BTS: Slow Horses

IBC

article here

The misfits of British intelligence return for a fourth outing with Robert Frost BFE in the editor’s chair.

Mixing espionage intrigue with whip-smart humour AppleTV+ Slow Horses has burned through four seasons since 2022 with two more in the works. Adapted from author Mick Herron’s award-winning novels by See-Saw Films and screenwriter Will Smith, the drama revolves around a group of British spy misfits under the notional command of washed-up MI5 chief Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) who somehow manages to get mixed up in plots that endanger state security. Also starring in S4, adapted from Herron’s novel Spook Street, are Kristin Scott Thomas, Jack Lowden, Olivia Cooke, Rosalind Eleazar, Jonathan Pryce and Hugo Weaving.

In the editor’s chair for the first time is Robert Frost who says he was already a fan of the show.

“Obviously having seen it you get a sense of what the finished product is like, who the characters are what their relationships are to each other but to prep for the S4 interview I basically blitzed through the books as well.

“I'm not a voracious reader but it was really helpful getting to know all the backstory for the characters. Understanding who they are meant that I could talk really well with the director about what the story was and where it was going.”

One of the production’s hallmarks is that one director is handed responsibility for the whole six episode run. In this case it’s Adam Randall. Frost was invited to pitch by the executive producers of production company 60Forty who had made AppleTV+ miniseries Hijack on which Frost had edited.

Most viewers will probably not be new to the show at this point, so the filmmakers can play with a shorthand for re-introducing the principal characters, he says.

“One of the hardest things for this was the whole idea of pre-titles. For ep.1 we have to get to the point where you believe that River has gone to his grandfather's house and been shot.”

River (Lowden) is the action man of the series but nonetheless a sort of Keystone Cop secret agent. His grandfather (Pryce) is a former service chief but in this episode is revealed with dementia.

The beginning of episode two, cut by Harrison Wall, flashbacks to reveal what happened and in the process the two editors swapped some scenes around.

“Harrison took some scenes from the opening episodes and I inherited a couple from ep2,” Frost explains. “Originally in episode one, you saw River arrive at his granddad’s house, you saw him go into the house and you knew it was him, you saw that. Then you heard the gunshot.

“We realised that it was just too much of a fake-out to actually see River and then hear a gunshot, because we then don't see a body. The audience just tweak straight away that something's wrong. So, I ended up taking some scenes that were shot for ep.2 of the grandfather being lost in his own confusion and his sort of subjective sense of what happened with a figure that could be River coming in through the door. By mixing and matching those shots you sort of believe that grandfather was actually going to get attacked.”

Frost also cut episodes 3 and 5 and this wasn’t the only incident of swapping around scenes.
“When you're building the first assembly of the episode, it seems inevitable that each scene is gonna flow into the next but what’s fun as an editor is you can lift a scene and plug it back down and see how the story plays differently. Getting from one scene to another is always interesting too. For example, there’s a short scene where Lamb walks into a newsagents and he looks at frontpage headline story about the explosion. We found a way to cut from that picture of the suicide bomber to an image of him confessing on video and use that to then take us into MI5. Finding those pieces of connective tissue is fun.”  
One handy thing about cutting a returning series is access to all the previous general shots of locations. Frost would add those in as a placeholders and then towards the end of the series, the camera would shoot some specific ones for the season to match.
“There’s quite a bit of traveling across London towards the end of the season so we got to go and shoot some aerials including of Slough House from the air.  That set is just standing if you go to that street (Carthusian Street, EC1). It's a real place.”

In episode 5, there are a couple scenes of tricky scenes which seem at polar opposites from a pacing and story point of view.

In the first, colleagues of Slough House are in one room discussing a course of action to find and rescue River. It’s a dialogue scene with quick fire barbs directed at each other. The second is a set-piece action scene involving a car crash on a London street.

“Regardless of whether it's a big three-page dialogue scene or an action scene you're looking for the same things. Where are the actors looking? If they look to a certain side of the screen that can cue you to cut to what they're looking at. When do I need to see someone's reaction? If someone does an eye roll can that help punctuate a line.

“The good thing about action scenes is you can go chronologically through it and just build it that way. Often with dialogue, I'll hone in on a part of the scene where I know a performance is good and that a certain shot is going to be used. I'll do that bit first then build it out from there.
“That particular scene in Slough House was tricky because it's half a dozen characters standing in a circle, so you have to use the wides to establish where they are. There's a lot of quick quips and comedy and it can be very easy to just bounce around everyone and risk feeling almost like a sitcom.”
The climactic action scene in Ep.5 was originally planned as a single take and Frost was asked to come down to location for three nights and cut it whilst they were shooting.

“When I got there, it quickly became clear that that was not the best way to do the scene. There was so much that the audience needed to be able to read and understand that they decided to shoot it a different way.
“It's quite an intense scene. Adam's idea was to stay with the characters inside that car to retain the element of surprise and claustrophobia. We had all these cool angles including from GoPros on the front of the cars but we made the decision to stay inside the car.”

Frost had his laptop on a fold-up table and received records straight from the camera. “I took those very low-res QuickTime files, brought them straight into my Avid, and started to cut it that way, then presented a quick assembly for the director to view. This media has all of the time code information burnt in so that my assistant editor can later re-cut it with the actual rushes.”

 

Building a career in editing

Frost has been interested in film and TV for as long as he can remember. As a nine year old he was making little animations with his friends. He studied Film and TV Production at York University and started out in the industry as a runner at Encore Post in London.

“They had suites for dry hire and one day an assistant editor invited all the runners in just have a look at how the Avid worked and what the editor did. I jumped at the opportunity. I went in with my notebook and wrote down as much as I could. Then a couple of weeks later, their trainee editor had to leave and I ended up getting the job.

“I think that’s because I'd shown that interest in making the notes but it wasn't a ploy. I was just genuinely interested in it.”

His next step was as second assistant editor. “In this role, you're mainly ingesting the rushes, making sure things are in sync, providing material for the editor when they need it. You move through your career at this point through recommendations. As you get towards the end of a job you put the word out about other jobs. Once you've got that one thing on your CV, it becomes a little easier.”

Frost’s own career made a leap forward when he began assisting editor David Webb, the managing director of editing house Final Cut. This included a couple of seasons assisting Webb on Netflix’ Sex Education, then Criminal: UK (also Netflix) before solo editing two episodes of acclaimed ITV drama Litvinenko (Webb cut the other two).

“As a second assistant you've got the benefit of being able to jump around from job to job but if you can settle down and work for one editor for an extended period you can show your skills and build a relationship.”

Frost still advocates the hands-on, ground-up route to the editor’s chair while acknowledging that opportunities are thinner on the ground then even a few years ago.

“Remote working is convenient and it means that people don’t have to commute into Soho every day or even need to be based in London but you do also miss the interaction and those chance encounters of the coffee in the kitchen and talking to people.

“It's not like your dad has to be Steven Spielberg to get a job. You can meet people and being in a physical space is the better way to do that. I think the opportunities are still there so long as you're interested in editing. If you’ve just done a degree then starting at the bottom of the ladder is still beneficial because you’re absorbing so much. Post facilities are full of people with all sorts of work and life experience and being around them is invaluable. Yes, there are fewer large drama shows being made but hopefully there's still enough projects to go around.”

Frost himself has since completed the YA romantic thriller feature My Fault: London

for Amazon Studios and is about to start work cutting Season 6 of Slow Horses with Will Smith once again leading the writing.

 

Simon Duggan ASC, ACS Uses Arrays of RED Cameras for George Miller’s Furiosa

my interview and words for RED Digital Cinema

article here

Director George Miller’s visual flair fuels every scene of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga with one spectacular sequence topping the rest. The film’s centerpiece is a thrilling chase in which Furiosa (Anya Taylor Joy), on board the 18-wheel War Rig, is attempting to outpace the Biker Horde of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) speeding across the Australian desert.

The 15-minute sequence required 308 set ups and took 64 days to shoot by cinematographer Simon Duggan ASC, ACS and second unit DP Peter McCaffrey using arrays of RED cameras.

“We required lighter and more compact cameras for many of the action sequences and tight shooting environments such as under the War Rig and its driver’s cabin,” Duggan says. “The KOMODO and V-RAPTOR were perfect for this. We knew we had full control of the image with such a large sensor size and could easily shape it or add grain in the DI.”

To meticulously plan the set piece Miller pre-visualized it using 3D creation tool Unreal Engine in collaboration with second unit director Guy Norris. They input all the details of the real location, plus angles of the sun, camera angles and lenses, camera tracking vehicles, the actual vehicles and their speeds.

“George used this virtual world to put together a realistic animation of the sequence and to test his ambition to always keep the camera moving with the action and actors as if the camera was one of the characters itself,” Duggan explains. “The previs was designed to prove that it was physically possible to create all the camera angles and movement in the real world. It informed all the crew how to execute the scene and it minimized the amount of rehearsals and takes required to achieve it.”

Most of the sequence was shot on a 4km highway near the town of Hay, New South Wales. Duggan and McCaffrey broke down the whole sequence with sun angles, continuity and dynamic camera movement in mind.

Two V-RAPTORS were assigned to the main unit and another to the second/action unit. A total of eight KOMODOs were deployed including a five camera KOMODO array rig for shooting 240-degree background plates.

“The V-RAPTOR especially came into play when we used the two Steadicams, one with a Trinity arm attached. Operators Mark Goellnicht and Simon Harding wore the Steadicams for many hours on actor performance days including a one take shot lasting several minutes. We also used V-RAPTOR when the Edge Arm camera tracking vehicle was extended to its maximum for high flying shots around the War Rig.”

A second array rig of KOMODOs was built to scan the actors faces for any VFX face replacement requirements. KOMODOs were also mounted on intricate camera sliders which were attached to the undercarriage of the hulking War Rig vehicle. Working to Duggan’s brief, RED developed RED Control Pro, an app especially for the production to control the multiple KOMODO’s settings simultaneously with an iPad.

On the V-RAPTOR they shot Arri DNA primes and Fujinon Premista zooms while the KOMODOs were variously fitted with Canon RF primes, Zeiss compact CP3 primes and an assortment of Tokina, Angenieux, Sigma and Zeiss compact zooms. Duggan shot Spherical 2:39 while protecting for 16:9 to allow reframing for VFX purposes. “Each camera was set for maximum resolution and the lowest REDCODE Raw compression depending on the frame speed we were shooting,” he details.

Furiosa is much more complex visually than Fury Road with many locations only talked about in the previous film now shown on screen. The film opens at the Green Place from which Furiosa is abducted. It is a lush green Oasis on the edge of the desert appearing in stark color contrast to the barren red landscape.

Duggan continues, “We travel through a heavy orange dust storm to discover Dementus’ Encampment with tents made from translucent plastic. We see the ‘day for night’ look established in Fury Road yet with a more subtle cyan tint. There are satellite towns connected by roadways through the desert to the Citadel Fortress, one called Bullet Farm which is an ammunition factory with rusted steel infrastructure and red brick smelting chimneys.

Another, called Gas Town, is surrounded by a black oil moat supplying fuel and made up of filthy chrome piping and chimneys with leaking black oil over every other surface. We find a more complex interior to the Citadel with interiors, tunnels and grotto’s carved into the rock mountain.”

With this expanded playground, Duggan and onset DIT Sam Winzar created looks for each setting to accentuate the color and tonal differences. “We decided not to engage a dailies colorist as we knew the digital files were heading straight to the VFX team which our final colorist Eric Whipp was keeping a close eye over. As each post VFX sequence began Eric would step in to adjust the grades along with George. This included detailed fine tuning of the red earth landscapes, the orange dust storms and the blue/cyan ‘day for night’ look as well as general fixes such as sky enhancements and addition of blue-sky reflections to the chrome War Rig when shot on cloudy days.”

Another factor that came into play on Furiosa was the harsh and unforgiving desert environment. “We were mid El Nino with a repeating cycle of massive winds blowing red dust and rain creating sticky red clay followed at times by harsh sunlight,” he says. “The RED cameras handled the extreme conditions well. They were well protected from the rain and our grip, Adam Kuiper, developed his own ‘air blade’ system to keep the dust out of the lenses. The cameras and lenses had to be cleaned nightly, but we never had any problems.”

The Right Package for a Successful Shoot

British Cinematographer

article here

Whether navigating tropical jungles, searing deserts, icy mountains, or the depths of the ocean, wildlife filmmakers face a unique set of challenges. Despite the variety of environments, a common set of considerations always guides their essential kit list. 

On every shoot, technical challenges are inevitable as capturing something unique to tell the story often requires innovative solutions, such as using tiny cameras embedded in trees. While equipment is tailored to the environment and subject, starting with gear that won’t fail is crucial, especially when far from any repair options. 

Main camera equipment should be robust enough to withstand extreme conditions and perform consistently. It’s important to consider how many cables are required to connect the gear, as these can be weak points in the field. In cold environments, touch screens may freeze, and protective gloves can make them difficult to use, and battery life will be impacted too. 

Power is another crucial consideration that is often overlooked. Lower power consumption means fewer batteries to hire, carry, and charge on location—an essential factor in remote areas without access to electricity. Discussing power efficiency with suppliers is highly recommended. 

For major wildlife productions, including those for the BBC and streaming platforms, UHD delivery is almost mandatory, with 8K delivery becoming increasingly common. UHD is the baseline, but some allowance is made for specialist cameras that may only record in HD. If the camera can only shoot in 4K, stabilising footage could be challenging, especially if cropping is necessary, which could compromise the final delivery. 

The environmental impact of the production is also a key consideration. Reducing the weight of baggage not only lowers the carbon footprint but also helps stay within budget. Additionally, lighter gear is easier to carry to remote locations. 

Capturing with clarity 

CVP understands that documenting wildlife demands precision, patience, and specialised equipment to seize those fleeting, extraordinary moments in the wild. Its selection of products is curated to help you achieve stunning results, whether photographing birds in flight, elusive mammals, or intricate macro scenes in their natural habitats.  

Its range features cameras from brands like RED, ARRI, Nikon, Canon, and Sony, known for their superior image quality, fast autofocus systems, and exceptional low-light performance. These cameras are designed to withstand the challenges of shooting in diverse environments, from dense forests to open savannahs. Paired with an extensive collection of lenses, including long telephoto and macro lenses, you can capture every aspect of wildlife with unparalleled clarity and detail. 

In addition, CVP offers a wide variety of accessories tailored to the needs of wildlife cinematographers, including sturdy support, advanced audio recording equipment, portable lighting solutions, and weather-resistant gear to ensure you are prepared for any shooting condition. We’ve even got camouflage gear to help you blend into your surroundings for those close encounters! 

Women in Wildlife Filmmaking

British Cinematographer

article here

Networking and support group Women in Wildlife (WiW) is connecting and amplifying women working within the wildlife industry. We hear from its founder and members about the group’s vital work. 

The planet is facing climate and biodiversity loss crises that impact all of humanity and yet globally, women remain underrepresented in leading solutions to these urgent conservation challenges.  

A study by The Nature Conservancy of the world’s largest conservation organisations found that men influence conservation and science decisions more than women. It said women experience sexual harassment and discrimination. Meanwhile, men reported the sector as a more equitable and favourable place for women than women themselves experienced.  

A 2020 paper by US biologist Wendy Anderson outlined ways to mitigate gender bias in the sector including changes to recruitment, pay transparency, and career development policies. 

Her work inspired Australian wildlife biologist Eliza Stott to do something about it. In 2021, she launched Women in Wildlife (WiW), a networking and support group whose primary goal is to connect and amplify women working within the wildlife industry. 

She explains, “The three most significant unmet needs by women in wildlife agencies have been found to include opportunities for career development, lack of a strong female network, and flexible working hours. 

“We hope to create a network of strong females working within the industry, to help bridge one of the gaps which are preventing women from thriving in dream wildlife careers.” 

Her own experience throughout her university career, including now completing a PhD in wildlife parasitology, along with working within the wildlife industry fed into founding Women in Wildlife. 

“The fact that women don’t feel they have other women they can lean on within the industry for support is an issue I wanted to address,” says Stott. 

While nurturing roles such as zookeepers, vets, and nurses tend to be female, men tend to dominate roles in the field or in decision making roles within wildlife management.  

The sector is incredibly competitive and many entry level jobs require volunteer experience. In a lot of cases that can lead to people’s time being exploited. The zoo industry is particularly poor in this regard, she says, where there is limited flexibility around individual needs. 

“The underlying issue is that the industry is so competitive and male dominated,” Stott says. 

Women in Wildlife is one of many groups that have sprung up to challenge the status quo. It recently expanded to a team of 12 – all volunteers – producing newsletters, webinars, a podcast and a schools outreach program. Over half of members are Antipodean with growth strongest in the UK, the US, Africa and Asia working in every aspect of the sector from researchers to veterinarians to cinematographers. WiW’s Instagram account has 7,800 followers and it’s about to launch an official membership program.  

“We want to change the dial and highlight all the positive work women do and career pathways for women coming into the industry worldwide,” Stott says. 

Sophie Darlington 

Wildlife filmmaker Sophie Darlington believes WiW plays a valuable role in supporting women starting out in the industry. “It’s an important resource that I wish had been around 30 years ago. At least now we can share our experiences as well as encourage new talent in a safe space,” she says. 

As technology plays a pivotal role in shaping the stories she wants to tell, particularly in wildlife narratives where swift and confident reactions are crucial, kit choice is pivotal for Darlington. With advancements in technology, filmmakers now have a broader toolkit at our disposal for storytelling and on recent productions, her go-to choice has been the ARRI Alexa35. “With its impressive 17 stops of dynamic range, intuitive user interface, and outstanding colour science, it provides the perfect combination of flexibility and quality,” she says. “The OLED MVF-2 viewfinder ensures edge-to-edge sharpness is essential for keeping fast-moving subjects in focus, while the option to shoot up to 120fps at 4K resolution adds versatility for capturing dynamic scenes.” 

Latitude, contrast, colours, and sensitivity are key when Darlington shoots in remote locations. “The dynamic range of our equipment, along with its colour science and low-light capabilities, are paramount because we often encounter unpredictable light conditions,” she says. “Whether it’s capturing a sequence in the soft dawn light or harsh midday sun, we must have the confidence that our footage will grade aesthetically and convincingly across varied scenarios. As documentary filmmakers, we lack the luxury of controlled conditions; instead, we adapt to whatever unfolds before our lens. Therefore, having equipment that can handle these challenges with flexibility and reliability is essential to successfully capturing the story.” 

Melissa Christi 

Field ecologist Melissa Christi is a self-taught nature photographer who turned her love of the outdoors into a hobby then a profession. “After getting frustrated seeing fantastic little fungi, or some remarkable behavioural interaction that I might never see again, I realised that taking photos gave me a method of preserving those moments in time. I started with a tiny digital camera that fitted in the palm of my hand, and photographed everything I could.” 

“When I started out ten years ago I didn’t see a lot of female cinematographers or photographers. That has changed for the better but one challenge is to see this follow through to higher levels of conservation which is still mostly populated by men. 

Gail Jenkinson 

Being part of a community such as WiW that is supportive of, and encouraging to other women working within the wildlife genre of filmmaking has been of great benefit to cinematographer Gail Jenkinson. 

Advances in kit and technology have also helped her capture animals in action – when filming in high speed - behaviours that might not be possible to see with the naked eye. When regularly using cameras and equipment in extreme environments for wildlife filming, reliability and quality are essential. “This comes from cameras such as the Alexa Mini, which I’ve used in the Arctic, on land and sea, as you can be confident they won’t let you down in the cold,” says Jenkinson. “The Amira is a wonderful camera to use on your shoulder in fast-paced scenarios, ergonomically so well designed, so you can concentrate on creating images and capturing behaviour, that straight out of the camera, already looks beautiful.” 

Steph Varley  

Freelance photographer Steph Varley studied photojournalism at Leeds University and combined that with her interest in travel and wildlife.  

“At university I didn’t realise this could be a career. I thought if you worked with wildlife you had to be a vet and if you wanted to do photography or journalism it was with newspapers. It wasn’t until I went onto social media that I was able to see there was a collaborative approach into my dream job.” 

Varley is early into making a transition from photography to videography. A motivational speech by wildlife documentarian (and fellow WiW member) Roxy Rogan encouraged her to be more active online.

Praneetha Monipi  

With almost two decades of experience working as an independent conservationist and animal welfare worker, Praneetha Monipi recently launched conservation non-profit, Adhvaya: Beyond Barriers.  

“I want to change the perception that conservation only happens in forests and remote places when it can happen in urban areas or wherever you are,” she says. “I want to build something that is not for an elite group of research scientists and conservationists but brings people together every day.” 

Monipi, who has a Masters in conservation from Oxford Brookes, has also encountered male bias at every stage. “The value of platforms like Women of the Wild – India and WiW is to know that you are not alone in dealing with [issues like harassment]. I’ve been threatened with rape and followed when out in the field. This happens to other women. Knowing there is a community that understands your struggles and offers coping mechanisms such as mental health strategies is one way of overcoming male imposed restrictions.” 

Streamers lean on more social creators to drive brand, content engagement

Stream TV Insider

Social media influencers are an increasingly potent and necessary part of the marketing mix for streamers in media and entertainment, finds a new report from creator marketing platform, CreatorIQ.

article here 

While password sharing crackdowns dented social engagement for streamers among creators, the average Earned Media Value (EMV) attributed for the top 15 streaming brands charted in the report grew 56% year over year in the first half of 2024, as the number of creators posting about streaming platforms grew 28% year over year since 2023.

In releasing the findings, CreatorIQ highlighted why this matters, stating, “despite constant changes to the streaming industry, creators have been an adaptable channel for streamers to drive tune in and continue brand growth.”

Per the firm’s definition, EMV measures engagement with social media content about a brand that is created by a third party, or promotional efforts that don’t include paid advertising. It’s an influencer marketing metric that’s used to quantify the value of social media content, typically through social creator posts, but can also gauge impact of posts from publications, retailers or other brands. It’s worth noting the study source, CreatorIQ, has stake in the EMV game – a proprietary metric -  as the company’s business is predicated on linking content creators with brands.

Nonetheless, it notes EMV is “one of the most widely used KPIs for creator campaigns” and says EMV “can be used to evaluate the impact of influencer marketing campaigns and benchmark brands.”

Examining the performance of top 15 streaming brands (ranked by social engagements, impressions and EMV) between 2019 to 2023 it’s clear from the report that streamers are increasingly leaning into influencers to drive awareness of specific content and brand value.

Average engagements with those top streamers from creator marketing rose 61% over the five-year period, alongside to a 66% uplift in average total EMV.

Spotify marked the most success in using social creators, with CreatorIQ recording an increase in EMV from $1.2 billion in 2019 to $2.2 billion 2023 – handily surpassing the $1.4 billion 2023 EMV total of Netflix in second.

Nonetheless, Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video are also growing EMV through the use of influencers. Netflix grew EMV from $823.6 million to $1.4 billion between 2019 and 2023, and Prime Video’s EMV went from $110.1 million to $351.6 million in 2023.

The report reveals Netflix as particularly successful at getting influencers to talk about its original content. CreatorIQ measures this by recording the hashtags used by creators in their communications. Hashtags associated with Netflix original content collectively generated $39.4 million EMV in Q1 2023, accounting for 11% of the brand’s $314.7 million quarterly EMV total.

Powerhouse and micro-influencers

The report attributes Spotify’s success to partnerships with “powerhouse” creators and celebrities such as with Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper.

Also notable are gaming “micro-influencers” who played “a significant role in sustaining the brand’s digital presence.” Spotify managed to double its micro-influencer community to 15,600 in five years.

Powerhouse creators and micro-influencer deals are part of the playbook for other streamers too - 75% of Prime Video’s EMV in 2023 came from “powerhouse tier creators,” showcasing success from prioritizing high-impact creator partnerships.

CreatorIQ advises that such partnerships should be doubled down on for future growth.

“Streaming brands should prioritize the retention of Powerhouse tier creators to drive sustained growth,” it says, while micro-influencers deliver “authenticity, and can drive meaningful engagement [which] can be critical in niche markets or for specific campaigns.”

The report commends the leading streamers for continuing to work with influencers while the industry was buffeted by the fallout from Covid and subscription saturation.

Netflix and Prime Video received praised for managing to keep around 70% of their marketing creator partners on board during the tough five-year period, with CreatorIQ noting this high level of engagement paid off in returned EMV. Netflix for example grew total engagements with key creators from 724.9 million in 2019 to 1.2 billion in 2023.

According to the report, there’s a correlation between the rise in churn from 2022 due to general streaming fatigue and a dip in the overall number of influencers working directly for streamers of 4.6% from 157,000 to 149,800.

The introduction of password-sharing policies from early 2023, led by Netflix, also saw a marked decline in EMV. Netflix, for example, saw EMV drop off by 15% year on year in 2023 in the aftermath of its crackdown.

“This downturn coincided with a decrease in social conversation surrounding the controversial policy, and a 27% contraction in Netflix’s community when those unwilling to adopt the policy stopped watching Netflix content,” noted CreatorIQ in the report.

More recently there are strong signs of a bounce-back of the broader creator community for the streaming industry. In the first half of this year the average number of creators for each brand increased by 28% over 1H 2023, “a sign that the best for the streaming industry may be yet to come,” suggests the report. The retention rate (measuring how many repeating creators maintained between periods of time) was up 72% during the same period.

Netflix’s EMV averaged $110.7 million per month so far this year, per CreatorIQ —13% more than its $98.4 million monthly average in 2023.  Still it, and leaders like Disney+ marked slight EMV declines in the first half of 2024.

NBCUniversal’s Peacock was a standout in the first six months of 2024, growing its EMV by 7%  yoy to $128.6 million. Much of that is thanks to a bump in visibility from Olympics-related social media campaigns, with Olympics-related hashtags collectively generating $27.9 million EMV, accounting for the nearly one quarter of the platform's first-half  total.

All in all, average engagements in H1 2024 were up by 245% year-over-year, in part facilitated by simply having more content to talk about as the impact of the strikes on production releases unwinds.  On average for the first half of the year, CreatorIQ found streaming brands generated 56% EMV growth year-over-year.

“The industry’s growth trajectory, marked by a significant increase in digital engagement, underscores the pivotal role of creators in shaping brand success and consumer sentiment,” concludes CreatorIQ.

 

IBC 2024: Pivot to Streaming Paying Off, Says Paramount Global CTO Wiser

Streaming Media

article here

Paramount Global is under the pump and about to be sold but its future is bright because it is successfully transferring systems from production to distribution in the Cloud, according to the company’s Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Phil Wiser.

Nearly all of Paramount’s enterprise systems have shifted to cloud including video-intensive tools, systems, and asset storage, Wiser said addressing the IBC Show in a keynote of CTO Perspectives.

“The transition to the cloud facilitates more downstream fluidity and opens opportunities to better exploit assets,” said Wiser, who called on fellow legacy media companies to fully grasp the opportunity provided by Cloud, Virtualization, and AI.

“Broadcast and streaming need to converge to support the economics of the wider business,” Wiser said. “You cannot afford to sit on proprietary hardware and dedicated networks. The internet is the most robust media distribution system ever built. All broadcasters and studios should adopt an internet-first mindset.”

He said lessons had been learned by Hollywood from seeing the fate that befell the record publishing business which fought rather than partnered with digital upstarts like iTunes and failed to switch to streaming models in time.

“Major media companies, like Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, see ourselves much more as internet-based community businesses at this point,” he said. “The issue is that the exact timing of when consumers are going to move en mass online is very hard to predict.”

Wiser was also in an IBC session, giving updates about the progress of the studio’s collective vision to evolve into the Cloud by 2030. This is not an easy task, especially as studios confront the blunt end of the proposed transition: production.

“We’re seeing significant shifts in areas like animation, whereas cloud-based production remains a work in progress,” Wiser reported.

For MovieLabs 2030 Vision to succeed there must be an agreed, interoperable set of tools such as security protocols and a standard language in order to streamline production and distribution in the cloud for the good of the entire community. Doing that from a position in which every single production at every studio (let alone across studios) is completely unique underlines the ambition of the project and the scale of the gap that remains.

Wiser said the transition to online can be managed astutely with the right blend of technology, business and, crucially, of content.

“What everyone's reacting to right now is the uncertainty about how quickly the core consumer business will shift wholesale online.”

While Paramount Global reported a $5.99bn write-down of its cable business in its recent quarter and is shuttered its TV division as a cost-cutting prelude to being taken over by Skydance Media, Wiser insisted its streaming strategy was working.

Its DTC business gained profitability for the first time last quarter as numbers swung $450m year-on-year to $26m. Streaming revenue climbed 13% to $1.9bn, subscription revenue grew 12%, and advertising revenue climbed 16% to $513m, reflecting growth from Paramount+ and Pluto TV.

Paramount’s shift to public cloud is being done in concert with AWS. Wiser shared the IBC stage with Girish Bajaj, VP, Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios Technology.

Bajaj was in charge of Amazon’s recent rollout of a new UEX powered by AI intended to streamline and enhance the overall content discovery experience with more personalized recommendations.

“We want them to have more control over their streaming appearance. We think that's the way to reshape the future of entertainment video,” Bajaj says.

“We have to ensure an equally positive experience for all types of content, whether that’s a series or a movie or a live event and whether that member is in a city or the countryside. We spend a lot of time obsessing about building a high-quality streaming experience that works at scale. A global streaming product is not easy to do. It is very complex, and we build features for every single content type.”

IBC 2024: AI’s Greatest Power in Media is to Make it Seem Normal

Streaming Media

article here

It was hard to keep AI out of the headlines at IBC Show 2024, not because there was anything groundbreaking in terms of news or product but because the technology is now part and parcel of every media tech conversation.

“This is a watershed moment for artificial intelligence,” Andy Hood, VP Emerging Technologies at advertising group WPP told the IBC Conference. “Because AI enables enable people at every level of our organisation do what they need to do.”

Messaging about the practical and positive application of AI – in which humans remain in the loop – contrasts with the feverish scare-mongering about the impact of Generative AI and fallout from the Hollywood strikes.

“AI is a buzzword but it is also a technology that can be used to create exciting new products,” said Huma Lodhi, Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Sky, demonstrating an AI powered sports highlights generator that won Sky and Comcast a technical Emmy.

That said, there was little talk and less application-specific mention of GenAI for automating entire crafts like scriptwriting or VFX let alone narrative content. The fear of algorithms replacing jobs has changed toward positive adoption of AI for analytics and back-office systems and some production functions. AI in tandem with cloud is now seen as absolutely key to getting the broadcast industry back on a level financial keel.

“AI is an example which humans can get very resistant to based on what they don’t know,” said Phil Wiser, EVP and CTO at Paramount Global. “A big part of our time is spent educating with programs around technology. We even sit in on productions to talk through ideas rather than try to push top down.” 

Experimentation to implementation

Banijay Entertainment, a French-headquartered TV production company, is on track to post €4 billion in revenue this year. It has partnered with Adobe and AWS to index all 200,000+ hours of content it owns with the aim of speeding up and expanding versioning for distribution.

“After lots of experimentation, it’s clear that AI-powered workflows and logistics will generate great savings and improve our profitability,” said CMO Damien Viel. “We approach AI as if starting a new business. We remain a creative company not a tech company so we have to make sure we’re building tech that helps creatives to do their job in ways they’ve always done.”

Similarly, Olympics host broadcaster OBS is using AI to achieve ‘glocal’ scale for clipping and distribution of its live content to digital platforms but is wary of cutting humans out of the chain.

“We could have used AI to publish direct to users this year from Paris but you still need checks and balances which only experienced editors can do,” explained Chris Jackson, Global Head of Digital Data and Analytics, Olympic Channel.

The more capable your AI product the greater the risk of introducing bias and errors, he warned. “We built an editorial co-pilot to help human editors check the output data before going direct to end users.”

Toward Me TV

AI is deemed essential to unlocking IP in content owners’ archives and in slicing and dicing content for increasingly personalized media streams.

“We are at the beginning of a content creation revolution,” said Vered Horesh, Chief of Strategic AI Partnerships at GenAI platform Bria. Moving from broadcasting one idea to a model in which media is expressed and manifested in a multitude of different variations.”

Panelists agreed that consumers want more targeted individualized playlists and that broadcast is naturally evolving to a streamed ‘Me TV.’

“We’re at a new frontier for rights owners to make the most of the rich IP they have,” said Maninder Saini, Head of Growth at Twelve Labs, which has developed a deep learning model that extracts information about content and users from multiple touchpoints.

“Broadcast, sports leagues, teams, and studios are sitting on IP and not sure what to do with it. Using AI-based metadata extraction, they can make sense of what they have and make more of it through targeted adverting and hyper-localized video.”

Using AI to turn a content archive from a cost center to one of profit will only work if content owners transfer their systems to the cloud. As Lewis Smithingham, EVP of Strategic Industries at Monks pointed out, “Content owners with their archive on LTO tape are going to be challenged in monetizing that asset.”

There are monetization opportunities for service providers if they can sell personalized content recommendations or promotions.

“We will soon see AI influence content,” said Richard Kerris, VP and GM of Media & Entertainment at Nvidia. “We’re already seeing the ability to change on-screen logos in sports distributed to different territories. A next step is that AI will hyper-localize the product placement in a live broadcast down to highly specific geographic areas and specific products.”

No standards and no guidelines

There remain concerns about the rapid pace and lack of precedent for a technology with the potency of AI but in terms of implementing safeguards and regulation the industry, we were told at IBC, has got this.

SMPTE President Renard Jenkins spoke of a lot of “soft deployments” of AI in M&E and that SMPTE was is working with studios, content owners and vendors on education around AI implementation.

“Technology is accelerating beyond our ability to keep up with it so we’re working with the community to understand what they are planning and launching. AI is a foundational change in how we design, what we use and how this is integrated into our individual processes. In the age of AI we have to have guardrails and that’s where policies and standards becomes extremely important.”

With the European Union’s AI Act now in force, a Senior Policy Advisor for the European Broadcasting Union told IBC that work with AI developers was still ongoing – meaning that issues of protection and remuneration for content creators had not been resolved.

 “We want to have a comprehensive discussion with AI providers that gives our members levers to negotiate something in return for use of their content,” Francois Lavoir said. “Our aim is to give our members control.”

A word of warning came from Juan Reyes of the Tech Align Group; “AI is in every room and every panel here at IBC but there is no standard and no guideline. Studios are concerned about losing their IP to another studio or content creator studio because their IP has not been tracked or accounted for in AI systems.”

Unlocking the power of live and archive using AI

IBC

AI is barely out of the box, but it is already being applied in action to super-scale fan engagement of sports. A leader in this regard is Olympic Broadcasting Services, which was able to leverage the tens of billions of data points collected across the Paris Games in real-time to serve highlights clips, reports and commentary dissected across viewers in more than 200 countries. 

article here

Speaking at the ‘AI in Action’ IBC Conference session, Chris Jackson, Global Head of Digital Data and Analytics, Olympic Channel said; “AI is great at crunching numbers but getting it to deliver the more emotional aspect is a challenge. We want to bring [out] the human dimension in the sport.” 

He characterised Generative AI as both “parrot” - simply repeating things back - and “clairvoyant” in being able to predict things on which you haven’t trained it with specific data. “When you’re working with these models the challenge is to build something which is useful and doesn’t repeat stuff we already knew.” 

The more capable your AI product the greater the risk of introducing bias and errors, he warned. The Olympics solution to that was to throttle back on publishing AI-produced content direct to users. “We built an editorial co-pilot to help human editors check the output data before going direct to end users.” 

Jackson also stressed the importance of using data pulled from videos that the Olympics owns. “If you’ve got information that is specific to what you’re doing, you can massively reduce the risk. You wouldn’t try and do a native TV production with a couple of people,” he said. “It’s the same with AI when delivering a capability. You need many departments doing many different roles and together as a team they come to create something robust and good.” 

Huma Lodhi, Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Sky, said: “AI is a buzzword, but it is also a technology that can be used to create exciting new products.” 

Lodhi was demonstrating Replay, an Emmy Award winning AI-powered text and video highlights generator. It analyses video streams in real time and detects key moments using various audio, visual and textual cues. For sports, these include points/goals, penalties, and other major moments. Indexed highlights are compiled as they happen into an interactive experience, giving viewers the ability to play them back as many times as they wish. 

“Live sports is not easy for AI,” she said. “Outdoor environments with diverse backgrounds are tricky for object recognition. Weather conditions are unpredictable. Sport itself is a dynamic environment which makes timing tricky for events like cricket. Even football matches can last different lengths.” 

Sky is developing a solution designed to be scalable and applied to any sport, any number of matches and capable of delivering one-line highlights or detailed descriptions. 

“It is very specific to Sky customers,” said Lodhi. “We do not use a general language model. The AI is customised to our audience so we can deliver personalised notifications and services to them.” 

Attendees also learned how to ‘Unlock New Pathways to Monetisation with AI and the Cloud’ at a panel session on the AI Tech Stage. 

“We will soon see AI influence content,” said Richard Kerris, VP and GM of Media & Entertainment at Nvidia. “We’re already seeing the ability to change on-screen logos in sports distributed to different territories. A next step is that AI will hyper-localise the product placement in a live broadcast down to highly specific geographic areas and specific products.” 

Maninder Saini, Head of Growth, Twelve Labs, highlighted the idea of turning a content archive from a cost centre to one of profit.  “It’s a new frontier for rights owners to make the most of the rich IP they have,” he said. “Broadcast, sports leagues, teams and studios are sitting on IP and not sure what to do with it. Using AI based metadata extraction they can makes sense of what they have and make more of it through targeted adverting and hyper-localised video.” 

Lewis Smithingham, EVP of Strategic Industries at Monks pointed out that a lot of broadcasters still owned “very traditional, static inventory and single-use appliances” and that this would hold them back from being able to personalise programming. 

 “Content owners with their archive on LTO tape are going to be challenged in monetising that asset,” he said. 

The evolution of live sportscasting: It’s rocket science

IBC

 

article here

 

 

“Elon Musk, whenever you think of the man, has made a rocket that's reusable so why would you now make a rocket that is not reusable? He's changed the game and he's changed the price point to create a different business model.”

 

For Claire Wilkie, Founder and CEO, Limitless Broadcast the analogy can be applied to sports broadcasting.

 

“What we're seeing now is more people switching to using software defined workflows in the cloud. It’s a new business model, a new way of working, a new strategy and it opens new editorial and monetisation opportunities for everyone.”

 

With a career spanning ten years beginning at BBC Studios and BBC Royal Events and working on the 2012 London Olympics, British Basketball League and multiple series of Strictly Come Dancing Wilkie founded Limitless to bring remote production to every sport. Among recent achievements was delivering the live 18-camera grand final of the Premiership Women's Rugby on TNT Sports and BBC iPlayer as sustainable, and ultra-agile remote production powered by the LIMITLESS remote hub.

 

At IBC she speaks with experience about the evolution of live production and says the industry is transforming and changing at a rapid rate.

 

“Remote production is going mainstream with even smaller companies moving into that workflow. We've got changing business models happening within the industry as a result.”

 

Even the largest scale, most high profile events  - like Channel 4’s presentation of the Paralympics from Paris -  are being done with via a remote production hub (in that case from  remote galleries based in Cardiff and managed by Whisper). “What interests me the most is being able to go to the furthest most remote locations and still go live, even when there’s no pre-existing fibre infrastructure,” Wilkie says.

 

This is where the use of 4G and 5G high speed connections, either via network slicing or set-up as a private network, is starting to pay dividends. What is critical in any remote produced and 5G contributed production is synchronised ultra-low latency.

She says, “The last thing broadcasters need is inconsistency. If you're going to have latency, then consistency is key so that everything can be synced up and the director has no problem calling the shots. When feeds are inconsistent the production can be chaotic. So, getting that latency down and in sync is the absolute goal.”

 

The next iteration of live production is greater use of cloud and how service providers like hers can harness cloud to deliver new business models and editorial opportunity. Wilkie says the industry is moving towards software defined tools where the onus is on technologists to look at how that can be streamlined and resilient for editorial.

 

“The key is whether the production team feel in control. Operational crew must feel empowered to do their jobs when they walk into a remote or virtual gallery. It needs to work as though it was a hardware gallery in a truck. They need to be able to do their jobs to the best of their ability and the tech has to be redundant and resilient. Familiarity and trust is really important when we're moving to these more IP-based and cloud workflows.

 

She stresses, “In any remote or cloud set up there has to be low latency and it has to empower skilled people to do their jobs.”

 

With IP infrastructure as the backbone and streaming as the dominant new distribution model, sports clubs, leagues and federations are able to engage their fans like never before. An example is the rise of ‘watch along’ and digital shows such as Lion's Den, which Limitless produce for the FA as an interactive format streamed on YouTube.

“Fans could comment on and call into the show live,” Wilkie explains. “They can communicate with each other through graphics and be part of the show. What's really interesting is looking at how we break that wall down even further between the live event and the community. That's where Virtual Reality comes into play. VR hasn't been adopted yet because the tech is still evolving but it’s a fascinating space which is on the cusp of taking off.”

 

At previous IBCs the focus of innovation in broadcast sports was around resolution but sports producers seem to have decided they’ve reached a plateau where 1080p HDR is as good as the picture needs to get.

“We have to be driven by the habits of the consumer,” Wilkie insists. “The previous generation is watching daytime TV and linear television but Gen Z are only watching shows that have a community following.  The viewing habits of the younger generation will dictate and is dictating how we make content and how we distribute it.”

 

She cites uber-successful YouTubers like Mr Beast with viewing figures in the millions and the rise of influencer-led sports content as clues to the future of live streamed events.

“Those creator-led shows have full production teams creating with high production value. What they're also doing really well is bringing advertising very subtly into the show itself. Rather than having the live game interrupted with an ad break, content creators will embed brands within the show format. It might be a logo on a mug that the presenter has on their desk. Provided this is done in a way that is relatable and authentic then the fan community will buy into it.”

 

If Gen Z are viewing more live sports on platforms like YouTube and on mobile devices one wonders what implications this has for the future of longform live sport?

 

Wilkie believes there will always be international culturally important events like a World Cup which are best experienced in a shared sit-down in front of the main TV.

 

“When an event like that has a huge cultural following people will tune in and watch it live. Nonetheless, I feel like those watching or able to watch in 4K or 8K is quite niche. Younger generations are not necessarily watching in those resolutions so why would we make content in those resolutions if it's not for archive?”

 

There is some reluctance in the industry to move wholesale to remote and cloud methodologies but Wilkie thinks the hardware-based large OB trucks provider will co-exist with and complement more decentralised IP solutions for some time.

 

“When those big trucks were being built they were designed and engineered with the latest technology and the latest functionality but over time as in any industry change happens and transformation happens. We've seen it in the space industry with SpaceX.

 

“It’s coming down to two different ways of running businesses. If you are invested in hardware, then it's understandable that you don't necessarily want to move into a different business model overnight. I also think there's an element of the unknown for some people and an attitude of why do we need to change something that’s been working really well for so long.

 

“The point is that with cloud you can have a much more agile footprint. Limitless is able to offer that ultra flexibility and ultra agility of having a really nimble footprint on site so that we can pop up anywhere in the world and go live and still offer the production value that client’s expect from a more traditional solution.

 

“Ultimately, what’s driving all these changes is creative freedom. Editorial talent are finally able to bring their ideas into reality because of the maturation of new technology. The freedom of using IP-based, remote and cloud production and high-speed cellular internet connections means that you can go anywhere and tell the story.

 

“That’s what I find really exciting. Suddenly as technologists and engineers we are able to open up new opportunities to the storytellers in our industry.”