Think Globally: SVOD Success Means More Content, Foreign Content and Automated Versioning

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Today there are nearly 300 VOD and OTT platforms available to consumers across more than 200 countries and territories. That number is expected to increase to 600 platforms and two billion subscribers by 2025. How do you stand out amid all that competition?

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“Content is king,” says Teresa Phillips, CEO and co-founder of data and technology company Spherex.

“Companies with existing or expanding content catalogs have a competitive advantage because they don’t have to buy or license content, but even those titles become stale over time,” she says.

“The result is the demand for new content will continue to increase as more consumers tire of existing catalogs, are unable to find something to watch, and reach the point of deciding which service is no longer worth the subscription price.

That leads to a prediction — which is surely already in action among most leading SVODs — that investment in original foreign-language content investment pays dividends.

The success of shows like South Korea drama Squid Game has platforms searching for possible successors. Netflix alone is investing half a billion dollars in Korean content in 2022. This year, Disney plans to launch service in South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and buy 50 Asian originals by 2023.

Meanwhile Peacock has partnered with Telemundo to develop 50 Spanish-language projects and create a new streaming channel, and Amazon Prime Video announced it is expanding its content development in India, ordering shows in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu languages.

Several of these will find the same level of success and audience acceptance as Squid Game, Parasite, and other foreign language titles, says Phillips.

As the number of titles being released continues to increase, directors, producers, and studios need to find a competitive advantage that allows them to reach markets faster, at reduced cost and with no regulatory risk.

“Beginning in 2022, adding AI and ML tools to existing manual processes can help content providers accomplish this important objective while reducing localization costs and improving the customer experience, and getting to revenue faster,” Phillips says.

 

One Gateway To Rule Them All: Viewers and Platforms Want Unified Video

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Platform aggregators are on the march, consumers seems to want one gateway to rule them all and the cost of content will inflate further, according to market analyst Kantar.

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It also questions whether media planners need to plan for the metaverse.

In its Media Trends and Predictions 2022 report the agency calls out what it terms ‘the paradox of choice’ with payTV broadcasters finding themselves in the surprisingly healthy position to capitalize.

“Although market choice is a good thing, too much can have the unfortunate effect of paralysing consumers (and advertisers) into making no choice at all. We might even, ironically, swing full-circle and arrive back at the platform operator era, with one provider acting as gatekeeper to multiple channels.”

Kantar warns that if channels and platforms fight for viewers independently, it will make the struggle much harder. “Certainly in the near future we would expect to see different streaming players band together to create promotions and bundles, or partner with telco operators.”

It outlines the argument further: With the number of SVOD launches on the rise, smaller services don’t feel confident enough to go it alone, and an increasing number are partnering with established cable and satellite TV operators to secure guaranteed subscribers at launch. Viewers are on board with this trend and want to be able to access their content through one unified system.”

This dynamic has given a new-found confidence to broadcasters and operators previously under pressure to maintain growth. Many are also looking to merge and partner overlapping ecosystems.

For example, Sky has signed up Peacock, Paramount and Discovery+ as part of its launch strategies, cementing its power in Europe; the planned M6 and TF1 merger in France could create a major new media group; Brazil’s Globo partnered with Google Cloud to bolster its technology infrastructure; and the UK’s Channel 4 tie-up with Amazon Prime to show Brit tennis star Emma Raducanu’s US Open final live on broadcast TV. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority (97%) of the viewing was on Channel 4, with a peak of 9.2 million viewers, found Kantar.

All this leads Kantar to suggest that the subscription model is losing its power to drive long-term growth.

“This is because competition has grown incredibly fierce, there’s more competition for the same content, and prices are increasing amongst some SVOD platforms. In response, expect business models to diversify further in 2022, with a sole subscription offering becoming scarce.”

Kantar thinks SVODs need to up their audience measurement metric tactics (ideally with Kantar of course).

“The largest SVOD businesses now require much more than their own data and the sheer will to grow; they need a definitive picture of audience behavior that allows them to look ‘over the wall’ for a complete view. How else can they truly understand their competitors, identify blind spots or find new subscribers?”

This becomes more imperative now that more VOD content is being married with TV views from established ratings agencies like Barb in the UK (for whom Kantar work and helped devise and count VOD viewing figures).

“The outcome should supply those subscribing with a unique competitive advantage that’s likely to give them the upper hand and help influence strategic, audience and content decisions. Time, then, for SVOD platforms to reappraise the value of people, not device-based measurement alone?”

This also means that as “actual viewing figures” become publicly available, content owners and producers could command higher licensing and carriage fee negotiation rights than before.

That could inflate content costs which are already at record levels. Spend on film and TV content, reached $220 billion globally last year, Kantar calculates.

Audiences Are Learning to Accept New Forms of Video

There are two other trends worth noting from the report, as both demonstrate that it’s easy to make incorrect assumptions, and — as the streaming market looks to evolve — they could provide valuable lessons.

“The first is that the rise in short-form video — as evidenced through TikTok’s incredible growth — shows audiences are surprisingly happy to engage with different formats, video lengths and degrees of quality. At the very least, for VOD platforms seeking diversification, this offers a route for experimentation in the quest for new audiences.”

The second lesson is how wrong so many industry commentators were about content. “Previous assumptions that global productions would take over might not pan out. What we see from every global streaming platform is very fast growth in decentralized production.”

A case in point is the biggest hit for Netflix — ever — is a Korean series with subtitles.

 “Instead of global-to-local, the most interesting new trend might just be local-to-global — proving that the video streaming market will continue to surprise and evolve.”

Kantar also has an interesting take on the metaverse: namely, what a media plan for a virtual world will look like.

“There will be wide-ranging implications for virtual shopping and product testing, as well as the formation of new and interactive ad formats.

“If the metaverse lives up to the hype we’ll need to understand the size and composition of an entirely new audience segment and develop tools that allow brands to measure their reach and effectiveness, similarly to TV and display advertising.”

Putting the interactions in the metaverse as a component, and in the context of overall media, is something that advertisers will demand, Kantar says.

It also has a warning for brands not to ignore the climate crisis or consumer’s response to change.

“With ambitious targets for net-zero emissions on the cards, and the CEOs of brands such as Unilever and H&M calling for change, marketers will need to focus on sustainability in 2022 and have it hardwired into strategies thereafter. Media plans will no longer just be about reach, frequency and driving results. The carbon footprint will be just as important.”

 

What “Yellowjackets” Did To/With Its Viewers

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The cult success of horror thriller Yellowjackets is as much about the series’ distribution as its split timeline and genre-busting narrative.

The finale of season four’s ten-episode run doesn’t air until January 16, and most viewers just can’t wait.

That’s the kind of to-die-for buzz that marketers love, and it’s at least in part due to Showtime’s decision to drop weekly episodes to build up tension — and lets audiences fill in the gaps with their own ideas about what comes next.

This is in contrast to critically acclaimed and hugely tense drama masterpieces, like Underground Railroad, which arrived on Amazon earlier this year. The media buzz around this peaked shortly after it premiered and presumably the audience then trailed off shortly after (Amazon releases no viewing figures) as fans binged on the box set.

That also probably means audiences skip-watched episodes of the slavery drama. With a show like Yellowjackets, the audience is more likely giving it closer attention since it has become an appointment to view. That’s an anecdotal observation drawn from the way the BBC has chosen to schedule shows in the UK, despite having BBC iPlayer available to dump all episodes at once.

One example is the police thriller Line of Duty, which reached national fever pitch in the last three seasons. A BBC and HBO adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials gave some younger families a rare chance to gather on the sofa each Sunday with everyone glued to the same screen.

Disney has tended to tease audiences for its MCU episodic spin-offs in an attempt to keep subscribers on board for more than a month, but Yellowjackets’ availability on Showtime in most cable homes is keeping people tuned in on primetime Sundays.

“Dwelling in that unknowing for a full week after each episode can be frustrating, but I can’t say it isn’t making me happier to live without the auto-play,” says Slate’s Phillip Maciak. “If the whole season had dropped on Netflix it’d be all anyone was talking about, but there’s a special pleasure in not knowing what’s next.”

Created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, the grisly story about a girls’ soccer team stranded in a frozen wilderness in the 1990s juggles timelines with the survivors of that catastrophe 25 years later. It’s had comparisons with “bloody puzzle-box ancestors,” like Lost and The OA, but with added “teen-mixtape soundtrack, Gen-X icon casting and hellacious moments of semi-comic ultraviolence.”

Attempts to define what the show is part of the reason people keep watching and talking about it.

“Each episode has seen the series transform its own genre in ways that produce plenty of uneasiness and narrative tension on their own,” says Maciak. “Sometimes it’s a haunted-house, political thriller; sometimes it’s a cabin-in-the-woods slasher; sometimes it’s a semi-satirical feminist suburban revenge comedy; sometimes it’s an odd couple, buddy cop, road trip adventure. Whether the show’s baseline understanding of itself is in constant, generative flux or in tailspin, Yellowjackets’ instability is precisely what makes it so fun to watch week in and week out.”

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when, but at some point in the last few weeks, Showtime’s Yellowjackets went from being a low-key phenomenon to a cultural force. A lot of the show’s popularity can be attributed to excellent reviews and word of mouth and the holiday season, but it could it also be nostalgia for the days when teens didn’t spend every waking hour face down on their phones?

“Like Lost, it time-jumps — cutting between the girls’ childhoods and the present day, sprinkling Reddit-thread-worthy unsolved mysteries everywhere,” Angela Watercutter writes at Wired. “But unlike Lost, its appeal feels rooted in a desire to return to those halcyon days before the internet.”

For those still oblivious, Yellowjackets is an episodic drama, set in 1996, about a New Jersey high school girls soccer team that gets stranded in the Canadian wilderness following a plane crash. The show is purposefully vague about how many of them make it back to civilization and which of them survived a Lord of the Flies-style narrative.

But critics also point to something more basic about its appeal: It’s a mystery full of the kinds of symbolism, clues, and Easter eggs that the internet loves to devour and hypothesize about.

“There are Reddit threads (lots), news articles, and more Twitter chatter than you can shake an Antler Queen at, and in this deep-winter COVID-19 surge moment, it’s hard not to go down an online rabbit hole trying to decode it all. The Season 1 finale only gave fans more cannibal catastrophe content to chew on,” says Wattercutter.

This is all somewhat ironic because one of the things that’s appealing about Yellowjackets is that it’s so lo-fi. American teens in 1996 barely had AOL, and none of them had smartphones. They listened to the radio and watched VHS because there was no Netflix.

Watercutter says, “This isn’t to say that everyone who watches Yellowjackets wants to go back to a more primitive, pre-internet time, but there is something appealing about living in that world — for Gen Xers and millennials who grew up in it and for younger generations curious about its contours. It’s also a story that almost has to take place in a previous decade. If the Yellowjackets were a big-deal high school girls’ soccer team now, they’d all probably be quasi-famous TikTokers or microinfluencers.”

She reasons that the survivors of the crash (that we knows of so far) were able to keep a somewhat low profile after their return to civilization is likely due to the fact that it happened before the era of that social media and true crime podcasts turned everyone into a wannabe detective.

The show knows this of course — and explains the casting of Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis, “three ‘90s indie-movie staples who built their careers just before the era of celebrity blog culture and managed to survive its wrath. That they play its adult leads remains the show’s best in-joke.”

Yellowjackets creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson told NPR they started with a very simple premise: a sports team and a plane crash. The duo also discussed the influence of plane crash survival books such as Lord of the Flies and Alive, as well as how they wanted violence depicted on-screen, and what they’re hoping audiences will take away from the series.

 

 

“Station Eleven” or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse

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The before and afters of an apocalypse in the movies usually has the post-event world looking desaturated, burnt out, drained of color. Not so Station Eleven which flips that convention on its head.

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In the 10-episode series that just finished on HBO Max the apocalypse results from a flu that has no incubation period and causes near-immediate death.

In adapting Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel writer and showrunner Patrick Somerville (The Leftovers) traced three story worlds — a Traveling Shakespearean troupe; a cult of kids, led by the prophet Tyler (Daniel Zovatto); and a group of survivors living in an airport.

The series alternates between past and present timelines to show the pivotal hours leading up to the crisis, the immediate aftermath, and those who have adapted to the new circumstances of their world twenty years later.

This could be a set up for a “puzzle-box” of elements that fire up fan communities in shows like I, Robot, Westworld and Yellowjackets but Station Eleven side steps this.

“It isn’t that the post-apocalyptic drama doesn’t supply answers—it does, in increasingly rewarding layers as it unfolds—but rather that the questions that really matter can’t be addressed through plot mechanics,” suggests Lili Loofbourow  in a review at Slate. “We are not interested in how the pandemic started, or who engineered it, or even how exactly it works. We don’t even especially need to know the particulars of the ‘Station Eleven’ graphic novel within the show. What matters far more is the feeling the book creates and what that feeling does.”

That feeling is evoked most strongly in an aesthetic that acts an antidote to the dour color palette and mood of other post-apocalyptic motion picture narratives on television and in film. 

“Laced with humor and heartache, it's perhaps the brightest, most fanciful end-of-the-world drama you'll ever see,” says Slashfilm.

While Polygon insists that the “Beautiful, lush cinematography gives scenes a sense of contemporaneousness — resisting the dour tones that often mark the apocalypse genre.”

The visual (production design + cinematographic) concept was have the present feel like the future, and the future to feel like the past.

“In many ways, we were trying to invert the post-apocalyptic genre,” Somerville tells Vox, “Hiro Murai [who directs the pilot] always said he wanted to be there when we were talking about year 20 [after the plague that kills most of humanity]. Quiet, big, expansive, beautiful, green. Not destroyed. Just still.”

In postproduction the filmmakers actually deemphasized color in scenes set before the apocalypse.

“Year 20 is very naturally lit with lots of bright sunlight and lots of colorful greens and flora and lots of saturation,” explains DP Christian Sprenger who set the series look with Murai in the pilot. “We wanted that world to feel welcoming, and we wanted to push against that concept of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road’s very gross, dirty, almost monochromatic future, that sad apocalypse aesthetic. Where that led us was that year zero, the world we’re currently living in, wanted to feel a little bit more subdued and slightly desaturated.”

He added to xxx that they chose locations that had artificial lighting; subway stations, a theater, even the streets at night. “Everything has this stark, manmade aesthetic. We intended to let that be what the sci-fi future aesthetic normally feels like. And when you jump forward to the future, that almost feels like 200 years ago.”

 Sprenger told the LA Times that the inspiration for shooting ALEXA Mini Large Format was to help tell a story “about a few seemingly insignificant people up against these giant man-made and eventually natural landscapes. This idea led us down the path of putting our small little characters against these large-scale wide frames — feeling the contrast of scale to significance.”

Station Eleven is not the only show to imagine the post-apocalypse in a vidid color palette. Mad Max: Fury Road, for instance, is full of crisp blues and burnt yellows, highlighting its desert setting. I Am Legend and The Walking Dead have been set in worlds where greenery has overtaken what once were human spaces.

“What sets Station Eleven apart is its willingness to push those vibrant colors to an extreme,” says Emily VanDerWerff at Vox. “Every time the series drops us into a world where humanity is rebuilding, despite the devastation of the Georgia Flu, that world feels almost inviting.”

Costume designer Helen Huang picks up the theme: “A large part of this project is about optimism and memory,” she says. “Those two things also spark color, because if you look at our world as it is now, if you took away all the people in it, it’s full of color. It’s full of graphics. It’s a memory of our civilization. It creates this world that’s separate from all the other language of the post-apocalyptic world that’s out there.”

Steve Cosens, who shot four episodes says that his direction from Somerville was to depict a future that was not daunting.

“Even though we're in this kind of post-apocalyptic, post-pandemic world, he wanted nature to feel that it's friendly. It's not like some of these other post-pandemic or post-apocalyptic shows where nature is all burnt out and kind of scary. There would still be some lyricism in the design of the sets or there would be pops of color.”

The color vibe aside, there’s another ray of hope that Station Eleven radiates – that of basic human connection. Instead of going all ‘Lord of the Flies’ or selfish rogue as element of humanity are often portrayed in the aftermath of (zombie)geddons like 28 Days Later or A Quiet Place II, Station Eleven  eases those psychic blows by saturating its plotlines with “excessive, frankly rococo” connections, says Loofbourow.

“The show isn’t following some supernatural principle according to which everyone in its universe is connected. Rather, it makes it seem that the reason we’re hearing this particular set of stories is because they are connected. Station Eleven is obviously and unsubtly interested in art—art as artifice, art as authenticity, and art as a preserver of civilization that stands in opposition to civilization’s less savory aspects.”

 

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In the Case of AI Vs. Free Will…

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One of the age-old themes illuminated in Shakespeare’s Macbeth is that of free will. Does Macbeth possess the agency to commit murder, or is he simply fulfilling the prophesy of the Witches? Or, to muddy the waters further, what role does the Witches’ foretelling of the future have on Macbeth’s destiny? Had he not heard them would his fate have been any different?

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Carrisa Veliz, associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, is in no doubt. She argues that ceding more of our choices to algorithms threatens to denude mankind of mavericks, leaders, inventors and creators — anyone who thinks outside the box.

This dilemma (most recently interpreted by Joel Coen in The Tragedy of Macbeth, the latest cinema version of the play), is also one that can be applied to ethical considerations about how computer algorithms appear to increasingly govern our lives.

To what extent do recommendation engines, addressable advertising or personalized political messaging determine what we do, where we go, what we buy and what we think?

“We want a society that allows and stimulates actions that defy the odds,” she writes at Wired. “Yet the more we use AI to categorize people, predict their future, and treat them accordingly, the more we narrow human agency, which will in turn expose us to unchartered risks.”

Predictions are not innocuous, she maintains. The extensive use of predictive analytics can change the way human beings think about themselves.

Such ethical issues lead back to one of the oldest debates in philosophy: If there is an omniscient God, we can be said to be truly free? If a supreme being already knows all that is going to happen, that means whatever is going to happen has been predetermined. The implication is that our feeling of free will is nothing but that: a feeling.

“Part of what it means to treat a person with respect is to acknowledge their agency and ability to change themselves and their circumstances,” she contends. “If we decide that we know what someone’s future will be before it arrives, and treat them accordingly, we are not giving them the opportunity to act freely and defy the odds of that prediction.”

A second, related ethical problem with predicting human behavior is that by treating people like things, we are creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Predictions are rarely neutral. More often than not, the act of prediction intervenes in the reality it purports to merely observe.

“For example, when Facebook predicts that a post will go viral, it maximizes exposure to that post, and lo and behold, the post goes viral.”

Veliz goes further, arguing that if AI-driven predictive analytics are partly creating the reality they purport to predict, “then they are partly responsible for the negative trends we are experiencing in the digital age, from increasing inequality to polarization, misinformation, and harm to children and teenagers.”

Predictions are not innocuous. The extensive use of predictive analytics can even change the way human beings think about themselves. There is value in believing in free will.

By contrast, there is immeasurable value to society in believing in free will she says. After all, society has countered theological fatalism — the idea that everything is known by God — by creating ways to improve our health, our education, and punishing those who transgress the norm.

“The more we use predictive analytics on people, the more we conceptualize human beings as nothing more than the result of their circumstances, and the more people are likely to experience themselves as devoid of agency and powerless in the face of hardship.”

In other words, Veliz says we have to choose between treating human beings “as mechanistic machines” whose future can and should be predicted (welcome to The Matrix, folks), or treating each other as independent agents (in which case making people the target of individual predictions is inappropriate).

Unless, of course, our minds have already been made up for us.

 

Affordable Displays Can Take HDR Mainstream

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It’s been about six years since HDR emerged, and now there are signs that the technology may finally be tipping into mainstream production.

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Streaming services from Apple TV+ to Netflix and Hollywood studios have embraced HDR as routine for their feature films and TV shows, but most other productions view HDR as a luxury that entails an additional post process, more time spent in the colorist suite, and additional cost of critical monitoring equipment.

It is the drop in cost of HDR reference displays that leads Jason Druss, a product marketing manager at Frame.io and previously a senior colorist at WarnerMedia Studios, to declare that the early adopter phase is over.

“The drop in price that’s enabled by growing market penetration allows for economies of scale,” he writes in a post on the Frame.io blog. “And unless I’m mistaken, that’s exactly what we’re seeing right now.”

For evidence, Druss points to the release of Flanders Scientific’s latest HDR monitor, the FSI XM312U,  which boasts 5,000 nits of peak brightness for a price tag of $21,995.

If that sounds a lot, compare with FS’s previous monitor (the XM311K), Sony’s BVM-HX310, Canon’s DP-V3120, and TV Logic’s LUM-310.

“All of the models cited are exceptional 31-inch 4K professional reference displays that support a multitude of HDR color gamuts at peak brightness levels of at least 1,000 nits. They all meet or exceed the minimum spec for Dolby Vision mastering. And they all fall [between] $30-40K.”

While $22,000 is still no one’s idea of a casual purchase, “it’s clear that the decision makers at Flanders Scientific believe that market growth is enough to support a price cut of over 30 percent. This is going to allow so many more mid-level production companies finish their projects in the highest quality available.”

Druss adds, “When a better product with a significant technical advantage hits the market at a much lower price, it’s a clear indication that the HDR market is shifting. And you can bet that it’s led to some interesting conversations inside the offices of Sony, TV Logic, et al.”

There are more cost-effective options too. These include Apple’s Pro Display XDR (which costs about $5,000 and new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros that feature mini-LED displays offering 1,600 nits peak and 1,200 nits full-screen.

Druss also earmarks the Dell UP3221Q, which can hit 1,000 nits, and the Asus PA32UCG, which boasts a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio as being “HDR capable displays” costing less than $5,000.

All of this points towards higher quality, attainable HDR monitoring.

There won’t be many colorists or DPs “who aren’t enthusiastic about having a vastly increased palette of light and color to work with,” Druss says. “The only thing that’s getting in our way right now is affordability, and all signs are pointing to 2022 being the year HDR comes within reach for many of us.”

 

Hidden gem: ProAV in Spain

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Spain started the year with bullish predictions in terms of growth and recovery after a very tough 2020 but “by the end we can say that this year has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride,” says Greg Babbs, sales manager at Datapath in what is an understatement.

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Luis Garrido Fuentes, executive director, Alfalite calls Spanish AV in 2021 “a year of transition” and for Cesar Sanz, Iberia sales director, Philips Professional Displays (PPDS) it’s a “cocktail” mixed with stops, starts, and more stops as the new wave kicked in.

Business uncertainty was compounded by supply chain issues, leaving vendors challenged to source products for projects while absorbing price increases. These two major global challenges look set to stay for the short-term, with many predicting continued disruptions until at least April 2022.

“Logistics issues, availability of products and rising costs put the breaks on growth in the second half of 2021,” reports Jeroen Helms at Peerless-AV. “Government, retail and corporate all share the difficulty of getting products to fulfil projects. Projects have been postponed due to lack of LCD screens or control system components. It’s like driving with the handbrake on – the market wants to pick up and move forward but is unable to.”

Local impact
As elsewhere, the experience of the past couple years has permanently altered pro AV needs, mostly in positive ways. Integrators are “enthused by a shift in mindset from their customers about the importance of technology to their businesses and institutions in a post-Covid era,” reports Babbs.

He adds that digital transformation strategies have changed pro AV from an IT task “to a strategic board-level discussion around tech’s integral role in their own recovery and future.” This has resulted in a plethora of new growth opportunities around UC/VC technologies for digital workspaces, eLearning and virtual classrooms.”

One effect of lockdown on hotels is a heightened expectation from guests about their in-room entertainment. “They expect extensive possibilities offered by solutions, such as Chromecast, or the option to stream Netflix giving a home-from-home, or better-than-home experience,” says Sanz. PPDS outfitted 116 apartments in a Tenerife residential complex with a Philips MediaSuite Professional TV to this end.

The country’s great weather and tradition of living outdoors makes the live event sector particularly strong for local AV and one that was most considerably impacted by lockdown.

Yet last summer, Spain saw “an explosion of events” with Andalusia-based audio specialist Zero Dbs involved in 80+ concerts, festivals, corporate events and theatre shows. “The public reacted with a great desire to go back to attending outdoor events,” explains owner Juan Antonio Cuevas. “We must have catered for 35,000 people in just three months.”

Events included Jazzándaluz, a three-day jazz festival in August, a concert series called Música al Aire in Carcabuey and a festival in Alhaurín de la Torre, in the province of Malaga featuring pop, rock, indie and flamenco performers.

“We are also witnessing a renovation of technical equipment in many theatres and halls that have sound and lighting that is over 20 years old. We’ve installed theatres with line array equipment such as the Uniline Compact (from French vendor, APG). Spain is a country of festivals and each one is a good example of high-quality AV and technically skilled staff.”

Nonetheless, live events and hospitality sectors are likely to face “limited investment” through 2022, feels Helms, with the outlook only positive once restrictions are lifted.

Román Ceriani, CEO, ICAP Global Ibérica and EVP – GPA thinks the main challenge facing every sector this year “is having the ability to distinguish between the back-to-office momentum, and the new hybrid world versus sustainable growth in the medium and long term.

“2022 will be a year of important growth again where we will begin to see that transition between an impulse to return to normality and needs based on the requirements of different businesses on a regular basis.”

Shift in mentality
Ceriani is one of several respondents highlighting the relative lack of AV adoption in Spain’s education system. Ignacio Bujalance at Lightware Visual Engineering thinks education “lags behind” in terms of technology, particularly for offering hybrid remote and in-person lectures. Nonetheless, 100 units of Lightware matrix switcher were recently installed as part of a large-scale University re-modelling with further such installations “on the horizon”.

Covid also forced schools, universities and training centres to offer online classes. “Many opted for virtually no-cost solutions, but there have also been many others who preferred to offer quality audio and video, and with reliable connections, to serve a high number of students,” says Julián Oltra, MD, Audio Video Zentralmedia (Clear-Com’s local partner). “This has resulted in a high demand for robotic cameras and streaming solutions which has compensated for the lack of activity in other applications.”

Several country experts observe longer-term changes to Spanish AV culture. The market is described by Sanz as “very aggressive and price-sensitive,” with customers, “informed about technology solutions and therefore more demanding” than those in other countries. For these reasons, he says, the Spanish retail sector is one of the most advanced in Europe.

Antonio Ortega, who manages the area for Crestron, witnesses a “shift in mentality regarding the importance of cost versus quality and how purchasing departments take decisions.” Spain he says, used to have a cost-driven approach, which affected the quality of the solutions.

Today, the value, satisfaction and RoI are more important in the decision-making process.
Garrido supports this. He says that corporates are beginning to appreciate the added value that products of quality – notably LED screens – offer in terms of reliability and durability.

As in any country, there is an AV skills shortage. “Looking at the AV talent pool in Spain, the difficulty,” says Helms, “is that the skills required to work in our industry are built from experience. To find, recruit or hold these people is a difficult task”.

World class talent demand
As a member of the AVIXA Advisory Board for Spain and Portugal, Ceriani is actively involved in promoting and developing talent as well as methodologies, procedures and best practices. This includes an AV Experience Zone that is part of ISE 2022 with a keynote and panels to drive discussion.

“The culture of work is deeply rooted in Spain,” he says. “It is also a country where exponential development has taken place and where talent and service commitment coexist. In the AV world, the Spanish market stands out for its propensity for service and customer satisfaction.”

Garrido agrees there’s a lot of talent, but spots a need for professionals to train in virtual production environments. “Our sector has a great vocational component, one that attracts more people than in other sectors, but it is very hard to reconcile family life and work,” says Cuevas, while Bujalance suggests technical skills are in high demand for AV rental because of a labour migration to other industries “which are more stable and have had less impact from Covid.”

“There is a certain gap between training in AV technologies and its use in the business world,” Oltra concurs. “The risk is that these professionals will end up finding better opportunities in other countries and emigrating. With the increase in labour supply that we will inevitably have, this risk can be controlled.”

Ortega rates Spain’s programmers among the best in Europe. “Due to the merging of IT and AV in the recent years and the quality of our educational institutions, I truly believe there are great people available who can ensure the quality of projects and know how they will translate into reality.”

Prospects for 2022
Business is likely to be galvanised this year, come what may. Besides local and regular events like AFIAL or BITAM, Ceriani says there will be European funds to boost the economy, and additional funds for education and government investments in projects connected to the community. Lightware is anticipating a 20 per cent growth in 2022 on the back of some large pro AV projects in the region. Alfalite expects growth of 25 per cent in fixed installations, but fears the pandemic will rerail the restart of the rental market.

“The year will start very slowly due to the pandemic, then accelerate rapidly,” predicts Cuevas. “There will be many more events as national and international artists tour. The lack of supply of AV equipment will limit many companies, as well as the lack of qualified personnel who during the pandemic have had to look for other jobs in other sectors. So, there will be a lot of work but companies may not be able to meet large anticipated demand.”

ISE comes to town
As you’d expect there is a universal delight that ISE chose Barcelona as its new home, although the scale of its impact locally won’t be felt until tradeshow numbers return to normal.

Garrido hopes ISE “will be a catalyst for the market to complement European funds for digitisation”. Babbs feels Spain has been somewhat of a “hidden gem”, often overshadowed by larger European markets and that ISE “will bring about fresh excitement and investment from both smaller brands and brands from further afield that may have overlooked Spain at the first glance.”

Ceriani thinks the fayre “represents a turning point for the country with Barcelona the centre of the scene for our industry. It will generate an exponential leap in terms of digital transformation in Spain. Producing an acceleration in creating jobs, new roles and careers, will also position and empower the country worldwide from a technological perspective for today and for years to come.”

Mobile World Congress is also coming to town. “Both events profile Barcelona as a centre of technological innovation,” says Oltra. “The impact goes beyond the AV market, and the average citizen not related to our industry knows about the arrival of ISE because it has been widely reported in the general media.”

Ortega says: “Amsterdam has been an incredible host for this event for many years, but I am one hundred per cent sure that Barcelona will exceed everyone´s expectations, Covid allowing. Having the privilege to host ISE will clearly reinforce the importance of our region to the industry.”

 

Pushing open the doors of perception

AV Magazine

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In a Hoxton warehouse a six-person undercover unit is tasked with cracking a world-changing mystery. On the dark web, a black market known as ‘Origin’ has begun selling contraband, including Covid 19 vaccines, rhino horn extract – even Brad Pitt’s DNA. Suddenly, you’re face to face with dinosaurs.

What is going on?
This is Lost Origin, a research and development project designed to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the nascent world of immersive and interactive tech-led performance storytelling. Even that is a mouthful but there’s no getting around the multi-disciplinary fusion of traditional and cutting edge techniques in an effort to a create unique experience.

“The objective was to create an immersive collaborative experience,” explains Maciek Sznabel who oversees the creative implementation of immersive projects at project lead, Factory42.

“Virtual Reality experiences can be solipsistic. You can experience VR alone but you cannot share the experience with others. The aim of Lost Origin was to design an interactive experience that people can enjoy together and, to achieve that, we decided to mix theatrical performance with mixed reality technology.”

The project is funded within the Audience of the Future programme by UK Research and Innovation through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. It is the culmination of a series of R&D ‘outputs’ which explore how audiences of the future will enjoy new forms of entertainment and visitor experiences.

Previous ‘outputs’ included a VR project featuring Sir David Attenborough, co-produced by Factory42 with Sky – one of the partners for Lost Origin alongside the Almeida Theatre in Islington and University of Exeter and MR wearables developer, Magic Leap.

“We began with weekly meetings of all the creative groups and it quickly became apparent that nobody had done anything like this before,” says Sznabel. “We had people with huge experience in film, TV, animation, theatre interaction. On the one hand we had to apply this knowledge and on the other hand forget what we know, be open minded and think another way.”

The process started from the basics, such as how many rooms they would need, for how many people and what the throughput of people would be. “We slowly started to create a vision for the physical space and the software simulation.”

Sets were built out of cardboard boxes, starting with just a single box, and gradually building up and changing the design. “You couldn’t build the set first and then fit everything around it. This was a constant process of iteration, of trial and error. The starting point was – let’s put this box on the floor and see what we can do with it in AR.”

The storyline quickly took shape as involving elements of science (dinosaurs) and mystery (to make the player’s spooks), but it too had to be kept loose and evolved with all the other pieces, including the animation which typically takes the longest time to create. “The process was quite similar to designing a game in the sense that we have computer animation and narrative joining together,” adds Sznabel.

Only this time they had the added layer of real-world sets through which players would move and interact with objects both animated and actual (lights, audio). “It took maybe a year of things moving from paper to software tests and animatics to test, change, and retest constantly working out how we want people to interact, how many interactions, what do the players’ experience.”

Iterating to outcome
The final version is just one of many possible iterations. A smaller scale version was tried out at the Metro Centre in Gateshead where Magic Leap enabled people to interact with virtual objects like a dinosaur or robot. From this they learned that an original plan to have three large rooms with different applications of Magic Leap wasn’t going to be possible. In part this was because of the limits of Magic Leap.

“Magic Leap gave us rules for how to optimise the technology such as not making a virtual object larger than five metres but we wanted our experience to have scale,” says Sznabel.

Another plan was to give each player the chance to have different experiences in Magic Leap by finding and picking up Easter Eggs in the corners of rooms, but this too was shelved when Covid forced the team to reduce the production’s complexity. Instead, two of the spaces used in the final project rely on more traditional (albeit still advanced) technologies with the AR glasses reserved for a big ‘reveal’ toward the end.

The technologies were kept separate to minimise complexity.

Interactive projections were used principally in the Journal Room. This is the point in the experience where things get surreal; the walls of the room look like they’re made from pages of a crumpled journal. Three Intel RealSense cameras were used to capture live depth and spatial data from the Journal Room, as seen from a variety of angles. The data generated from these cameras was then transferred to NuiTrack AI, a middleware package which allowed the team to locate and track the six human figures from each field of view.

“We used this human pose tracking data with our bespoke motion analysis tools, which allowed us to identify and respond to specific movements and gestures in realtime,” says Mike Golembewski, Factory 42’s interactive designer and developer.

Show control
The Production Family (TPF) was responsible for implementing the show control systems used to orchestrate and synchronise the media, sound, and lighting used within the show. This is a custom show control rack designed, built and programmed by TPF.

“It uses Qlab software as the main triggering system and is programmed to create multiple cue lists, all running at the same time,” explains TPF co-founder, Dominic Baker. “A range of timecode, OSC triggering and Midi is then used across the experience to control our lighting, sound and video servers. This ensures all the rooms are perfectly in sync, and can all be running at the same time. Input triggers and buttons are also taken into this system, so that music, sound and lighting can be triggered by buttons, proximity sensors, IR and other servers.”

The interactive projections used within the Journal Room were designed and authored as custom standalone applications in Unity, powered by three high-end PCs running Windows. Explains Golembewski: “These PCs received show control signals via OSC, provided live audio feeds to QLab via Dante, and streamed realtime 50fps HD video into a disguise D3 Server via NDI. The audio feeds were upmixed into a 7.1 surround setup, and the video was projected on to the walls using three Panasonic RZ120 projectors.”

Inside the interactive projections, the Intel RealSense cameras and NuiTrack AI middleware provided the information the team needed to understand where people were located within the room. “Our bespoke gesture analysis software let us understand how the audience was moving, and let us respond to it visually,” he continues. “All of the visual elements projected in the space, and all of the interactive audio elements, were created procedurally, and then mapped to user behaviours using multi-layered interaction controllers.”

A ‘flame interaction’, for instance, in which audience members could fan their arms to build a fire, consisted of 30 uniquely tuned audio interactions, and 25 animation-based interactions, layered together and presented simultaneously in a seamless display. Lighting was specific to each room to both “enhance the paranormal as well as the more naturalistic landscapes,” says lighting designer, Jess Bernberg.

The Journal Room is lit with tungsten light to emit a warmth while most of the other spaces are lit using LED to create a harsher, industrial feel. Lighting also informs the experience. Areas light up to show players have solved a ‘puzzle’ and informs them where to move/hold their focus.

“Lights are rarely static and help keep the set alive,” adds Bernberg. “In each room there is at least one colour change to signify something happening.”

Animatics to final pixel
The CGI was Sznabel’s responsibility, a task the former Weta Digital artist relished. His CV includes The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Avengers: Infinity War.

“Our approach was to make the creatures as realistic as you’d find in a AAA game. The final textures are 2K resolution but seen in the device it’s a bit lower though you don’t notice it.”

Remarkably the small team of half a dozen artists completed all the work in house at Factory42.

Aside from design, blocking and layout they gave the dinosaurs character. “When a dinosaur looks at you we needed to have it interact with the person – to emote something. Some are scarey, others curious.

“For me this was a combination of a classical cinematic approach combined with game development and also a safari in the sense that you want to touch everything but at the same time you can’t. The animal has to behave as if it wants to touch you and at the same keep its distance.”

Almedia Theatre advised on the performance element, how players might move around and interact with the set. Actors also worked as guides within the performance space and would help recalibrate an AR headset as needed – keeping in character of course.

Being at the cutting edge also means technology can go wrong, or at least take an unexpected turn. In May 2020 when the team was mid-way through the project, Magic Leap announced a restructuring process away from consumer entertainment to focus on business products. Half of its 2,000 employees were laid off.

“We had had good cooperation with them to that point and they maintained that even while the business was moving more into corporate, medical and industrial applications. It felt like a great device and it still does but Magic Leap was clearly experimental. It’s why we were using it. In the future we look to work with other XR glasses.”

Opening the doors of perception
The market for XR glasses has pivoted between Microsoft Hololens and Magic Leap until now but 2022 could see a spate of new wearables from companies including Lenovo, and Xiomi built using a new XR development from chip maker, Qualcomm. Apple is also heavily rumoured to be launching its own XR glasses.

“Personally, I think that this is part of the future of entertainment,” says Sznabel. “I think you can see from the audience reaction that they are experiencing something different from anything that cinema or even VR is capable of.

“From a production point of view, the chief take-away is how this form of experiential activation requires iteration every step of the way. You cannot assume that anything you start out with will be there at the end. The technology is only going to get more powerful, more sophisticated opening up to richer and larger scale experiences. What’s we’ve done is opened the doors to a new realm of content creation exploration.”

Esports pioneers the future of hybrid immersive live events

Dataton

Esports were already booming before the pandemic and are now in an even stronger position. Adrian Pennington looks at the workflow that put the sport ahead of the rest from the start and the broader implications for the events industry in general.

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Most projections estimate that the competitive video gaming industry surpassed $1 billion in revenue in 2021. Market researcher Newzoo expects that to reach $1.8bn by the end of 2022 and some analysts go further and project revenue will exceed $2.5 billion this year.

Either way, the sector is booming, and that’s in the teeth of the pandemic.

It’s not as if esports were immune from the shuttering of live events. Stadium-sized events like Intel Extreme Masters, ESL One and League of Legends (LoL) Worlds had to be held behind closed doors. It’s just that, unlike regular sports, the live action continued unchecked.

Esports was in a unique position ahead of the pandemic because much of it is already played online. Audiences spiked during lockdown as more consumers were confined to their homes, driving them to spend more time on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and Huya. Newzoo calculates the global games live-streaming audience (including mobile gaming) topped 728 million last year, a 10% increase over 2020.

For players, the shift to playing remotely was not a big adjustment as they were already used to playing online and from home. Most talent were also already outfitted for online streaming, as many had their own content channels and had previously invested in kit needed to broadcast online. It was up to esports producers to quickly pivot to this new reality.

Leading on remote workflows

Riot Games’ production team in the U.S was already ahead of the game. Since 2018, it has been deploying employing REMI or ‘at-home’ remote audio and video production workflows. With outside broadcast trucks eliminated from the company’s workflow, Riot’s L.A. facility served as the central station of its productions. Everything from audio mixing and on-site camera control to director shot calls and video playback are routed through the site.

In Europe, ESL Gaming expanded its Polish hub in Katowice in 2020 to four times the size, building new control rooms and playing arenas. The move was planned pre-Covid to accommodate soaring demand but the need for centralized Covid-safe production meant that ultimate flexibility was baked-in.

This includes a studio infrastructure capable of handling multiple external sources alongside signals from the studio floor, without any latency issues. The networking, which includes routers and extensive fiber lines as well as kit to convert desktop PC signals to SDI, is designed to be configurable to any workflow, depending on the production’s requirements.

Meanwhile, Blizzard Entertainment turned to the cloud to keep its Overwatch League and Call of Duty League matches live since March 2020. In this case, the solution was built on Grass Valley technology and eliminated the need for a conventional control room. Virtualized apps such as multiviewers, router panels, test signal generators, switchers, graphics renderers, clip players and recorders are configurable as required and accessible from a web-based interface.

It meant that technical directors (TDs) could switch and monitor live feeds from home. Multiple distribution streams with separate graphics and languages for audiences in different regions can be produced by a single operator also working at home.

Professional Complexity

For years, esports has used equipment from vendors commonly associated with broadcast like Ross Video, Blackmagic Design, Calrec Audio, Panasonic and Grass Valley. Now, esports have taken the efficiency and quality of their output a step beyond conventional broadcast.

Given that signal integrity and split-second accuracy is vital to the interactive multiplayer nature of the game, esports technical teams have become adept at designing and operating systems with multiple feeds from game publishers, players, analysts, viewers and more. 

Now producers, directors and TDs and in-game observers can all be working at multiple different locations, doing multiple shows by using a common cloud or a data centre-based infrastructure networked over fibre or protocols like NDI. Functions that have been locked into proprietary boxes for decades in broadcast facilities are already working in software in the esports field.

It’s working.  The 2021 World Championship of LoL held in November in Iceland without spectators had a record peak audience online of over 73 million.

This year fans will (fingers crossed) be back at the events in their tens of thousands but the remote workflows implemented these past couple years are here to stay. That’s because automation and REMI workflows not only reduce the number of production personnel needed for cost efficiency and environmental benefits but the result is a better final product.

For a start, a remote workflow managed out of a central hub enables more shows to be produced with fewer resources. Moreover, the ability to engage online viewers and live audiences in an interactive way is crucial to AV going forward.

Embracing hybrid at scale

Although mass-attend live events remain something of a novelty, it won’t be too long before audiences become just as demanding of innovation as they were pre-pandemic. That means that events producers of all kinds need to deploy an increasingly sophisticated suite of solutions to deliver an immersive experience that embraces both physical and virtual attendees. 

Enabling hybrid in-person and streaming events necessitates the ability to collaborate and produce live content together while physically apart. In practice, this is done with multiple individuals spread out safely across many different rooms, spaces, and sites. Esports is doing this today.

AV and broadcast workflows and technologies were converging pre-pandemic but global lockdown has accelerated the fusion through software-defined and IP methodologies. 

AV pros now don’t bat an eyelid when they set up hybrid events using multiple NDI streams, a spectacular studio set with big-screen projection and imaginative LED configurations, plus projection-mapped elements, for primarily online audiences.

As the Metaverse of AR and VR content explodes over the next few years this set of skills being pioneered in esports that blurs the virtual and the real into one immersive experience is going to be in high demand.

 

 

How Canon's VR lens is becoming integral to the Metaverse experience

RedShark News

3D stills and virtual reality video will soon become as second nature to creators as regular digital photography. Affordable tools like the new Canon VR lens are arming professionals and consumers with the tools to capture three dimensional assets to populate the emerging spatial internet.  

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The Canon RF 5.2mm F2.8L Dual Fisheye lens was launched late last year and received further publicity at the Consumer Electronics Show at the start of 2022. It is an interchangeable lens designed for the EOS R5 and is listed at less than $2000. 

“A lens like this opens up the world for users to go from 2D to 3D stereoscopic 180 VR,” says Brandon Chin, Technical Senior Specialist at Canon USA. “It means the multi-purpose use of the R5 can now be exploited in a completely new medium to deliver imaging for future content creation purposes. You now have VR in your camera bag.” 

VR videos can be immediately published today on apps like YouTube VR and for viewing in headsets like Oculus.  

“You can imagine recording a concert and instead of seeing it in a flat two dimensional way we’re now able to see it with depth and also look around with freedom to view in a way that’s not communicated through conventional 2D apps,” Chin said. 

Most previous methods of capturing stereoscopic imagery relied on two cameras and two lenses paired on a rig which was not only expensive and complex but fraught with challenges in aligning the optics and then again the files in post. 

“The big difference is that this lens is two separate optical systems mounted as one single lens so all the alignment that would normally take a custom rig to achieve - this camera can do on its own.” 

The dual circular fisheye lenses on the front of the camera are mirrored by two circular displays (for left and right eye) on the back. Recording of both images, however, is made as a single file to a single card. 

“Because you are getting one file from one camera the post process is substantially more streamlined. Optically it is doing the job of two separate lenses.” 

He also points out that since Canon makes lens, sensor and software for the process, the previous difficulties in getting different elements manufactured by third parties to match is eliminated. 

The image sensor records 8K DCI “as a maximum” although the captured resolution per lens will be slightly less than 4K due to the two image circles being placed side by side on the sensor coating. 

The file can be brought into post using one of two apps: the new EOS VR Utility standalone app for Mac and PC or EOS VR Plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro. 

Both applications will change the circular side by side image into a side-by-side equirectangular 1x1 image and can be output to different file types and resolutions. 

If using the Premiere Pro plug in, following conversion, you are able to then drop clips into the timeline and do colour correction in the normal way. 

Clearly the parallax between the dual lenses is pretty fixed but there are some slight adjustments to the alignment that can be made in post. 

The camera does not support live streaming VR natively but does have an HDMI port. Chin says he wouldn’t be surprised if someone in the market would go out and “build some sort of ingesting application that will allow people to see very high resolution 180-degree imagery.” 

Asked whether Canon would look to add further depth-sensing technology (such as LiDAR) to the system, Chin said Canon was looking for feedback from the market. The company is targeting adoption of VR across many sectors such as training, travel, sports, live events and documentaries. 

“Innovators in VR are trying to do things that are extremely challenging technologically. This is a great new area that is unexplored by us. We are receiving all that information and feeding back to Canon Inc (the manufacturer) how to best support it.”  

“We’re very excited about what the future holds for immersive content and all the ways metaverse will play into our lives.” 

Imagery captured for Canon’s new immersive VR video calling platform, Kokomo, was captured using this lens.  

This video https://youtu.be/573sAhUYATk  gives a complete introduction to Kokomo, the app and how Canon wants the 3D experiences of VR to be combined with the ease of video calling. 

Currently in development but due for launch this year, Kokomo will allow users to video call in real time “with their live appearance and expression, in a photo-real environment, while experiencing a premium VR setting in captivating locations like Malibu, New York, or Hawaii.” 

The app uses Canon cameras and imaging technology to create realistic representations of users, so calls “feel like you are interacting face-to-face, rather than through a screen or an avatar.” 

Mass 3D asset creation  

The creation of 3D assets is one bottleneck among many in the way of growing the 3D internet, or the metaverse. Some developers think this might be solved with the advent of mass market LiDAR. New cell phones (such as iPhone 12) contain LiDAR, putting this technology in the average user’s pocket.   

Rumors abound that the iPhone 13 Pro could contain a second-generation LiDAR scanner, which combined with machine learning algorithms could turn the stills we take everyday into three dimensions almost overnight.  

“Many experts think 3D snapping is as inevitable as digital photography was in 2000,” reports Techradar.

It’s not just still images either. LiDAR could hold the key to user-generated volumetric video. As pointed out by Apple Insider patents published by Apple in 2020 refer to compressing LiDAR spatial information in video using an encoder, “which could allow its ARM chip to simulate video bokeh based on the LiDAR's depth info, while still shooting high-quality video.”  

3D media management platforms like Sketchfab and Poly.cam are based on interoperability standards such as glTF and already enable viewing and interactive manipulation of 3D models via a web browser.  

“LiDAR technology … now allows anybody with the latest iPhone to mass render the physical world, translate it into machine readable 3D models and convert them into tradable NFTs which could be uploaded into open virtual worlds very quickly populating them with avatars, wearables, furniture, and even whole buildings and streets,” says Jamie Burke, CEO and Founder, of London-based VC firm Outlier Ventures.