NBC’s Olympics Coverage Honed From Decades of Tech Experience

 TV Technology 

 

NBCU’s Summer Olympics operation is a herculean effort at the best of times without having Covid to contend with. The Games’ postponement in 2020 at least gave the network some breathing space to revise its plans but with uncertainties around travel and health regulations changing up until the last minute, the logistics are staggering.

https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/nbcs-olympics-coverage-honed-from-decades-of-tech-experience

Nonetheless, David Mazza, senior vice president and CTO for NBC Sports Group and NBC Olympics is doing his level best to keep the machine well oiled.

“We have aggressive plans, as does [IOC host broadcaster] OBS, to make this the most immersive experience for fans especially since so many can’t come to the games,” Mazza says. “My main job as we approach the games is trying to predict when the train is going to go off the track and bump it back on before there’s an actual wreck. You’ve got to be ready to minimize the damage.”

Other than the not inconsiderable challenge of meeting Covid protocols, the biggest logistical shift sees NBC relocating 400 staff and a number of venue control rooms back home. These are the control rooms for basketball, beach volleyball, diving, golf and tennis.

With Stamford already utilizing all eight control rooms, four mobile units have been docked on site. Then, to make sure everyone is socially distanced, NBC also moved three dayparts out: one to Telemundo Center in Miami from where Telemundo Deportes is presented; another to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan and another daypart to CNBC in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. A further 150 people working on digital editorial are set-up in a hotel near the Stamford HQ.

Nonetheless, in Japan the number of NBC crew including freelancers is still around 1600.

From SDI to IP for UHD

As if the shifting sands of Covid weren’t enough, NBC is undertaking a key technical upgrade too. It is finally retiring the SDI router after 15 years and five Games of service and implementing an IP core at its broadcasting center in Tokyo and Stamford. This is based on ST 2110 Grass Valley gear, Cisco routers and the same VSN control system used for the past couple of Games.

“We pretty much gutted all our RIBs [racks-in-a-box] down to bare metal,” he said. “Our original plan was to get that IP to settle in for Tokyo as our big step before tackling 4K HDR at the Beijing Winter Games February 2022.”

Then the pandemic happened. “We realized there is such a short turnaround [six months] between successive Games closing and opening ceremonies and that we were not going to be able to make the shift in time,” Mazza added. “So, we accelerated the HDR 4K shift into Tokyo.”

HDR is being prioritized by broadcasters around the world as a step-change in enhancing viewer experience. It can boost the look of shows regardless of whether they are in SD, HD or 4K. In NBC’s judgment, it wanted to bring improved content to the home far sooner than wait for another Games cycle.

NBC could lean on three years’ worth of Notre Dame football in preparation for HDR at scale. It has spent a great deal of effort on single stream productions [shooting 1080p and down-converting to the 99% of the audience still viewing SD] and also on the round trip process [for graphics, for example] of elements produced in SDR, upLUTed to HDR, and downLUTed to SDR.

“HDR is tricky stuff,” Mazza says. “There’s a lot of ways to screw it up if you don’t convert it properly. But after all the work that’s gone into the LUT conversion for round tripping, we think we’re in a good place.”

The Notre Dame coverage enabled NBCU to experiment with different LUTs for up and down conversion. This was based on OBS’ HLG LUTs (aka “look-up tables,” which help color grade footage) which the Olympic broadcaster shared with NBC. After some adjustments the broadcaster arrived at “NBC LUTs” which it recently offered to the industry.

“We’re using both OBS’ and our LUTs for our HDR coverage depending on how it best fits our workflow,” Mazza explains. “The main OBS idea that we preserved was leaving more room for highlights in SDR. It means we have some latitude in the down-conversion for those HDR highlights which we think enhances the SDR signal.”

At the venues

The key events for the domestic primetime audience are the ceremonies, athletics, gymnastics, swimming, diving and beach volleyball. While switching for the latter two moved home, the rest remain in Tokyo. 

At those primetime venues NBC is fielding crews of 80-100 while NBC’s setup at the International Broadcast Centre is home to the program tech leaders and decision makers. All unilateral NBC feeds plus host material is aggregated at the IBC for transfer as 1080P HDR over 8x10Gig pipes to Stamford which then becomes the U.S. aggregation point for onward distribution to Telemundo, CNBC and 30Rock. 

Mazza explains, “At the venue we book a video split of an OBS camera feed [such as super slo-mo] into our switcher. In Stamford they record all the OBS host feeds and some multi-clips [such as super slo-mos that didn’t go to air] running in parallel to the live feed. Our digital and social teams can dive into that extra content.”

This includes bespoke content for Amazon Twitch such as primetime sidecasting, where Twitch creators will commentate on the live events, encouraging viewers to tune in for NBC's live coverage at the same time.

The scheduling and time zones (Tokyo is 16 hours ahead of L.A.) works for showing swimming and athletics live in primetime but for some sports—like gymnastics which attracts a huge audience—quick turnaround edits (2-3 hours) will be made at the venue. Additional edit suites in Tokyo and Stamford will craft feature programming.

Its presentation of the Games’ opening ceremonies will offer a hint of that: On Friday, July 23, NBC will offer a first—a live morning broadcast of the opening spectacle, starting at 6:55 a.m., followed by a special broadcast of “Today” and a daytime Olympic program. There will also be a traditional primetime broadcast.

“OBS coverage is fabulous but as always we’ll supplement their cameras at those five big prime time venues with 8-12 of our own in order to tell the U.S. story,” Mazza said. “For the other 25 sports we’ll augment the host feed with a 'mix zone camera' typically transmitting via a LiveU unit. The only announcers on site will be those for the bigger sports. Back in Stamford there are 30 announce booths for calling the other sports.”

NBC will further augment coverage by accessing Content+, a web-based platform primarily dedicated to short-form and digital content. This EVS-based server system and MAM houses ISOs, non-aired shots and specific angles plus archive of previous Olympics.

“Over the years we’ve worked with OBS so that when they publish a clip to Content+ it alerts our MAM and our system then requests that clip and pulls it over,” Mazza says. “They are not the same system but they are pretty well tied together. For example, in our MAM we might have a logger doing subjective logging [e.g pointing out that Michael Phelps’ mom is in the crowd] but we have also integrated OBS’ EVS logs so we don’t need to duplicate that effort.”

Home run to Connecticut

All of the broadcast circuits are lightly compressed back to Stamford in J2k while NBC will use OBS MPEG-4 feeds for monitoring.

“If we can afford the 2-5 second latency to trade for higher picture quality it’s Long GOP MPEG-4,” Mazza said, referring to the format that uses a mixture of inter- and intra-coding. For monitoring where we care more about latency—such as for our announcers—it’s a lower bitrate MPEG-4. I think we’ll all be shifting to HEVC for UHD deliverables but most of the HD is MPEG-4 today.”

In event of failure, NBC has a “belt and braces” safety net with four fibre paths carrying 215 HD feeds back to the US, managed by AT&T. If a massive series of undersea earthquakes knocked them all out (unlikely), then line cuts of the main cable and primetime shows are available via satellite.

“Because the risk of failing is too great for our primetime shows, we also have the ‘lifeboat’ of a small coax router,” Mazza says. “The IP network is fully redundant but in the event of any problem we have a coax back-up.” 

All told, NBCU is expected to broadcast and stream around 7,000 hours of Olympics coverage.

It’s a battle out there

Mazza says his biggest fear is not having the right expert in the right place at the right time. “There are a handful of people who understand how IP works. We have to get them to the right place where the problem is. That is daunting with all the Covid regulations in place.”

Nonetheless, he says he enjoys the challenge. “We’re taking a whole bunch of finicky kit halfway round the world, setting it up in a hurry and getting 1,200 freelancers who arrive just a week before the Games up to speed on how to operate it. Then having it run at peak performance on the night of the opening ceremony and for the 16-day marathon after that. It’s incredibly gratifying when all those pieces come together at exactly the right time to make the program.”

Mazza describes the process of going into battle.

“I tell my crew, lots of stuff is going to go wrong. Don’t spend time lamenting the problem. We need to react and figure it out so it doesn’t burn us again. Work the problem, don’t look back. Fix it and get back on the air.”

 

Behind the Scenes: The French Dispatch

IBC

Transforming Wes Anderson’s idiosyncratic aesthetic into a visually consistent physical format presented a series of challenges for the film’s production designer and director of photography.

https://www.ibc.org/trends/behind-the-scenes-the-french-dispatch/7694.article

The singular visual style of Wes Anderson’s latest feature The French Dispatch looks more than ever like a live action animation. That’s not surprising given that he has made stop motion animations Fantastic Mr Fox and Isle of Dogs and perhaps decided to challenge himself to see if he couldn’t command such control over real locations and life-size sets, actors and practical effects.

It’s an experiment made in concert with the auteur’s regular troupe of actors and several behind the camera artists with shared histories on The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Among them is production designer Adam Stockhausen, Oscar winner for ‘Budapest’ and whose talents are currently being put to use for Steven Spielberg on West Side Story and the next Indiana Jones project.

Stockhausen explains that all Anderson projects begin with an animatic. “The animatic is really a way of thinking through the entire movie from an animation point of view and building the entire film shot by shot in a way that defines the scope of what you see.

“We did the exact same process in Isle of Dogs but it’s applied differently here. In Dogs we would design for a table top miniature set. If it’s a wide shot we’re working in one scale and if it’s a close up we have another scale, but always in stop motion and in the context of a miniature set. In The French Dispatch, some of the live action is in miniature context, some is in context of the location and some are full-scale set builds.

“The animatic certainly provides the blueprint but this one had so many different threads and stories and sets,” Stockhausen says. “I stopped counting at 125 different sets including miniatures. That’s way more than Budapest.”

Animatic blueprint

Robert Yeoman ASC, another Anderson regular, explains that he would set up each frame for the animatic using crew members as stand ins to block scenes. “I’ll address any lighting issues with Wes and Adam⁠ – are we lighting through the windows or relying on top light? What is the general feeling of the scene? This preparation makes for a more efficient shooting day when the actors arrive.”

The animatic is Stockhausen’s lead into thinking about how to fashion the sets. “I’m asking what kind of a space it is? What when you say ‘a hobby room in a prison’ what on earth does that mean? For the prison in The French Dispatch we might start with 10,000 images and whittle those down.”

This film was more complicated than normal given the magazine-like structure of The French Dispatch (full title The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun). The comedy drama is inspired by Anderson’s love of The New Yorker and is about an American journalist based in France who sets out to create his own publication.

“The film is broken up into different stories each of which has its own visual story, so the task of design is multiplied,” Stockhausen says. There is even a pure animated sequence. “Conventionally you introduce a set and keep going back to it over and over again. Here, we introduce places and 20 minutes later we’re done with that story, never to return.”

The different episodes in the film take place within the fictional town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. “Mission number one was to find the city,” says Stockhausen. “There is a grandness of scope to the way we introduce the city which you can really only get from being somewhere and specifically in France.”

Finding the location

Tonal references included The Red Balloon, a 1956 French fantasy short filmed in the Ménilmontant neighbourhood of Paris, and photos of Paris before its reconstruction in the mid-19th century.

“The idea was to find a town which felt like Paris but not as it is today – more a sort of memory of Paris, the Paris of Jacques Tati,” explains Stockhausen.

The search began on Google Earth, from which a shortlist was photographed by location scout. This was narrowed down to half a dozen cities which Anderson and Stockhausen toured by car.

“We were looking for a place with the right combination of streets and also somewhere where vertical space is important,” Stockhausen says. “The old photos of Paris showed twists and turns, ramps and stairways as well as a two-dimensional grid. There are hills that run through a part of Paris where you’ll see a street which then suddenly becomes a staircase and then becomes a street again, and then it intersects with another street at an angle and then that one goes in a tunnel underneath the staircase of the first one.

“The architecture of the city has this incredible maze-like complexity to it. The trick was to find an actual city where we could get that feeling in a tight geographical area.”

They found such a place in Angoulême in southwest France. Outside of town, the production turned a derelict felt factory into a make-shift movie studio with a prop store, carpentry mill, sculpture room, set dressing and three stages.

The last piece of the location puzzle was the prison. “That location had to carry a huge chunk of the story,” Stockhausen says.

Inspiration came from Orson Welles’ 1962 film The Trial which had staged interiors at Paris’ Gare d’Orsay. “In Welles’ film the sets were built inside the station and you can kind of see off the edges of the sets and the architecture of the station beyond it. That was a driving image for the prison set. We found this empty facility that had the right sort of shell to build the prison. It had great windows and a great concrete balcony which we don’t try and hide. We just built our cellblock rows, craft room and execution chamber into it.”

Other key visual or thematic texts for the film included French film classics Vivre Sa Vie, Diabolique, Quai Des Orfèvres and Les Quatre Cents Coups.

Colour, aspect ratio, static tableaux

The French Dispatch is shot on 35mm with Yeoman finding the texture of negative film more in keeping with the story’s artisanal aesthetic. Several sequences are shot in black and white with colour used for emphasis, for instance when actress Saoirse Ronan leans forward to reveal her blue eyes.

“It’s the sense of a beautifully grimy city, really murky stuff on all of the architecture, and then these glorious colours come popping out,” Robert Yeoman ASC“It’s the sense of a beautifully grimy city, really murky stuff on all of the architecture, and then these glorious colours come popping out, just the way the balloon does in The Red Balloon,” Yeoman says. “So, amid our gritty town, you’ll see this luminous yellow café or these jelly bean-coloured cars.”

To design costumes and sets that would work in both monochrome and colour they shot tests to help determine how it would look on screen. Explains Yeoman: “Does a yellow shirt look white in black and white? Does a dark blue look almost black?”

A further design complication is Anderson’s desire to move the camera on a dolly to connect different elements of a scene without fading to black or making a cut.

For one scene this entailed hanging the entire façade of le Café le Sans Blague from the ceiling of the felt factory so it could just slide away on a rail.

In ‘The Private Dining Room’ sequence of the film, the camera moves from room to room in the kidnapper’s lair, introducing all of the criminals in one shot to give a sense of the space and their connection to each other.

The first establishing shot of The French Dispatch building uses a real location in the town to which production added two buildings on either side of the camera.

“We had to add those to actually make the composition what we wanted because we couldn’t find just the right thing,” Yeoman says. “And we had to do it in mid-air. Because Wes didn’t want to be tilted up on the French Dispatch building but to be looking straight at it, the camera had to be up in the air on top of a ladder.”

 

The trickiest job was a section of ‘frozen’ tableau of still life sets which the camera tracks across but was unlike anything Stockhausen had attempted before.

“Because we had the animatic, we knew exactly where we were going, but the translation of that into a physical thing just wasn’t simple. Using paintings of forced perspective means you don’t even know what the lens is or where the camera is going to be or how these ‘frozen’ people relate to it. Basically, how do you develop your vanishing point?”

They worked through the problem by building maquettes and models before moving up to full-scale canvas sheets as backdrop with members of the crew posing in place while Yeoman and Stockhausen adjusted the perspective.

“It was really a sort of a three-dimensional sculptural process of figuring out where to place the actors and props and how you could use the space,” Stockhausen says. “Once we’d done that for a single panel we then had to think about what happens as we travel through space to the next one. How do the palm trees and sphinxes overlap with the column of the wrought iron palace?

It was amazingly complicated and it was a total work in progress. We marked it out on the floor week after week and gradually developed to a point where Wes told us to just put the dolly track down. We were doing last minute adjustments as the camera was switched on.”

He continues: “We’ve done shots like that before but always with three dimensional sets with walls that come out towards the camera more, just as we do in the introduction to the police station in The French Dispatch. The walls help you delineate the different spaces but with forced perspective 2D painting we had none of those crutches to help us.”

Supervising art director Stéphane Cressend found a group of scenic painters employed at the Paris Opera to create the backdrop paintings for this sequence and others in the film.

“We showed them the physical set and asked them to paint a backdrop and then they very quickly did this really gorgeous sort of trompe l’oeil painting,” Stockhausen says. “It was really fun for me because that’s how I started out my career – as a painter of backdrops and maquettes for an opera company.”

Anderson also uses different aspect ratios to tell parts of this story. It’s a technique he has used before, notably on ‘Budapest’ when Yeoman shot 1:37 for the scenes that take place with concierge Gustave to signify the time period of the 1930s and 1940s.

“We loved the compositional possibilities that this aspect gave us and so carried this over to The French Dispatch,” Yeoman says. “Occasionally we would change to a wider ratio for emphasis, just as we did using colour.”

An example is the scene in which we see a first glimpse of art works exhibited in the prison. “It’s the night of the show and everyone is eagerly waiting in the dark,” explains Yeoman. “When the lights come on, the frame changes to an anamorphic widescreen in colour and we see all of the paintings in frame. This could never have been accomplished in the much squarer frame of 1:37. The use of colour adds to the impact of the shot.”

Editorial manipulation

Many shots underwent minute editorial manipulation such as re-speeds and split screens, the handywork of editor Andrew Weisblum.

“We’re doing all kinds of internal surgery on a static shot to change the timing between the different characters,” he says. “One shot which shows everybody waking up in the village had 12 different split screens in it to make everything line up. There’s probably 20 of those types of little manipulated tableaus in the movie but every time you see a shot with two people there’s generally a split screen there.”

Angoulême, co-incidentally, is home to a significant number of France’s animation and video game studios and its annual animation festival briefly halted the film’s production.

“It was amazing working in France because every single person in the crew was so interested in the movie we were making. I never had the feeling anyone was just there punching a clock,” Stockhausen says. “On a Wes Anderson picture there is this incredible push for the first round of sets before you get a few moments rest before scrambling to get ahead the next round so the animation festival came in the nick of time!

 

The Future is Medium Format

NAB

The giant screen spectacular of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lawrence of Arabia, Dunkirk or The Hateful Eight are visually epic in ways that many filmmakers can only dream. The sheer cost of using exotic equipment like Hasselblad lenses and IMAX cameras put it beyond the reach of wannabe David Leans or Chris Nolans.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/the-future-is-medium-format/

Until now. New kit from cameras and lenses to adapters is paving the way for so called medium format cinematography to be produced on a budget.

The argument is put forward by Yaroslav Altunin at CineD.

Originally, medium format film was used on Mamiya, Hasselblad, and Rolleiflex cameras (to name a few) delivering frame sizes of 60mm by 70mm.

“These larger frame sizes dwarf the image circle of every 35mm photography and Super35 cinema lens on the market, which is why Christopher Nolan used rehoused Hasselblad lenses for Dunkirk and Tenet, as well as several custom lenses from Panavision. Medium format lenses are larger and create a bigger image circle that covers these gigantic frame sizes.”

This says Altunin has a unique effect on your recorded image. “Depending on your framing, your subject is separated not only from your background but also foreground. It creates a larger-than-life aesthetic that is costly to achieve. Imagine getting the intimacy of an 80mm lens, with the width of a 35mm lens.”

While Leica, Pentax, and Hasselblad released several medium format cameras a few years back their quality left something to be desired, according to Altunin. However, he feels that the new Fujifilm GFX 100s ($5999) is the real deal, especially paired with the Atomos Ninj V recorder ($600) which will output RAW. However, the frame size is still 43.9mm x 32.9mm and nowhere near the size of 65mm or IMAX. 

Altunin’s answer is to add a focal reducer (or speedbooster). By pairing a Fujifilm GFX 100s with a Metabones 0.71x Hasselblad V to Fuji G Speedbooster ($800), “we are able to get a gorgeous medium format frame comparable to an 80mm image circle,” he declares.

If Hasselblad V system lenses are too expensive (they can cost up to $5000 a unit) then Kipon makes a 0.7x Mamiya 645 to Fuji GFX for Mamiya lenses and if the GFX 100s is out of the range there are other speed boosters that can achieve a larger frame even when using full-frame cameras. 

“By taking cameras such as the Sigma fp L, Canon R5 or Sony FX3 and combining them with Kipon Speedboosters we can adapt Mamiya 645 lenses to E-mount, R-Mount, or L-Mount. This set-up would provide a comparable image to a 56mm diagonal frame, or roughly 46mm by 31mm. Think of this as the Super35 of Medium Format Cinematography.”

While all of these options may not have the ergonomics or workflow of an ARRI Alexa 65 or a Panaflex 65, they are amazing options for filmmakers to achieve an unattainable look.

“It is incredible to see that these tools are finally within reach,” Altunin says. “What the DSRL revolution did for budget-conscious filmmakers, this new medium format evolution will once again change how we create our imagery.”

 

 

 

Is There More To a Digital Image Than Meets the Eye?

NAB

We might think we know what makes up our perception of digital images, such as resolution, color, and pixels but what if there was something else about the image that gave us clues as to its characteristics? It’s a question of perception.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/is-there-more-to-a-digital-image-than-meets-the-eye/

“I think there is more in an image than can be resolved by your eyes,” writes David Shapton at RedShark News. “I think there is a macro effect, or an epiphenomenon, in addition to the original visual or auditory phenomenon.”

Shapton suggests that there are macro effects in images that we don’t see directly, which nevertheless inform our perception and give us extra information about the image.

He calls it “natural intrinsic metadata.” He says, “It’s there in every reproduced image. The nature and quantity of it does depend on the resolution.”

If that seems a bit woolly, then that may be because the science of sight isn’t hard and fast. In fact, think too hard and you stray into the grey area of philosophy.

For example, do we see the same colors? We all perceive colors through cells found in our eyes composed of a hundred million photoreceptors — the rods and cones. But it’s our brain which interprets light, colors and form, so there might be no way to know if we see the same colors.

“We see with our brain, not with our eyes,” Shapton acknowledges. “Whatever we see is always being interpreted, so there are bound to be ‘epiphenomena.’ The content of an image has a big effect on how the image is perceived; As resolution, dynamic range and color depth (and frame rate) increase it requires creators to re-evaluate our work. A bit like you have to rethink your painting process when you switch from oil paint to water colors.”

Pixels are clearly not the only criteria for seeing an image. Higher contrast increases perceived brightness; an object’s edges appear sharper.

Plus, we’re talking pixels — light that that been recorded onto a sensor and replicated digitally on a screen. That has to impact our visual sense.

“When we are looking at an object in the real world, we are placing it in focus, while not concentrating deeply on the rest of the surroundings,” says YungKyung Park, associate professor in Color Design at Ewha Womans University Seoul. She specializes in the color science field.

“However, when we are looking at the same object using the display, we can focus on every point of the screen, allowing us to perceive substantially more information about this object.”

The Science of Hyperrealism

She argues that 8K displays are able to provide a smoother gradient and improve sharpness to the point, where objects seem even more realistic than in real world.

This phenomenon is referred to as hyperrealism.

“Hyperrealism is achieved when we are able to capture and comprehend even the subtlest lighting and shading effects and the display is able to transmit extreme glossy and shadow expressions, giving us abundant information about the object,” she says. “Ultra-high resolution displays are evolving to approach the capacity of our vision.”

She attributes the appearance of “hyperrealism” to the formation of “mach bands” — a phenomenon observed when a band of gradients will appear lighter or darker than they actually are.

“Mach bands affect our perception of color and brightness values — and essentially result in an optical illusion. That lateral inhibition in the retina visual system enhances the perceived sharpness of edges.”

Park does provide some science to back this up. She led an experiment at Ewha University to find out whether increasing the screen resolution from 4K to 8K made a significant difference in viewing experience.

The study, involving 120 students, rated perceived image quality increasing by 30% and depth perception increasing 60% from 4K to 8K.

What fascinated Park is that rather than pointing out the increased sharpness or contrast of the image associated with higher resolution, participants highlighted the main differences to be those related to sensory perceptions.

“They described images depicted on 8K screen as evoking higher sense and perception — for example, noting that objects look cooler, warmer, more delicious, heavier,” she says.

Further, the study found that perceptual qualities (parameters highly relatable to the display technology itself like contrast, color, and resolution) are positively related to cognitive attributes (like temperature, sense of reality, space, depth, and perceived image quality).

Because of all this additional information about the object, she concludes, “on the cognitive level, it appears like it has an even higher resolution — which is the perceptual rather than measured quality — which makes us feel like the image is more real and has higher senses.”

Park’s experiment was sponsored by Samsung in support of marketing its 8K flat panels so perhaps we should take all of this with a pinch of salt.

The need for an 8K display, let alone anything of higher pixel count, is typically debunked as being a waste of time since we humans can’t physically resolve the visual detail.

Visual Acuity and Hyperacuity

This is being countered by arguments that the most common method for determining whether resolution is visible to humans — termed simple acuity — only tells part of the story.

What we need is the view of an independent visual imaging expert. How about Chris Chinnock, owner of analysis firm Insight Media?

“Generally, simple acuity is measured via the Snellen eye chart which determines the ability to see distinct black‐on‐white horizontal and vertical high‐contrast elemental blocks,” Chinnock explains.

“However, human vision is far more complex than a simple acuity measurement. Research suggests that 8K images are engaging other senses that can be difficult, if not impossible, to measure but are real nonetheless.”

For example, take a look at the night sky. Some stars are far too small to be seen according to simple acuity theory — but we can see them nonetheless.

Shapton and Chinnock suggest that Vernier acuity combined with the brain’s ability to “fill in the gaps” come into play. Vernier, or hyperacuity, refers to the ability to discern slight misalignments between lines — an ability that’s impossible using simple acuity descriptions of human vision.

“You’ve got simple and hyperacuity coming together in the brain to create an image that dimensionalizes the image in ways that we’re not fully aware of,” Chinnock contends.

So, factor in ultra-resolution with HDR, immersive audio (also suggested by Shapton as enhancing perception), wider color gamut and higher frame rates to reduce motion blur and we begin to see things — differently.

“Whether you have an 8K image or a 100K image, the higher fidelity and lack of artefacts reinforces what the brain is able to do,” Chinnock says. “The brain is not having to work as hard to recreate the image.”

Truth be told, we don’t actually know. As Shapton notes, “the field of digital video, especially extremely high resolution, is very young.”

We are not in Kansas any more.

 

What Will It Take For Studios To Ditch Pay TV for DTC? Oh, Just 200 Million Subs.

NAB

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/what-will-it-take-for-studios-to-ditch-pay-tv-for-dtc-oh-just-200-million-subs/

In theory, the big studios would need 180-200 million paying subscribers to their direct to consumer services if they are to cut out all content licensing to third-parties and pay TV channels.

So calculates Ampere Analysis as reported at Video Net.

The 180-200 million subscriber figure applies to every major studio group and takes into account their different D2C pricing. The model is based on replacing content licensing and pay channel income from every window. Advertising revenues (i/e AVOD) were not included in the modelling.

This does not imply that studios are actively trying to replace their third-party revenues, yet. But it does put a flag in the sand. What would happen if they did?

“This is a theoretical model,” Ampere’s Research Director Guy Bisson explained: “Bear in mind that each of the studios has gone to market with very different price points yet there was an amazing consistency to the subscriber figures that allows them to say goodbye to their entire legacy business outside of free TV networks, and it is 180-200 million.”

Netflix surpassed 203.6 million subscribers earlier this year and Amazon claims Amazon Prime has also gone over that mark (though, as THR points out, not every Amazon Prime member watches the company’s video content). Disney has stormed to 100 million in just 16 months and has announced it will close linear channels in various markets to prioritize Disney+.

Bisson pointed out that D2C is a long-term play for the studios, and it could be five years or a decade from now before they could then use D2C to fully replace their traditional revenue streams.

Nonetheless, faced with the possibility that major studio groups could, at some point, become financially independent of third-parties, how will the rest of the media business respond?

As Bisson noted, “What we are effectively talking about is restricting the flow of content from the traditional chain of exploitation that starts with cinema and moves through packaged media and on-demand into Pay TV and then into free television. If the major [content] suppliers squeeze the head of this chain, it forces change on everyone.”

V-Net editor John Moulding notes that Ampere Analysis has previously modelled the viability of studios skipping the theatrical window in order to boost premium VOD or feed movies exclusively to their own services. The conclusion was that they will make more money using a hybrid approach.

“The likely outcome is that in key markets where a D2C service is in early growth stages and there is a keen focus on customer acquisition, we could see films released to D2C services at the same time as theatrical, or one or two lower-budget movies could go direct-to-D2C as streaming service exclusives.

“The bulk of movies, especially the higher budget ones, will still go through theatrical windows,” Bisson predicts.

As Bisson pointed out, all-or-nothing makes for good headlines but the reality is usually nuanced and hybrid. And that includes the fact that the content supply chain stretches beyond the major studios and includes large TV production houses and independent film studios who will continue to feed the rest of the ecosystem

 

Temporary Fix To Permanent Flex – The Industry’s New Mode of Work

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The pandemic may have panicked the industry into new modes of remote working but its longevity has provided scope for a degree of standardization around technologies and universal acceptance of its practice.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/temporary-fix-to-permanent-flex-the-industrys-new-mode-of-work/

So much so that even as a return to production normality becomes a possibility we know that things have changed forever.

By the end of the year the industry will have experienced 21 months of remote collaboration. What began as a necessity will most likely remain in place even as teams are allowed to travel or return to the office.

The collective work from home experience has shocked the industry’s previous inertia into life. There’s a realization that remote production actually solves practical problems for the content creation process and improves everyone’s quality of life.

For example, artists no longer have to live in expensive cities like New York, LA or London to access work. The industry is no longer constrained by physical capacity. Any location which meets your family’s needs and work-life balance is on the table. Busy execs don’t have the time to travel, and nor do they need to when the remote experience is so good.

Having the ability to run an online review session where both parties see the same media at the same time is where remote solutions prove invaluable. This will continue to exist regardless of any pandemic-based restrictions.

It’s not uncommon today to have a project worked on in Montreal, London and Mumbai, with teams contributing to different parts of the project. Remote tools help facilitate that and provide options to a director or senior craft talent unable to spend months of the year locally in an office.

Camera to cloud tools are also coming on stream, enabling creative collaboration of key personnel remote from the set.

At the same time, there is no doubt that people are exhausted with communicating solely by video. The fatigue of unabated screen time and lack of interpersonal connections is having a negative impact on mental health, increasing risk of burnout and in some cases, driving people from the industry. The social aspect of face-to-face brainstorming is also beneficial to the creative process.

Survey after survey suggests that employees expect and desire a hybrid work scenario going forward. It is up to the employer — the facility, the broadcaster, the studio and individual production — to maintain workflow flexibility.

While accepting that remote or even hybrid won’t be right for every job, there is still a simple economic hurdle has to be solved. Many companies have legacy hardware such as on-premise storage systems which have yet to be amortized. Thousands more have invested in creative workstations and other tech gear which are already deployed in machine rooms and data centers all over the world. According to Sohonet, that “sunk capital” problem will likely take 18-30 months to work itself out before we arrive at a future where the majority of new purchases are software as a service in the cloud.

In the meantime, the industry now has the resilience to survive any futureshock.

 

Consumers want to live their experiences in-person and online

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Pent-up demand for live ‘at the venue’ experiences coupled with backlogged supply will create a tremendous hunger over the next few months – but content providers shouldn’t abandon virtual experiences now that new behaviors have been formed.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/consumers-want-to-live-their-experiences-in-person-and-online/

That’s the headline from a new study published by UTA IQ, the research, data and analytics division of Hollywood talent agent UTA.

The study, “Virtual + Reality: The Future of Digital & Live Entertainment in a Post-Pandemic World,” found that an overwhelming majority of respondents plan to return to some form of live entertainment once it’s safe at 96 percent. Specifically, three of four consumers say they are most excited for sporting events, concerts and movie theaters.

Joe Kessler, global head of UTA IQ, said in a statement: “As real life re-emerges, consumers are roundly rejecting a binary choice between virtual and live entertainment. Much like hybrid work, consumers are demanding a best-of-both-worlds approach to their entertainment choices. Consumers are enthusiastic about returning to live experiences, but they also are unwilling to give up the enhanced virtual experiences that helped get them through the pandemic.”

Among the key findings of the report are that:

·         One in three people say live events are more important to them post-pandemic

·         The same percentage are more inclined to go to “as many live events as possible

·         Three quarters of people attended a virtual event during the pandemic, or 90% of Gen Zers

·         88% of people who attended a virtual event will continue to do so when live events return

Music performances were the top virtual events consumers participated in during the pandemic, and 75% of consumers who attended virtual music festivals amidst COVID-19 will continue watching those events.

Consumers’ top reasons to attend virtual events, even when it’s safe to return to ‘real’ shows, are to avoid crowds; experience the event “comfortably”; go to an event that wouldn’t visit their region; spent less money; and explore an event they’re only casually interested in, in that order.

Commenting on the high percentage of Americans who say they’ll continue to attend events virtually, Kessler adds: “Those who see a zero-sum game are missing the ample opportunities ahead if you listen to consumers and their increasingly discerning expectations for both virtual and IRL entertainment.”

Community crossover

UTA’s Global Co-Head of Music David Zedeck describes the role of livestreams post-COVID-19 as “virtual balconies,” noting at NY:LON Connect 2021 that they will be “ancillary to normal business, not to replace the business.”

The lasting role of virtual events is further reinforced by the live events industry investing in this space, from Live Nation acquiring livestreaming service Veeps and equipping venues with streaming capabilities to Warner Music partnering with and investing in virtual entertainment company Wave.

In-person live events have yet to enable real-time fan participation at scale – a benefit that consumers value from virtual events, per the report.

“Today’s fans are not satisfied being passive consumers, so it stands to reason that they want live experiences to involve them more and incorporate their perspectives,” says Kessler. “Virtual events should continue to prioritize and innovate around this desire, while organizers and promoters of in-person experiences should plan to account for greater fan involvement in order to meet consumers’ emerging expectations.”

The study is a follow-up to UTA’s study on COVID-19’s lasting impact of entertainment which found that consumers demand that the digital world evolve to become more meaningful and truly connected in similar ways to in-person experiences.

Social authenticity

The UTA reports are also supported by YouTube’s analysis of recent online culture and trends which places new expectations on talent/creators to engage with consumers/fans online in more purposeful authentic and relevant ways.

“During COVID-19, celebrities/influencers tended to share the more ordinary and authentic aspects of their lives, whether out of necessity or a desire to strike the right tone, the report states. This made fans feel more connected to them, and the shift to more relatable content ignited a greater sense of intimacy that they crave from modern celebrities.”

Oscar-winning octogenarian actor Anthony Hopkins is a case in point. Over the past year, his total social media following grew by 80% “thanks to his focus on content that shows off his fun personality. He took the Internet by storm when he joined TikTok and posted a video doing the Toosie Slide challenge and has continued to resonate ever since.”

TikTok itself was the most downloaded app in all of 2020 and in Q1 of 2021. The nature of TikTok begs users to join in, whether by engaging in viral trends and challenges, taking part in crowdsourced content or using the platform’s ‘Duet’ feature to build on other users’ videos.

“The platform’s undeniable cultural relevance has shifted consumer expectations, suggesting that the future of social media will likewise prioritize active participation to help users feel more connected,” per UTA. “As a result, creators and social media platforms should consider emphasizing calls-to-action and collaboration in order to seed participation.”

 

 

We Need Look at the Hard Truth of Our Digital Divide

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Internet connectivity is considered an essential utility underpinning social inclusion and a bootstrap to driving economic recovery. The true picture of coverage across the United States paints a sobering view of the challenges facing the country.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/we-need-to-take-a-hard-look-at-the-digital-divide/

This is starkly illustrated in a new digital map released by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

Drawing on data from the Census Bureau, the FCC, M-Lab, Ookla and Microsoft, the information reveals that in many parts of the country broadband speeds fall below the FCC’s benchmark of 25 Mbps download, 3 Mbps upload. The map also includes data on places that reported a lack of connection by computer, smartphone or tablet.

It is poorer areas which are disproportionately lacking in internet connectivity and access to computers and related equipment.

“What it tells you is there’s a lot of places in the United States that aren’t using the internet at broadband speeds,” a White House official told news site Axios, estimating that means tens of millions of people.

The problems are immediately clear from just a general overview of the country. Every area marked in red in the image mean they don’t meet the FCC’s minimum recommended broadband speeds.

“Given that the FCC’s benchmark is pretty low — just 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up — this is pretty terrible,” comments Matt Wille at Input.

“No, that’s an understatement — it’s a total failure. The many, many red areas on the map just have no access to high-speed internet at all.”

For example, in a working-class Latino area in east Oakland more than a quarter of people do not have internet access, even though commercial providers exist, NBC News found.

That’s compared to a “wealthy white neighborhood” to the north of that Latino neighborhood where only 6 per cent of people lacked access to broadband internet.

There is also a layer on the map that shows areas designated as American Indian, Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiian Areas.

There continues to be gulf between these “tribal communities, which have historically suffered from lack of internet access,” and much of the rest of the country, per NTIA.

The new map draws on a wider pool of data than existing maps by the FCC, which relied exclusively on industry-provided data that overstated broadband penetration.

“The FCC relies on data supplied by internet service providers about where they could offer service,” reports Axios. “Companies can report that a census block is served even if only one household has internet service — which leads to maps that overstate access.”

The Biden administration, which is looking to spend $100 billion on broadband as part of the American Jobs Plan infrastructure package, acknowledged this.

“There’s a large gap between what the carriers are saying is on offer to be used and what’s actually being used,” the White House official told Axios.

 

The FCC uses its maps to allocate billions of dollars of subsidies for broadband deployment.

“To ensure that every household has the internet access necessary for success in the digital age, we need better ways to accurately measure where high-speed service has reached Americans and where it has not,” Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement.

The Democrat’s Bill aims to “bring affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to every American, including the more than 35 per cent of rural Americans who lack access to broadband at minimally acceptable speeds.”

But in a time when nearly everyone has smartphones that connect to the internet, as well as entertainment devices like gaming consoles, computers, or other such devices, “even minimally acceptable speeds are not enough to provide reliable internet to an entire family,” observes British paper The Independent.

 

Speak the Language: Your Guide to Social Video Success

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YouTube is often dismissed by traditional media as for viewers watching skateboarding cats – but that’s a head in the sand attitude. With a billion hours of content watched globally every single day on the site, it has something significant to tell us about changing consumption habits and how content creators should reach their audience.

https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/speak-the-language-your-guide-to-social-video-success/

The Alphabet-owned site’s latest Culture and Trends Report examines how people used video to connect and find community during the pandemic with some intriguing results.

The biggest takeaway is a pretty simple one: Video is playing more and more of a valuable role in how we navigate our lives.

But there is a lot more going on than this. If content owners and creators want to reach a wider audience online (whether they go to YouTube or not) there are lessons worth noting not least the ability to ‘speak video’.

We crave presence

Lesson one is that watching videos with others, whether physically or in the virtual world, heightens immediacy, generating a stronger sense of connection.

Over 85% of YouTube users had watched a livestream on the platform over the past 12 months, and over a half a million users live streamed for the first time in 2020.

Live stream shared experiences were epitomized by tNASA’s Perseverance rover landing on Mars which reached over 2 million concurrent viewers at its peak.

“I think it’s because you don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Andre Laurentino, Chief Creative Officer, Ogilvy during YouTube’s video analysis of its report. “If it’s pre-recorded you know that fate will not interfere.”

In The Heights director Jon Chu believes live has yet to reach its potential; “There’s something about knowing other people are watching the same things at the same time. Presence is what we crave after a year in a pandemic.”

The idea of virtual presence – using video to experience something virtually is familiar to many more of us over the past year and these realtime experiences were more personal than ever. Thousands of couples got married on YouTube channels, for example, as a way to share with friends and family unable to attend.

But there’s more to realtime digital entertainment than its personal nature. It is distinguished in part from live broadcast by the very overt presence of the rest of the audience.

#withme videos, for example, in which the viewer can participate simultaneously with the creator (i/e clean with me, study with me) grew in popularity last year with over 2bn viewed globally.

“Using simultaneity to create immediacy extends across a broad range of formats that are not necessarily live,” said Kevin Allocca, Head of Culture & Trends at YouTube. “People are now using connected TV devices to turn videos they watch privately into a social experience.”

The idea of using a YouTube video to keep you company is a lot more common than you might think. Streams of lo-fi hip-hop beats have become gathering places for people looking to focus or relax together.

Lofi Girl, a music label and radio-style channel, has emerged as the face of this phenomenon. ‘Her’ streams have been watched nearly a billion times.

“It’s the prototypical example of a pop culture phenomenon built entirely around synchronised activity,” says Allocca.

YouTube also pointed to how late-night talk shows, such as The Daily Show with Trevor Noah originated from their hosts’ homes, making them look like YouTubers, and viewership to The Daily Show channel rose 45% last year.

Authenticity rocks

Lawyer cat is a perfect metaphor for the barrier breakdown between our public and personal live.

“As we relied on digital tools in our homes to communicate during quarantine people felt less pressure to project unrealistic images of their lives,” says Allocca. “They now seem to expect the same of their favorite creators and stars too.”

Some of the breakout channels of the year were grounded in the mundane.

Milad Mirg, for example, narrated stories of his life while making sandwiches at a Subway.

A University of Illinois dental student gained over half a billion views in a month of him brushing his teeth.

As opposed to more formal entertainment, these examples represent what Allocca calls “extreme authenticity or radical relatability.”

He says, “It’s the natural progression of YouTube creators as they seek to form more of an engagement with their audience.”

More than ever such relatability and relevance is derived from an ability to “speak video”.

This means, “to cleverly employ the language of digital video, its formats, tropes, aesthetics to deeply connect with the audience by mirroring the way they use these every day.”

This video language includes long loops of content and memes, commonly created by fan communities.

Marvel tapped into this when it released this hour-long loop of this scene from Falcon and the Winter Soldier in a clip which has been watched over 6 million times.

“People are diving more and more into long content of things they love,” says Laurentino. “There’s no such thing as long copy. There is only boring copy.”

Not surprisingly some of the biggest breakout stars in modern entertainment are the are the ones who use video the most intuitively.

Comedian Bo Burnham emerged as a YouTube star and won rave plaudits for his digital video and social media literate Netflix special Inside.

YouTube cites the rise of Jawsh865, one of the creators of ‘siren music,’ whose videos led to a chart-topping collaboration with Jason Derulo; and Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, whose channels have over 100m subscribers making him YouTube’s top creator in 2020. Earlier this year his videos - of stunts including eating a $70k pizza and being buried for 50 hours - were watched 1 billion times in a month. 

Also cited is musician Lil Nas X whose single ‘Montereo’ has been viewed more than 240 million times.

As “wild and extravagant” as the visuals are, Lil Nas X’ personality is grounded by his honesty in coming out as gay, says Allocca. This making him relatable. What’s more, the artist has the nous to drop multiple different versions of the single. He talks video.

“In a world where barriers between public and private have been stripped away the winners are the ones whose relatability stems from [having the] comfort and fluency in the dialects of the web,” Allocca said.

Immersive videos encourage togetherness

When the M&E industry talks about immersivity it mostly refers to heightened sensory overload wrap-around experiences like giant screens or virtual reality.

YouTube’s concept of immersion is a little different. It illustrates this by citing the viral video of a single shot fly through of a Minnesota bowling alley captured on racing drone Jay Christensen and Anthony Jaska.

“The more innovation happens in future the more you will see it applied to advertising,” comments Luca Pannese co-founder at creative agency Small in YouTube’s analysis. “It’s the evolution of content and of communication because this is where creativity starts.”

The Minnesota fly-through is also an example of first-person video, a term borrowed from gaming where the first person perspective helps create a feeling of immersion in the action of the story.

Allocca uses that idea to state that, “Gaming is emerging as the most influential space in youth culture – maybe even bigger than music.”

Gaming tools are increasingly being used online for immersive narrative storytelling. For example, improvised role-playing drama Dream SMP has garnered 2 billion views since May 2020.

“This is the West Wing told in Mindcraft,” explains creator MatPat. “Every individual player is logged in as an active part of this stage play. People can watch the shorter uploads or watch the multi hour long side stories form individual characters like a podcast.”

It’s important to know about this development, MatPat stresses, “because these are your consumers of the future.”

Another form of online video immersion comes in the surprising form of atmospheric or ambient music content. So called ‘in another room’ videos are designed to more deeply connect a viewer or listener with a place or time.

‘Oldies playing in the car but you are in a dream (1930's City road trip w/ cars passing 3 HOURS ASMR’ is one example.

Lil Nas X, naturally, even released a version of Montero in the format titled ‘MONTERO but ur in the bathroom of hell while lil nas is giving satan a lap dance in the other room’  landing 3.2 million views and counting.

Google enlisted cultural anthropologist Susan Kresnicka to comment on its findings. She said, “When the pandemic upended life as we knew it, many of the ways we were used to meeting our needs became untenable. So, people are learning new techniques to soothe their anxious minds.”

For example, viewership of videos related to “nature sounds” increased 25% as people looked for something to help calm them.

“Using multi-sensory media like this to better immerse the viewer in an experience to build a closer connection has a lot of power and appeal right now,” Allocca said.

Over half YouTube’s audience agree that a video they watched helped them feel like they were in a different place this past year.

“This kind of audio first video are more popular than ever,” Allocca said, pointing out that podcasts recorded in video form were watched by 51% of YouTube’s audience in 2020.

“YouTube is a huge destination for podcast distribution and consumption.”

All of these trends speak to the surprising ability for digital video to push beyond the expected audio-visual conventions and become more experiential

Many may have been spurred by quarantine but their popularity suggests that they are here to stay.