Netflix’s Tiny Creatures: Pushing Narrative With HDR Color Grade

Post Perspective 

Netflix’s Tiny Creatures is a natural history drama with an anthropomorphic approach to telling stories that show the harrowing life-and-death challenges that small animals face.

https://postperspective.com/netflixs-tiny-creatures-pushing-narrative-with-hdr-color-grade/

“This is a new genre,” says Jonathan Jones, creative director of Ember Films, as well as a director and DP. “There’s nothing else like it around. It’s not a documentary and it’s not completely fiction. I call it an animal drama.”

The eight 25-minute episodes tell various stories about the lives of creatures in a narrative style more common to a feature film.

Jones called on 20-plus years of experience working with and photographing animals for natural history programming when planning for Tiny Creatures. His credits include the flagship BBC series Planet Earth II, for which he won an Emmy Award, Seven Worlds One Planet and National Geographic’s One Strange Rock.

“I understand what motivates these animals, whether they are nocturnal or diurnal, and the science behind their physiology,” he says. “I put that experience into the script so that our filming approach could be plausible and technically achievable.”

Mini Movies
This grounding allowed Jones to push each story’s drama using the tropes of cinema. A rolling ball chasing a little mammal, for instance, recalls Raiders of the Lost Ark. Water pipes burst as a mouse escapes in the nick of time. A hawk looms over a kangaroo rat like a dinosaur in Jurassic Park. And a scene with an opossum in a hen house has nightmare overtones.

With producing partners Blackfin and Momentum, Jones developed the script and formulated narrative arcs for the little creatures, giving them a voice based on their real-world habitats. For example, Episode 1 plays out like a Western, only the stars aren’t a cowboy and a bank robber — they are a rat and a snake.

The landscapes were shot in various environments at locations throughout the US. Episode 1 was filmed entirely on location in Arizona, but for the other episodes, the animals were filmed at Ember Films’ studio in England — where the habitats were rebuilt as sets (i.e., New York apartments, wood lodges, sewer systems, barnyards).

“We painstakingly storyboarded every shot to be frame-accurate so that the entire shoot would unfold just as we scheduled it,” he says. Video backplates, including footage from drones plus high-resolution stills, were captured at each location “to make everything sing visually.”

Double-Pass Technique
These elements were used as a style guide to recreate the set and tune the lighting to mimic the real environment. For example, Ember used 10-foot by 6.5-foot print enlargements mounted outside the windows of the stage, rather than greenscreen, to reveal the external world.

Other in-camera tricks included blurring depth of field so that the eye concentrates on the foreground and only subconsciously sees the background; adding physical mid-ground sections between studio-shot foreground and background plates; and making rapid cuts so the viewer doesn’t have time to interrogate the picture.

However, it was another SFX technique that enabled the shots of heroic creatures appearing to be in dire peril from being captured by predators, including a snake, an owl and a hawk. Jones explains how the “double-pass” technique ensured the animals’ safety. “We photographed one animal and then made that animal safe. With the camera angle locked, and provided nothing in the set was moved, we filmed the second animal so that when we put the frames together, it looked like a predator chasing its prey.”

This was only possible with a workflow that brought post production to the set. “To ensure that the two frames match when stitched together, rushes from each take are edited in the moment,” he says. “Some shots would have eight or nine layers of 8K footage to composite into one shot.”

His tool of choice was the Red DSMC2 camera with the Helium sensor. “I wanted to shoot the highest resolution possible,” notes Jones, who shot at 6K to 8K. “For slow-motion, we used the Phantom Flex4K often at 1000fps.”

The data requirements were eye-watering. Everything was kept raw for post in Adobe Premiere. Each day’s shoot averaged 3TB to 4TB. Each episode totaled about 80TB running online, mirrored for backup and archived on LTO. Adding to the challenges of this production, the episodes set in Washington and Louisiana were filmed at the same time with dual post workflows.

HDR Master
Tiny Creatures is also mastered in Dolby Atmos and in HDR. The color pipeline was devised and managed by Toby Tomkins, colorist and co-founder at London boutique Cheat.

“Jonathan really wanted to push the narrative with the HDR grade, which was really fun,” Tomkins recalls. “For example, when there was a shift from night to daytime or dark interior to sunny exterior, he really wanted the audience to feel the change with eyeball-iris-closing inducing dynamics to really push a heightened realism not possible in SDR.”

Alongside Tomkins was Cheat colorist Jack McGinity, who developed the base look together with Jones and graded three episodes as well. Cheat calls on Blackmagic Resolve for color grading.

Tomkins continues, “The stars of the show were the animals, and we leveraged the enhanced dynamic range and color volume to amplify the texture and colors of the animals to add depth and really make them ‘pop.’ We ultimately made the decision to prioritize the HDR grade, as we believed most viewers would benefit from the enhanced experience.”

Lighting
Shooting with the Red and Phantom cameras at the same time necessitated a lot of light to compensate for the fast speeds. To that end, they employed large HMI lights as distant sun sources but many of the scenes were lit by LED Dedolights, which emit no heat and can have their color temperature changed with ease. Other fixtures included ARRI SkyPanels for softer light and circular Rotolights.

“Circular rather than square lights are useful for highlighting the eyes and looking like a reflection of the sun,” Jones shares. “The animals are our superstars, and the temperature of the lights was always monitored.”

He continues, “If an animal wasn’t feeling ready on set, we would never push it. We always had three things scheduled at any one time as a backup in case we couldn’t go with plan A. The biggest challenge was the logistics in taking a different approach for every animal and for each episode.”

Finishing Under Lockdown
The color grade was a complex job, but due to the global pandemic, it had to be completed under lockdown conditions. “Fortunately, we had already set the tone and look for the series with Toby,” Jones relates. “When COVID forced social distancing, we used Streambox to communicate, and I had a color HDR monitor manually calibrated with Toby’s Resolve. It took longer to do reviews, but it’s testament to Toby and his skill that we made it work.”

Actor Mike Colter (Luke Cage), located in the US, had voiceover work on Episode 8 to finish when the work-from-home mandate struck. Jones says, “He recorded the episode on his iPhone while sound-proofed in his daughter’s closet using a new microphone we bought online. He had to stop at the end of each page and upload it.

“Everyone on this production worked so hard to make it what it is. This is a new genre using some of the highest-resolution cameras around, with a truly cutting-edge post workflow. Everything was a real challenge but the potential for extending the format geographically in the US or anywhere in the world, as well as changing the scale of the creatures, is exciting.”

Jones concludes, “For me, though, it all comes back down to trying to engage families in wanting to ask questions about the natural world. Hopefully by enjoying this shorter, higher-octane show, they will dig further into whole seasons of amazing shows like Our Planet and Planet Earth.”

Editors Have Proof of Concept for Flexible Work Environments. Now What?

AVID

The media and entertainment industry has the green light to restart production—but while there are still health risks, many remote video editing workflows will stay in place. The question is for how long, and which aspects of these flexible work environments will go on to become the industry’s new normal after lockdown ends.

http://www.avidblogs.com/editors-have-proof-of-concept-for-flexible-work-environments-now-what/

Post-production and VFX companies were not required to close during quarantine. In fact, many in North America and Europe have continued to service existing orders through a combination of remote workflows and social distancing measures for finishing procedures, such as Dolby Atmos mixes that need to be performed on site.

Meanwhile, trade bodies like the UK Screen Alliance and the Motion Picture Editors Guild are providing guidelines for working safely, aiming to get the post sector back to the office to limit the expected fallout of widespread redundancies.

Todd Downing, ACE (Mrs. America), is looking forward to returning but feels understandably hesitant about what the new rules mean in practice. “I don’t think we are ready to be in enclosed spaces with others right now,” he says. “But I am optimistic that with all the scientists studying the virus we can figure out how to make that a reality soon.”

Even after it’s safe to return, though, the industry will still have confirmed that it can support remote production. “For a lot of people in the industry, this was not an obvious assumption,” says Michele Sciolette, CTO at Cinesite, in an interview for Creative Planet Network. “Today we know, with direct first-hand experience, that remote production is possible while maintaining a high level of productivity.” Cinesite supports studios in Vancouver, Montreal, London, and Germany.

This changing mindset seems to run along the chain from studio executives to finishing boutique. As the industry recalibrates, it’s opening up to the idea of shifting away from the former centralized model, where the production office and facility were the operating hubs for creative personnel, toward more flexible work environments.

“A hybrid model—where some aspects of production continue to be office-based while others are done remotely—would have a lot of advantages,” Sciolette said, in an interview continued on Cinesite’s site. “This would allow us to address the limitations we face with the current ‘all-remote’ setups while giving us the flexibility to scale up our teams beyond the constraints of our physical office space, as well as providing more flexibility to our team members and reducing our carbon footprint.”

In truth, the industry had already begun implementing hybrid architectures where media is held on-prem and/or in external data centers, and is accessible from a facility or remotely via cloud using PCoIP remote display tools. COVID-19 has fast-tracked the strategy to ensure a far greater degree of distributed work across workspaces going forward.

We have proved during COVID that remote offlines work, says Jai Cave, technical operations director at UK post facility Envy, in an interview for AV Magazine . Envy rolled out over 100 remote edit suites, and when this period is over, he envisions an increased demand for remote offline for specific projects where it solves a problem. However, a lot of editors, producers, and production managers will want to come back to a facility for the improved creative communication it brings, he says.

He predicts the growth of a blended solution that has editors and producers spend a few days of the week in a facility and work the rest of the week remotely if that suits them.

Sciolette believes that the winning formula will come from the flexibility to take the best of both worlds: stay remote when it’s convenient and meet in person when it’s necessary.

After all, remote video editing workflows present some challenges regardless of the technology in place. For instance, calibrating reference displays demands completing some aspects of production in a specific room. It’s hard to fully recreate every kind of person-to-person interaction virtually.

“In documentaries, more than any other genre, you are writing the story in the edit, and directors feel a loss of control if done remotely,” confirms Jack Jones, technical director at documentary specialist Roundtable. “Directors are keen to get back to the facility.”

Charlotte Layton, commercial director of The Farm Group, recognizes that going totally remote means giving up some key elements of collaboration. “The question is: How do we keep a sense of community? And how do you celebrate an emotional journey when everyone is disparate?” she says.

The producers of a recent broadcast project opted to meet at The Farm Group’s central London location (observing PPE protocols) at regular intervals under lockdown, according to Layton, “to feel more connected” to the work in progress.

“There is a huge benefit to having clients in a suite, however the amount of time they spend with creative talent may change,” says John Rogerson, CEO of London post house Halo. “Remote working is not a silver bullet and only makes sense when a client needs it.”

However, working separately until the very final grade or sign-off stages is convenient for production executives as well as DPs and editors, and it may become a fixture of the industry.

“If traveling to distant locations year after year is affecting your life in a negative way, we’ve now proven it unnecessary and perhaps inefficient,” says Roger Barton, ACE, who helped edit Paramount Pictures’ feature The Tomorrow War under lockdown.

“Personally, I find myself happy cutting at home,” Barton says. “I very much miss the camaraderie, but I’m more creative here with fewer distractions, and I’m probably working more hours than I ever have. I’m happy to do it because it’s on my own schedule, and that creates a balance that I enjoy. The flexibility to do so is one of the lessons I hope we walk away with.”

Barton acknowledges that this won’t be true for everyone. Some are calling on the industry to use the enforced break to put a check on some of its more draconian work practices. Zack Arnold, ACE (Cobra Kai), struck a chord with his argument that decried “the ridiculously long hours, the chronic sleep deprivation, the complete and utter lack of work-life balance, and the lives that are destroyed . . . by the perpetual content machine that is Hollywood” of pre-COVID normality. If ever there was a time to set boundaries and demand change, it’s now, he urged.

If nothing else, the crisis has proved the prudence of a business continuity policy centered on routing media to work-from-home locations. It may also have triggered a change in the way craftspeople work within the industry—some of which may be here for good.

“We’ve all been asking for more remote working and been told up until now that, for security reasons, this wasn’t possible. But now everyone can see just how much more convenient it can be,” says Cheryl Potter, who edited HBO drama The Nevers remotely. “Good luck getting that genie back in the bottle!”

8K: History Repeats Itself

StreamingMedia

There's such an inevitability about 8K UHD content going mainstream that discussions about it are now are invariably sanguine about 12K, 16K, and beyond.

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/8K-History-Repeats-Itself-143046.aspx

"8K is beginning to take hold," Nick Ryan, head of product mastering for MainConcept, said on a MainConcept-hosted webinar. "It can be easy to get overly focussed on the technical hurdles but we need to remember that long ago the idea of 4K was scary. Now the industry has accepted it as a gamechanger. I have no doubt we will be having the same concerns about 16K and looking back at 8K as a gamechanger."

8K production is just about cracked, and the distribution challenge is also being solved thanks to new compression and processing techniques.

Chris Chinnock, executive director of the 8K Association, ticked off the expanding 8K ecosystem. These include flagship 8K TVs from all the major brands and next-gen games consoles supporting 8K playback (even if there may not be many 8K games initially).  YouTube and Vimeo host thousands of 8K clips, mostly short form or wildlife, which is seeding 8K the same way 4K did. Production workflows for 8K are understood to be similar to 2K and 4K.

"There are some pain points," Chinnock said. "You need more processing power, memory, and storage, and transport will always be an issue. But guess what? Those were the exact same issues as we experienced with 4K. The bottom line is that the 8K ecosystem looks similar to how 4K did seven years ago. We'll see history repeating for 8K."

Japan's NHK has been broadcasting 8K since December 2018, encoding in HEVC at 80Mbps to 100Mbps and using up an entire satellite transponder.

"They have proven it can be done but it's not commercially viable," Chinnock said. "We will have to move to bandwidths that are more mainstream. 20Mbps to 30Mbps up to 50Mbps is reasonable for deployment."

Fortunately, this is achievable thanks to new codecs including HEVC, VVC, EVC, LCEVC and AVS3 from China, as well as "smart streaming."

Chinnock explained, "Smart streaming is intended to encourage content to be mastered in 8K and then smartly downscaled to a 4K resolution package with some sort of metadata, distributed in 4K, and smartly upscaled to 8K on reception. Ideally the image quality will be close to native full 8K. That is what the 8K Association would like to see implemented. There are positive developments, but it needs nurturing."

MainConcept singled out LCEVC as the most interesting crop of current codecs. The standard, which is shortly to be ratified by MPEG, is compatible with other main baseline codecs and can immediately offer bandwidth savings.

V-Nova, the UK-based developer of the technology behind LCEVC, is a partner with MainConcept. Ryan shared preliminary test data from V-Nova demonstrating how an 8K file encoded in LCEVC-enhanced HEVC/H.265 delivered bitrate reductions of 45% giving a VMAF score of 90.

"For the VMAF score of 95, there was still very significant bitrate reduction," Ryan said. "This just one 8K test but we see this as very promising data. We will continue to work to integrate LCEVC into the MainConcept SDK." 

He argued that HEVC/H.265 is most suitable for 8K today because of the billion devices enabled for HEVC playback in the market.

MainConcept claims its own HEVC software encoding algorithm is 20% more efficient compared to its open source equivalent.  "When you think of the large data for 8K, any saving in file size has a very large impact," Ryan said. The software also allows for 8K live streaming at 120 fps 4:2:2 10 bit for digital signage as well as broadcast application.

MainConcept also flagged what it called hybrid GPU acceleration as a way to further boost 8K streaming efficiency. "This allows you to dial in the best of both software and hardware encoding to accelerate the overall process by up to 2.5x," Ryan said. "For 8K, this will save time and also makes things like archival and live encoding realistic and much more cost-effective."

To back that up, MainConcept claimed that the cost of setting up 8K live encoding using its hybrid GPU technology and a basic hardware mix of Intel processors, Nvidia GPUs, and AJA capture card will set you back $8,000 off-the-shelf. Without using the hybrid GPU and instead running multiple CPUs and high-end Xeon Platinum processors the cost is more than double, it said.

"The takeaway I have is that it is unsafe for studios, content suppliers and the tech suppliers that support them to build their workflow and tech stack based on current technology levels," Ryan said. "Really you need the flexibility to scale for the future without having to overhaul your production pipeline."

Content Resilience

Speaking for Samsung, Des Carey, the firm's head of cinematic innovation, said capturing in 8K was the best way studios now had of futureproofing their content.

"For the longest time, film was the gold standard when it came to archival. Now for the first time we are able to capture at a resolution that is considerably higher than 35mm (he put 35mm at 5.6K). In saying that, embracing change can be difficult."

"Historically speaking the biggest changes in our industry have come from indie filmmakers who drive innovation to crate content. More indie filmmakers today are shooting at higher resolutions than studio projects."

He added, "Remastering a film from 35mm is time consuming, costly and can add artefacts and scratches. With 8K data it is easier to get back to what you initially shot.

"With 8K data we have option to conform at 2K, 4K or 8K and as AI upscaling becomes more robust we will see Hollywood blockbusters shooting at higher resolutions."

An example is Jurassic World: Dominion, currently shooting on 35mm and in 8K on Panavision cameras.

"In 2020, 90% of the large VFX shows are working in 2K even if the final output is 4K DCP. At Samsung, when it comes to displays, we are focused on the AI upscaling aspect. We want to work with the VFX vendors so that processing becomes more robust VFX will be able to turnover at higher rez.

"We want to work with video game developers so they no longer have to trade resolution for framerate. We are trying to find ways of keeping both of those aspirations intact."

Tesla’s connectivity issue is a mere blip, not the road to hell

RedShark

Tesla suffers a global network outage and the internet couldn’t conceal its schadenfreude. With customer’s suffering connectivity issues, such as not being able to connect to their cars through the mobile app, you could feel the glee with which columnists and social media wags sharpened their knives.

https://www.redsharknews.com/teslas-connectivity-issue-is-a-mere-blip-not-the-road-to-hell

Elon Musk may be hard to like (given his trigger-happy expletives and apparent disregard for the virus) but you have to admire his ambition. The techpreneur appears like a Bond villain but should be praised for almost single-handedly dragging the car industry out of its petrolhead phase and into the 21st century.

The outage, on Wednesday, which also impacted Tesla’s internal systems, is not the first. Similar issues happened in 2018, 2017 and 2016. Banks have IT issues with regularity it seems causing all manner of problems for people unable to withdraw cash or pay online. Sony Pictures is one of several high-profile media companies to have been pirated for content and private emails.

While Tesla vehicles are having many connectivity features owners can still access and use their cars. According to Electrek even Tesla owners who primarily use their phones as their car key, the Bluetooth still connects to it to unlock and “start” the vehicle.

So, it’s no big deal and is a glitch to be taken in ones stride on the road to zero carbon emissions. Actually, Musk’s other headline news this week is perhaps more concerning for future car connectivity issues.

At Tesla’s 2020 shareholder’s meeting, Musk “who is well-known for exuberant promises” according to CNBC, predicted the company will be able to make a $25,000 full self-driving car within three years. Part of this dramatically reduced cost (basic Teslas currently cost over $10k more and that’s in the US without Brexit tariffs) is predicated on new battery technology which will be mass produced, be smaller in weight and boost one-charge up to 500 miles.

“About 3 years from now, we’re confident we can make a very compelling $25,000 electric vehicle that’s also fully autonomous,” he claimed.

Autonmous vehicles are the logical direction of travel. Musk has long envisaged a Jetsons’ style future in which the car is merely a screen-wrapped mobile entertainment pod with the logistics of getting from A to B taken care of by AI.

In his recent comic-sci-fi novel Buzz Kill, author David Sosnowski has his teenage hero called George Jedson hack into the Tesla-style supercar of a Zuckerberg-like CEO of a social media giant (‘Quire’) and steal it by driving it all over San Franscisco from the remote comfort of his bedroom.

In the book, Jedson does this to catch the attention of, and ultimately a job with, Quire but more scenarios might paint a more malign intent. Terrorists taking over the traffic grid and turning every car into missiles, for example.

It’s a lazy idea though. Musk is co-chair of OpenAI which has the stated goal of promoting and developing friendly AI in a way that benefits humanity. He’s well aware of the existential threat of rogue AI – aka Cyberdyne Systems - and is determined to do something about it.

Despite seeing $50 billion wiped off Tesla shares this week because of analysts skeptical about Musk’s three year electric car target, would you actually bet against Musk succeeding?

What’s next for the BBC’s technology strategy?

IBC

The absence of a high-placed CTO is an opportunity to divorce the BBC’s tech approach from being wedded to iPlayer, analysts say. 

https://www.ibc.org/trends/whats-next-for-the-bbcs-technology-strategy/6816.article

Unlike many large media organisations, the BBC currently has no-one responsible for technology on its board or executive committee. The resignation of chief technology officer Matthew Postgate last month poses questions about the centrality of technology within the Corporation.  

While programming lies at the heart of the BBC, technology is key to its production and distribution. This year it will spend around £175 million on technology and a further £200 million on distribution. 

“The BBC urgently needs to see its technology strategy as central to the future of the institution,” says William Cooper, founder and chief executive at consultancy Informitv and former BBC head of New Media Operations.  

“In many respects, the BBC is falling behind the technical quality that can be delivered by some of its competitors. It is not currently clear how the BBC plans to address this.” 

The broadcaster has promoted Charlotte Moore to the role of chief content officer and has an interim CTO, Peter O’Kane, reporting to interim chief operating officer Glyn Isherwood but, in its Annual Plan, the BBC has surprisingly little to say about technology.  

“I believe it’s imperative to have a CTO on the board,” says Nigel Walley, managing director at media researcher Decipher.

“It needs a CTO that can balance the needs of broadcast and on-demand and that person should not have control of a consumer facing service or brand.” 

Tony Hall’s departure as director general has left a series of unfinished problems and a significant number of landmines for new DG Tim Davie to defuse. Many of these are cultural and political but there’s a technology issue too which analysts deem rooted in a blind faith in iPlayer. 

“Whenever the subject of digital strategy is raised everyone points to iPlayer, as though its mere existence showed that the BBC had solved its digital future,” Walley says.  

“Decipher has long argued that the iPlayer team was too powerful and were distorting the way the BBC’s tech innovations were introduced to market. Every consumer facing tech innovation had to be plastered with the iPlayer logo, even if there was no iPlayer tech involved, such as BBC content in Sky OnDemand.”

Cooper agrees, saying that the Corporation has come to believe that iPlayer is a product that can compete with the likes of Netflix, rather than simply a means of delivering its programming on demand, which can be delivered by many competing platforms.  

“Yet the technology requirements extend far beyond the BBC iPlayer and underpin every aspect of its operation. The BBC still faces key decisions on whether to invest in traditional broadcasting, which is likely to remain important to viewers and listeners for the foreseeable future.” 

Responding to questions from IBC365, the BBC reiterated that iPlayer is core to the its future.  

“Everyone in the organisation will have a part to play to continue transforming the service,” it stated. “The technology behind this is key – but so is the content, user-experience and way we market iPlayer to viewers.” 

The primacy of broadcast 
Fifteen years after its launch, and iPlayer delivers just 12% of all BBC television viewing. The vast majority of viewers are watching traditional transmissions. 

“The TV industry seems to have spent 10 years denigrating the one major function which allows it to compete against on-demand apps – its broadcast function,” says Walley in a blog.

“Rather than being an Achilles heel, the able to broadcast simultaneously to millions of people at a fixed cost, is a remarkable capability that many of the Silicon Valley giants would love to be able to emulate. It is still the dominant distribution function for BBC content (by hours consumed) but has become the unfashionable relation compared to ‘digital’.” 

This is not to say that the Corporation didn’t need to reinvent broadcast’s role in the face of an on-demand onslaught. However, Walley and Cooper say that the challenge appears to have been ducked by focussing efforts and profile onto its on-demand offering. 

“The BBC has outsourced much of its technology and distribution to third-party service providers, yet has continued to invest in developing iPlayer and more recently BBC Sounds as the key to its future technology and distribution strategy,” says Cooper. “However, other global players with deep pockets are more than capable of competing in this digital domain, and the online technology is becoming commoditised.” 

Platform conundrum
The vast majority of BBC television content is consumed via TV platforms where distribution strategy “has to be informed by ‘tech’ but not ruled by it,” according to Walley. 

Some of these (Freeview, Freesat and Youview) are platforms that the BBC has a share of ownership. Walley argues that these have been under the control of the iPlayer team for too long and decisions have been made that favour iPlayer over the platform’s own interests.  

“The BBC (with help from ITV) have left Freeview and Freesat ill equipped to fight the impending battle with AmazonFire OS and Android TV,” he contends. “The commercial platforms need a more nuanced approach than we have seen.” 

The opportunity to have merged the three into a single, powerful and competitive free-to-air TV platform has probably been missed, he laments. “For the last decade the three UK based TV platforms have been forced to compete with their hands tied behind their back. But there is still time to allow them to spread their offerings.” 

Rather than “meekly handing Freeview customers to Amazon and Google” and to prevent a “Kodak level misjudgement” resulting in no UK-managed TV platforms in play by the end of the decade, the trio of platforms need to work together.  

“[They need to] build a joint free-to-air TV log-in, with a federated log-in system to allow a Freeview or Freesat user to log into the individual apps on each of the platforms via one, unified identity,” Walley prescribes. “That identity could be the basis for a wider TV account (perhaps including BritBox) that should include addressable advertising capability.” 

Walley adds that the BBC’s broadcast channels need to drive innovation around the content and promotion required to capture audience share in a world of growing on-demand. “They need strong independent leaders for each channel with the authority to dictate brand and tech strategy.  Charlotte Moore’s move is perhaps an indication that Tim Davie gets this need.” 

The BBC Executive and tech 
In recent years, the post of CTO has attracted some controversy. Postgate’s predecessor, John Linwood, won an unfair dismissal claim after his contract was terminated following the failure of the Digital Media Initiative, the development of which it brought in-house. This integrated digital production and archiving system was scrapped at a cost of nearly £100 million. The National Audit Office was scathing in its report, concluding that “The level of assurance and scrutiny that the BBC executive applied to the DMI was insufficient for a high-value and strategically important programme that involved significant risks.”  

Since then, Postgate rose rapidly from being a member of the management team for BBC iPlayer, to head of R&D, becoming CTO in 2014. “His degree in politics served him well in navigating the organisation,” assesses Cooper. “His lack of an engineering background did not appear to impede his progress.” 

Postgate saw the future of the BBC as online and digital first. “I think the whole industry is moving away from thinking of video and audio as hermetically sealed and toward an idea where we are no longer broadcasters but datacasters,” he said in a 2015 Streaming Media interview.

Nonetheless, there is still a perceived lack of tech understanding among BBC executives. “Not only general tech understanding,” says Walley, “but even understanding of stuff that should be core to their business.  A very recent channel head had to have Freeview explained to them when they took the top job,” he says. 

Two decades ago, Cooper says, it seemed that technology innovation was at least appreciated as strategically important at the BBC, even if it was properly understood by relatively few senior executives. 
 
“Without an informed and influential voice responsible for technology leadership and governance at the top table of the BBC, the institution risks being outmanoeuvred by competitors, like Sky and Netflix, that see technology as core to their business,” he warns. “So far it has offered a few online trials in UHD but has no announced plan to upgrade its transmission standards.” 

In defence of Davie 
The Charter under which the BBC operates provides an obligation to “promote technological innovation, and maintain a leading role in research and development, that supports the effective fulfilment of its Mission and the promotion of the Public Purposes.” Significantly, it says the BBC must “focus on technical innovation” to support the delivery of its services, “seek to work in partnership with other organisations” and “share, as far as is reasonable, its research and development knowledge and technologies.” 

“There is no doubt the BBC can only deliver on its mission through the continued development and exploitation of new technology,” says Richard Lindsay-Davies, CEO, DTG, which works with the UK’s broadcasters to maintain standards across digital TV.  

“This is demonstrated by an impressive depth and breadth of technical expertise capability distributed across the entire organisation, and its commitment to R&D.” 

Given the 20+ list of published BBC engineering management salaries, Lindsay-Davies urges us not to read anything into the streamlined Executive Committee.  

“The reporting line of this role has changed quite frequently over the years from the Controller of Engineering being No.3 in command in the ‘30s, through the CTO reporting to the COO/DGG for many years, and more recently being part of a larger Executive Committee. Irrespective of who is on the Executive Committee I am sure Tim will want to be in the room with the right experts as mission-critical technology is discussed, whether it be radio waves, AI or super-computers creating and curating personalised content instances.” 

Davie is a former chair and director of Freesat where he worked alongside Lindsay-Davies. “There is no question that innovation is high on Tim’s agenda,” he says. 

Indeed, Davie recognised this in his first speech as DG, saying that “…we will be in a hybrid world for decades to come…[and] We will need to be cutting edge in our use of technology to join up the BBC, improving search, recommendations and access. And we must use the data we hold to create a closer relationship with those we serve.” 

Collaboration is key 
The BBC is also committed to a new technology hub in Newcastle. The hub, part of a move to relocate BBC functions outside the capital, will develop technology that underpins iPlayer and BBC Sounds. 

Other recent examples of the BBC’s technologically-driven contribution to the UK digital economy listed by the DTG include: 

Embracing IP technologies within studio complexes such as Cardiff; sustainability in every area from operations to studios and distribution; and accessibility – an area with great scope for development as new technologies emerge such as object-based assets.  

“In my opinion, the BBC contribution to open international technical standards, and therefore freedom of speech, is worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize,” asserts Lindsay-Davies. 

What next? 
The DTG has a number of technologies where it thinks the BBC needs to be playing. From accessible, traditional viewing, “to AI-curated, highly personalised experiences that seamlessly reflect the individual, television connects people,” the DTG remains confident that the BBC and the UK technology industry is able to step up and deliver.  

“Collaboration is key,” stresses Lindsay-Davies. “It will be critical for other players in the sector to keep pace, challenge and contribute to the next phase of digital television innovation.” 

Others think BBC R&D could share the same fate as IRT, the joint technology research institute of the public broadcasters of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It is being shut down in part explained by shareholder ZDF because there is less need for broadcast-specific knowledge, as provided by IRT. 

“In terms of blue-sky R&D tech, I am not sure we want the BBC doing that stuff anymore,” says Walley. “The idea of BBC boffins in brown coats working on AI and virtual reality is a nonsense.  It’s a throwback to the patrician age of Reith.” 

Walley also urges BBC3 to be brought back into the broadcast line up – but as a fundamentally innovative, fully IP channel.   

“To remove it entirely from the broadcast line up was an act of cultural vandalism that is still shocking,” he says.  “A fully interactive IP BBC3 could be put at the centre of a project to define the role of a broadcast channel in a digital world. It should have its own separate and distinct presence in the on-demand world, tied to its core linear IP output but highly experimental in its approach to content and distribution. It could be the first brand to link TV and radio output in an online world.”  

It is formally the responsibility of the Board to ensure that the BBC fulfils its functions. The Board includes the DG or chief executive officer, three other executives and a number of non-executive members. It is for the Board to appoint members to ensure that they collectively have the range of skills and experience to fulfil its functions. 
 
“In practice, the Board delegates responsibilities to its Executive Committee,” Cooper says. “Given the strategic importance of technology, one might expect to see its representation at at least the Executive Committee.” 
 
Davie, says Cooper, would be well advised to appoint a CTO that can embrace both broadcast and online technologies as well as the general information and communications technologies of the corporation. 

The BBC emphasised to IBC365 that technology will be a core part of the new Chief Operating Officer’s role.   

“We’ll use tech, as well as the data we know about our audiences - to help maximise how much value we can give people online,” it stated.  

“This will mean more joined-up products and services that are simple to navigate between – and content and programmes easier to find.  Design and Engineering (of which R&D is part) will be a key part of this division to help us achieve this. Driving the growth and development of BBC iPlayer, BBC Sounds and BBC News online are the key digital prioritise for the BBC – so our teams will be fully focused on this.” 

The Atlantic Production Center Relies on Sohonet Exchange for Networking Services During COVID and Beyond

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With over 400,000 square feet of rentable space, The Atlantic Production Center (APC) in Manhattan is the newest and arguably fittest filmmaking facility on the block. 

https://www.sohonet.com/2020/09/17/the-atlantic-production-center/

 A joint partnership between SL Green, one of New York City’s largest office landlords, and seasoned production house Atlantic Pictures, The APC is a flexible office solution spanning ten floors at 625 Madison Avenue dedicated to servicing the needs of television, film, and media-related productions of any size. 

Opened in January 2020, forced by COVID-19 to shutter three months later, and re-opened in July, The APC has already hosted an incredible range of clients including HBO Max, BET, Netflix, FOX and Samsung, just to name a few.  

“We’ve been busy from day one and now that we’re able to be up and running again the phones haven’t stopped ringing,” reports Amanda Weisenthal, VP of Operations. “We’re not just in a prime location – we know exactly what productions need.” 

The APC offers a unique opportunity for productions to maintain their entire back office in one place including ideal spaces for production, set dressing and props, wardrobe, and executive suites. 

“Key facilities include first class communications and connectivity which is why we brought in Sohonet Exchange even ahead of our soft launch,” Weisenthal explains. “We understand that anyone looking for production space requires a turnkey communications solution and a fast service. They don’t need to be dealing with red tape. Sohonet Exchange has a pedigree of working on the highest-profile shows so they were our first choice as sole communications provider.” 

Sohonet Exchange supplies and manages Internet, networking, wireless and voice solutions on behalf of clients at The APC. 

“Any tenant who comes in to The APC needs extensive comms and Sohonet Exchange has been super responsive. They reach out to the tenant to arrange their exact needs and are really proactive in setting up a tailored phone and WiFi system whether that’s for one day, a week or over months of the tenancy. If there’s any issue, they come right in and take care of it. They understand the pace of the production which many providers simply do not.” 

Weisenthal joined The APC to guide its launch (alongside Operations Manager Lance Johnson) after extensive experience as location scout for Paramount, Showtime and Netflix. “We’re open 24/7 which is very rare for New York,” she says. “I know from my time in locations that finding an office that’s going to allow you to film at 9 am is a pretty big deal.” 

The sheer size of its professionally managed space has led to the surge in enquiries as lockdown is eased. For example, when anyone enters the building, they are temperature tested for the virus using thermo-imaging, a technique which means people don’t have to be stopped or touched. 

“Our space is phenomenal for what’s going on,” Weisenthal says. “If you’re looking for a production space with 50 or 100 offices, we will extend you extra room for social distancing. If you want everybody to have their own office to accommodate safe zones for executives and crew, we will make it happen. If you need just one floor, we will give you multiple floors. We are putting that into our framework as standard and at reduced rates.

“Sohonet Exchange is right there with us. There’s no messing around. Whatever your needs, you get it and you get it quickly and professionally.” 

From conversations with clients including the Studio majors Weisenthal says they are very clear about what needs to happen to go forward in New York City.  

“Everyone is taking preparation for getting back to work very seriously and because of that I think the outlook is positive. I believe that by the end of the year major feature films will be being shot in the city again. 

“We want you in our space. We will do it in a safe manner and we won’t cut corners.” 

Moving Picture, Audio, and Data Coding by Artificial Intelligence: "A New Way to Make Money"

StreamingMedia

The video compression industry is ready to reinvent itself, and new standards-setting body Moving Picture, Audio and Data Coding by Artificial Intelligence (MPAI) is the mechanism to drive it, according to Thierry Fautier, President-Chair of the Ultra HD Forum and an influential voice in the shifting sands of codec development.

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/News/Online-Video-News/Moving-Picture-Audio-and-Data-Coding-by-Artificial-Intelligence-A-New-Way-to-Make-Money-142899.aspx

Speaking on an IABM-hosted Future Trends webinar about Imaging & Immersive, Fautier (who is also VP Video Strategy for Harmonic) was joined by MPAI founder and Leonardo Chiariglione, who launched the MPEG standards committee for ISO/IEC in 1988 and resigned two months ago.

"The problem confronting our industry is the fragmentation of license pools," underlined Fautier.  "This is blocking the evolution of technology."

Fautier elaborated on the current impasse at MPEG. The media coding industry is trying to move from a position of "pulling their hair out," he said, about how to implement codecs like HEVC and potentially VVC commercially.

Rival AOM, meanwhile, is "only selecting the tools that will be patent-free. [This means that] at the end of the day nobody is making money in a process which is very friendly to big companies like Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Google."

The third approach is that of MPAI. The non-profit organisation plans to develop new technical specifications of data coding, using AI to bridge the gap between those tech specs and their practical use through Intellectual Property Rights Guidelines, such as Framework Licences.

"Here is an opportunity for people to make money," Fautier said. "There will be more buy-in from license sources and licensees. You need to be upfront with those who use the technology. I believe MPAI's approach is the right one. It's a very exciting time where the video industry is ready to reinvent itself."

Whereas Fautier insists the industry is ready to pay certain fees for using technology provided it has insurance for the amount they pay, Chiariglione said MPAI was open-minded to open source.

"In my long MPEG days, I fought hard to convince a significant number of members to think that MPEG shouldn't just be something that has only one business model. We shouldn't be religious about it."

The IABM's CTO Stan Moote shared research from its latest industry report identifying COVID-related technologies including virtualization, cloud and remote production as the tech enablers at the top of media industry lists. Imaging and immersive applications like 8K HDR, VR, and MR were a little further down but still high on people's agendas.

"Immersive applications are pointless without practical compression techniques," Moot said. "What is at stake in the battle for video compression is what makes sense from a technical and business perspective."

Fragmentation is only getting more pronounced. This week the Chinese consortia behind AVS2 is on verge of releasing AVS3 targeting 8K content.

Fautier called AVS3 an alternative in case people are not satisfied with 'western' technology, "though we don't know if it will be a success outside China."

Meanwhile, HEVC patent holder InterDigital has announced that it has developed software to simplify and accelerate AI-based video compression research. CompressAI allows researchers to quickly design, train, test, and evaluate AI-based codecs. It said the open source platform (publicly available on Github) is already being used to support the development of next generation image and video codecs.

The demand for more immersive content seems to have accelerated under COVID-19.

"While 5.1 was the standard we're seeing that expand," said Greg Chin of Avid on the IABM panel. "There's no request for stereo-only mixes. There is a large and primary immersive component to shows now."

The lion's share on the audio side is taken by Dolby Atmos, but Chin said there was interest in every single areas of immersive sound, including binaural and ambisonic techniques.

Raul Aldrey, chief business officer of MediaKind, said that opportunities for implementing immersive applications were growing into 2020, and while there has been an enforced dip in the first half of the year, these plans haven't gone away.

"We're seeing these things come back to the forefront of discussion," he said.

A current example is cycling's premier event Tour de France. In cooperation with cycling app Zwift fans can join the race on their own bikes at home and compete head to head with the pros.

"There's a pressing need for live events to deliver an experience to fans at home in the absence of fans at the stadia," Aldrey said, predicting that there will be more and more of these immersive experiences crossing over into fan engagement.

Betting is also likely to merge into the mainstream of the live sports experience, enabled by real-time interaction and the growing number of states and countries where sports betting on TV is legal.

Peter Kirkup, group technical solutions manager at AR/MR solutions developer disguise, said the pandemic has demonstrated that audiences are hungry for the immersion they would experience in a live context.

"I think the new normal we will all go into will benefit from the outcome of all of this innovation," he said. "There will be new capabilities and new technologies on top of new normal which will enable us to create new more amazing things. We've already seen extended reality use cases for viewers watching a live stream of an event at home. This will accelerate even after, partly because audience expectations are now set much higher."

Aldrey also predicted that 8K will be driven by the postponed Tokyo Games. "There aren't many devices [capable of receiving 8K] in the market, but the Olympics will be used to drive 8K and other immersive experiences into the mainstream. I would say we'll see a cascade of these experiences and events beginning next year."