Categories
Item of Interest

MPAA Boss Defends Censorships with Blatantly False Claims

MPAA Boss Defends Censorships With Blatantly False Claims http://tinyurl.com/3x66kl5

If you’re for the usupportable COICA try not lying! COICA would have prevented YouTube from ever getting established, would tackle music lockers and music search engines. In fact any innovation the existing power brokers would simply be banned without any review, just in a nice cosy arrangement.

Every statement made by an MPAA representative can be safely assumed to be lacking in factual support: in other words a lie. The “reports” they quote are mostly made up and only consider one side of the equation, even after they double or triple count on their side.

The MPAA “reports” have never been even submitted to peer review (the standard for scientific papers) and consistently debunked by the Federal Government Accounting Office and anyone without their agenda. Their agenda is to protect their business model so they would enjoy the near-monopoly “rents” they’ve enjoyed in the past, even though the technology that enabled those monopoly rents has been superseded.

If your business needs intrusive legislation, almost certainly a breach of the First Amendment, then you have already failed. When you’re fighting your customers every day, you’ve already failed.

It’s a long article but it’s well worth the read.

What’s scary is that there are still people, and people in power, who will believe Pisano’s blatantly false and misleading claims here and will push forward in favor of government censorship of websites, contrary to the very clear rules of the First Amendment. In the end, it’s hard to see how COICA would pass even a rudimentary First Amendment review — as more and more First Amendment experts are noticing. 

It’s really quite distressing the level of blatant falsehoods that the MPAA will spew in favor of getting the US to become a regime of censorship.

While COICA has almost no chance of passing in this Congress, here are the 19 Senators who were quite happy to sell out your First Amendment rights to do the bidding of the industry that bought and paid for them.

  • Patrick J. Leahy — Vermont
  • Herb Kohl — Wisconsin
  • Jeff Sessions — Alabama
  • Dianne Feinstein — California
  • Orrin G. Hatch — Utah
  • Russ Feingold — Wisconsin
  • Chuck Grassley — Iowa
  • Arlen Specter — Pennsylvania
  • Jon Kyl — Arizona
  • Chuck Schumer — New York
  • Lindsey Graham — South Carolina
  • Dick Durbin — Illinois
  • John Cornyn — Texas
  • Benjamin L. Cardin — Maryland
  • Tom Coburn — Oklahoma
  • Sheldon Whitehouse — Rhode Island
  • Amy Klobuchar — Minnesota
  • Al Franken — Minnesota
  • Chris Coons — Delaware

Categories
Item of Interest

Hey, Movie And TV People, Here’s how to avoid becoming Apple’s Lunch

Hey, Movie And TV People, Here’s How To Avoid Becoming Apple’s Lunch http://tinyurl.com/2btdz8c

Wise words from Matt Rosoff at SAI Business Insider:

O’Reilly took the mike for the first question, and made the point that the recording industry blew it in the early days by not offering its content in a convenient digital format for a price that consumers were willing to accept. As a consequence, piracy took off, and Apple’s deal was the best bargain that the industry could get. He suggested that the film and TV industries are making the same mistake now by withholding content from new digital platforms like Google TV and Netflix streaming.

Here, Emanuel got hot under the collar and insisted that piracy is wrong and shouldn’t be considered when making business decisions. Instead, he suggested that the government and industry needed to do more work to educate consumers about stealing content and to enforce existing laws.

Emanuel’s right. Content has value. The problem is, once content is digitized, it’s trivially easy to copy it. And every copy protection scheme will eventually be broken. (Cory Doctorow did a great job explaining why this is true way back in 2004–basically, you can’t encrypt content against the people who you’re also supposed to be delivering it to.)

This is isn’t a moral argument. It’s a physical argument. Arguing against the piracy of digital content is like arguing against gravity. Or death.

Essentially he makes the same argument that other make: you can’t sell abundance (digital goods that can be reproduced infinitely at little cost, but you can use that abundance to sell scarcity. Or you can focus on events that have immediacy. Immediacy is a scarcity that you can sell and sports or other live events are a great example.

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production

The Walking Dead produced for about 50c per viewer

The Walking Dead produced for about 50c per viewer http://tinyurl.com/28er76d So why a 99c rental? Should be no more than 70c to be fair.

The advantage in producing six episodes in a row was continuity, Ms. Hurd said, keeping cast members in character and the same crew members employed. “It was also, to be hones, far more cost-effective,” she said.

The episodes were filmed almost entirely on location in and around Atlanta, where a roughly 30% tax credit cut down costs. AMC declined to comment on the show’s budget, but two people with knowledge of the production said each episode cost $2 million to $2.5 million, a price that puts it in line with other high-end dramas on cable, though still below the equivalent prices on broadcast television.

It seems like 50c per viewer is right in the middle of current production costs, and right in the middle of typical ad revenue per viewer per show.

Categories
Item of Interest Media Consumption New Media

Four Ways Social Media Will Change Television

Four Ways Social Media Will Change Television http://tinyurl.com/25zp6ar

Instead of the metaphorical “next day” water cooler of history, which was a social component to Television even then, we’re moving the conversation online and into Twitter (and other social conversations). I tend not to watch sports events – it’s just not my thing – but I’m rarely uninformed about the progress of games because my friends tweet constantly about the progress! Social media changing Television.

NewTeeVee identifies Social Viewing, Measurement, Curation and Commerce as the dominant trends in social media support for Television. I tend to agree: I discover new show from recommendations from friends.

Categories
Item of Interest Media Consumption

Comcast app turns Apple devices into remote controls

Comcast app turns Apple devices into remote controls http://tinyurl.com/2cmsxyc I called it back in June! http://tinyurl.com/29l53d8

From my June post:

And the it hit me: Apple and Google (et al.) are going about it the wrong way. The program goes on the big screen. Period. The interface is on our laptop, or iPhone, or iTouch, or (the killer one) an iPad. All have a keyboard for easy entry of urls and search; there are social applications that work just fine on those existing screens.

Trying to put the interface on a screen 20′ away without a keyboard (and wireless keyboards aren’t really an option) is just wrong: not only is it the wrong place, I don’t want to clutter my program communally (which presumably I’m watching because I enjoy it) with social media that’s personal.

The two screen approach makes much more sense. Put the program on the screen – uncluttered like  the program’s director intended – and put the control and any desired interactivity on another screen. An iPad would seem to be perfect for this, but since I don’t plan on getting one, an iPhone or iTouch or Laptop could also run the interface anywhere on the same local area network.

And that’s what Comcast have done: put all the searching and program control on an iDevices application:

The browsing and search functions do much of what a traditional remote can do: You can browse through listings, choose a show and watch it on your TV. You can also change the channel and sort through content based on genre or keyword. If you’re busy, the app also lets you program DVRs to record shows and movies.

It may just sound like a snazzier version of a remote control now, but Comcast is promising some added features to amp up the appeal. Soon, updates to the app will allow users to share what they’re watching through access to social networking sites. Other promised add-ons include the ability to stream video content directly on your Apple gadget (coming in December) and enhanced search functions (coming soon).

Categories
Assisted Editing Item of Interest

Is Clip Used? (in FCP Sequences)

Is Clip Used? (in FCP Sequences) http://tinyurl.com/28kkfmm

Inspired by LAFCPUG forum feature requests, a new applet from Assisted Editing.

Do you want to know which clips have been used in which sequences in your project? Is Clip Used? updates your Browser clips using a simple menu command.

Is Clip Used? sets the clipsʼ Label 2, Comment A or Comment B column (your choice) to the sequence name or names where theyʼve been used.

Is Clip Used? is an applet that shows as a menu item in the right-hand side of the menu bar. Choose the Browser column to use for the sequence name or names from the menu. The name of the Sequence or Sequences where the clip is used will be updated in the chosen column of the project immediately. If a clip hasn’t been used in a sequence, the field will be set to blank; if a clip has been used in more than one sequence in your project, the field will be set to all the sequence names separated by commas. You can easily undo the Browser column change by choosing Undo.

Requirements:

  • Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 or later (part of Final Cut Studio)
  • Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

Categories
Assisted Editing Item of Interest

Update coming for prEdit

Greg has been doing some amazing work on prEdit yesterday and today. Might be an update next week: write your v/o script in prEdit in between the clips. Now that we have script export to text (with timecode stamps) this is the logical next step.

But it gets cooler: your narration will be voiced by the system voice and speed of your choice!

Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
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.