Tuesday 31 January 2017

J.J. Abrams honored as the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year

ACE Cinema Editor official 67th Eddies Award Program


Gifted with a prodigious talent as the creator or co-creator of groundbreaking TV series like Lost and the creative force as producer and director of some of the most high-profile and successful films of all time, notably Star Wars: The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams is this year’s recipient of the ACE Golden Eddie.

A true polymath, even excluding his production and directing prowess, Abrams is also a scriptwriter (Regarding Henry, Forever Young, Armageddon), a composer (of the theme music for Felicity, Alias, Fringe, Person of Interest and Lost) and an actor in films such as Six Degrees of Separation.

His enthusiasm and sheer ambition to tell stories registered at an early age, beginning with a clay animation shot on his parents’ home movie camera at age 8 and continuing into his teens making short films on Super 8.

“For me, working in Super 8 as a kid, was a kind of microscopic glimpse into what it would be like to do it for real,” Abrams says. “The experience with splicing tape gives you an invaluable hands-on appreciation for what it is to edit. That’s not to say that nonlinear digital editing isn’t incredibly intuitive, but there is a required investment of time and consideration when working with Super 8. There is no button you can press which will undo a decision or suddenly deliver you a close up. There is no such thing as a work print - it’s the only print.”

He adds, “Of course, making movies as a kid is finger paints compared to the art of a professional filmmaker, but you still learn the lessons and you come to understand the process.”

Many artists who have worked with Abrams describe production as a genuine collaboration. Abrams himself refers to the “family” of filmmakers with whom he is loyal.

“I feel blessed by working with a team of filmmakers who all have a mutual respect and admiration for one another and no doubt have some of the quirky dysfunctions of a family. Part of the fun is sharing a common experience. There’s nothing more important than everyone coming together to do a triple A plus job.”

He explains how he likes to work with everyone in a similar way. “If I work on a scene with a group of actors, I love to see what they bring to the scene as opposed to imposing my expectations or vision which I have in my pocket anyway. I welcome a point of view that may not be my own.”

The same holds true for editorial. “I’d rather be surprised by what the editor brings and challenged to look at a moment again rather than have a certain definitive interpretation adhered to at all times,” he says. “It may be that they bring a perception to a scene that hasn’t occurred to me. It may be that I’ll disagree with the approach and we go back to the original design.”

“A lot of the time they will see something that is just a better approach. They have found that moment,” he continues. “This is a critical requirement of editing, which is to be aware of the intention but not to be beholden to it. It’s about working out what should and can be done with the footage we actually have as opposed to sticking religiously to any notion when the scene was written or shot. That is an enormous piece of the filmmaking craft which editors bring.”

While Abrams refers to the craft of editing in general he is also referencing the close working relationship he enjoys with Mary Jo Markey, ACE and Maryann Brandon, ACE who have teamed with Abrams on all his directorial features.

“They bring different qualities,” he explains. “Just like working with a writer or an actor or director, you get a point of view that is unique to each. It’s not like they are pigeonholed into doing action or one is better at comedy or drama. They are both so vastly capable of so many different kinds of genre and stories.”

Abrams first worked with Markey on Felicity, the WB show co-created with Matt Reeves between 1998–2003. Brandon was an editor on Abrams’ ABC TV series Lost (2004–2010) and they were both editors on ABC’s Alias (2001–2006). The first time they were paired together was in 2006 for Abrams’ debut directorial feature Mission: Impossible III.

“On that show there were a number of wonderful people coming from the features side with whom I had never worked, such as Dan Mindel, ASC, who lent their vast experience,” says Abrams. “When it came to mood and tone and character, I just knew what I was going to get with Maryann and Mary Jo. Luckily, Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner were incredibly supportive.”

There was, however, some initial resistance to his choice.

“It never really occurred to me that having women cutting an action movie would be an issue,” he says. “In fact, I was a little discomforted that this was something people thought might even be a problem. To me, they felt like an asset. They brought the same compassion and humanity and focus that they’d showed making Lost and Alias, and I knew that their presence and expertise would help make the movie a better one.”

They joined forces again in 2009 to work on one of the most anticipated science-fiction films of the decade: Star Trek. Later, they'd also work on the sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). In between the two Trek films, they edited Abrams’ Super 8 (2011), produced by Abrams and Steven Spielberg. When Abrams was tasked by Disney with the responsibility to bring back Star Wars he turned once again to this most consistently performing duo - who received an Academy Award nomination for their work.

“We have a shorthand,” says Abrams. “They are industrious, great storytellers and terrific at finding the emotional journey behind every scene.”

Abrams relates how, on Mission: Impossible III, Markey found a piece of footage to bridge a couple of shots and carry the production forward.

“These little moments happen all the time but it saved my ass because until that point the sequence wasn’t working well,” he says. “Editing is not just about telling the story but also problem solving and Mary Jo and Maryan are brilliant at both.”

Brandon similarly came to the rescue on The Force Awakens. “The sequence where Han and Chewie board the Millennium Falcon was never intended to be that way,” recalls Abrams. “This was to be told from Finn and Rey’s point of view but in assembly it felt wrong to cut away from Han when he’s only just walked into the movie. We could have gone back and reshot the scene, reconstructing part of the Millennium Falcon set, scrapping our initial approach and rewriting Han’s entrance but instead Maryann looked at the material and found footage I hadn’t realised we’d shot. These were pieces shot before Harrison’s injury but which, in her skillful hands, showed Han and Chewie re-acquainting themselves with the long lost Falcon.”

“This is just one example of their skill at finding a way to tell a different version of the story to the one intended.”

If there is a thread binding Abrams’ diverse output it may be the strong emotional connection and interior character development which resonates with audiences even throughout high-octane and explosive action. It’s a sensibility which begins by working with actors but is honed in the edit.

“I don’t think there’s any secret or trick to it,” he says. “It’s about always trying to stay connected with your character. It could be a group conversation with eight people in a room but if you are not tuned into the character whose point of view you are following then the scene starts to float away and become observational as opposed to experiential.

“When it comes to action, because the big picture is often what you are focused on, it can distract you from keeping the most important plate spinning which, for me, is the emotional connection with a character.”

Abrams says he loves the editorial process. “Editing itself is something magical and I’m amazed every time by the power editors have to tell a story, often one you never expected.”

He says, “I feel incredibly lucky to have worked with people like Maryann and Mary Jo and Sam O’Steen (who cut Regarding Henry), Fred Toye, Stephen Semel and so many others. It has been, and continues to be, an education in storytelling. I am extremely honoured to be recognised by ACE.”

Singapore: Media Tech Fusion


AV Magazine

The city-state of Singapore continues to punch above its weight with a top-down nationwide plan to make its citizens the digital capital of the Asia region.

http://www.avinteractive.com/features/media-tech-fusion-30-01-2017/

With its skyscraper hanging gardens, terraformed tropical landscape and zoned business and living districts, such as Fusionopolis, Singapore already appears a futurist’s dream. The republic is not, however, content to rest on its hard won status as a hub for East West trade but with land and manpower at a premium is ambitious to transform the economy of its five million citizens into a digital superpower.
“The future is about convergence, digital disruption and transformation which will fundamentally change the way we work, live and operate – not just as an individual but as a people and in business,” says Gabriel Lim, chief executive of Singapore government agency, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). “We see that as a very important shift in our external environment.”
He explains that since Singapore’s independence from Malaysia in 1965 the country has managed successive plans for economic transformation. “We were a sea and air hub for physical trade, then we moved up the value chain to be a base for service industries. The next step is seizing the opportunities in a digital future.”
It is doing this with a top to bottom strategy that is likely only possible from a de facto, one-party state which has a commanding grip on all areas of society (though technically democratic, Singapore’s power is wielded by the People’s Action Party). All roads come back to the government and, where digital initiatives are concerned, this means the IMDA – the result of last October’s merger of agencies handling media/software and telecoms/data (or ‘infocomm’).
The Singaporean state operates like a corporate enterprise and any business thinking of setting up shop here will soon realise that partnership with it is pretty much essential to tap talent, funding, tax incentives and public/private schemes.
“Our strengths, as opposed to neighbours like Thailand and Malaysia, are that we are an inherently connected society,” claims Lim. “Not just in infrastructure, but culturally too we are tech savvy. We have a civil service that understands the role of technology in improving lives. We have a single layer of bureaucracy so that if a company wants to start a small pilot or ramp a massive R&D centre they won’t find layers of municipal and regional authority.”
Singapore has identified education as key to its ability to compete against far larger regional economies like China, or the equally effervescent markets of South Korea, Indonesia, even Myanmar. Specifically, it is introducing robotics into the classroom.
These include Bee-bot, designed by UK firm TTS, and the MIT-created KIBO, both tech toys which teach preschoolers about sequencing, assembly and problem solving. A more advanced S$15,000 (€10,000) robot called Nao familiarises older children with AI.
“Most of what we know as adults about robotics comes from Hollywood and can be intimidating, so Nao is a revelation to adults too,” says Adrian Lim, IDMA’s education director.

Coding and computation
The initiative continues at primary and secondary level where coding and computation is part of the curriculum. A number of school buses have been retrofitted as mobile tech labs to reach outlying districts or institutions which can’t afford permanent investment. On board, pupils can experiment with wearables, learn to programme drones, and go hands-on with scanners and 3D fabrication with laser cutters.
This is part of a wider effort to expose every Singaporean to digital technology. “Many older folk still do not know how to use smartphones so we need to introduce technology to them in ways that they can understand,” explains Goh Augustine, manager of IMDA’s next generation infrastructure.
A pilot smart bus shelter, for example, features two 46in ruggedised Samsung touch screens serving content such as updated transport schedules, weather, news and a feedback page for users to note their reaction to the unit. E-books can be downloaded and there are smartphone charge points. It’s the type of scheme that can only be enacted in a culture of high civic pride and higher CCTV surveillance.
For those in employment the government is pumping S$120m (€78m) over three years into a scheme to re-skill sections of its workforce in digital essentials. It also wants to reduce the dependence on 230,000 manual jobs in security and cleaning and 110,000 jobs in landscaping with replacement automated systems. Such jobs are either hard to fill or largely employ immigrant labour.
To do this there are 30 pilot smart tech schemes, the most successful of which will be scaled nationwide. These include facial indexing for use in future investigations, robot-as-a-service cleaners for hotels and offices designed by V3 Teletech, and a scheme to fly drones over buildings for early detection of structural damage managed by Aerolion.
“Many countries are grappling with the digital divide but we want digital inclusion and that means the vulnerable and elderly,” stressed Gabriel Lim.
Since 2014, 6,000 of the poorest households have been provided with tablets, PCs and home broadband at a subsidised cost of S$6 (€3.9) a month, plus guidance on how to use them.
Neighbourhood self-help kiosks and mobile health stations are being installed for vital signs monitoring to cope with an ageing populace and reduce the burden on the health system. By 2030 the number of Singaporeans aged 65+ will triple to 900,000. A related scheme will introduce sensors into homes to enable telemedicine.
Another e-health scheme could see virtual reality used for surgical training and remote diagnosis. Side Effects, a Toronto-HQ’d software developer better known for film/TV visual effects package Houdini, is working with the medical department to create VR scenarios. It has its Asian base in Singapore.

VR customised
Another instance of the fusion of media with technology to solve a government posed problem could see VR customised for use in the classroom. Local production company Beach House Pictures is developing software in tandem with the education department to enable multiple users to experience the same interactive content at the same time. Subjects will be based around Singaporean and worldwide cultural and historical sites and already include a VR sim of the aftermath of the 2015 Nepali earthquake.
IMDA has established labs for companies and the public to access tools and equipment and workshops to prototype new ideas. Tech labs, such as the one at Jurong library, contain 3D printers, drones and Arduino open source microcontroller kits with further facilities dedicated to video production and games just opened.
One beneficiary is Gray Tan a local business student who used the labs to develop a prosumer camera for astronomy. His company TinyMos aims to commercialise the product by mid-2017.
While the labs are primarily intended to cultivate Singaporean tech entrepreneurs, the fusion of local talent with international innovation is critical to the government’s plan to export the republic’s intellectual property far beyond its tight borders.
“Asian businesses use Singapore as a test bed to enter markets in Europe or the US and, conversely, western start-ups can gain validation here,” says Lim. “If it works in Singapore it can be scaled and exported to other parts of Asia.”
Singapore already leads Southeast Asia in both smartphone penetration (exceeding 100 per cent) and mobile broadband subscriptions (140 per cent), according to Ericsson but Singtel, the main telecoms provider, aims to boost connectivity further. HetNet is its solution to managing capacity by handing over voice and data connections from its network to the country’s 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots (targeting 20,000 by 2018). This has the important benefit of boosting connectivity in the flats of residents living 15 storeys and higher.
With Huawei and Ericsson, Singtel is to roll out 5G, a cellular technology capable of 20Mbps and zero latency for mass mobile broadcasts and M2M communication. “We will launch 5G in select areas like Changi Airport and the financial district by 2018 and then build out the network nationwide,” says Singtel’s Edmund Quek.
Singapore is not a big enough market on its own for international businesses, instead marketing itself as a base to reach 800 million people in Asia Pacific. That’s why media giants like Discovery Networks and Walt Disney base their APAC operations there as do corporates such as Unilever while AV outfits like US LED firm SiliconCore maintain a local presence.
“The biggest challenge for companies investing in APAC is risk that the deal they think they’ve signed, for property for example, might not be honoured,” says Gabriel Lim. In contrast he says investors favour Singapore because of its robust IP protection.
Fifty years ago, emerging from colonial rule, the city-state’s prospects were not good. “What would it take to convince investors to sink money in Singapore to build infrastructure and build factories and create jobs?” poses Angeline Poh, assistant chief executive, content and innovation at IMDA. “We needed the rule of law, skilled labour and predictability in the system to inspire confidence.” To that concrete mix, Singapore has now added technological innovation.

Case study – World’s first driverless taxi
A fleet of autonomous taxis is planned to be on Singaporean roads by 2018 run by nuTonomy, a 2013 spin-out of joint venture research by MIT and the National University of Singapore. Permission for test on public roads have been ongoing since August in the 2.5-square-mile business and residential district one-north (a driver is installed in the back for safety while tests continue). The cars are modified Renault Zoes and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electrics are fitted with six sets of Lidars plus two cameras on the dashboard to scan for obstacles and detect changes in traffic lights. Autonomous taxis could ultimately reduce the number of cars on Singapore’s roads by two thirds to 300,000. Having beaten Google and Uber to launch, nuTonomy plans to export the model to other Asian cities and Europe. The smart vehicles project first adapted golf buggies, then mobility scooters before electric-powered road cars.

Friday 27 January 2017

Sky paves way for OTT future

Streaming Media

European pay-TV giant Sky has signaled the start of a long-term shift away from satellite broadcasting by launching an OTT version of its Sky Q TV service.

http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/News/Featured-News/Sky-Paves-the-Way-for-OTT-Future-116018.aspx

Debuting in the UK, Sky will roll the broadband-based service out in its other European markets—Italy and Germany, and Austria—over time. Subscribers can access via the internet or a new set-top-box, due in 2018, instead of using a dish.
Sky already offers a slimmed-down streaming package, Now TV, but Sky Q will be the full-fat version.
The company has identified a market for growth of around two million UK homes that cannot or will not install a satellite dish and a further estimated six million customers across Europe that do not have a dish. Many of these will be in urban areas where dishes are harder to install.
Sky has not announced whether the service will support UHD 4K broadcasts, or bandwidth to the home requirements for 4K.
The move is a response to competition from BT (who will discuss their upcoming OTT service at Streaming Forum next month) and to SVOD services like Netflix, and came as the company announced less than stellar half-year financial figures.
It reported a 9% fall in operating profits after paying more for broadcast rights to Premier League football matches. Churn had risen to 11.6% from 10.2% last year.
"Churn is not where we want it to be but we've got a good set of plans to bring it down," Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch said.
Sky added 140,000 Sky Broadband customers in the UK and Ireland in the last 6 months of 2016 to bring the total to 6.1 million.
“Over time, we will launch this service in our other markets, building on our position as Europe’s leading OTT provider.”
Sky is set to market its broadband packages using average download speeds in line with an expected new set of rules from the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority due this spring, which will aim to require ISPs to be clearer about the speeds they advertise.
Separately, the operator said it will launch its Sky Kids app in Germany and Austria and extend its streaming service, Sky Ticket, to more devices and platforms.
In a statement Sky said: "We will broaden our business further by launching our movie transactional service, Sky Store, in Germany and fully roll-out our targeted advertising service, Sky Adsmart, in Italy and Ireland."
Sky has accepted a £11.7 billion ($14.6 billion) takeover offer from Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, which already owns 39% of the company. Fox needs shareholder approval and the greenlight from regulators in the UK and Europe for the offer.

Do we care if Trump rolls back Net Neutrality? Netflix doesn’t…

RedShark News

In the words of Slim Shady, “The FCC won’t let me be…"
Well Slim may have less to worry about now that the Trump administration appears hellbent, among other items, on ripping up net neutrality.
http://www.redsharknews.com/ip-video/item/4306-do-we-care-if-trump-rolls-back-net-neutrality-netflix-doesn’t…
This is the policy enforced by the US communications regulator Federal Communications Commission which prevents broadband providers from charging different rates to various content providers.
It’s been a thorny issue for a number of years with big broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast lined up in opposition and against exponents of it which include Netflix, Twitter and Google. Net neutrality critics argue that the problem it’s trying to solve, namely giant ISPs acting as gatekeepers to what we see and do online, doesn’t exist.
From a Republican point of view the regulation is another arm of the state interfering in the market.
President Trump's appointment of Ajit Pai as chairman of the FCC only points in one direction.
He has previously stated that the commission’s Open Internet Order (which established net neutrality) “would be reversed or overturned in one way or another.”
Netflix, though the chief bandwidth hogger with nearly 50 million US subscribers, thumbed its nose at a potential change in the rules which could see it charged more for usage.
Perhaps with an eye to assuaging shareholders it said in a statement last week: “Weakening of U.S. net neutrality laws, should that occur, is unlikely to materially affect our domestic margins or service quality because we are now popular enough with consumers to keep our relationships with ISPs stable.”
There’s perhaps a veiled threat to Comcast et al there: alter the terms of service and two can play at that game. Can you afford more people to cut the cord when everyone knows that content – which we have lots of – is what people want.
But, as consumers, why should we care about the plight of one billion dollar company over another billion dollar one?
While Netflix has the chops, cash and scale (most of its growth is being driven in markets outside the US where its growth is widely believed saturated) to fight its corner, smaller content providers may not feel so plucky with power handed to gatekeeping ISPs.
There’s an argument to suggest that ISPs may take advantage of a rollback in regulation to promote their own video services.
And if you care about access to the internet as a utility that needs defending against corporate greed then we understand your concern. With nation's seemingly turning inwards away from global cooperation, we wouldn't want the U.S anti regulatory stance to infect other countries and stifle digital innovation or consumer rights.
On his appointment, Pai immediately tweeted: “There is so much we can do together to bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans and to promote innovation and investment.”
You don’t have to read between the lines to understand what he means. Just go to his offcial bio on the FCC site where he writes that “consumers benefit most from competition, not preemptive regulation. Free markets have delivered more value to American consumers than highly regulated ones”. He goes on: No regulatory system should indulge arbitrage; regulators should be skeptical of pleas to regulate rivals, dispense favours, or otherwise afford special treatment.
All together now.. "they try to shut me down on MTV, but it feels so empty without me.”

Esports media: How it's broadcast to fans, and how traditional TV is getting involved

Sports Business International

Streaming websites are synonymous with esports viewing, and have been largely responsible for its rapid ascent.
http://www.sportbusiness.com/sportbusiness-international/esports-media-how-its-broadcast-fans-and-how-traditional-tv-getting
Twitch is by far the most important platform, averaging 10m views daily/400m views a month worldwide.
“Twitch owns the audience. To get reach you have to have a channel on Twitch,” says Malph Minns, Managing Director at sports consultancy Strive Sponsorship.
Other similar, but far smaller, esports video platforms include Azubu, MLG.tv, Hitbox, uStream, and StreamMe.
The biggest competitor to Twitch is YouTube Gaming.
“There are really only two places for successful content creation – Twitch and YouTube,” says Matt Hill, SVP Global Sports and Entertainment Consulting, at marketing agency GMR. “[Put] simply, Twitch provides the gaming audience the ability to take their highlights to YouTube, and YouTube provides a notification to [gamers’ YouTube] channels when the creator is live on Twitch. The relationship is competitive in the sense that the two video platforms are both attempting to be the ‘go to’ location for gaming video content.”
Each has its points of difference. YouTube attracts large global audiences, but lacked the ability to broadcast live until the launch of YouTube Gaming live streaming in September 2015, “a direct attempt by YouTube to dethrone Twitch,” says Hill.
“YouTube is adopting a very aggressive strategy to take share from Twitch in live streaming,” agrees Adam Mezhvinsky, founder of esports consultancy Quintessential Enterprises (QTE). “YouTube’s advantage is that is has a far wider social community for esports fans to share content with.”
According to Hill, a content creator can, and should, use both platforms, “as either one is a good choice when trying to grow your brand, and audience. YouTube now may be able to attract a wider, avid and casual, gaming consumer.”
Facebook, with 1.6bn users, is getting into the game by partnering with live video content providers, including Activision Blizzard Media Networks, to show live tournaments and news programming via MLG.tv’s Facebook page.
Television broadcasters have begun covering esports in a bid to reach its young male audiences.
The conventional route is a dedicated TV channel. In the US, ESPN began by streaming games on its website, expanding its offer to includes blocks of esports programming on TV channels ESPN2 and ESPNU. European pay-TV broadcaster Sky recently launched the Ginx.TV channel to air esports competitions.
Another route is invest vertically. Turner Broadcasting and WME-IMG have done this by creating the Eleague around CS:GO. Coverage is distributed on TV channel TBS and simulcast on Twitch. The project was recently expanded to cover The Overwatch Open, a tournament based on Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch title.

This time it’s different

Traditional TV has covered esports before. In Korea, OnGameNet aired the first television broadcast of an esports tournament – Starleague – in 1999. MTV covered the Cyberathlete Professional League World Tour in 2005. USA Network showed the Major League Gaming 2006 Pro Circuit. Sky partnered with DirecTV to launch the Championship Gaming Series in 2007, which folded a year later.
The latest wave of coverage is considered more likely to be sustained because the esports audience has become a more critical target for traditional TV networks. This is a demographic which is showing less and less interest in traditional TV pay packages and schedules. Broadcasters have more at stake in getting their approach right.
The esports audience has grown to a scale that broadcasters and advertisers cannot afford to ignore. But they are struggling to get to grips with its global scale and lack of structure. Unlike conventional sport, esports grew online and without geographic boundaries.
“The rise of social media, live streaming and expanded distribution options for broadcasts of top level competitions have enabled esports to break down geographical barriers in a way that many traditional sports have struggled with,” says Mike Sepso, SVP at Activision Blizzard Media Network.
“Esport is global so distribution has to be global and Twitch serves that for the core audience,” says Michele Attisani, co-founder and COO at esports content producer FACE IT. “The big opportunity for broadcasters is to engage with a more localised mainstream audience.”
Alex Varatharajah, analyst at Ampere Analysis, says the main issue facing traditional media in esports is competing with established providers like Twitch.
Duncan Stewart, Deloitte’s Director of Technology, Media and Telecommunications Research, says broadcaster investment has not been significant:
“A typical US cable company might air 1,000 channels, so airing a single esport channel is not an overwhelming commitment. So far, based on public information as well as some private conversations, the esport channels that have been launched have not seen blockbuster ratings. Part of the problem may be the human interest angle: people like knowing something about the person behind the player (think about how the Olympics always does that) and the people who play esports are sometimes not comfortable on camera.”

The importance of authenticity​

Some historical attempts to put esports on television failed because the programming was perceived as inauthentic. “Too much of the old content pandered to a mainstream audience and alienated the core esports fan,” says Minns. “The challenge for broadcasters now is to provide value to the core fan while also trying to bring new people on board.”
This is also a challenge for esports content producers such as FACE IT, Ginx.TV, and ESL, whose business model is to distribute content to as many outlets as possible.
“Even two years ago, the hardcore esports enthusiast would only be interested in watching content on Twitch as the purest way of consuming this content,” says James Dean, Managing Director, Turtle Entertainment UK, the owner of ESL. “The aim is to adapt esports to TV. The industry is in a trial-and-error phase just now. There will be no single winning format but authenticity will be key.”
Broadcasters are often advised to partner with a ‘native’ esports producer to better understand the audience. Hence Swedish media giant MTG’s acquisition of Turtle Entertainment, and Sky and free-to-air commercial broadcaster ITV’s investment in Ginx.TV.

Interactivity missing from TV​

A critical element which some observers suggest fundamentally undermines any attempt by TV to successfully deliver esports is the interactive nature of most esports consumption.
“The real-time chat function is a key part of any online broadcast, offering people a very direct way to engage with their favourite players,” says Dean.
Online platforms like Twitch offer viewers a rich set of statistics and the ability to switch between the video feeds of different players within the same game, or to switch to watch another game entirely. MLG.tv on Facebook offers viewers an ‘Enhanced Experience,’ which is an HD video stream with a feed of match statistics, live leaderboards, and insights based on the competition they are watching.
Such interactivity is increasingly possible on connected TVs, but more likely something that broadcasters will offer via second-screen applications or online services running parallel to the large screen broadcast.

Producing content for TV is different​

“Traditional esports coverage has been like calling a horse race,” says Minns. “The action has been confined to commentary of player-versus-player with little broad narrative. Contextual storytelling is what broadcast does very well. Esports on TV will see more pre- and post-game analysis, putting the game in context and explaining an individual player’s story.”
ESL’s Dean agrees: “As the esports audience has grown, we are finding that people are looking for more engaging content, which means developing ideas around analysis and commentary and side stories that creates additional editorial or storylines around tournaments. The question is how we blend this into a service which works on second screen and on TV for the millennial audience.”Attisani says educating viewers is key: “The biggest challenge with showing esports on TV is that viewers often won’t have a clue what’s going on. Education is vital.”
He suggests broadcasters could take direction from TV coverage of poker. “When poker was brought to TV the key presentation initiative was to show the competitor’s cards to the viewer at home with commentary about what each hand meant. Similarly, we have to explain what’s happening and why.”
An appraisal of the first season of Turner’s Eleague by rival esports broadcaster ESPN rated its production values “above that of other esports broadcasts”. It praised reaction shots of players and fans that provided emotional context to the in-game action, and the highlighting of the personal stories of some players, which “made the games more meaningful without sacrificing the pacing of the broadcast.” This allowed a newer audience to feel engaged with the players and teams, ESPN concluded.
There was criticism of the Eleague’s structure, however, with ESPN calling it a “drawn-out tournament” rather than a league, “with an unusually high number of teams and an unnecessarily inflated game count. As a result, it was difficult to become invested in any single game throughout the group stages, save perhaps the weekly Friday finals played on TBS.”
Eleague coverage is making a mark. An Eleague broadcast on 16 September 2016 drew 361,000 viewers, beating, by way of comparison, the 292,000 that watched the Premier League clash between Liverpool and Chelsea on NBC on the same day.

The role of publishers​
Since games publishers’ business is selling games, rather than selling media rights to competitions featuring their games, there are far fewer content restrictions around major esports events than with traditional sports.
For the time being at least, publishers see esports primarily as marketing. The more people who spend time with their games via esports, the more people are likely to purchase the game or, for free titles, make micro-transactions within them. Ovum forecasts that global revenue generated by online/micro-transaction PC games – including LoL or Dota 2 – will rise to $28.1bn by 2019.
Esports content producers, such as tournament organisers, meanwhile, make most of their revenue from sponsorship and advertising sold around video streams associated with their content.
“We create thousands of hours of content from 15 studios worldwide, so we have a huge amount of inventory we can sell around and a big incentive to try and break into the broadcast industry and get our content into linear and OTT platforms,” says ESL’s Dean. “It’s the reason MTG bought us.”
For publishers and esports producers, the interest of traditional media represents potential new revenue, either by extending coverage of the game title to a new audience or in selling rights to broadcasters. Broadcasters will look to make money from sponsorship and advertising around programming.
“While the bulk of esports revenue for content producers is made at the elite end where the top teams and players compete, it is extremely important for publishers to feed the grassroots,” says Minns. “Publishers make more from game sales and in-game purchases than they make directly from fans watching the game. At least, that’s where the current balance of money lies.”
Recognising the increased interest in esports, publishers have sought to adopt the format of established sports tournaments to further their appeal to television and sponsor brands.
Electronic Arts launched EA Majors based around Madden NFL Football, FIFA and Battlefield 1, explicitly intended to mirror the major tournaments in tennis and golf. There will be four Madden Majors a year, each with a $250,000 prize pool.
Valve scheduled four Majors for Dota 2, described as “a series of four marquee tournaments culminating in The International.” These Majors are backed up by open and regional qualifiers in multiple geographies.
Riot Games has hosted League of Legends championships across multiple territories for the fourth year in a row, including in France, the UK, Belgium, and Germany.
“Adopting the structure, and indeed the terminology, of established sports further reflects the sense that esports are pitching towards the mainstream,” says Ovum.

The esports viewer

PwC reports that one in five esports viewers watches weekly and consumes an average of 19 days of esports content per year. Asians and Hispanics tend to watch more (27 and 32 days respectively) and self-identified hardcore gamers watch 32 days.
Newzoo reports that esports enthusiasts spend 42 hours a month watching esports content, compared with 23 hours per month spent by football enthusiasts consuming football content. An average esports viewing session lasts 2.2 hours, according to Superdata. A large percentage of esports viewers (40 per cent say Newzoo) don’t themselves play the game that they like to watch, which is considered proof of a high level of engagement.
When it comes to what platform fans use, PwC says 57 per cent view esports via a laptop or mobile device. Only 32 per cent watch esports on TV. Newzoo research suggests that 67 per cent of US fans use laptops or PCs to watch esports video, compared to just 27 per cent for TV.

Thursday 26 January 2017

Capturing natural magic in 8K with Red EPIC-W

VMI

Shooting high resolution video to extract useable frames has become a handy and relatively common technique in live sports and feature film visual effects but Banana Split Productions has made ingenious use of it in order to capture the natural magic of a child’s performance.

http://vmi.tv/case-studies/article/127

The boutique commercials agency and production company is among the first to make use of the Red EPIC-W with HELIUM sensor for a TV spot and is arguably the first anywhere outside Hollywood to record 8K against green screen.

The creative brief for Hasbro toy brand My Little Pony depicts two young children at home enjoying a colouring book and letting their imaginations roam free as the My Little Pony world magically appears all around them.

Normally this would have been filmed over a couple of days, including one in a full green screen studio, but in order to the meet the tight turnaround date, Banana Split producer Anne-Maria Wilson and director Ian Sciacaluga decided to film it all on location in just a single day, arranging for a green screen to be set up in the basement of a suburban house in South London.

What may have been a risky decision for such a high profile project was nullified by the choice of acquisition source.

“When you are working with child performers not only are you limited by the time allowed with them but you never really know where the best moments of their performance will be,” explains director of photography Jonathan Beech. “Often the most naturalistic and magic moments are in the wides rather than the close ups. Shooting at the highest resolution possible with the safety net of being able to reframe in the edit was the essential luxury the EPIC-W enabled.”

There are other cameras with 8K sensors but what made the Red model particularly attractive to the team was its ability to output Avid files. The camera can also be switched to output Apple ProRes but an Avid format suited Banana Splits’ post production route. Files could be converted onboard the camera from Red Raw and seamlessly transferred to the edit making significant time savings.

The camera is able to simultaneously record 8K Red Raw and 4K Avid files speeding up render time by being in a edit-ready format and allowing the director the option of going back to the 8K source to extract those ‘one time only’ magic moments.

Despite having used Reds before, Beech made sure to run extensive tests with the new camera at VMI.

“We wanted to know how the menus and codecs worked, how the camera functioned under different circumstances and what we could and couldn’t do with it,” he explains. “There can be the odd gremlin in firmware with new cameras so we were just double and triple checking. We spent a whole day at VMI and the technicians there gave us all the knowledge they had which put us in good stead.”
As it turned out, the camera performed brilliantly with no technical issues at all.

A set of Zeiss Master Primes was chosen to complement the sharpness of the 8K image.

“At the end of the day you can always make a picture softer in post but you can’t really make it sharper,” Beech says. “As soon as I put the Prime lens on and looked at the picture I realised I was looking at a filmic image. The camera’s different grading options gives you more latitude at the top end of the curve for more detail in whites or blacks. Although we didn’t need to use the full dynamic range of the camera in this instance, it’s exciting to realise just how much flexibility in terms of grading options the EPIC-W offers. It seems limitless.”

The spot is being edited in house at Banana Split and airs on February 22

Friday 20 January 2017

Big data is driving AI across media

KNect365 TMT
Access from devices to cloud AI APIs is the game changer providing highly powerful and scalable real-time capabilities for processing data. 
The concept of ‘machines thinking like humans’, has moved beyond theory thanks to the increase in – and increase in access to – massive amounts of unstructured multimedia combined with the low cost of high-power, specifically cloud-based, computing. Essentially, if it weren’t for big data there would be no artificial intelligence.
“There’s a been a huge influx of data with everyone feeding sound, text and imagery over social media which has accelerated our ability to try to find ways to process and understand it,” says Ian Hughes, analyst at 451 Research. “Traditional processing and analytics are too slow since it doesn’t scale, so research has been pushed into AI as a way of dealing with data.”
Adoption is bound to grow as all media experiences become fully connected and new products are developed to provide more convenience, relevance and satisfaction to the user experience. Voice recognition is an early example.
“Speech-to-text services could become a ‘table stake’ in multi-language video markets providing automated subtitling over any video content,” reckons Nagra senior director product marketing Simon Trudelle.
“You can imagine that AI systems will be able to analyse, by facial recognition or object detection, the actual content for metadata gathering,” says Paul Turner VP, enterprise product management, Telestream. “Given that metadata is key to automated workflows, this could vastly expand our capability to ‘mine’ content for other purposes.”
Some 75% of Netflix’ usage is driven by recommended content that was itself also developed with data – reducing the risk of producing content that people won’t watch and proposing content that consumers are eager for. This groundbreaking use of big data and basic cognitive science in the content industry has shown others its potential.
“The world’s biggest content owners are going direct to consumers,” says Trudelle. “With Netflix and Amazon now in the top ten content creation companies worldwide, it could drive a paradigm shift in the media industry. With a growing stock of videos available, just relying on manually managed catalogues or curated lists to create TV or SVOD services has already started reaching its limits.”
The use of AI relies heavily on massive volumes of unstructured data – and a lot more has become available now that video-enabled consumer devices are connected. Capturing and managing TV/video platform data so it can be exploited by advanced predictive algorithms is becoming a key focus for the media industry.
“With early data mining you needed to be experienced in statistical analysis to take advantage of the technology – now we are able to put some AI tech into the hands of those who don’t have a Phd to make it work,” says ThinkAnalytics founder/CTO Peter Docherty. “We can also take advantage of elastic computing power to build and scale models and begin to develop more industry specific tools.”
Voice assistants such as Amazon’s Echo and Google Home record user voices in order to function, a logical extension of which is to have cameras on smart TVs and STBs relay information back to the operator about who is watching to improve individual profiling, content serving, ad targeting and automated product insertion (using tools like Mirriad).
This may appear more intrusive to the way in which Google or Amazon appropriates data from web searches, for example, and opens up a debate about how much data consumers may be willing to part with for perceived benefit or service discounts.
According to Bloomberg, Google, Amazon and Microsofare already aggregating voice queries from each system's user base to eductate their respective AIs about dialects and natural speech patterns.
“The advent of cloud-based apps and APIs means 2017 will be about personalisation,” says IBM’s EU Cognitive Solutions & IoT executive Carrie Lomas. “It’s not just about knowing age and gender but knowing a consumer’s emotional response to products marketed to them. Cognitive computing enables media and brands to personalise their approach in a frictionless way.”
At Kudelski (Nagra’s parent), principal data scientist Pietro Berkes says machine learning (ML) algorithms are used to assist human decisions in all its core businesses including helping operators understand the behaviour of subscribers, predict churn and optimise their catalogue.
Its security division uses ML methods for “privacy-preserving user behaviour modelling and intrusion detection.” ML algorithms are also applied to help infrastructure operators better manage peak traffic situations and to detect and prevent fraud in deployed systems, he says.
Realistically, it may still take several years before new AI APIs become widely available and adopted by the traditional content creation and distribution value chain. “It’s really a new mindset that players need to have which asks ‘What if there were a cloud AI API doing this?’” suggests Trudelle.
That cultural reluctance may also inhibit AI’s adoption in production although similar benefits of sifting an overwhelming mass of data apply. Video from observational documentary shoots, for example, regularly achieve ratios of 100:1 swamping editorial. Auto-assembly and even auto edit-packages are available to package and polish raw multimedia though instances of use in professional content creation are rare.
“Making one cut of a promo was fine when TV was the only distribution medium, but today that’s not good enough,” says Oren Boiman, co-founder and CEO of Magisto, an AI-based editing software developer that claims 80 million users.
“If you are creating a trailer for a newspaper website, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube or Instagram, each one should be formatted differently,” argues Boiman. “You might target by gender, age or by country. With so many variants of the same source media required to optimise every impression online, doing so manually is extremely inefficient.”
Other examples of creation aided by AI are springing up. At last year’s Cannes Lions ad festival, a promo produced by Saatchi & Saatchi was reportedly scripted and directed by AI . Even the casting was done by a program that examined electroencephalogram (EEG) brain data from actors and matched them to the emotions it had detected in the song and its singer.
IBM challenged an ad agency to rate a video made by Watson alongside one made to the same brief by another team at the same agency. “They couldn’t decide which one was which but said they preferred the one by Watson,” says Lomas, stressing that creatives are still necessary to shape video and create campaigns “but AI techniques can take away the heavy lifting”.
IBM also demonstrated how Watson could be trained to examine patterns in trailers and horror movies to help create the official trailer for Fox feature Morgan, slashing typical production time from weeks to a few hours.
“It’s a common belief that AI will replace mechanical roles with creative ones,” says Berkes. “While that might be broadly true, the reality is more complex. The output of with tasks like creative filtering and automatic editing of movies must be ultimately evaluated by humans.”
Since ML systems need very large amounts of high-quality data to achieve optimal performance “data collection and curation requires substantial organizational efforts, he says. “The global shortage of ML experts represents one of the most important difficulties for companies wanting to enter the AI market.”
In response, the generic role of the ML expert will be replaced and complemented with more specialised roles. According to Berkes, these include engineers adapting known methods to new sets of data and tuning the model parameters; data scientists supporting ML engineers with big data cluster architectures and for the visualisation and evaluation of the results. Software engineers will also be needed to productise the resulting model.
The biggest losers in an AI ecosystem will perhaps be those in ‘assisting’ roles that can be replaced with automatic systems, rather like the way the traditional role of the ‘in-betweener’ in animated movie production has gradually been replaced by computer rendering techniques.
Even further out, say 2040, where will AI be? “We will have a completely different method of interacting with computers,” says Telestream’s Turner. “The ability to communicate with common language will be a paradigm shift that is as dramatic as the adoption of the mouse was.”

Thursday 19 January 2017

The rise of the mega-library

Broadcast

ITN’s decision to hand over the licence and distribution rights for its news archive to Getty Images has alarmed researchers and raised questions about the shape of the industry.
“On the surface, a monopoly makes the research process faster as more content is made available through fewer databases and interfaces,” says
James McDonald, an archive producer whose credits include The Program and Ronaldo. “But the implications are very worrying,” he adds. “This is going to have a negative effect on smaller businesses and could force smaller archives to sell out to some of the bigger suppliers just as a way to get their content out there.”
The ITN archive comprises 1 million news clips spanning 61 years, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam war and the aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami.
While ITN retains ownership, sales will be outsourced to Getty from July, leading to the closure of in-house clip rights division ITN Source and the loss of 30 jobs.
“ITN was looking for a long-term partnership that would grow its archive business and believes Getty Images is the right partner for the stewardship and dissemination of its archive content,” says Getty’s director of video content development Lee Shoulders.
“We will be able to leverage our global distribution platform and world-class sales force to expand the market for ITN’s video footage.”
ITN’s technical team will spend the next few months uploading hundreds of thousands of clips to Getty’s site. “Files will be temporarily uploaded to Amazon S3 cloud storage to facilitate the transfer of ITN’s complete library,” says Shoulders.
“In addition, ITN’s tape-based material will be made available as searchable text records through our analogue search and fulfilment workflow.”
What concerns researchers, though, is that vital knowledge possessed by ITN Source staff will be lost in transition.
“Getty’s footage collections are now going to be so immense and ever-expanding that it would not be possible for any one person to have a good overview of what it does, and doesn’t, hold,” says McDonald.
The personal touch
Paul Bell, the producer of documentaries including Senna and Amy, adds: “As a researcher, I want access to the material that I know is not on the website by finding the person who’s been with the archive the longest. Getty needs to make as much available as it can and keep the process transparent.”
For Carol O’Callaghan, a jury coordinator for trade association Focal International, “folk knowledge” is “lost in mega-libraries as staff cannot be familiar with the history of all the represented production companies”.
There are similar warnings from rival footage archives. “If no one from ITN Source moves with the archive and they rely on data transfer alone, that’s a recipe for disaster,” says Massimo Moretti, UK library commercial development manager at StudioCanal. “There will be a knowledge gap that they won’t be able to fill quickly.”
Alwyn Lindsey, vice-president, sales at Associated Press (AP), says archive owners underestimate the importance of personal interaction at their peril. “ITN personnel selling ITN’s own content would be knowledgeable and passionate – which is possibly a challenge for Getty.”
He implies that the link between ITN Source and the ITN newsroom, for planning ongoing news stories like Brexit, may be broken. “It’s not just knowledge of historical content that is important but also an understanding of what will be shot going forward.”
In response, Shoulders stresses that Getty’s ITN collection will be updated daily, “with agenda-setting news footage made available to our international customer base from 24 hours after it was first aired”.
Along with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ Corbis Images, the venture capital-backed Getty is credited with lifting image archives from a cottage industry to a global business by aggregating – through acquisition or licence – smaller collections, then digitising the assets and making them available for search on the web.
Getty’s purchases include Image Bank, Allsport and MediaVast. Since 2013, it has represented BBC Motion Gallery on behalf of BBC Worldwide, and in September it struck a similar deal with AP. A year ago, Getty acquired the rights to run Corbis, cementing its position as the world’s largest online image library.
“It takes a lot of investment to protect original assets and take them to market, which a larger company is better equipped to do,” suggests British Pathé general manager Alastair White. “The only way smaller libraries can survive is by getting everything online digitally and in HD.”
Getty’s dominance, and in particular the housing of BBC and ITN assets under one (foreign) roof, represents an existential threat, according to some. “By the summer, the gatekeeper of anything of importance in the recent history of this country will be not a public broadcaster, but an external agency,” says Bell. “If these assets were buildings rather than film, there might have been more government oversight.”
Licensing alternative
McDonald warns of “a considerable threat” to Britain’s audio-visual heritage – “not only in its exploitation by an American corporation, but in how accessible it is to film-makers to license, as Getty’s collection is tailored to sell to advertising and corporate productions.”
He adds: “They haven’t made the BBC’s collection any more accessible to film-makers than Motion Gallery was already doing and I don’t hold out much hope that their further acquisitions will be beneficial in that way either.”
The solution, he says, is to establish a publicly funded body in the mould of the French Institute National Audiovisual (INA), which licenses content from French broadcasters. “It strikes me as a much more ethical way to successfully license the content produced by our public service broadcasters.”
Others, though, see an inevitable and straightforward business move. “ITN Source has been an aggregator itself and the market continues to consolidate into a number of key players,” says Lindsey. “I don’t think a huge amount will change.”
AP is one of those players, recently acquiring rights to the British Movietone collection from Newsreel Archive.
StudioCanal’s Moretti anticipates little impact on the market, except a possible knock-on effect on fees. “If they adopt a very aggressive pricing policy, then the whole market value of a clip, regardless of its content, could reduce. It’s something I will have to monitor.”
Bell is also relaxed about the prospects. “Getty is a commercial library in the same way that ITN Source is a commercial library, so I can see that having Getty represent ITN is a good fi t from their point of view.”
There are unresolved implications for the future of collections represented by ITN Source. Broadcast understands that management of newsreels like Fox Movietone and British Paramount will revert to rights holders 21st Century Fox and Reuters.
Similarly, ITV Studios will take back control of collections from Rank, Korda, Carlton and Granada, ranging from the Carry On film series to Coronation Street.
Anticipating the move, and in parallel to ITN Source, Reuters began to sell its 1 million-clip archive through Reuters Media Express last September.
The wider challenge for archives like ITN’s, which accrue daily, is to process the rising tide of video.
Artificial intelligence tools such as voice, facial and pattern recognition are being introduced alongside basic timecode to automate metadata tagging, but there are doubts about whether any technology will be good enough to describe all the nuances of material on which archive producers depend.
“Machine cataloguing will always be a poor representation of emotions conveyed by a shot of a landscape, for example,” says O’Callaghan.
Getty uses an API that “significantly automates” content ingestion to its web platform. “This makes it very quickly available for customers to purchase and download,” explains Shoulders.
“Storage space costs and infrastructure have to be anticipated ahead of time so that we can keep up with such large volumes of daily intake. The ability to refi ne search in a way that we are displaying the most relevant content to a customer is a focus of ours, to ensure the correct clip can be found among the volume coming in.”
Ultimately, Getty’s swoop is a reflection of some major shifts in an industry striving to become more professional. “By doing that, you hope that it doesn’t become too streamlined and corporatised for researchers to be able to dig in the dirt to find the gold and gems,” says Bell. “If that is gone, you end up losing quite a bit of the archive world.”
ITN SOURCE: WHAT THE INDUSTRY SAYS
By the summer, the gatekeeper of anything of importance in the recent history of this country will be not a public broadcaster, but an external agency
PAUL BELL
DOCUMENTARY PRODUCER
ITN Source has been an aggregator itself and the market continues to consolidate into a number of key players. I don’t think a huge amount will change
ALWYN LINDSEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
If they adopt a very aggressive pricing policy, then the whole market value of a clip, regardless of its content, could reduce
MASSIMO MORETTI
STUDIOCANAL
Getty’s footage collections are now going to be so immense… that it would not be possible for any one person to have a good overview of what it does, and doesn’t, hold
JAMES MCDONALD
ARCHIVE PRODUCER