-to-DVD movie or, as its makers prefer, a “DVD Premiere”. This autumn, Paris Connections will go on sale exclusively in Tesco stores. If successful, it could revolutionise the movie business, removing distributors and agents in one swipe and transforming how many films are made and funded.

Paris Connections is the first in a series of Collins adaptations, loosely based on her novel LA Connections, but transposed to Paris Fashion week. Today, in the Hotel Lutetia, the director Harley Cokeliss is shooting a catwalk scene. Many of the extras are authentic fashionistas: a man with wet-look leather trousers, plenty of big glasses and vertiginous heels. The effect is tarnished somewhat when I am hurriedly shepherded among them to make up the numbers.

Right now it’s just one movie, but it does indicate that there is a way around the stranglehold on production by the MPAA studios. Unlike those studios, Tesco didn’t intervene to micromanage the movie asking just “that it not be porn” and be PG15.

No matter how bad the movie, actors, directors, producers and the whole product crew got paid!

One way to fund production – particularly web production – is to ask the fans to fund it. Anyone but Me (a show I haven’t seen but has completed two seasons) had the first two seasons funded by a “private investor”.

And like good filmmakers these days, there are graduated responses:

Ward and Miller have set a series of milestones for fundraising: When they reach the $30,000 mark, a special video of series stars Rachael Hip-Flores and Alexis Slade singing will be released. And at $55,000, Miller and Ward have committed to doing at least five new episodes of the show. “We wouldn’t just leave things where we left them [in the season two finale],” Miller said.

We just launched prEdit, our pre-editing tool for developing paper cuts (a.k.a. radio cut) from transcripts. prEdit:

• Lets producers or editors cut transcripts into selects in seconds
• Adds and updates log notes with auto-complete logging fields
• Previews the video for any clip, subclip, paper cut or section of paper cut
• Exports to Excel spreadsheets and Final Cut Pro, or Premiere Pro Sequences

“prEdit marks a new generation of postproduction tools,”  say I. “Video editing by text is a whole new way of working that will take weeks out of developing a paper cut.”

prEdit is available now from AssistedEditing.com and carries an MSRP of $395, discounted for an introductory special to $295 until August 31st. The prEdit workflow is described at http://assistedediting.com/prEdit/workflow.html and a video overview is available at http://assistedediting.com/prEdit. The first 80 seconds provide an overview.

The video is now available at YouTube  http://youtu.be/3fV388QsVVA?a

If you missed Star Wreck a couple of years back, you should take the time to revisit. I was privileged to interview the founders on the Digital Production BuZZ back when I was more actively involved in that show. Made in a 10×12′ room, on green screen, even the main deck is a composite shot if there are more than 2 people in it. The animation work was amazing. It was the work of a core crew of dozens and more than 300 people were involved at some point in the three year creation process.

Well, the success of that film – it’s made a lot of money despite being available for free download and is the most popular Finnish movie ever.

They’ve been working on the sequel for some time and the good news is that it’s been funded with a combination of fan funding and more traditional professional funding in a combination not tried before.

But what’s most interesting to me is how this story progressed. It went from some fans messing around and creating a rather impressive film visually speaking, to a new $8.5 million production. $8.5M is still a small amount from a movie-making perspective, but it’s not nothing. Plenty of excellent indie films have been made for a lot less. And, of course, you never know what happens next, after this film is made as well. And that was really the point. It was never that the model that created Star Wreck was the answer, but that the overall ecosystem is evolving, and its evolving to a world where the fans and the community really area a part of things, rather than looked at as evil people who just want stuff for free. Embracing your community leads to wonderful possibilities.

Seems maybe you don’t need $200m for every blockbuster!