India: Poised for growth

AV Magazine

India is on a rapid growth curve but the complexity of the market, vast size and diversity present unique challenges that companies need to navigate effectively.

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As the third largest pro AV market in APAC according to AVIXA, India is also the fastest-expanding economy in the region, with a projected GDP growth of seven per cent.

“Pro AV in India is currently witnessing a transformation and is growing rapidly,” says Gagan Verma, vice-president, India & SAARC for Crestron. “The influx of multinationals and local startups, coupled with a government led digitisation drive and rising technology adoption, is leading growth.”

Pratik Whadhwa, CEO, Modern Stage Services of New Delhi judges the climate “dynamic and witnessing significant growth” while noting challenges ahead from competition and the need for skilled professionals.

Reporting an increase in enquiries, Hans Chia at Clear-Com describes the market as “bullish” and predicts plenty more concerts, events and corporate installs.

India is a key region for Peerless-AV’s business strategy, “presenting significant opportunities,” says Justin Joy, the company’s senior sales manager. “Currently, demand for UC/VC products is booming as a result of large multinationals setting up shop in India. We’ve also seen a good level of interest from government organisations for quality AV products in meeting rooms and auditoria.”

Sujoy Bhattacharjee, sales director, Lightware Visual Engineering calls India’s growth “resilient” and not only in AV but across the board from IT and automotive to renewable energy. He adds, “Industries like medical and education are looking towards more futuristic, scalable solutions to help them with remote collaboration tools and AV over IP infrastructure.”

High growth territory
Promethean expects the country to be a high growth territory to 2025 and beyond. “There’s been a positive cultural shift when it comes to AV in India,” observes Howard Shaw, the firm’s Middle East and Asia chief. “Across all industries attitudes have changed, with technology in education now being a top priority. This has been a catalyst for the digital transformation we are seeing throughout the country, as businesses recognise the value technology plays in improving learning and productivity.”

Continues Shaw: “There’s also a reputational element that’s driving adoption in some instances. Having access to the latest AV solutions is a mark of success, creating powerful first impressions and encouraging collaboration between organisations.”

Dataton’s Trond Solvold dubs the climate “vibrant” with lots of opportunities, plenty of interest and strong competition. “India is a stable market,” he adds, “with significant purchasing power and a strong willingness to invest by both businesses and authorities.

“There’s a very refreshing attitude to AV tech in India with users quick to adapt to new technologies and a new-found appreciation of factory-built systems,” finds Solvold. “The industry also seems to be undergoing a paradigm shift in technologies from a projection-orientated approach in favour of other types of display devices. That has an impact on the system infrastructure as fewer servers may be required in a rig, for example.”

Digital India
Digital India is one of the key campaigns of the Indian government. Everything, it seems, is going digital. “Schools, colleges, malls, hospitals, airports, railway stations, museums are getting digitalised,” says Whadhwa.

The endeavour is being driven by one of the largest pools of young populations in the world. “The new generation is very tech savvy and tech friendly,” he says. “The business culture of AV communications/applications here is undergoing significant transformation.

“There’s a greater acceptance and adoption of AV technology across industries, driven by changing work dynamics, government initiatives, and a focus on localised content. This evolving landscape presents ample opportunities for businesses and entrepreneurs to leverage AV technology and contribute to the growth of the sector in India.”

Stemming from education
The Ministry of Human Resource Development launched ‘Project Connect’ in 2019 to provide high-quality AV systems in all government schools nationwide. The project connected over 8,000 schools with tools such as digital whiteboards, large format screens, sound systems, document cameras, and projectors.

In addition, it enabled students and teachers to access digital learning platforms such as the Bhimtal portal and Khan academy for e-learning. Improving the audio visual quality of classrooms in India is expected to have a positive impact on student engagement and performance, according to Verma.

This digital initiative continues to “drive a high volume and a steady stream of AV opportunities,” says Shaw. “In many global markets, technology use has typically evolved from interactive whiteboards and projectors to more modern interactive panels. In contrast, India is rapidly moving from very little classroom technology to widespread adoption of large format digital displays in general, and interactive panels more specifically.”

Strong fundamentals
While the government sector remains highly active, the private sector faces restrictions on expansion plans, leading to a more subdued demand for pro AV, according to Rishubh Nayar, sales director, Enterprise, for Christie. But, despite this, companies with ‘strong fundamentals’ have managed to expand, indicating a positive outlook for the overall pro AV market in India.

Visitor attractions
While India may not have Disney-style theme parks, the government has made substantial investments in visitor attractions “that aim not only to provide entertainment for the masses but also to educate them about our rich culture and heritage,” notes Nayar.

Museums have emerged as a particularly significant new area for AV in the last few years. Genelec’s market manager Arun Kumar says, “these now regularly feature interactivity and immersion, including multi-channel sound systems. These more complex soundscapes are driving demand for high quality loudspeakers and networked IP. This has proved particularly popular for museums, since they provide exceptional audio with the flexibility to allow quick re-configuration whenever an exhibit needs to change.”

The Command-and-Control segment has long been significant in India due to regular spending on defence and public security. Notable installs for Christie LED video wall solutions include the Airports Authority of India in New Delhi, where it provided Christie Core Series II LED video walls, and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu.

“Post-Covid, live events have experienced a significant resurgence, with our rental and staging partners making substantial investments as concerts and live performances make a strong comeback fuelled by high demand,” says Nayar.

“On the other hand, the hospitality sector, which was severely affected during the pandemic, is still in the process of recovery. Therefore, its spending on AV is more cautious and measured.”

Light shows everywhere
As Whadhwa points out: “Every state is a hotspot of AV activity in India. There are lots of new musuems, sound and light shows, smart city projects, airports, and a revamping of railway stations. Projects are happening across the country.”

Cosmopolitan cities Hyderabad and Bengaluru (Bangalore) are already hot spots of AV activity. “Hyderabad has emerged as a major hub for the pharmaceutical industry and technology start-ups, while Bengaluru is recognised as the Silicon Valley of India, boasting a significant presence of IT and multinational companies,” says Nayar. “These cities are expected to witness AV activities that cater to corporate organisations, such as video conferencing and digital signage.”

Nayer also highlights Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh, “with their rich cultural heritage and history,” as likely to see more experiential installations such as museums and son et lumière.

Mumbai is India’s commercial and entertainment hub and home to the country’s film and TV industry. AV activities in Mumbai include advanced AV systems for live events, large and small-scale audio and visual installations, digital signage solutions, and virtual reality applications.

“We’ve seen an increase in international acts coming to Mumbai with the opening of India’s largest exhibition and convention centre, Jio World,” says Chia. Clear-Com recently completed a project working with For-A India and system integrator, Sigma AVIT to install Clear-Com digital matrix, partylines and wireless kit.

Delhi is one of India’s fastest-growing cities and home to numerous AV installs, presentations for corporate meetings and events, and multimedia technologies.

Chennai is India’s fourth-largest, one of its most industrialised cities, and now an influential hub of many national and international events.

“The city of Pune has also seen good growth in the past 2-3 years,” says Peerless-AV’s Joy. “The smart city hubs – Hyderabad and Gujarat – are also seeing a lot of activity.”

 

Surge in projects
India’s G20 presidency culminates in September and it’s been a year of high-profile events, such as the Sherpa meet in Udaipur and G20 Development Working Group Meeting in Mumbai, both featuring large-scale façade mapping using WATCHOUT.

“Every state in the country is hosting G20 events, showcasing a sound and light show with cultural performances for the evening dinners,” says Whadhwa. “New venues are developed for holding conferences with the state-of-the-art equipment.”

General elections, scheduled for April and May 2024 to elect members of the 18th Lok Sabha, are projected to catalyse a surge in infrastructure projects nationwide. “These projects are likely to have a significant impact on various sectors, including tourism, museums, public attractions, son et lumière, and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions),” notes Nayar. “The optimistic sentiment surrounding these applications is expected to create a favourable environment for further expansion. Ultimately, this growth will contribute to enhancing India’s overall visitor experience and bolstering its economic prospects.”

The Navi Mumbai International Airport, scheduled for completion next year, will be the country’s largest and its first smart airport. In addition, India is developing world-class rapid transit systems like the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor that will link 24 of India’s most populous cities. Kolkata East West Metro, due by 2025, is the first metro railway to traverse two cities in India.

“In the sports sector, the Indian Olympic Association has recently showed keen interest in hosting the 2026 and 2032 Summer Games in New Delhi and Mumbai respectively,” says Verma. “As a result, a massive renovation of the existing sports infrastructure in India is also being undertaken. International fixtures like the Indian Premier League, U-17 FIFA World Cup, and local sporting tournaments will further draw pro AV businesses into the Indian market.”

October brings InfoComm to India for a second year and other regional events such as AV-ICN, part of Palm Expo India, should help increase focus on pro AV.

 

Cutting the red tape
India comprises at least four distinct regions within its borders. Given its vast geographical terrain and diverse population, AV companies must adopt varied approaches to connect with people across these regions, as each one possesses its unique culture and characteristics.

“To successfully engage with the Indian market, it is crucial to understand and adapt to the cultural norms and local environment of each region,” says Nayar. “A one-size-fits-all approach does not work. Building strong relationships is therefore crucial for companies aiming to achieve success in this vast and diverse market and establish meaningful connections with their target audience.”

Local partners
Given its geography and revenue potential, Shaw’s advice for any AV companies looking to engage with the market is to implement robust procedures from the start. “This includes onboarding the right local partners who share your values. This is exactly what we did with Almoe, our regional distributor. We’ve worked closely with them to establish processes that enable us to provide solutions backed by proven support and reliable logistics.”

Another challenge is navigating the complex and diverse regulatory framework. Every state has its own laws and customs which affect the way companies must conduct business. This includes registering businesses and complying with applicable labour, labour relations, tax, customs, and environmental laws. Additionally, there are laws and regulations that will be applicable to any type of commercial activity or services provided.

For example, Verma informs, there are restrictions on media content and advertising, labour laws, public safety measures, local taxes, and legal requirements related to insurance.

“Businesses should also be aware of India’s complex data protection structure, which is further complicated by broadening privacy laws,” he says. “My advice? Do due diligence and research the legal and regulatory framework. It’s important to have a partner who is adept at navigating the different jurisdictions’ regulations to ensure compliance, since failure to do so could lead to unfavourable consequences. Additionally, businesses must understand the local culture and values to ensure services provided are appropriate and do not violate local laws.”

Clear-Com Chia suggests that having representation in most of the major states is important. “Working with the right partner will be the eyes and ears for the AV companies in this vast region.”

One piece of advice from Whadhwa is to prioritise localisation. “Understand the local culture, languages, and consumer behaviours to tailor your AV solutions accordingly. Invest in regional content, language support, and user experiences that resonate with the Indian audience. Consider partnerships with local companies or hiring local talent to gain insights into the market and build strong relationships.”

AV companies looking at India need to be aware that this is a price sensitive market.

“Good value is always the primary sales pitch – even cars are sold on their mileage numbers!” says Kumar. “Building relationships with the sales channel is the only way to cover such a large region, and a high quality product service setup is also required to build confidence and credibility.”

 

Domenick Satterberg: A Guide to Cinematic Sports Production

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It seems remarkable, looking back, that NFL games were once recorded on 16mm film. Even more remarkable that every match since 1962 has been filmed by a specialist cinematography camera crew by NFL Films, the production unit of the league. The techniques they pioneered have recently been co-opted into the live broadcast and have gone mainstream with the rise of the behind-the-scenes sports documentary.

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Until 2013, NFL Films was still shooting 16mm footage of every NFL game for production of cinema-style game highlights that still form a key part of the league’s marketing.

One of NFL Films’ founders, Ernie Ernst, explains in an archive clip: “When we started NFL films, there was something that I thought was missing in all sports cinematography.

“I wanted to get the storytelling shots of the way that the sun came through the stadium, the cleat marks in the mud, the bloody hands of a player. We had other cameramen who are great action photographers. But to me, I wanted to get those little details that, added to the action, would flesh out the story.”

In 2012-13, the NFL Films crew — usually just a two-camera operation per game — “were the oddballs with light meters on the sidelines shooting film. I want to say the NFL was spending $50,000 a week just on film.” That included processing the footage in a lab before digitizing for distribution.

Since that season, digital cine cameras have been used, and the workhorse then and now, for Satterberg at least, is the ARRI Amira. 

 

“The Amira is built for documentary shooting,” explains Satterberg. “It’s shoulder mounted and has the same sensor as an Arri Alexa. We’re still shooting the Amira because everything we shoot is still 1080p. No need for 4K. We shoot 8 terabytes every Sunday with footage transferred via fiber from every NFL stadium back to New Jersey for postproduction.”

Teams shoot at multiple frame rates across the game, including 24 but also 30 frames, 48 frames, 60 frames up to 120. The unit has eight in-house staff cinematographers and around 60 freelance shooters across the country.

Getting the Shots

Of course, it is extremely hard to follow football, a point that Satterberg repeatedly makes. Only with experience and experimentation can you really get the shots you need. Bearing in mind that there are just a couple of cinematographers working the game. Shot selection is essential, as are the lenses required to capture those cinematic close ups and slow motion shots from the touch line. 

“The Amira truly is the best sports camera because of its eyepiece. I give credit to anybody who could pull focus on a football, or any kind of flying object, on a monitor or an LCD screen.”

According to Satterberg, the best lens pairing with the Amira for shooting a Super Bowl is the Fujinon 25-300mm cinema lens. He also uses an adapter that expands the image to Super 35. “It’s a great adapter if not ideal, but it’s what we use at every NFL game.”

The long zoom range allows him to shoot medium-wide to long- shots without changing lenses. It is, nonetheless, a heavy set up, which Satterberg operates with no focus puller. However, he has customized a focusing setup that helps him to achieve perfect focus.

“The pure size and weight of this lens has its drawbacks, but I can easily overlook those flaws because of the sharpness and quality this lens produces.”

Nevertheless, it’s very difficult shooting ENG-style with it, and hence, this setup can be mainly utilized for static shooting, but you have to know what you’re doing. 

“With the ENG zoom, [I just use] minimal taps on the zoom on the focus. To get you where you need to be, so you can see that ball flying through the air. It’s so minimal. It’s muscle memory at this point. I’ve got a pistol grip underneath the zoom rocker. So, I’ve really dialed in that Amira, now that I own it, to just fit perfectly on my shoulder. It’s all about balance.”

Satterberg won’t be changing up to shooting full frame anytime soon. “I know the Alexa LF is a great camera for the motion picture industry, but we need lenses that get out very, very far. And the lenses that fill those full frame sensors need to be extremely large,” making them too heavy and unwieldy for shoulder mounted work over 90+ game minutes]

Capturing the Details (and the Emotion)

We also hear from Hannah Epstein, who works with NFL Films shooting a variety of work on shows, games, events, and specials. Her style is to capture the game with a lot of attention to non-game highlights.

“It’s less specific plays or moments,” Epstein says. “I like to focus on really tight elements and just get facial expressions or hands or sweat; the emotion after the play, or before the play, eyeballs looking over the line of scrimmage. I like to play with negative space and use the crowd in my shots. I just love capturing the details of the game that puts you inside the game in a different way than anyone’s able to see on regular broadcast or from the stands.”

Some of Satterberg and Epstein’s work may feature in forthcoming Netflix eight-episode docuseries Quarterback. It follows three of the biggest quarterbacks in the game throughout the 2022 season, giving an unprecedented look at what it takes for the Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, the Minnesota Vikings’ Kirk Cousins and the Atlanta Falcons’ Marcus Mariota to succeed when all eyes are on them. 

Satterberg says they shot with Amiras in HD and speculates that Netflix has upscaled the footage to 4K for its platform.

Video game developers EA Sports also hired an NFL DP to teach them about cinematography when making Madden NFL, the hit American football video game series.

Satterberg explains they wanted to learn about shallow depth of field and how to control cameras shots racking between focus and out of focus. 

“They literally handpicked an NFL film cinematographer and put them on staff and said, ‘We want it to look pretty.’ And so that then evolved to Fox, CBS and NBC going with their full frame shallow depth of field cameras on the field of play as part of the live broadcast. They do us a lot of autofocus, because…it’s there, use it. They’re handing it to guys who are traditional shoulder-mounted shooters.  

“For the first couple years, it was kind of clunky. But I think they’re really getting the hang of it now, and they’re replacing full Steadicam rigs with Gimbals and full frame mirrorless cameras. It’s pretty amazing.”

AI: How Media Pros Are Moving from Panic to Practicalit

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Pragmatism has replaced fear as the sentiment most likely to be directed at generative AI by creative media companies and tech developers.

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“If you’re not using AI it’s sort of like saying you’re not going to have a mobile strategy,” says Jeremy Toeman, Founder, AugX Labs. “AI was commoditized in less and under a year and now it’s just as much a building block for doing things than anything else.”

He was speaking on the video panel “Beyond ChatGPT: How AI Is Transforming Streaming Workflows and Businesses,” moderated by Ben Ratner, director of news technology at Boston 25 News.

Like Toeman, Steve Vonder Haar, senior analyst for Intelligent Video & Enterprise at IntelliVid Research, is taking a long-term view:

“In a decade we will not be using the term artificial intelligence at all because it’s not really descriptive of the value that these capabilities are delivering to the marketplace, just as was the case in the early 1990s when ‘information superhighway’ was in fashion. As we move forward, the term AI is going to fade away.”

All these experts agree that AI helps by speeding up processes, but that if users really want to make creative content with value then AI only gets you part of the way. It may automate 80% of the previously manual process, but human skill, knowledge and taste making is crucial for finesse and polish.

As Mobeon CEO Mark Alamares puts it, AI enables teams and individuals to amplify their capabilities to make a much more efficient production process overall. “AI will enhance what we’re doing both on a creative and technical level, in the broad sense,” he says.

Vonder Haar likens generative AI to “getting people past that blank sheet of paper.”

Toeman says his colleagues use ChatGPT to evolve their own strategies and question their own thinking, resulting in higher-caliber of outcomes than they would otherwise achieve.

The downsides of reliance on generative AI include stifling independent creative thinking and learning.

 

“I still remember when I used to know phone numbers. And then, thanks to Google, we don’t know facts. And now, thanks to GPT, we might not know anything,” says Toeman. “That’s obviously hyper cynical, but there’s somewhat of a concern.”

Alamares reports a lot of hesitancy in the creative industries, because of ethical concerns, but most of the panelists are pessimistic that anything can be done to concretely vet every copyright infringement or deepfake.

“For me, it’s a garbage in-garbage out,” says Vonder Haar. “If you’re going to take information from the web, then God bless you, because you’re not going to have a trusted source of information from which to draw.

“The real future for AI in the business sense is going to be in the development of limited datasets that are used to inform decision making within a specific corporate network or a specific realm of individuals.”

There is some discussion about whether regulatory bodies like MPEG could devise a scheme to watermark video directly into video codecs as a way of tracking and verifying content. Vonder Haar suggests that Vizrt’s NDI video-over-IP protocol could be used to the same end.

“NDI is relatively widely distributed among devices [and they] would also have the opportunity to create some sort of standard that would help in this type of watermarking of real content.”

Perhaps blockchain technology holds the most promise for differentiating real from fake video.

“If you’ve got blockchain-certified video that was recorded from a blockchain-certified camera you can know that that’s the original,” says Toeman. “I think that’s going to be hopefully our savior through this all, I don’t know.”

On the storytelling side, AI will be able to jumpstart creative thinking and fast forward the scripting process but there’s a belief that traditional storytelling talent will rise to the top.

“The point is ChatGPT drives toward the norm, toward the middle, toward the average,” says Toeman. “So you use it to do average things. If you want to be a great storyteller, you will write a better prompt to get more out of it using it, but all the tools are kind of the same from this perspective.”

The consequence, he says, is that reliance on generative AI tools alone will only churn out very average mediocre content. The flip side is this trend will enable master storytellers to use the tool to shine.

“A great example might be Jon Favreau, who made the first two seasons of The Mandalorian using a lot of new tech to make that storytelling cheaper, faster, easier. But it’s not the tech that made the story.

“So, if you can write a very clever prompt for your unique story angle, and then add your own special sauce on top of that, that’s where [AI is going].”

Corey Behnke, co-founder and producer at LiveX, says he believes there will be more demand for producer oversight and moderation of AI than ever before when it comes to live streaming.

AI could help with 80% of the mundane tasks in video production but that still leaves 20% for actual humans to get the product right.

“The place where you are going to deliver your value is that last 20% of broadcast quality video;  that’s [what] separates a basic piece of video from a high polished piece of content,” agrees Vonder Haar.

“Because so much more content will be developed there will be more opportunities for high-end producers. The folk who were only going to be in trouble will be those who [operate] at the very basic levels of video production rather than the high end of the market space.”

Asked where he thinks AI will be a year from now, Toeman anticipates we will start seeing the first AI-generated content but no one will like it: “That’s my hunch. I think the content industry stays away from AI for [maybe] five years and by only then we’ll start seeing it used sort of the way CGI showed up in movies.”

In a decade we could have AI-driven real-time bespoke storytelling: “Make me a video in the style of Harry Potter about a sci-fi wizard on an asteroid, and I want it to be 90 minutes long, and make it seem like it’s written by Quentin Tarantino. I think that’s 10 years from now, tops.”

 

How “The Creator” Creator Gareth Edwards Is Thinking About AI

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The backdrop to new sci-fi film The Creator is AI, which can be benevolent and could be evil. One AI manifests as a very cute young kid.

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“This film will challenge what you believe,” says actor John David Washington in a making-of featurette. “It’s hard to know whose side to be on.”

That’s exactly what director Gareth Edwards, who wrote the script with Chris Weitz, wanted. Although the future 50 years hence looks “as if someone made Apocalypse Now in the Blade Runner universe,” according to Ryan Scott at SlashFilm, Edwards doesn’t paint AI as black or white.

“Should we embrace it or should we destroy it,” he asks.

Releasing in cinemas on September 28, this is Edwards’ first film since Star Wars: Rogue One in 2016, around the same time he began writing the film. The starting point was to make an allegory about robots, “a fairy tale for people who are different, that look different from us, and that we treat as the kind of the enemy or the inferior, and that they do the same back to us,” he says in an interview with Joe Deckelmeier for Screen Rant.

He’s kept the robots but added AI so that the robots are sentient. It was only as they were shooting the film in the first half of 2022 that the latest wave of AI technology became front page news.

“I thought I was making a subject matter that was like three decades away. Like, there’s no way we’re going to witness this. And then whilst we were filming, people are sending me links to news items about whistleblowers in big tech saying that the AI was sentient. And it was like, Whoa, what’s going on?”

“As we’re making The Creator, AI is getting better and better,” Edwards says. “It feels like we’re at that tipping point now and this movie questions what does that look like 50 years from now, when AI is more embedded as part of society.”

Equally presciently perhaps, the film also depicts half of the world having developed AI and the other half being actively against it, following a catastrophic malfunction. Interestingly, it is the West that wants to ban AI while a region of Southeast Asia fights to keep it as a force for good.

Scenes in the film depict an anti-AI movement “with people with protest signs, for and against AI,” the director told Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, thinking this was absurd. “And now, I live very near the Studios [in LA] and we drove past and that’s exactly what’s happening [with the writer’s strike].”

The movie is set in 2070 but Edwards told Nemiroff he should have picked 2024. “But I picked 2070 Because I didn’t want to make the mistake Kubrick made of 2001: A Space Odyssey [which was made in 1968 but the Jupiter mission it depicted remains distant even now]. “So I was like, I’m gonna pick something way downstream.”

Making a Smaller Budget Go Further

Distributed by 20th Century Studios, the film itself was shot on a relative shoestring budget of $80 million, but looks like a blockbuster costing significantly more. For Edwards this seems a welcome retreat from the huge budget he handled for Godzilla in 2014 and back to the more DIY approach with which he made breakthrough sci-fi-horror Monsters in 2010.

Counterintuitively the secret was to ditch CGI and LED volumes (though both were used) to focus on shooting more in actual locations with world-building production design added after the fact.

“What you normally do is you have all this design work and people say, ‘You can’t find these locations,” he explained during a Q&A session hosted by IMAX, and reported by Slash Film’s Vanessa Armstrong.

“[They’d say] You’re going to have to build sets in a studio against greenscreen. It’ll cost a fortune.’ We were like, ‘What we want to do is go shoot the movie in real locations, in real parts of the world closest to what these images are. Then afterwards, when the film is fully edited, get the production designer, James Clyne, and other concept artists to paint over those frames and put the sci-fi on top.’”

So they did, and the crew went to 80 locations, which is far more than one would normally use for a movie of this size.

“We didn’t really use any green screen,” he said. “There was occasionally a little bit here and there, but very little. If you do the maths, if you keep the crew small enough, the theory was that the cost of building a set, which is typically like $200,000, you can fly everyone to anywhere in the world for that kind of money. So it was like, ‘Let’s keep the crew small and let’s go to these amazing locations.’”

Edwards shot the film using Sony FX3 cameras, a budget choice but, as he points out, one that is barely distinguishable in performance from far more expensive so-called cinestyle cameras.

“The difference between the greatest digital cinema camera you can buy and a camera like the FX3 is minute, hardly anything,” he told Nemiroff.

The big advantage for the production was the camera’s ability to record in different light scenarios including the capability of shooting 12,800 ISO “so we can shoot under moonlight.”

That in turn enabled the production team to shoot with fewer lights, cutting costs and increasing mobility. The filmmakers developed a lightweight lighting rig that a crew member could move in seconds, rather than minutes, as Edwards explained to Armstrong.

“I could move and suddenly the lighting could re-adjust. And what normally would take 10 minutes to change was taking four seconds.”

This afforded room for the actors to improvise and for Edwards to capture more of a documentary feel. “We would do 25-minute takes where we would play out the scene three or four times and just give everything this atmosphere of naturalism that I really wanted to get, where it wasn’t so prescribed. You’re not putting marks on the ground and saying, ‘Stand there.’ It wasn’t that kind of movie.”

Edwards’ lighting operator would move with the camera, just as a boom operator would, he told Nemiroff.

“We’d do a little dance together in real time,” he said. “Normally [changing light setups] would take half an hour. So it just liberated us completely. And I’m never gonna go back, to be honest.”

He started the project with one of the world’s most in-demand cinematographers, Greig Fraser ASC, who won the Oscar for his work on Dune last year. As Edwards says tells Nemiroff, “Greig is one of the few people in the world I would trust to give a camera to and say, you shoot it, and just hand it over. He’s got an amazing eye. The whole world seems to know that now.”

Having done prep for the movie in 2019/2020, Fraser got the offer to shoot Dune and its sequel for Denis Villenueve, and suggested DP Oren Soffer take over behind the camera.

According to Edwards, Soffer was a protege of Fraser’s. “So I looked at his work, it was really strong. We chatted and I really liked him. And so basically, there’s this transition where Greig carried on remotely but Oren picks up the reins.”

In conversation with Armstrong, Edwards revealed that the visual design of The Creator was inspired by the simple idea, “What if the Sony Walkman won the tech war instead of the Apple Mac?”

“The way we tried to quickly describe the design aesthetic of the movie is that it’s a little bit retro-futuristic.”

Likewise for the insect-like robots in the film, which they tried to design as if an insect had been made by Sony. “We took products and tried to turn them into organic-looking heads. We took things like film projectors and vacuum cleaners and just put them together, deleted pieces and kept experimenting. It was like DNA getting merged together with other DNA, trying to create something better than the previous thing.”

“AI Democratizes Filmmaking”

When it comes to AI in filmmaking, Edwards is equally even-handed. He was surprised by what is already possible with AI tools.

“My initial thoughts were that AI will never be able to understand the beauty of an image but actually websites like Midjourney are pretty good. [So, then you think] soon it’ll be moving footage. And then maybe you won’t need cameras,” he told GameSpot senior editor Chris Hayner in an interview for Fandom.

“It’s going to change filmmaking so much,” he continues, way beyond the CGI-realism breakthrough of Jurassic Park. “It’s going to be a big seismic shift. My hope is that it sort of democratizes filmmaking, like it doesn’t cost $200 million anymore to go make something that’s in your head. You can kind of do it from your bedroom. But then the question is when everyone can make Star Wars from their bedroom, will there be any specialist [crafts] anymore?”

 

Disney vs. Charter: Another Feud in the Battle to Reshape Pay TV into Streaming

Streaming Media

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Immovable object meets unstoppable force in Disney vs. Charter, which is another feud in the wider the battle to reshape pay TV into its inevitable streaming future.

Though both companies published counter-public relations material over the weekend, a deal will be struck, since the cost of not doing so is too great for either to bear--right now. That will change as cable companies manage the irrevocable decline of their video business and studios face the reality of losing billions of dollars in carriage revenue.

At the center of the dispute is the TV viewing audience which continues to cut the cord, forcing change in the traditional business model, but not yet at the numbers or rate that make streaming the only option in town. There will be an awkward truce between cable and streamer until that debate is settled.

Charter knows the writing is on the wall. “We're on the edge of a precipice... The video ecosystem is broken," said CEO Chris Winfrey in a conference call.

Disney boss Bob Iger has already indicated he’s considering exiting the pay TV business entirely, including selling ABC and other networks, as viewers shift to DTC. Having pulled its content from Charter over the weekend, Disney would stand to lose more than $2 billion in annual revenue from that cable company alone.

Charter meanwhile believes the content it receives from Disney has been devalued and not worth the hike in fees that Disney was demanding. It accused the Mouse House of forcing “MVPDs and consumers to pay higher rates with the same packaging restrictions with no additional customer value, despite destruction of the multichannel video marketplace.

It also described the pricing and packaging restrictions proposed by Disney as “actively driving” consumers out of the market, “accelerating the vicious cycle and further destroying the video business.”

Instead, Charter wants Disney to make ad-supported versions of Disney+ and Hulu available for free for the 15 million customers of its Spectrum cable service and in return would agree to price rises for Disney channels, including ESPN. Disney+ and Hulu currently cost customers $7.99 each per month. Charter also argues that there is not sufficient exclusivity in programming on Disney channels versus Disney+.

“We’re either moving forward with a new collaborative video model, or we're moving on,” Winfrey said.

Charter CFO Jessica Fisher doubled down on this in a call with investors, saying margins have become so bad on video compared to broadband that they are prepared to ditch video entirely. “If we’re unable to come to a deal, and ultimately move on from the traditional video business, the margin profile of our business should improve and its capital needs should decline,” she said.

In doing so, Charter could see as many as 1.8 million subscribers exit if Disney fans vacated to find its programming elsewhere, according to Wells Fargo media analyst Steven Cahall. He estimates such a dynamic could affect $3.7 billion of revenue. The conflict with Disney could also affect future plans, speculates Cahall. Launching Xumo, Charter’s joint venture streaming platform with Comcast, might be more difficult if Charter is at odds with many of the companies that operate streaming hubs.

Disney countered that its linear channels and DTC services are not one and the same, but rather complementary products. Adding that it continued to invest in original content that premieres exclusively on our linear networks, including live sports, news, and appointment-viewing programming. “Likewise, on our direct-to-consumer services, we make multi-billion-dollar investments in exclusive content, which is incremental to our linear networks.”

While Disney would wave goodbye to $2 billion, it also risks accelerating the migration from pay TV to SVOD. That is likely its long-term play, but it would probably wish for a more managed, less volatile, transition. That’s because Charter’s demands are likely to be echoed elsewhere. “If others follow, this increases the risk of future carriage disputes, blackouts, and less affiliate growth,” said Cahall.

“The future of this Charter/Disney negotiation has dramatic ramifications on the rest of the industry aside from Disney,” said analysts at MoffettNathanson.

In the past few years the streaming business model has moved away from single genre content (news, scripted, sports) toward more of a bundled package--much like the multichannel business of old. Warner Bros. Discovery for example plans to mix and match sports, news, and documentary programming products focused on one uber Max destination. Like Disney, it is trying to do so while not critically endangering the still-important revenue it gets from cable distribution.

Other scenarios are possible. Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch has told investors that Fox is due to negotiate renewal of about a third of its carriage contracts over the next year. “Imagine if Charter or one of its rivals insisted that its customers not be forced to pay for Fox News Channel, which is the linchpin of Fox’s finances,” suggests consultant Derek Bain. “That network is expected by S&P Global Intelligence to generate more than $1.95 billion in affiliate fees in 2024.”

In its own version of The Future of Multichannel Video published as negotiations broke down, Charter said it believed content is valuable and that Disney is an excellent content creator but “we have already reached the point of economic indifference with the current model.” Instead, it proposed a “hybrid, customer-centric mode” which maintains a symbiotic relationship between the trend to DTC and cable’s proven reach and reward.

It said, “distributors and programmers need to work together to entice and reward customers to utilize bundled subscription products-–most programmers simply will not be able to profit/survive solely on a-la-carte streaming revenue.”

In this PowerPoint presentation Charter puts great emphasis on ESPN, the jewel in the crown when it comes to distribution on cable TV. Live TV has for decades been the exclusive and most lucrative part of the TV landscape with pay TV forced to pay ever higher rights for sports content and the real threat of more content being hived off to streaming services, key sports and brands like ESPN have become the ultimate battleground.

Charter claims that Disney acknowledged that the most sensible financial outcome for ESPN is a hybrid approach, retaining a sizeable portion of its linear television revenue while incrementally exploiting streaming options. “ESPN is widely seen as the linchpin for the evolution of the video ecosystem and this model paves the way for a ESPN DTC product,” the cable company outlined.

Disney is reportedly in talks with major sports leagues about launching an online version of ESPN with the leagues having an equity stake. According to Bain, this may allow them to have early renegotiations on their sports rights packages and expand their rights to enable them to air more games in an online DTC product.

Disney has also been in talks with Amazon to be a partner in a new ESPN online offering priced between $20 and $35 per month. Bain says, “If ESPN were to partner with Amazon and the major sports leagues to launch a powerful online offering of ESPN, the results would be devastating for multichannel operators like Charter Communications. Therefore, it wouldn’t be surprising if much of the root of the dispute between Charter and Disney are over the terms of online rights for the channel.”

With so much uncertainty it’s unsurprising that Disney stock fell--but so too in the washback did the price for Paramount, WBD, and Comcast as did local TV station owners Sinclair and Nexstar. The latter LA station has been in dispute with DirecTV for weeks. Increasing fees increases by programmers are the reason subscribers are fleeing, said Rob Thun, DirecTV's chief content officer.

“We have a symbiotic relationship where we both should benefit,” Thun said. "But they are killing the host." 

 

WBD's Leah Hooper Rosa- interview

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Leah Hooper Rosa, who leads WBD’s streaming business in EMEA, is tasked not only with operations and growth for existing streaming services HBO Max and discovery+, but also planning for the roll out of Max from early 2024.

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Warner Bros. Discovery’s European Head of Streaming Leah Hooper Rosa enjoys solving jigsaw puzzles which is lucky because she has a lot of pieces to fit together as the company prepares to launch streaming platform Max in Europe in 2024.

“I love solving complex problems and at a time when the industry is experiencing a lot of change, figuring out how we can move ahead in an orderly fashion with speed is what excites me,” she said.

WBD was formed on 11 April 2022 with Max, combining HBO Max with elements from discovery+, launched in the US a year later. Having played a leadership role in the launches of discovery+ in regions including India, Europe, and the U.S as SVP Global DTC Strategy at Discovery, Hooper Rosa was a natural to lead the same effort for a unified product in EMEA.

While the existing HBO Max team were midway through a “very aggressive international rollout” and Discovery had an “international expansion path” for discovery+ the merger into one organisation behind one enhanced product has been a tough but rewarding exercise.

“It felt like a mammoth task but the shared learning carried the team across the line,” she said.

“Particularly in streaming we’ve been doing our own transformation amongst the wider WBD transformation. We had one team experienced in rapid market expansion and the other with a lot of history in terms of merging platforms. Those two knowledge sets coming together gave us the confidence to take on such an aggressive timetable in launching Max.”

The focus for launch was achieving reliability. She said, “With two apps coming together we needed a reliable platform. What annoys people is when they go to watch a piece of content and it doesn’t work.”

Consumer satisfaction with Max app has fed back into ratings which are currently at an all-time high on both iOS and Android “way above and beyond what HBO Max and Discovery+ achieved.”

Now Hooper Rosa is charged with achieving the same success with Max as it rolls out across 22 existing EMEA markets.

She does this by driving the EMEA division’s “cross functional leadership” which means “bringing our global disciplines of marketing, content and product together to make sure we have one cohesive go-to-market strategy for Europe.

“A lot of my role is split between running the platforms we have today and making sure we deliver against our KPIs and financial targets. I am laser focussed on P&L and our subscriber targets and also making sure we are planning for Max launch.”

Across EMEA the company has different groups, representing the Nordics or Iberia for example, and Hooper Rosa’s role is to work out what makes sense for WBD in that market. What is the digital advertising strategy? What is the right commercial structure with partners? How does product packaging work in terms of local market context?

“There is no one size fits all strategy. In some markets, like Poland, we have a really extensive broadcast network business and in other like the Netherlands we have more of a traditional payTV business. So, the consumer and partner expectation around content and how people are used to engaging with us is different.”

Her starting point for any market launch is to identify the absolute ‘must haves’. “We spend a lot of time working that through linked to our commercialisation strategy, the local regulatory framework and consumer behaviour in the region. We spend a lot of time understanding what is critical and what is a nice to have.

“This process is not unusual but it’s really key to us that everybody understands what the minimal viable product (MVP) is for launch. Everything after that is driven by improvements in the core KPIs whether that’s ‘watch time’ or ‘reach’ or our ability to do things more efficiently to drive monetisation.”

Hooper Rosa’s role involves working with counterparts in APAC, Latam and North America to work out what is global versus what is regional. “I am all for making sure our product is compliant and relevant for the individual market but it’s also about threading the fine line between local requirements and global efficiency. What is the global core competency we need and what is unique to a region?”

She added, “Working out how to take Max globally at the most efficient scale has been the most exciting puzzle.”

In the US, WBD is about to launch CNN Max, which is a separate but linked tier to the main Max platform. WBD CEO David Zaslav recently called news and sports “differentiators” for SVOD platforms.

Hooper Rosa agrees: “News drives a high level of engagement and especially drive up the frequency of app visits. HBO Max in the U.S. has a rich legacy of Sunday night TV. The challenge for us to make every night a Sunday. The frequency of people coming to the service along with the amount of time they spend on the service are the two core metrics that keep down churn.”

Into that equation, WBD will offer different pricing levels. “There is massive growth of FAST in the US, which is essentially AVOD, but we’ve not seen that level of growth in Europe to date. We are however seeing more FAST services in combination with ad supported premium services.”

Hooper Rosa points to ad supported subscription services with light ad loads as having growth potential in Europe. She characterises ad-light as being in the order of 4-6 minutes of ads per hour rather than the 12-16 minutes per hour for typical FAST channels.

“We have launched ad light across major markets on discovery+. It’s a really interesting business model for select markets. I think there will be an increase in ad light propositions across Europe (Disney+ ad-supported service lands in November) and with that we hope to see an increase in the number of SVODs that households are taking. The European average is still under three SVODs per household versus five in the U.S. We hope that with the introduction of more lower priced ad services we get less switching behaviour between services and customers begin taking a broader sweep of streaming choices.”

 

Behind the Scenes: One Piece

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The bestselling manga series of all time has been made into one of the most expensive live action series ever. 

Reimagining a cartoon into live action is a hard trick to pull off but doing so with the bestselling manga series of all time had director of photography Nicole Hirsch Whitaker, ASC seeking advice from her son. 

“I was terrified of doing a live action adaptation so before I signed on I asked him, ‘Do you think I should do it? Do you think this is something the fans will be ok with?’ He said, ‘Yes absolutely! And if you don’t do it I will never speak to you again!’” 

Her son is a One Piece superfan. He had read every book in Japanese (even learning Japanese to do so), dressed up as one of the characters for Halloween, and has a tattoo of ‘Trafalgar Law’ on his chest, she says. 

Hirsch-Whitaker herself had watched 900 episodes of the anime series with her son and so was already steeped in One Piece lore.   

Debuting in 1997 in the manga anthology magazine ‘Weekly Shōnen Jump’, this serialised pirate adventure is about the search for elusive One Piece treasure led by Monkey D. Luffy. The 8-episode Netflix series introduces Luffy as a young man who aspires to become ‘King of the Pirates’ and the group of misfits who dream of becoming his loyal crew, The Straw Hats.  

The story sprawls across 105 volumes of stories, all written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda who has sold over half a billion books to date. There have also been 1000 episodes of a 2D animated series based on Oda’s work, 15 animated movies and 40 different video game titles set within One Piece world. As such, Oda has earned the distinction of being one of the most influential manga creators in the history of the medium. 

It’s understandable why Netflix would be attracted to a piece of IP with such massive built-in popularity. In making the franchise’s first live-action adaptation, the streamer needed to appease die-hard fans and reach an audience who had never heard of it.  

Oda is onboard as executive producer but the process of giving “three dimensionality” in live action to much loved characters was something neither Hirsch-Whitaker nor director Marc Jobst took lightly.   

They had previously worked together on the finale of Netflix superhero series Jupiter's Legacy and he reached out to her to shoot the first two episodes of One Piece with him (ep 1, ‘Romance Dawn’ and ep 2 ‘The Man in the Straw Hat’). 

They prepped for about a year throwing ideas back and forth about films, photographers, painters and musicians – “to create this all-encompassing world that would make old fans happy and also find new fans,” Hirsch-Whitaker says. “It was a daunting task.” 

For tips on shooting scenes on water she sought advice from Paul Cameron ASC (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) and key grip Herb Ault who worked with Claudio Miranda ASC to film Life of Pi on Arri Alexa.  

These scenes were shot in water tanks at studios in Cape Town. The production design department were given a head start on the massive ships required by repurposing ones that were initially built for the production of Black Sails. Most of the crew members who worked on the series (which went off the air in 2017) also worked on One Piece. 

The filmmaker’s aim was to create a look that combined elements from both the manga and anime while adding their own distinctive touch to the visuals. To that end, she chose to shoot on the Arri Alexa LF with custom-made Hawk MHX Hybrid Anamorphic lenses. She and Jobst had used a similar set on Jupiter’s Legacy but the lenses for One Piece needed to be capture super close focus as well as super deep focus to match the look of the anime. 

She explains, “We both love anamorphic and we felt that using it would bring painterly backgrounds to the show and make it feel more like anime however we realised that doing so wouldn’t give us the very close focus which we needed.”  

They tested a variety of spherical lenses but none was right. Then Hirsch-Whitaker reached out to Vantage Film, the German lens manufacturer, and asked if they would be willing to design something for unique.  

“They said yes and Netflix agreed. They built them for us from the ground up. It was a little scary because we didn’t get them until right before we started shooting but I knew they would give me something amazing.” 

The DP says she pushed for shooting some of the show on a Virtual Production stage but since there wasn’t one in South Africa and would have meant the production building one, they shot on traditional stages with VFX extensions. 

Production designer Richard Bridgland says there were so many sets, “it was like designing four feature films because every two episodes the story moves to a different part of the story world.” 

“Mark comes from a theatre background so he was really adamant about keeping the honesty of the story intact,” she says. “This is a very grounded story about family and if we had too many VFX shots and digi-doubles it would take people out of the story. It’s still a huge VFX show but the aim was to shoot as much in camera as possible and not hide behind tricks.” 

In a similar vein, Jobst wanted the film’s fight sequences to feel different to generic superhero action. “It felt like we wanted to enjoy the journey to the punch more than we wanted to enjoy the punch,” he told Collider. 

Hirsch-Whitaker explains how they developed a visual language for this. “It was important not just to show a realistic punch but to show the actor’s performance while punching. Marc was adamant that we had no second unit and that we would shoot everything ourselves. A stunt team worked with a camera operator separately from us for months, shooting on Alexa and editing the sequence together so that on the day we shot the scene everything was already worked out. The actors did most of their own stunts. I didn’t have to think about moving the camera and all the bumps that you would normally get working on a stunt sequence.” 

In her block of episodes Hirsch-Whitaker got to introduce the clown pirate Captain Buggy (Jeff Ward), who can split his body pieces and put them back together any way he likes. During the four months she spent in prep in Cape Town the VFX team were doing R&D to work out how the character would stretch.  Bridgland’s team also spent considerable time rigging Buggy’s circus tent, the scale of which took Hirsch-Whitaker’s breath away. 

“The tent was incredible when you walked on set you felt like walking on a theatre stage with a full proscenium. They left the top open so I could light from the ceiling and Jeff could have the floor without lighting getting in the way. VFX finished the tent and incorporated my lights into the design. My main references for these scenes were Moulin Rouge and The Greatest Showman.” 

All of the interiors for the ships were filmed on sound stages with the exception of Captain Alvida’s ship, Miss Love Duck, which was one of the largest repurposed vessels from Black Sails. Two ships were built entirely from scratch including the Straw Hats’ iconic ship, The Going Merry.  

Many of the locations Oda created for One Piece were taken directly from real world places - actual Balinese pagodas, storefronts in Florence, Italy; Belton House in Lincolnshire, to name a few.   

According to Prosthetics Designer Jaco Snyman (Mad Max: Fury Road), leaning away from CGI whenever possible helped capture some of the wackier aspects of the story. “Instead of just using VFX characters straight off the bat as they do in some other shows, we got to create these amazing prosthetics so the actors really got to live with these characters and stay true to Oda’s vision.”  

Four fully animatronic snails that are roughly the size of house cats were created for the show as well. These had different detachable eyeballs so the puppeteers could give them a variety of expressions and add a little bit of movement to the face. 

The snails were also customised to look like their owners. Garp’s snail, for instance, sports a row of pearly white teeth and a beard. Says co-showrunner Matt Owens: “We didn’t want to shy away from any of the weird elements that make up this world. We’re just telling the audience, ‘Hey, phones are snails in this world. It is what it is. Accept it.” 

Hirsch-Whitaker spent nearly 6 months in South Africa and invited her son to visit and walk the set. He’s also binged the series “and given it his stamp of approval.” 

Netflix reportedly spent $18 million per episode on One Piece, making it one of the most expensive shows ever made.  Game of Thrones and The Mandalorian, cost $15 million per episode, while HBO’s House of the Dragon came in at $20m. Amazon Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power came in at a staggering $58m per episode. 

The eight episodes cover just a fraction of the One Piece story so Netflix will have plenty more rope to play with should it prove a hit. It also means this first season has cost at least $144 million, which as Collider points out, is about $40 million more than what the anime it is based on has spent in its 20+ years on the air.