IBC identifies latest tech trends

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AI, 5G, XR, metaverse and edge computing are the five tech trends identified by IBC as being most in demand when the show returns on 15-18 September.

IBC organisers also continue to reshape the event for a more sceptical post-Covid audience citing internal research that what its target community wants most is engagement.

“Networking, especially structured networking, was cited by 80% of our attendees, looking for new connections and new audiences,” explained CEO Mike Crimp.

“Most reassuringly for us they said that IBC has a very strong track record in this area and were confident we could keep it going.”

Research highlighted the popularity of The Future Zone, an area of laboratory tech which was dumped from the show in 2022 as IBC stripped back to its core conference and exhibition.

It returns, supported by the EBU, along with the Innovation Awards and technical papers, a fixture since IBC’s birth in 1967.

The IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme, where groups of companies come together to demonstrate proof of concept to solve problems, was “hugely successful” on debut in 2022 and is well underway. “IBC has evolved from a premier showcase of new technology to being an incubator as well,” Crimp said.

Not returning is the Big Screen conference agenda dedicated to cinema technology. “IBC is the best of the old school trade shows with a conference and a show floor in one place, but this year we wanted to re-examine the structure of the event,” Crimp said.

This includes a two-day peer reviewed paid for conference for which VIPs can pay more for greater access, followed by a two-day free conference called Changemakers. This is a people-centric programme addressing topics like gender equality and inclusive tech with speakers including Alexandra Hussenot, UK Lead at Women in Immersive Technologies.

Headline speakers in the premium conference includes CTOs from the Hollywood majors, Valerio Motti, VP, FAST Channels at Fremantle and BBC Studios Productions CEO Ralph Lee.

The convergence of technologies such as games engines and LED panels used to create and display content for broadcast and business applications has led to the ISE Show in Barcelona wooing broadcast vendors for its show next February. IBC has responded by tapping up AV exhibitors, media partners and trade associations.

“We are seeing a lot of crossover between M&E and what is termed broadcast enterprise,” said show director Steve Connolly.  “There won’t be a hall dedicated to ProAV but it is one of the adjacent sectors we are keen on expanding especially with all the virtual production being developed.”

While ISE continues to expand and IBC has arguably failed to grow its base from traditional broadcast, there are still reasons to celebrate IBC’s distinct identity. Its base in Amsterdam, is more conducive to networking and suits the relative bijou nature of the broadcast industry.

Exhibition floor space is expected to top out around 45 sqm with the volume a good indicator of visitor numbers to the RAI. Last year 37,000 attendees came to cover a floor space of 37 sqm.

Exhibitors including Zixi and LTN Global have doubled their pitch size from 2022. Grass Valley, Ross Video and Gravity Media have also “significantly expanded their original footprint” according to Connolly.

Panasonic and Samsung, 2022 absentees, have resigned to join a hundred first time IBC exhibitors including Chinese IT giant Tencent, Korean electronics powerhouse LG (more familiar to visitors at ISE or CES) and IMAX, which recently acquired streaming platform SSIMWAVE.

For those caught up in the horrendous queues at Schiphol Airport last time there was some encouragement but no reassurance that it wouldn’t repeat.

“It seems like it’s going to be ok,” Crimp said. “We’re waiting for them to tell us that. We are pushing them hard.”

There’s an AI for that

The M&E industry is anxiously waiting for regulation on the limits of AI from law suits brought against the likes of ChatGPT developer OpenAI and government legislation in Europe and the US.

In its absence, film studios are training their own AI models on the data that they own.

Adobe has done this too with Firefly, its Gen-AI tool launched in March. “We’re not in the business of replacing creatives,” reassures Morgan Prygrocki, Sr Manager, Strategic Development, Adobe. “That would be counterintuitive. We're really just trying to create a creative assistant that allows you to arrive at final concept faster.”

When it comes to the creative arts the prevailing sentiment is that AI is not going to replace you, but somebody using AI is. 

Michael Kammes, Senior Director of Innovation, Shift Media said, “We have voiceover artists concerned that voice cloning is going to take their jobs, that AI automatically doing edits is going to take the editor’s job but, at the same time, everyone is asking for AI tools.”

Pixellot anticipates that AI will soon automate sports highlights, create social media posts, and optimise workflows. “We see this as a major development at Pixellot, and we have a dedicated working group to lead this change within the company,” hints CEO Alon Werber.

Analytics platform 24iQ is looking into potential use cases for Gen AI. “For example, freeing up editorial time by auto-creating attractive content collections based on prompts like ‘box office smashes,’ or ‘plot twists you didn’t see coming,’ says boss Stuart Huke. “There are also potential benefits for speed of delivery, such as automating trailer creation for every piece of content fo

more effective personalisation. Bottom line, gen AI needs to provide a value proposition that is better than what ‘traditional’ AI/ML can do.”

Cloud versus on-prem

While the move to cloud is inexorable the pace of migration is being questioned. There are even reports of companies pulling processes back from cloud onto premises in order to control rampant (egress) costs. The IABM, in April, reported widespread lack of understanding about cloud economics with mid-size companies, in particular, hesitant to commit. 

“Businesses are rapidly gaining a better understanding of cloud economics, which is then allowing them to better determine the right hosting model for the operations in their businesses,” says Neil Maycock, COO at Pebble. “The term ‘hybrid’ is very overused in our industry, but the reality is that for most businesses that is likely to be their cloud strategy.”

Jon Finegold, CMO, Signiant agrees, “Companies aren’t abandoning the cloud, we’re just seeing a more judicious approach.”

Expect this to be a debate at IBC, wherever AWS is.

Realtime visualisation

The collaborative nature of cloud and the instant creation of photoreal CGI is driving realtime visualisation from automotive and fashion design to live events and entertainment.

One of eight projects selected to develop a proof of concept in the IBC Accelerators scheme aims to live stream Mixed Martial Arts combining high-end photoreal graphics, augmented reality, virtual advertising and spatial audio to audiences viewing on VR and online.

Another Accelerator project plans to develop a means to create and animate synthetic humans that can be integrated into a virtual production alongside real guests. The project will also aim to build a foundation for broadcasters to create ‘virtual translators’, using avatars and sign language for accessibility services and other functions.

 

Enter CNN Max: News, Then Sports the Differentiators for WBD’s Max Überplan

Streaming Media

Nobody has figured out how to stream news--yet, claimed JB Perrette, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming operations. “This is a game that is still very much to be played.”

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WBD hopes its latest attempt CNN Max will crack the code. But it has its work cut out since the platform, launching September 27, is behind the curve of its competitors.

CNN Max, which will launch in beta, differs from the short-lived subscription service CNN+ in that it leans much more heavily into live news, as opposed to personality programming centered around the network's talent. The new 24/7 service will offer live content from CNN US, CNN International plus four hours of original programming per day and will “enable experimentation” with product features, content and originals, the company said.

TV news networks face the challenge of moving from the decades’ old pay-TV model into DTC, especially when news has traditionally been delivered as a free, ad-funded or loss leading service.

Clues to CNN’s approach under WBD came from CEO David Zaslav earlier this month. During an earnings call reported at Deadline he called news and sports “differentiators” for SVOD platforms.

“They’re compelling,” he said. “They make these platforms come alive. If you’re on an SVOD platform and something is going on in the world and you can see it, it makes that platform really alive.”

Combining news into a larger entertainment-focused streaming offering is not new.

Paramount+ livestreams news from CBSN and local stations. The Roku Channel has also added local news streams to its channel roster including three NBC stations (San Diego, Boston and San Francisco Bay Area) as well as LX News run by NBCUniversal Local.

Arguably the leader in this regard is UK commercial broadcaster ITV. When it launched free ad funded streaming hub ITVX last December it made news core to its broader drama and light entertainment VOD offer.

ITN, the supplier of news to ITV, pointed to the success of platforms like NBC’s Peacock saying it had shown news to be a “valued add-on to their drama, comedy and documentary output”.

What ITVX has done differently, and they argue is an industry first, is to invest in original news output, including in a dedicated team of 19 journalists.

ITV director of news and current affairs Michael Jermey told Press Gazette: “The thinking behind it is that in the same way as ITV puts news at the heart of its terrestrial television schedules, in launching a really exciting new streaming platform we want to put news at the heart of that as well–and there is nobody who has a streamer where news plays that role and we think it’s quite an exciting point of difference.”

The home page of ITVX feature a ‘latest news’ bulletin, which can be updated as many times as necessary for breaking news. By featuring news content so prominently the idea is that viewers won’t need to jump around multiple platforms but be able to access their familiar ITV news source in one place–on demand.

WBD has something similar in mind for CNN Max, even if its hand is also being forced in this direction by not being seen to cannibalise the core CNN service paid for, still quite handsomely, by cable. The issue with going DTC for CNN has been the network’s contract with cable operators, who pay a premium in exchange for a certain amount of exclusivity.

So CNN Max will simulcast core CNN shows like Amanpour, Anderson Cooper 360, The Lead with Jake Tapper and The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and 900 of legacy content like Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy and the CNN Films’ and Max Original Navalny mixed with new shows such as CNN Newsroom with Jim Sciutto as well as live news created specifically for the channel.

As Perette explained in a press release: “CNN Max is differentiated by having 24/7 news at its core from CNN, the leading global news organization, and being available on a scaled streaming service in the U.S., which has a significantly younger and additive audience compared to traditional TV.

“This provides even more quality choices for Max customers who will be able to easily catch up on what is happening in the world, particularly in moments of breaking news, all within one seamless experience.”

Max will need careful integration into the broader Max platform. One experiment is to alert Max viewers to breaking news with onscreen notifications. Another idea is to integrate “dynamic tiling” which as Perrette explained to Variety are graphics that update to reflect what an anchor like Blitzer or Cooper are talking about live.

WBD also needs to switch the CNN Max business model from dependency on pay-TV distribution.

Sources told Axios that the live feed will include the same ads sold on linear TV to start. Eventually, it plans to integrate advanced advertising features that would allow the network to place targeted digital ads on the service.

Nonetheless, for all Perrette’s fighting talk, CNN’s rivals are ahead of the game. CBS launched CBSN as far back as 2014. NBC News Now launched in 2019. ABC News Live launched in 2020. Subscription service Fox Nation debuted 2018.

“CNN Max isn’t a cord-cutter’s dream, but it’s a lot closer than anything else that’s been attempted to date,” concluded Josef Adalian for Vulture. “It could also get current Max subscribers to open the app more often, perhaps even daily. That’s key, because the more frequently someone uses a service, the less likely they are to cancel it.”

A premium sports tier for Max is next in line, as soon as October, when live (not exclusive) MLB games will be simulcast on WBD’s cable networks and on Max.

 

Anastas Michos ASC GSC / Cabinet of Curiosities

British Cinematographer 

Anastas Michos ASC GSC reteamed with director David Prior to shoot the Emmy-nominated episode “The Autopsy” for Guillermo del Toro’s anthology series Cabinet of Curiosities.

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In this version of Michael Shea’s short story, adapted with the help of screenwriter David S. Goyer, a small-town sheriff (Glynn Turman) is investigating a tragic mining explosion. One of the bodies pulled from the wreckage is given to pathologist Dr Winters (F. Murray Abraham) to examine, only to uncover a much more gruesome and macabre secret.

The episode, shot on RED Digital Cinema cameras, also received recognition with an ASC Award nomination earlier this year. Given the subject matter and their successful collaboration on Prior’s feature debut the horror film The Empty Man (2020) it was natural the pair should hook up.

“A director and cinematographer might not always see eye to eye but when they work together a lot you tend to challenge each other and that becomes part of the creative process,” says Michos. “You develop a shorthand which is paramount to getting through it all, particularly for TV. We shot this 58-minute episode in 15 days which astounded the both of us. Having the ability to understand what the director is trying to communicate is certainly useful.”

Knowledge of each other’s sensibilities proved advantageous when they arrived in Canada to shoot “The Autopsy” in 2021 during COVID since they were instantly confined to quarantine.

“We had about three weeks in our respective apartments which allows a lot of time to think. Our main reference for exteriors and tonality was The Deerhunter (1978). In most projects, tonality is the first thing we try and decide.

“’The Autopsy’ is both a horror piece and an existential suspense story. It’s about a dying man who recognises his own mortality and somehow discovers another being in the universe. That is what draw me to the story.”

In addition, Prior and Michos wanted to draw out the story’s neo noir elements and decided to use colour for this purpose.

“In television I tend not to shoot particularly dark because you don’t know what anybody’s TV set is actually going to display, unlike with the more standardised DCP for theatres when you can walk that line a little further. In this TV show we use colour to get into those noir tones.”

Michos says Prior has a “very strong sense of camera” in terms of what he likes and the way he works. “He is drawn to using camera with intent. The camera is never chaotic. It always has a beginning, middle and an end to every move. Which sometimes works outside the sphere of the actors.

“By that I mean he will change his blocking to allow the camera – the audience’s eyes – to set the tone and then adjust the blocking to it. If the actor misses their mark, he will instantly call cut.”

Michos also reveals that Prior regularly uses previz for scenes but doesn’t tend to share that with his camera crew. “He internalises the previz, but he also allows the shot to happen on set organically. When I go into rehearsal, I’m aware of how he likes the cameras to move and will set up shots accordingly, knowing that he also has previz in his mind.”

The opening scene is an example this.  The transition from the stars to the mine, which glimmer like the night sky, was Prior’s idea in prep. It turned out to be half CGI (the stars) and half practical with the ‘coal’ composed of chunks of anthracite.

The spider’s web in the same scene came about serendipitously. Prior and Michos were on their way to location when they stopped to get a pick up shot by a riverside.

“The location was bucolic – too bucolic for what we needed. So, we jacked up the van, took the tyre off and put that in the frame. We littered in some coke cans we had in the truck and dirtied up the frame to be a little more industrial and appropriate to a mining town. In the process we noticed this beautiful spider web. You could barely see it since the morning dew had gone so I took a water bottle and squirted it and took the shot. David has always thought we might use a moth for this scene but Guillermo saw the web in dailies and suggested to that David go with the spider idea. The spider then becomes a motif through the rest of the show.”

The mine set and mineshaft were designed by production designer Tamara Deverell with removable walls to realise the desired camera movement and lighting.

“She designed the tunnel on paper and we paced it out on the construction floor and realised we had maybe 10 metres of tunnel with a bend in it. The sequence itself was several pages so part of the process was to make the tunnel seem longer.”

Working on a limited budget they employed the usual tricks such as lighting one side to film then turning around, lighting the other side and, by altering the background and judicious cutting, creating the illusion of a longer tunnel.

They used a Technocrane 75+ to reach into the tunnel but had to take it off its base because it was too high. Key grip Robert Johnson manufactured a ‘seat’ for the crane to sit on the floor and allow Michos to perform a tracking shot.

“The mine shaft is supposed to be 50 metres deep with an elevator travelling down, but our elevator only travelled three metres so that was a process of smoke and mirrors too. Since the elevator cage starts to descend from daylight we had to figure out how the lights would dim and where to put them for the shadows to work. The fall off had to be appropriate. One of our larger accomplishments was getting a 10ft drop to look like it went 10 storeys underground.”

They would have encountered different hurdles had they shot the scene in a volume. For a start, where do you begin to look for a mine which is period appropriate to the 1970s whose owners will allow you to film inside?

“It certainly can be done as virtual production and it’s a great way to do it on a TV budget but in this case the practicalities of doing it old-school worked out well.”

For their camera package Prior and Michos went with RED’s Monstro in concert with Zeiss lenses. They shot the episode in 8K and extracted a 5K picture for Netflix.

“We did a lens test and the Zeiss was the one we felt had the right bokeh. I also needed a fast lens because of our dark lighting scheme.”

Having started out as an operator on films like Interview with a Vampire and Mary Reilly and as DP shooting Texas Chainsaw (2013) and The First Purge (2018) it is hard to not to conclude that Michos seeks out horror and supernatural stories.

“Part the reason is the horror genre allows a filmmaker to explore the human condition in a very specific, stylised way,” he agrees. “It allows the cinematographer to challenge themselves more than a drama might, because a drama is placed squarely in reality. I find horror and supernatural more interesting to photograph because we can push the boundaries of reality.

“At the same time, I mix it up and go from horror to romcom to drama because on set we live the same lives as the characters. It is hard to be on set for 12 hours even pretending to cut into someone’s chest or dealing with death, destruction and fear and all that despair for day after day, so a change to a romcom is always welcome.

“I love telling different stories. Some are beautiful and loving and some are horrible and shocking but that’s the way of life.”

 

Barry Ackroyd BSC - Verite Virtuoso

British Cinematographer

Fresh from being honoured with the Pierre Angénieux Tribute at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Barry Ackroyd BSC reflects on his celebrated career spanning both documentaries and narrative.

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As a teenager, Barry Ackroyd BSC wanted to be a sculptor. School teachers said he was good with his hands. Which he was, only he wanted to use his brain too. 

“They knew I was smart but not that I might be dyslexic, so when I failed exams they suggested I did something with my hands. That was half true, but I also hoped to use by mind and art was the secret.” 

As a filmmaker he says he always wanted to put politics into stories and that’s evident in his incredible body of documentaries from Sunday and Hillsborough – recreations of, respectively, the 1972 Derry and 1989 football stadium disasters – to Nick Broomfield’s remarkable 1991 South African exposé, The Leader, The Driver and The Driver’s Wife and the 1996 Academy Award-winning Anne Frank Remembered.  

It’s also there in his dramatic work, notably in a dozen collaborations with Ken Loach and in Hollywood movies packing a political punch, including the folly of the 2008 financial crash chronicled in The Big Short and Battle in Seattle centred on protests against the World Trade Organisation.  

“I am sculptural in the sense of being three dimensional on screen coupled with a genuine passion for the subject. At least, that is what I aim for.” 

The art of storytelling 

From a working-class background in Oldham, “without access to huge cultural influences”, Ackroyd left school at 16 when the typical job path would have been straight into a factory. Instead, his art teacher suggested he go to art school. 

After Rochdale college (“a fantastic place that opened my mind”) he progressed to a BA at a fine art school in Portsmouth which also had a small film section. 

“It was here I understood that, along with the editor, cinematography is an art form unique to cinema. Shooting the film was even more integral to the process of creating a film than the director.” 

With fellow students he shot a biographical drama in Devon, his first feature, and even blagged his way onto the set of Ken Russell’s Tommy (1975) to shoot a ‘making-of’ film.  “My first break was working for stills photographer and director Andrew Maclear including following musician Randy Newman on a European concert tour.” 

 

The early 1970s was a golden era for British documentary filming. Chris Menges BSC ASC was an early influence. Ackroyd followed in his footsteps working for Dispatches, Granada and with freelance teams, travelling to over 50 countries shooting in conflict areas including the Sudan, China, Cambodia, and the Arab world. 

 

“Getting assignments in all these places, gathering information, and working my way from assisting to DP was a great education. The lessons I learned then are what I tried to apply to my cinematography even today.” 

He worked with Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC on trips to South Sudan and another documentary about Van Morrison and assisted Ivan Strasburg BSC and Mike Fox BSC. He paired that experience with his appreciation for Nouvelle Vague filmmakers and American documentary makers D.A. Pennebaker, Richard Leacock, and Robert Drew. 

“They were using the camera as an extension of themselves, stripping the camera into a new ergonomic that enabled you to react freeform to a sound or a look. Raoul Coutard [Jean-Luc Godard’s cinematographer] and Néstor Almendros [ASC] were so adept and unafraid. Chris Menges dared to walk down pitch-black corridors and keep the camera turning. I tell students now that if you want to be a cinematographer in the style I appreciate, go watch Don’t Look Back (Pennebaker’s 1967 Bob Dylan observational documentary). I applied all those theories and principals of the documentary to making feature films.”  

 

There was a third motivational force too. 

“I remember as a teenager thinking that I could never make films because I am not one of them. You’d see British thespians playing working-class people and I just thought that was out of my league. Then I saw Kes which was set in a secondary school nearly identical to the one I went to. It told me that if there are films about people like me then I can be a part of making films.” 

That prophesy was realised in 1991 when Ackroyd got a call from Ken Loach following a recommendation by Menges.  

“My daughter had just been born and we’d just moved into a house in Hackney. I was so busy I said to my wife when the phone rang that I don’t want to do this. When Ken introduced himself, I quickly said, ‘Oh yes I can!’ The point about Ken Loach is that he dared to make films with people like me.” 

Loach met his new cinematographer on a bridge over the M1. “He doesn’t like to interview you or go for coffee and talk cinema. We met between Birmingham and Leicester. I brought the camera Ken got me to shoot the only thing we could – traffic. It was my audition.” 

Set in London and starring Robert Carlyle and Ricky Tomlinson as builders, Riff Raff was the start of a lifelong friendship which has taken in 12 features including Carla’s Song, AE Fond Kiss and 2006 Palme d’Or winner The Wind that Shakes the Barley. 

 

The first three (Riff Raff, Raining Stones, Ladybird Ladybird) “were a complete learning process and really influenced me,” the DP says. “I shot those with my Aaton camera and loaded the gear each morning into the back of my Citroën GS.” 

 

Making his name 

To mark the 30th anniversary of the Derry killings in 2002, Ackroyd lit Sunday for director Charles McDougall while director Paul Greengrass was making Bloody Sunday with Ivan Strasburg. 

 

“I was shocked when Paul called me to do United 93,” says Ackroyd of the 2006 re-enactment of the terrorist plane hijacking. “I had no idea how to do it. What I could offer was to go back to my doc days and shoot, reload, change position, and shoot again. We decided on two cameras, one low down at seat level on a dolly track and one I operated handheld with variable primes as we’re being thrown around on the plane on a gimbal. We only had four-minute mags, so we planted a mag down the plane and shot and overlapped the two cameras. We’d duck into the seat, change the mag, carry on shooting which we did for about 50 minutes non-stop.   

 

“Instead of breaking the story into small shots we made it run because it was a cinematic piece of time.”  

They teamed up again for Green Zone (2010), starring Matt Damon; Captain Phillips (2013), which earned Ackroyd ASC and BAFTA award nominations; and action thriller Jason Bourne (2016). 

All displayed the handheld verisimilitude to action bred on documentaries. In Captain Phillips for example, star Tom Hanks hadn’t met his adversary played by Barkhad Abdi until the scene filmed on the ship’s bridge. 

 

“In a way, this is a lift from Ken Loach in that the only cinema you can trust is when you capture the moment. In a documentary you only get one chance to capture the moment, you don’t get rehearsals.”  

An even more spontaneous moment occurred at the end of that film. They had shot three different versions of the ending including one with Phillips at home in Boston and another on the US Navy ship.  

“It was pointed out to us by the naval officers that the real protocol for what had happened to Captain Phillips would be to go see the medic. So that’s what we filmed, with the ship’s real medic. Tom didn’t know what questions he was going to be asked and his confusion and shock illustrate the character’s trauma. Holding onto someone’s reaction can be just as important as a line of dialogue.” 

Ackroyd’s work on United 93 was admired by Kathryn Bigelow, who hired him to shoot The Hurt Locker in 2008, and Adam McKay, who wanted the Brit for his comedy drama The Big Short (2015). 

“I’d just finished Battle in Seattle on Super16mm, and I was very keen on using 16mm for Hurt Locker,” he says. “It’s cheaper than 35mm of course and so enables you have to have more cameras and to be nimbler. We put four in most scenes which really gave us the freedom to dig into that story and move at the fast pace I like.” 

 

For the tense drama about bomb disposal teams in Iraq, Ackroyd received an Academy Award and Bafta nomination. Nonetheless, he was shocked at how well it was received.  

“I thought the unusual episodic structure might not play to large audiences but perhaps what saved it were the tremendous performances and the slow-motion shots showing what happens in the kill zone around exploding ordnance.” 

Political pictures 

Most of Ackroyd’s projects show a clear political sensibility. Arguably these pictures are the ones he is more passionate about and therefore where his best work shines. Asked which offers he has turned down and he reveals he was on the point of shooting Zero Dark Thirty for Bigelow about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden when Bin Laden was captured and killed by US special forces.  

 

“I wasn’t sure how much influence we were then going to get from the military to tell their point of view,” he says, though he later went on to shoot Bigelow’s race crime drama Detroit (2017). 

McKay wanted him to shoot Don’t Look Up, the 2021 satire on ecological disaster, but something about the script wasn’t quite to Ackroyd’s taste.  

 

He was also offered Succession but was too busy to take on the HBO drama, although the style of the show is Ackroyd-esque. “I don’t quite throw a zoom around like that,” he says. “It should be about how you look at and listen to the world.” 

 

Nonetheless he is proud that Hurt Locker has become a totem for a style of cinema that Ackroyd has mastered. In the wake of the film, he was offered a lot of “gung ho” macho movies and some by stunt coordinators-turned-directors who felt Ackroyd’s style suited their own. 

“But stunt directors are not great directors. They just want to film action.” 

One of the few concessions to more conventional Hollywood action is The Old Guard, a Netflix-funded and female-starring and directed thriller with Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Matthias Schoenarts. Ackroyd shot some scenes on the original and recently shot the sequel. 

 

“Charlize Theron is an old friend from when we met on Battle in Seattle,” he says of Theron, who is also a producer on the project. Other films they’ve made together include The Last Face, directed by Sean Penn, and Bombshell, for which Theron received an Oscar nomination for portraying Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. 

 

His most recent film was the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody, starring Naomi Ackie and directed by Kasi Lemmons.  After dutifully guiding the BSC as President between 2014-2018, Ackroyd is now looking for the next project to grab his attention. 

 

“I’ve never been good at asking for a job,” he says. “I want something that’s really good. It could be like Coriolanus (the 2011 adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy directed by Ralph Fiennes), or a political thriller that brings down the government and brings about a better world.” 

 

ITVX Marks the Spot

IBC

Six months from launch and ITVX has bucked the trend to be a successful new AVOD led streaming service.

It’s a marathon not a sprint for ITV which saw its new streaming service ITVX get off to a steady start six months on from launch.

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“When running a streaming service there is no finishing line,” Rufus Radcliffe, MD, Streaming, Interactive & Data, ITV tells IBC365.

“If someone had said this time last year ‘would you take where we are now?’ we’d have bitten their hand off. We’re really pleased so far but conscious that there’s always more to do to delight our viewers and our advertisers. We are far from resting on our laurels.”

The key metrics ITV looks to are monthly active users and streaming hours which, when compared to ITV Hub, are up 29% (to 12.5 million) and 33% (to 737 million) respectively for the first half of 2023 over H1 2022.

That includes some incremental distribution. The app is now on Sky Q and it is also ‘single illuminated’ on Virgin - the only place you can watch nonlinear content on Virgin Media now is through the app.

“Even if you strip that out the growth is really significant,” Radcliff says. “Streaming is really competitive. Every night is a battle for eyeballs. We are really pleased with these numbers but we’ve spent a lot of time and focus on building capabilities to be a successful streaming service. The digital marketing capability we have now is far stronger than it has ever been before. Our ability to target very specific audiences using digital channels (via digital ad platform Planet V) and social media is also far better than ever.”

He hails the launch of ITVX for the way content, product, marketing and distribution all united “in a cross functional” way.

ITV gave its digital and marketing teams a double challenge in the run up to launch that was not just to release the platform but to do so timed for a major live sports event - rife with technical pot holes.

“We knew the FIFA World Cup would guarantee awareness of ITVX but it was a fixed deadline and meant we had a very galvanising launch date,” Radcliff says. “We hit those timings and fortunately we did it with a service that performed very well during the World Cup.

“When you’re running a streaming service in live sport the amount of people landing on the site at any one time is enormous so when England crashed out in the quarter finals we were getting over 2,500 starts a second and had 2.5 million concurrent streams but the service performed very well.”

He says they managed to launch ITVX onto 12,970 individual devices. “A crazy number but one that illustrates the complexity of the streaming landscape where every platform has a multitude of different devices within it.”

Its primary focus to date has been on the free ad funded streaming service that contains a 16,000 hour library. An additional 6,300 hours is in its SVOD tier.

“One of the big things we needed to do was establish the core proposition at launch. We had a hugely scaled up AVOD proposition that was free for users. ITV Hub was always conceived as a 30-day catch up service and we were quietly scaling up the number of hours on it over the course of 2022. Eighteen months ago, there were 1,500 hours on ITV Hub compared to 16,000 on ITVX today. So, across all genres and all types there is a lot more content on ITVX.”

This includes original drama that debuts first on the streaming service. Ambitious content like A Spy Among Friends, Nolly and The Twelve – “big ticket shows that put ITVX on the map as a content destination,” says Radcliff.

“ITV Hub had a very ingrained viewer behaviour which was, if miss you a show you could catch it on the Hub. We wanted ITVX to be a place that when you switch on your TV or device you go there and discover what to watch. The exclusives have a brand value in terms of defining what the ITVX proposition is and they’ve also done big audience numbers.”

Box sets of drama will also land on ITVX after the first episode premiers on ITV1, such as crime drama Unforgotten, while there have been simulcasts of soccer and also reality show Love Island.

ITV calls this a transformational year. It is in the process of migrating everyone who currently subscribes to BritBox to the ITVX premium tier and will focus on growing its subscription service next year.

All of this has worked to drive awareness of ITVX as a brand and source of content to over 90 per cent, according to Radcliff. In April, ITVX overtook Disney+ and All 4 as the UK’s fourth most considered streaming service, according to figures from YouGov’s BrandIndex.

The number of UK households with at least one SVOD fell in the first quarter of 2023 to 16.10 million versus 16.91m in 2022 and 16.95m in 2021. Yet, Kantar’s research showed that ITVX (and Apple TV+) bucked that trend by gaining the most number of new subscribers in the quarter.

The strong performance for ITVX helped drive a 24 per cent increase in digital advertising revenues at the broadcaster to £218m. Yet ITV’s total ad revenue dropped 11 per cent in the first half of the year to £811m as brands cut back spend.

“Clearly there’s a cost of living crisis and consumer confidence crisis,” Radcliff says. “People act rationally and will look at what they are paying for. The price point for ITVX price is very competitive (£5.99 for premium service). We are not operating at the price point of some other streaming services.

“Another thing that differentiates us from the US streamers is that we are a British brand. We have a news feed as well as FAST and live and VOD all constantly evolving so that’s why we claim to be the freshest streaming service but always with a British sensibility that US streamers don’t have.”

Another focus will be on optimising the roster of FAST channels available on ITVX. Radcliff points out that the broadcaster has been expert at channels since 1955 and is keen to explore its next evolution.

“There is still quite a lot of additional work we’re doing on the FAST channel experience in terms of how do we best surface content on the homepage and how we merchandise it but the fact we can now present 20 channels on ITVX and we can optimise it according to what is working or what is not working is appealing to our viewers.”

It will take the next year or so to test, learn and iterate its FAST proposition. “We’ve got FAST channels., our main ITV1 and digital channels (ITV2, ITV3, ITV4) and we can reconfigure all of that in a FAST environment and test what works to maximise the audience.”

Expect more live streamed pop-up channels too. Water sport SailGP began streaming live on ITVX in June in the first standalone live sports commission for the service. This was a test for future events “which will accelerate moving forward,” says Radcliff, including for Big Brother.

The reality show that began life at Channel 4 before being revised at Channel 5 in 2018 returns to screens in the autumn (produced by Initial) and will include a live feed exclusively on ITVX following the main show on ITV2.

The other big content moment is September’s Rugby World Cup the audience for which ITV hopes to convert to regular ITVX users. It will be broadcast live on ITV1 but with additional content and highlights as well as live streamed matches on ITVX.

“We are still giving people the mass reach experience on the linear channel but we’re then able to exploit that out on ITVX with a richer experience. There’s not a scenario where we’re putting big premium sports rights on ITVX exclusively. Our linear channel and ITVX will work in complementary way.”

That we are in the midst of the transition of ad spend away from linear broadcast and into streaming is clear.

“ITV is very ambitious about ITVX but it’s still early so it will be some time before we know whether it’s succeeded,” says Ed Barton, research director, Caretta. “ITVX (and Planet V) are ITV’s attempt to capture some of the spend instead of seeing it all go to big tech.”

Barton notes that linear TV is “stagnant and coalescing around the largest channels and shows” whereas he expects a few more years of rapid growth in spend on ad supported streaming.”

ITVX is currently selling around £180 million pa and they should be able to triple this by 2027.

“Generally, people know what content they’re prepared to pay for, and what they expect to get for free,” Barton says. “The quality and volume and what you can get for free in the UK is better than it’s ever been so I think it’s getting harder to convince people to pay for content. The current ‘death by 1000 subscriptions’ approach adopted by the streaming industry will sort itself out as the market shakes out services that don’t scale.”

Last month ITV CEO Carolyn McCall, expressed optimism that ITVX would help the broadcaster reach its goal of at least £750m of digital revenues by 2026.

To do this Barton says ITV must make ITVX the primary way of engaging with its audience and make shows everyone wants to watch and premiere them on ITVX – obvious strategies perhaps but not to simple to execute.

He also advises ITV to “hire ad tech developers, or work with a really good ad tech vendor, to stay at the leading edge of this fast-evolving segment.”

The line from ITV is that the free to air broadcaster offers brands the best of both worlds.

“We are the only place you can get these huge audiences for big entertainment shows and live sports and have amazing targeting capabilities,” Radcliff says. “So, if you are an advertiser you can come to ITV and get both of those commercial propositions. The prerequisite to be able to offer multiple different advertising audiences is to have a really big audience every day and that is what we are able to do. ITV is only place in town where you can reach millions of people all on all in one go and be able to segment that audience.”

Jennifer Lame’s Pace and Process for Editing “Oppenheimer”

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For a film in which there are a lot of men talking in rooms, Oppenheimer seems to move at a propulsive pace. Writer and director Christopher Nolan seems to challenge himself in creating a thriller out of a biopic with scientists and politicians, but achieves it with the skillful work of editor Jennifer Lame, ACE.

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She edited Nolan’s previous film Tenet, as well as Marriage Story for Noah Baumbach, and says that her priority while editing Oppenheimer was constantly moving the story forward by “cutting all over the room” rather than “lingering on a shot because of its quality or composition.”

“When you’re dealing with a three-hour biopic based on a ginormous topic, and a ginormous book, pacing is a problem,” she tells Matt Feury in an episode of the Avid-sponsored podcast The Rough Cut.

“Honestly, a lot of people felt earlier drafts of the movie were too fast, which is hilarious, because it was obviously longer than three hours for quite a long time.

“[The challenge was] how do you make people feel like they’re not being rushed through something but also not make this a four-hour movie?”

Fortunately, Lame finds dialogue scenes among her favorite to craft. “I like scenes with awkward human interactions. That’s my special thing. There were so many amazing scenes for me in the movie that I could have spent like three weeks cutting.”

She picks out the scene in which Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is being none-too-subtly interrogated by an army officer played by Casey Affleck as one of these. Another is the scene in which Oppenheimer meets President Truman (Gary Oldman) in the Oval office, plus all the scenes in room 2022 — where the tribunal deciding Oppenheimer’s security clearance post-war is made behind closed doors.

“Every scene in room 2022 I love. I also love every scene with Lewis Strauss [the US businessman and naval officer and played by Robert Downey Jr.] because Strauss is my favorite character,” she says. “He performs one way, but then reveals himself in a different light so the question was how sympathetic do you want people to be about him?

“I found the different onion layers of his personality and his psychology to be incredibly fascinating. And I actually feel for him. I don’t see him as a straight villain as some people do. I have so much empathy for him. I see him as like the Willy Loman character [from Miller’s Death of a Salesman], who thinks that he’s good at playing this game but actually he’s so not good at it.”

 

Part of the reason why Oppenheimer feels like it barrels along is the time-hopping structure that is the Nolan’s signature storytelling mode and thematic preoccupation.

“Chris spends a lot of time structuring the script before it’s shot. The intimidating thing about scripts like that is making that come to fruition because — since he spent a lot of time writing it and he knows that he shot it — he expects that it’ll be great.

“I also tend to work with writer-directors because it’s like their baby, but also weirdly, I feel like they are kind of okay with killing their babies to some degree,” having the film reborn, in other words, in the edit.

Also in the interview, Lame expresses her appreciation for the efficiency of a Christopher Nolan movie. Even with a massive budget and the freedom of an auteur he sticks to deadlines.

“The whole thing is tight, he’s kind of obsessed with time,” Lame says. “What I also love working about with him is that dates never move. We hit our dates. He’s just so efficient on every level of the process, not just with shooting, but also all the way to finishing the movie. We have screenings every Friday, like it’s this adrenaline rush. It’s, like, hyper focusing in a way that I’ve never hyper focused on a job before, which is just really fun.”

One visual and sonic element that pervades the film is that of particles and waves which we learn exist simultaneously as characteristics of matter at the quantum level.

“Those were written into scenes,” says Lame, “But there was a creative process of figuring out when and how to cut those in. And like I would say that montage was very, like free flowing. It’s very hard to talk about editing on some level, because you try things in terms of rhythm, and it’s like trial and error.”

It’s also why the editor does few interviews, because she finds talking about editing like “talking about playing the piano. You just practice a lot and you get better at it but sometimes it’s kind of boring to talk about.”