CinemaTech
CinemaTech
CinemaTech focuses on how new technologies are changing cinema - the way movies get made, discovered, marketed, distributed, shown, and seen. (With occasional forays into other parts of the entertainment economy.) You can also follow CinemaTech on Twitter (@ctechblog).

  • TV Ennui: Are Viewers Totally Content, or Just Really Averse to Change?
    There's a great collection of stories in today's NY Times, focusing on efforts to change the way we watch TV (online and in our living rooms.) The overall message is that viewers are either pretty happy with the cable/broadcast/satellite programming that finds its way into their living rooms, and that most media companies (except Sony) have pretty much given up trying to produce original shows for the Web. There's also the obligatory piece about 3-D TV.

    Links to the stories below, along with a short excerpt from each one:

    - Sony's Bet on Sticking With Web Shows

      Sony Pictures Entertainment has continued to pour money into Crackle.com, ordering Web shows that cost up to $1 million each. Why is Sony still betting so big? For one, it thinks it has hung around long enough to learn important lessons about consumer psychology when it comes to the Internet. But Sony also has a potential ace up its sleeve when it comes to funneling Crackle video to TV sets.

      Analysts point out that Crackle could become the primary entertainment channel for Sony’s PlayStation Network, a fast-growing video service that pumps games and online content into the living room via PlayStation 3 consoles.


    - Crowded Field for Bringing Web Video to TV

      Start-ups and tech giants alike are offering what they say are easy ways to pipe shows and movies to a TV, hoping to win over people who might want a cheaper or more diverse alternative to cable and satellite service.

      These companies have a lot of convincing to do. Most people do not have the tech-savviness to tackle the hardware and software setup that these products often require. And the companies are not able to offer access to many shows and channels that are on traditional pay TV, nor bundle services like phone service and Internet access at a discounted rate, as TV service providers do.


    - TV Makers Predict a Bright Future for 3-D

      If all goes as analysts predict, 3-D TV could account for half of all television sales within five years.

      So far, 3-D TV is a sliver of the overall market, accounting for about 2.5 percent of new television sales in the United States in the last quarter, according to a survey by the market researcher iSuppli.

    - Plenty to Watch Online, but Viewers Prefer to Pay for Cable

      These are confusing times in the living room. The proliferation of Internet video has led to much talk of “cord-cutting” — a term that has come to mean canceling traditional pay TV and replacing it with programming from a grab bag of online sources.

      But so far Americans are not doing this in any meaningful numbers. “Nor is there any evidence of it emerging in the near future,” said Bruce Leichtman, the president of Leichtman Research Group, which studies consumer media habits.

    - DIY TV: How Are You Watching?

      Everything I watch is from various online sources, or is viewed at the apartment of a generous friend or at one of the bars around New York that hold screening parties for popular cable shows.

      Although we’re still in the minority, some like me are cobbling together a patchwork way to watch our favorite primetime and cable TV shows without ever signing up for Comcast or a similar provider.


  • Notes and quotes from the PGA's 2010 "Produced By" conference
    It was a real treat to be invited to speak at the PGA's "Produced By" conference this weekend; I was on a panel moderated by Emerging Cinemas' Ira Deutchman called "Smashing Windows: DIY and the New Hybrid Distribution."

    I took some notes throughout the day Saturday on things that struck me as worth remembering, during panels on transmedia, digital cinema, "The Simpsons," and the producer's role. (I had to fly home Saturday night, so didn't stick around for the second day of the conference.) The subtext of most of the sessions I went to was this: we acknowledge that new stuff is happening and new technologies are emerging...and we know audiences want to interact with content in new ways...but it's unclear how we'll make anything approaching decent money in this new world.

    I got a chance to ask noted producer (and onetime United Artists chief) David V. Picker whether he felt worried or energized by the changes technology is bringing about. "I'm curious," Picker said. "No one knows how they're going to make their money back. No one has figured it out." But it seems obvious, he added, that "you just can't keep making $100 million movies."

    Picker moderated a panel of producers talking about the relationship between producer and director. (The panel was supposed to feature Brian Grazer and Ridley Scott, but both were mysterious no-shows. Not too eager to dwell about "Robin Hood," maybe?)

    Larry Gordon, who produced "Die Hard" but also "Water World," said that anything can happen to a project (mostly bad) as you're trying to package together the screenplay, actors, and director. "You're not shooting until you're shooting," Gordon said.

    Gordon said a lot of a producer's job is "protective work," mentioning that he once had to battle to keep Paramount executives from firing an actor on one of his films that they deemed unfunny. (The actor was Eddie Murphy, and the film "48 Hours.")

    Douglas Wick, producer of "Gladiator" and "Working Girl," said that "creative alchemy [mentioned in the title of the panel] is an interesting topic, because it rarely occurs. A good movie is a miracle. There are so many ways things can go wrong." Producers, he added, are called upon to solve every imaginable problem that comes along.

    Bruce Cohen, producer of "Milk" and "American Beauty," said that Spielberg told him on his first producing gig that the producer's job is to "get the director's vision up on the screen." Cohen said that is a "great mantra to start from," but that it's also important to figure out where a director may need help — on creative issues, sticking with the budget, or organizational stuff, to "keep them from getting in their own way."

    Cohen had some funny stories about being reluctant to give notes to Tim Burton while he was shooting "Big Fish." He observed that Burton "paces back and forth very fast on the set, which makes it impossible to have a conversation with him, which is the point."

    Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Entertainment moderated a panel on transmedia storytelling, with an impressive group of execs that included "Avatar" producer Jon Landau and "Battlestar Galactica" producer David Eick. Gomez mentioned that the PGA is forming a think tank on transmedia.

    Gomez started by showing some slides to explain his view of transmedia. Some of the benefits: transmedia can create intense loyalty, long-term engagement, lifespan extension (of the property, not the viewers, I presume), a desire to share the experience with others, and increased revenue.

    Landau talked about writing Pandorapedia, a "definitive version of the world" of "Avatar," by getting a dozen people in a room for a few days. That helped others who were building content related to the film.

    Cary Granat of Bedrock Studios talked about the way Walden Media has created educational programming for school kids around movies like the "Narnia" series and "Holes," through a program called "Reel Thinking."

    Larry Tanz of Vuguru mentioned "The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers," intended to start on the Web and then move to TV.

    Landau was asked why there weren't more transmedia tentacles extending from "Avatar." He said they'd pitched some that Fox hadn't wanted to fund. "Trying to get a big studio to embrace new ideas is never easy," Landau said. "No one ever got fired for not trying something."

    "All these extensions cost money," said Tanz. "And not all of them generate money. You may only be paid for the TV show of the movie... Some of the pieces can be liabilities on the balance sheet."

    Transmedia needs to come from an authentic place, Eick cautioned: "Once the audience starts to feel manipulated, you're dead... and maybe not just the off-shoot, but the mothership, too."

    The panelists were honest about the current state of transmedia: it can still be hard to figure out where to invest to actually generate good returns (whether that means ticket sales, TV viewers, or game buyers/subscribers.) "It can be hard to understand if webisodes actually have any impact on box office," said Granat, but he pointed to Disney's recent "Tickets Together" experiment in selling advance tickets to "Toy Story 3" on Facebook as something that may point in an important new direction.

    Landau agreed that embedding transactions into media, whether virtual goods or ticket sales, is likely the future. He also suggested that some of the spending studios do today on traditional TV and print advertising might be better invested in transmedia projects.

    Granat added, "The big studios are not going to continue [investing in transmedia] until they understand the metrics."

    But Granat mentioned an interesting transmedia example toward the end: Disney's decision to create a Broadway version of "The Lion King." The studio took a risk in hiring Julie Taymor to reinterpret the film, and wound up creating a stage franchise that has since surpassed the movie in revenues by playing for years in theaters the world over (at a much higher ticket price than the film, of course.)

    During a session on "Digital Cinema and You," Cinedigm Entertainment executive Michele Martell trotted out some stats about the industry. Of about 39,000 movie screens in the U.S., 8,400 have digital projectors today, and 3,700 can show 3-D content. Of 100,000 screens worldwide, 15,000 are digital, and half of those can show 3-D, she said. Also, she referred to a survey that found that one in four Americans say they plan to buy a 3-D TV. (But when?)

    On 3-D television broadcasts, Fox Sports exec Jerry Steinberg said, "It is still a technology in search of a business model. People will have to pay extra at home, or for theater tickets." But Steinberg is a believer that it'll happen: "What 3-D does for sports is recreate the experience of being in the premium seats, and we as an industry haven't sold that yet." He said his expectation is that 3-D TV, just like high-def, will be an 8 to 10 year transition. "We're two years into it," he said.

    Jonathan Dern, a Cinedigm executive and a long-time producer of animated TV shows and movies, said, "I don't intend on producing anything from now on that isn't in 3-D. [That way,] you have an archive that is the future."

    In our panel on "DIY and Hybrid Distribution," I tossed out what I've found to be four essential truths of the new media world producers are living in: "Distribution is free. Choice is infinite. Demand is instant. Noise is unprecedented." You can either develop strategies to address those shifts, or you can try to ignore them. (I've found that many studios and more established producers are doing the latter.)

    "Simpsons" writer-producer Tim Long moderated a panel of his colleagues, including "Simpsons" creator James L. Brooks, that was a hoot, as you might expect. They talked about some of the guest stars with whom they most enjoyed working (Michael Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, Mr. T) and some with whom they had problems (the late Gary Coleman apparently didn't want to say "Whatchu talking about, Willis?" on his episode.) They agreed that Conan O'Brien is one of the funniest people they've ever met, seeking to entertain anyone who'll make eye contact with him, at any moment. They said that the reason that Homer and Marge have stayed together after so many years is that the sex is great. (Apparently, this is Julie Kavner's explanation of the secret of their marriage.)

    "The show is a labor of love, but it's also a labor of work," said "Simpsons" executive producer Matt Selman. More seriously, he added, "we try to cram the maximum amount of awesomeness" into every episode.

    I only caught the end of Mark Cuban's conversation with LA Times reporter Dawn Chmielewski, but he made the comment that "if anything, the studios have gotten more power [over the past few years], not less."

    He also talked about the EBIF standard for developing interactive applications on TVs, and said that as new Internet-enabled cable boxes crept into American homes, we'd start seeing more applications layered onto TV shows, like the long-heralded ability to click your remote and buy an outfit that a character is wearing, or dive into more data about a documentary. Cuban said that there are already about 20 million cable boxes deployed that support the EBIF standard.

    So those are my notes. You can read tweets from the conference here, and hopefully the PGA will post audio or video at some point.


  • Ten links for today's DIY panel at the "Produced By" conference
    I'm panelizing later today at the PGA's "Produced By" conference in LA, and just wanted to share some links with the audience (and you). The title of the session is "Smashing Windows: D.I.Y. and the New Hybrid Distribution."

    Here's are ten links worth checking out (and feel free to add your own in the comments):

    - Required reading: Peter Broderick's "Declaration of Independence: The Ten Principles of Hybrid Distribution."

    - Manohla Dargis in the NY Times: "Declaration of Indies: Just Sell It Yourself!"

    - Videos from the DIY Days series of conferences, on the WorkBook Project

    - Ira Deuchtman's blog and Twitter feed

    - Book site for "Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age" (with lots of free content)

    - Truly Free Film, a blog overseen by producer Ted Hope

    - The IndieGoGo blog (site that supports Internet-based fundraising)

    - Jon Reiss' blog, filmmaker and author of "Think Outside the Box Office"

    - Videos from The Conversation @ Columbia, a gathering held this past March, including panels on "Attracting an Audience Through Social Media" and "Digital Distribution."

    - Blog Maverick, Mark Cuban's blog


  • Chad Hurley Interview Notes from 2005
    YouTube is marking its fifth anniversary this month.

    It felt like a good time to go back to the notes from my October 2005 interview with co-founder Chad Hurley; I'd interviewed him while working on this New York Times story about video-sharing sites, which compared YouTube to other start-ups that helped publish your videos, like Vimeo and Blip.tv.

    When Hurley and I spoke, the company was still being funded only by its founders; by the end of the year, they'd taken a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital, and by October 2006, Google had acquired YouTube for $1.6 billion.

    These are interview notes from my phone conversation with Hurley, lightly cleaned up. It's interesting how determined Hurley was to make the site easy to use for consumers, and to attract up an audience first before introducing advertising.

      Video, we felt, really wasn't being addressed on the Internet.

      Last summer, I was in Italy, and I took some video clips on my cell phone. But with cell phones or still cameras [that could record video], you'd get it onto your computer, and there was no easy way to share it, no services like Ofoto or Shutterfly. [Co-founder] Jawed [Karim] has thousands of clips on his computer.

      There were problems with all the different formats [and whether you had the right plug-ins to view the video in your browser.] We were focused on making a product that had a consistent kind of experience. We started encoding these video files on the fly into Flash video, so they would seamlessly integrate into the Web page.

      We all have parents on the east coast and in the Chicago area, and we wanted to make something that everyone could use, easily.

      We're receiving thousands of public videos per day, and serving up hundreds of thousands of views every day.

      We let people upload files of up to 100 megabytes, which is a very generous amount of space. But we're trying to prevent people from uploading 'Spiderman.'

      [As for people posting copyrighted content to YouTube,] as we expand, we're hoping the community will become more responsible.

      We feel like the video market is in a place where the digital photography market was a few years ago. We think we have a good head start on the rest of the competition. In the next few years, users are going to start adopting video more widely.

      We're purposely trying not to add too much to the site. We want to just empower people with video. With our PayPal experience [all three founders had worked at PayPal previously], we allowed anyone to accept payments, which really empowered them. We want to do the same thing for video, and create a solution for everyone. You don't need to be an advanced videoblogger to know what's going on. We're making a straightforward product that people can use.

      Right now, we're concentrating on the user experience. We feel that's the most important thing — serving customers. But it's clear that we're going to be an advertising-based product. We're not sure what direction we're going to head with that, but we won't do force-fed video commercials in front of a video, like where CNN forces you to watch a 15-second commercial before you see a video clip.

      We've been taking video of the genesis of the company, shooting with digital [still] cameras. They take pretty good movies.


    Wonder if that video has ever surfaced....


  • Video from The Conversation @ Columbia
    We shot the three main panels at the March edition of The Conversation, held at Columbia University. (The audio is a bit rough at points, due to some mics onstage that were cranked up a bit too high.) Thanks go to Emily Branham, director of the forthcoming doc "BeBe," for doing the shooting (and the audio issues weren't her fault, I should say!)

    > Tiffany Shlain's Opening Remarks:

    ConvoNYC - Tiffany Shlain's Opening Remarks from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.



    > Ira Deutchman's Opening Remarks:

    ConvoNYC - Ira Deutchman's Opening Remarks from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.



    > Panel: What I've Learned About Attracting an Audience Through Social Media (in three parts, with Arin Crumley, Jason Spingarn-Koff, Ryan Werner, Sandi DuBowski, Nina Paley, and Ian Schafer...moderated by me)

    ConvoNYC - Attracting Audiences Through Social Media - Part 1 of 3 from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.



    ConvoNYC - Attracting Audiences Through Social Media - Part 2 of 3 from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.



    ConvoNYC - Attracting Audiences Through Social Media - Part 3 of 3 from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.



    > Digital Distribution: Addressing the Big Questions (in three parts, with Cory McAbee, Richard Lorber, Steve Savage, Hunter Weeks, and Thomas Woodrow...moderated by Peter Broderick)

    ConvoNYC - Digital Distribution - Part 1 of 3 from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.



    ConvoNYC - Digital Distribution - Part 2 of 3 from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.



    ConvoNYC - Digital Distribution - Part 3 of 3 from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.



    > Stories Elsewhere: Making Media in New Ways (in three parts, with Asi Burak, Gita Pullapilly, Fred Seibert, and Lance Weiler...moderated by Wendy Levy):

    ConvoNYC - Stories Elsewhere - Part 1 of 3 from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.



    ConvoNYC - Stories Elsewhere - Part 2 of 3 from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.



    ConvoNYC - Stories Everywhere - Part 3 of 3 from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.



  • 'Filmmakers Taking Charge,' May 7th at the Maryland Film Festival
    I've been helping out the good folks at the Maryland Film Festival with a new event, coming up on May 7th in Baltimore: the Filmmakers Taking Charge Conference.

    It'll focus on topics like "generating buzz in a digital world," "the new rules of distribution," and what filmmakers can learn from the music industry's experiences with radical changes to its business model.

    There's a great list of speakers — most of them filmmakers — including Josh and Bennie Safdie ('Daddy Longlegs'), Lena Dunham ('Tiny Furniture'), Ed Sanchez ('Blair Witch Project'), Aaron Katz 'Dance Party'), Joe Swanberg ('Alexander the Last'), and Linas Phillips ('Bass Ackwards'). Janet Pierson, who runs the SXSW film fest, will be there, as will Rick Allen from SnagFilms, Ira Deutchman from Emerging Pictures, and Scott Macaulay from Filmmaker Magazine.

    Help spread the word to folks you know near Baltimore/DC/Philly... and there's a $25 discount on passes purchased by this Friday (April 30th).


  • The Conversation 2010: Post-Game Notes & Analysis
    Thanks to everyone who made The Conversation @ Columbia happen last Saturday — after I'd moderated my opening panel on building an audience, I mostly felt like I was free to goof off and just eavesdrop on other sessions, workshops, and lunch groups.

    We're posting all of the links, notes, tweets, and other material from the event over here, on The Conversation's official blog.

    Open to your thoughts on what we should talk about next time, and where we should hold it. (Last time was UC/Berkeley in October 2008.)


  • In SoCal? "Produced By" Conference, June 4-6
    The line-up for the 2010 "Produced By" Conference, organized by the Producers Guild of America, looks great. Speakers include Mark Cuban of Landmark and 2929 Entertainment; James L. Brooks; Brian Grazer; and Darla K. Anderson, producer of "Monsters, Inc." and the upcoming "Toy Story 3." They've also got sessions on producing online content and videogames; DIY and hybrid distribution; and indie film marketing.

    If you're a PGA member, it's just $295 to attend; for others, the price is steep: $995. The event takes place at 20th Century Fox Studios. (There's a discounted rate of $595 if you are in another guild or a member of various film industry groups, so that's worth checking out.)


  • Convo NYC Sold Out ... But We're Looking for a Shooter
    I'm both happy and a bit sorry to say that the New York edition of The Conversation, March 27th at Columbia University, is now sold out. (I've already gotten a handful of e-mails from people asking how they can get in...)

    But ... we are looking for a one- or two-person crew to shoot the three main panels of the day and help us share them after the event (likely on Vimeo or a similar site). You'll get a comp pass to the entire day, which will let you participate in the lunch discussions and afternoon workshops. Get in touch with me if you're interested.

    Update: We found someone great. Thanks for the responses!


  • Three Quick Links for the SXSW Crowd
    - For my session with ze frank on Saturday, March 13th at 3:30 PM, you can submit questions (and vote on questions submitted by others) right here.

    - For my session with Gary Hustwit on Sunday, March 14th at 3:30 PM, you can submit questions (and vote) right here.

    - Finally, here's some info about getting your free copy of the Fans, Friends & Followers e-book (a $12 value, as they say on teevee). (BoingBoing was kind enough to blog about the e-book offer, which only lasts for the duration of SXSW, earlier this week.)

    (If you find me at the event, I may also have paperback copies of FFF with me [$15], which I'm happy to inscribe. Don't be afraid to ask...)