The high life: Aerial Cinematographer Dylan Goss

interview and copy written for Definition 

His first aerial credit was for Bad Boys, the original 1995 hit. Nearly 30 years on, Dylan Goss is one of a handful of go-to aerial cinematographers in the business. 

article here and p24-25 here

Name a blockbuster and you have probably seen his work. Among them are The Game, Titanic, Kundun, Pushing Tin, Up in the Air, Fast & Furious 6, Elysium, San Andreas, Independence Day: Resurgence, Skyscraper, American Made, Avengers: Infinity War, First Man, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Free Guy and, just this year, The Fall Guy and Civil War.

He has also shot aerials on shows you may not associate with sweeping vistas, like the Oscar-winning Crash and Funny Games, and considers himself equal parts technician and photographer.

“I grew up wanting to code computers and solder electronics. Back then, there weren’t YouTube videos telling you how to do it. I enjoyed figuring it out myself. So now, when we have to come up with solutions and custom integrations, I feel pretty comfortable doing that.”

On a new untitled Paul Thomas Anderson feature, Goss had to adapt a gimbal to fit large 35mm VistaVision cameras which were never designed for aerial work. 

“Even though they are supposed to be mimicking digital news footage coming from a helicopter, so they could easily have shot digital, they were adamant about using VistaVision. We built this crazy rig to put an awkward camera inside that gimbal.”

On another recent project, he helped design a 360 rig fit with six RED V-RAPTORs to capture shots to be used on a volume built by Lux Machina.

“We took the existing gimbal design, worked out the geometry of the lenses and how they would work in sideways or portrait mode, and helped them understand the challenges of putting this on a helicopter.

“You just learn how things work in an aircraft. Although there are remote-control options, everything needs to be wired and needs to be redundant. You are in a real flight environment, and when you start working with a product that was not made for that scenario, you have to make some adjustments.”

Equipment used to be so specialised that Goss was once flown out to Australia for just one day to shoot a commercial, purely because there was no such kit or crew in the country.

Kit now is more solid-state electronics, with fewer moving parts, and designed to be bulletproof. “In the old days, you had to keep returning to the factory and to take the gimbal apart. It was like watch mechanics inside and my job was to keep it all ticking.”

While the gear has evolved from Spacecam to WESCAM, from Eclipse to Shotover – and propagated worldwide – Goss is still in high demand even if the gear, pilots, helicopters or special Phenom jets command a premium.

“Generally, I’m given a brief and they trust me to deliver. The production has to have confidence that we’re going to execute the brief because shooting from a heli still has a high-dollar value.

“Some jobs don’t have the money, so they adjust their creative and shoot drones. There’s always a way to re-engineer something. You could use a stepladder or a crane, but the projects I’m hired for are the big movies that want the big shots done their way.”

For bigger-scope shots, “it makes sense to fly an aircraft over big spaces with arcs and large movements for the momentum you can’t get with a drone.”

Top Gun: Maverick raised the bar – but few films have the access or budget to be made with the assistance of the US Navy. Even forthcoming Apple TV+ feature Mayday, in which Ryan Reynolds plays a jet pilot, was largely shot from helicopters aerially directed by Goss.

Increasingly, he will work with the VFX supervisor to capture aerial plates. This will involve arrays of cameras configured to capture vast panoramas at high resolution for stitching in post. He finds previs shots a little exhausting because all the shots have been figured out, broken down and budgeted for. 

“There’s not a lot of room to expand. If I’m sent out to do three shots, I can’t come back and be like, ‘Guess what? I shot an extra 20 hours of helicopter time – and here’s the bill!’” he says. 

“You have to stick to the brief. But we do find moments where you shoot extra material and you’re wondering if that’s going to get recognised by a director or editor. I can sometimes come back with hours of footage that will never see the light of day.”

He enjoys working with directors such as Denis Villeneuve, Alex Garland and Doug Liman, VFX supervisor Paul Lambert and DOPs like Roger Deakins, who desire to do as much in camera as possible.

In Sicario, he was tracking a convoy of FBI jeeps where the heli work had to look like it was shot from a Reaper drone. For the aerial shots of a border crossing, Villeneuve flew with Goss in a heli at dawn down to El Paso.

“When we got to the border, it was a beautiful, magical sunrise, one where you couldn’t help but start pointing the camera around. Denis and I are in the back seat of the heli, I look over and he gives me a thumbs up to start rolling. 

“I shot a lot of footage for that movie; it was amazing to see it in the final film.”

Working with Villeneuve again on Dune, Goss found even more of his work in the final cut. 

“We’re sitting on top of a cliff looking over the Wadi Rum with a camera and tripod just surveying the immense scale of the landscape. They used it because it served the story. 

“I have lots of obvious aerial action shots from a heli I could quote, but I am awed by being given the opportunity to create with filmmakers of his and Roger Deakins’ calibre.”

The ornithopter sequences in Dune and Dune: Part 2 included shots filmed by Goss from a helicopter in Jordan’s Wadi Rum of a different helicopter that suited the scale of the fictional vehicle.

“It’s a stand-in for the ornithopter. So while I’m filming an empty frame for a big superhero movie [he has shot sequences for Spider-Man: Homecoming, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 as well as Avengers: Endgame] into which they will insert VFX, for Denis I’m shooting more practical FX.

“The tracking of my frame is real, the light on the object is authentic. If it lands or takes off from the desert floor then all these interactions with sand and light add to the plausibility of the final picture.”

On the set of forthcoming feature The Instigators, Liman told Goss about his long-gestating project to film Tom Cruise aboard the International Space Station.

“Doug [Liman] is a problem-solver and explained that they needed to redesign the camera by removing components which weren’t designed for zero gravity. They were taking an existing camera and space-proofing it. Sign me up!

“My understanding is that, if they go at all, it will be Doug and Tom plus a camera since the cost for seats is astronomical.

“If you are on the ISS, audiences can really feel that you’re there. The way the light comes through a window, or the way your arms float would be tricky to simulate even on the most cutting-edge sound stage.” 

Blair Wallace Grades Award-Winning Chimp Empire for James Reed and Netflix

interview and copy written for HPA

The traditional approach to filming chimpanzees in the rainforest is to use a relatively large camera and a very long lens, but Oscar-winning director James Reed (My Octopus Teacher) wanted to try something different.

article here

Reed and director of photography Ben Sadd wanted to make a truly character-driven series and so needed to be able to track the chimps continuously and to immerse the viewer in the details of their lives.

They also wanted a cinematic look mastered in High Dynamic Range and turned to Blair Wallace, Head of Grading at Evolutions, the respected Bristol, UK post facility. The Evolutions Bristol team provided all picture finishing for the series, winning Wallace the HPA Award for Outstanding Color Grading – Documentary.

“It was an exciting project and a pleasure working again with James who is a special storyteller,” says Wallace, who has worked with Reed on projects including Jago: A Life Underwater. “There’s scope for creativity in the grade when I work with James, but there’s also so much work the Bristol Evolutions team provide, ‘under the hood’, before we explore the films visual potential further.”

Shot over 18 months in the forests of Ngogo, Uganda, Chimp Empire is a KEO Films and Underdog Films production which follows the fortunes of the largest group of chimpanzees ever discovered. The four-part series, narrated by Academy Award Winner Mahershala Ali, explores the chimp’s complex society and how their ambition and that of neighboring rivals threaten to destabilise their empire.

“The Ngogo forest can be dark at times, the light spilling through the tree canopy can be dappled, bright and difficult to control both whist shooting and then in post,” Wallace describes. “The ‘subjects’ themselves will not wait for any sort of set up or to be lit! And when they move, they move very fast.”

That means Wallace’s first job in post was to access and ‘unite’ the footage. He was involved in early camera tests and with the help of the Finishing and Mastering Team that supports the grading suites at Evos Bristol chose a selection of processes including noise reduction and texture refining tools. A principal job on every Natural History project is to consider the texture differences between cameras.

“It’s common to have a dozen different formats to blend together,” says Wallace whose other credits include Queens (Disney+/NatGeo), the recent Emmy Winning Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory (Wildstar Films/Disney+/NatGeo) and Earth from Space (BBC Studios NHU).

“Wildlife docs can be shot on everything from a GoPro to an 8K RED Digital Cinema camera. We almost have to switch our color perspective off with some of the shots to smooth the links between formats.”

“After the first technical pass I’ll grade exposure, contrast, white balance and color to further match the rushes and provide an even playing field to then manipulate further in the direction of the story and look.”

For Chimp Empire Wallace created a series of show LUTs by blending the look generators and style grades in Baselight and tested them over the rushes before fine tuning the look.

“Because there was a risk of the forest environment becoming ‘samey’ throughout the series James wanted me to avoid a generic look. We achieved this by injecting some other color palettes into the grade to reflect the mood of the scenes and the narrative of the story.”

In Natural History filmmaking quality over content is often a discussion during the finishing of process. “We’ll even consider shot changes in the color suite such as bringing out material that the director didn’t think they could use at all from a technical point of view,” Wallace says. “We can do so much nowadays in the grading suite to bring problematic material to life.  James is intimate with every second of his rushes and is able to revisit footage he though unusable or suggest alternate shots which might work from a different visual perspective.”

The ‘cast’ of chimps were carefully selected during filming and it was vital that the viewer saw who was in frame however fleetingly during important moments of the story.

“Often the light coming from above meant special attention was taken to create post fill light for the chimp’s faces,” Wallace says. “We needed to see their eyes, understand their personalities and how they are communicating.”

He used defocus, multiple tracked shapes for faces and relighting techniques to draw the audience’s eye to the part of the frame intended by Reed.

The colorist was also contacted on several occasions by Sadd whilst on location in Uganda to discuss scenarios playing out in front of him.

“Ben discussed ideas as how best to capture in ‘current’ conditions and what would suit further manipulation once in post.”

Wallace says his long history of working on reality shows, drama documentary and factual entertainment like Top Gear prepared him for working with diverse camera formats and styles of shooting common to Natural History projects.

The biggest change over the last few years has been the gradual adoption of HDR mastering.

“That’s a move closer to opening a window and seeing the world closer to how we see it as far as light and contrast are concerned,” he says. “All our high-end projects are mastered, first, in HDR.”

RAW footage is favorable in that regard, he says. “The bigger the CCD and file format the better we can expect the translation of clean wide color and dynamic range images.  However, it’s not always possible in production and we know that camera teams can’t always send large files from the field so, as a post house, we are realistic and aware of the differences in received rushes from the shoots.”

The series was mastered in UHD HDR Dolby Vision with an ACES color pipeline working with IDT and meta adjustments to native where appropriate, followed by an SDR Trim.

“Some briefs want big saturated colors whereas others want more of a cinematic feel. In Chimp Empire we were doing a lot of reshaping and post lighting to form the images and direct the audience’s eye.  We used defocused matts, tracking of individuals and tampering down aggressive highlights to lean into a more cinematic feel. Other projects want the image to be sharp edge to edge with strong, vibrant primary colors.”

Wallace is currently working on a docuseries with Reed about a Dallas company using gene-editing technology to bring back extinct species including the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger and the dodo bird.

AI: A Call to Arms to Elevate Ourselves

HPA

article here

The potency of AI has swept our industry into a riptide of uncertainty. Instead of letting inevitable change wash over us, we have the chance to catch and surf the wave.  Provided that is,  according to Seth Hallen, we work together.

Hallen wants to wrestle the narrative of fear of the unknown to one where humans are empowered by continuous innovation.

“We know AI is really powerful but we’ve spent a lot of time either marveling at this technology or fearing  it,” he says. “We need to shift the focus back to the human. We need to talk about the way humans fit into a future of media and entertainment where AI is a force.”

Hallen recently left Light Iron where he spent over four years as Managing Director to pursue new opportunities that align with his passion for AI innovations that empower humans and companies within M&E.

“AI tools are going to continue to replace tasks that humans currently do,” he says. “But new tasks will be necessary, and  that’s no different from any other technology introduced into cinema over the last century. And in fact it’s consistent with virtually all major technological advancements through the last 125 years. Tools replace tasks; and the human roles evolve.”

“I believe AI in M&E is no different. We’re just at a puzzling time where it’s hard to conceive of what many of those new tasks will be because they haven’t been developed yet.”

Hallen wants to refocus attention on how AI can “unlock and unleash” human potential across the supply chain for media and entertainment. The key to that is for people to arm themselves with information about the technology.

“I have a fundamental belief that through education and collaboration we will figure out new ways of working and unlock new creative opportunities. That’s how technology has played out until now and we have no reason to believe that AI is going to be any different.”

Hallen’s personal journey includes taking courses and certifications about AI, ML and Natural Language Processing. “A better understanding of the technology will demystify what can seem from the outside to be a magical black box,” he says. “Knowing more about how AI works will help shape how we adopt AI in technical, operational, and creative processes.”

Some of the most compelling near-term opportunities for early adoption are likely within departments associated with data management, security, lead generation, legal, HR and finance.

“Those are the prime opportunities to employ AI in any business, not just in M&E,” Hallen says. “In a supply chain that is challenged economically we must look at every way to drive  efficiencies. Instead of paying editors less or letting VFX artists go we should be looking at how AI can be applied to the core business functions to save time and money.”

Turning to production, Hallen believes that AI will transform human creativity but not replace it.

“Take editing, for example. Would it have been possible in the 1960s to imagine how the process of splicing physical reels would be transformed with digital files and NLEs and an entirely new job description?

“AI feels scary now because none of us can conceive of what new roles it will bring but I believe they will be born. There will be a role for the assistant editor and it will be just as transformative as the leap from splicing film to drag and drop.”

Hallen is also optimistic that entirely new forms of storytelling will emerge. There may be a niche market for entirely AI-generated narrative video but he prefers to focus on the ways the technology can unlock human imagination.

“The real essence of immersive storytelling in professional feature film and episodic television begins and ends with the human role in their creation. Human imagination and experience has been the crux of our art throughout time. That won’t change except that AI can enable us to create fresh and unique stories, especially during the concepting phase.”

“Even now, when you use a large language model to write a script, remember that the output is based almost entirely on work that was created by humans, which means it’s not truly unique.  I believe there is a component to human imagination, fueled by emotional experiences, that enables fresh, unique and authentic storytelling that can not be achieved by machines today.”

The first wave of Gen-AI tools are having their compliance with copyright laws challenged in the courts. The outcome of these lawsuits notwithstanding, Hallen thinks the industry will manage the issue with greater maturity going forward.

“The next level of Generative AI will be using models that an organization or a person has the rights to and because it was trained on licensed material. There is considerable R&D going on at the studio level to build AI models trained on their own libraries of content and their own IP. A number of start-ups and artists are also exploring this route. I am confident that we will soon look back on copyright as an outdated issue because I think Big Tech and the content creation industry will unite to solve the problem.”

At Transformbase in London last month, Hallen was among cross-industry leaders talking about the importance of responsible investment in ‘Frontier Technologies’ including AI, quantum compute and blockchain. Next, he will be moderating a session at Digital Hollywood with panelists from Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and Paramount and will go on the road to communicate at the IBC broadcast show in September alongside SMPTE President (and HPA Board member) Renard Jenkins and then at Infinity Festival in Hollywood in November.

Hallen isn’t brushing concerns under the carpet. He knows that uncertainty itself is a concern. “Getting a handle on the real uses, issues, impact and opportunity is a critical focus at this time. It’s a conversation with many layers.” That said, he believes it’s his duty to accentuate the positive about a transformational technology by asking the right questions and encouraging curiosity and knowledge-share.

“These technologies can empower us rather than replace us,” he insists. “Let’s look at the good and the bad of AI together and try our best to find a sustainable way forward.

“A multitude of futures are possible and that includes one with a sustainable empowering human-centric use of AI. It is up to us all to shape it.”

HPA is  firmly focused on the many ways that AI impacts the industry and its constituents.  Hallen notes, “The heart of HPA is our ability to help our community through change with the most important, timely and impactful information, along with plenty of open discussion and collaboration. Expect to see more open conversations about the opportunities and challenges facing our industry in HPA channels.”

Younger British Audiences Gravitate Toward YouTube as SVOD Performance Plateaus

Streaming Media

The UK media landscape has its own idiosyncrasies but the broad picture remains the same as in the U.S and the rest of Europe – linear TV is in accelerated decline but overall viewing of TV and video is rising online. And as elsewhere the trends are most marked among younger people.

article here

The latest annual Media Nations report into the UK sector covering 2023 by the country’s media regulator Ofcom reveals that significantly fewer young people are tuning in to traditional TV than ever but that the TV set itself is becoming more popular among the same age group – only they tend to be watching YouTube and not BBC One.

Notably, the proportion of time spent watching YouTube in-home via TV sets increased from 29% in 2022 to 34% in 2023, while the proportion for SVoD/AVoD rose from 81% to 85%.

The decline in broadcast TV’s reach accelerated in 2023 but overall viewing of TV and video increased on video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, and broadcasters’ own VOD (BVoD) services such as iPlayer and ITVX.

“Social video is poised to compete more directly with TV and BVoD on connected TV, with YouTube in particular seeing a significant proportion of its viewing take place via the TV set,” noted Ofcom.

For the first time, less than half of 16-24-year-olds are now watching broadcast TV in an average week, according to Ofcom’s study.

Just 48% of young audiences tuned in in an average week last year, down from 76% in 2018. The decline in weekly reach among middle-aged viewers (45-54s) also accelerated, falling from 89% to 84% in a single year.

16-24 year olds aren’t just watching broadcast TV less frequently, they’re also watching for shorter periods at only 33 minutes each day – down 16% year on year. Of this, a mere 20 minutes is spent watching live TV.  

In comparison, they’re spending three times as long each day (1 hour 33 minutes) watching video-sharing platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.

YouTube the new TV

Total in-home use of YouTube was up 20% to 38 minutes per individual per day by December 2023.

Over this period the average time spent viewing YouTube on a TV set increased by 70% (from 9 to 15 minutes per day), while for 16-34s the increase was even greater, at 93% (9 minutes to 17 minutes).

Children are skewing most towards the TV set for their YouTube consumption, at 45% in 2023, up from 36% in 2022.

Videos up to 15 minutes long (excluding YouTube Shorts) were the most popular form of content on YouTube (62%), followed by YouTube Shorts (47%) which has grown in popularity since 2023 (36%).

BVOD switch is working

One of the idiosyncracies of the UK market is the dominance of BVoD platforms which are a growing proportion of total viewing to broadcasters’ content (to 13% across 2023, up 3% YoY).

Here the largest increases were among older audiences; for example, 55-64s and over-74s increased theirs by 32% and 43% respectively (to 28 and 24 minutes per day).

Ofcom notes that the rapid growth in total BVoD viewing “was not enough to compensate for the large decline in viewing of broadcasters’ linear channels, which nevertheless continues to account for a large majority (87%) of total viewing of broadcaster content.”

That said, these proportions vary by broadcaster. Viewing to Sky (Sky Now) and the BBC (iPlayer) skews more towards the broadcasters’ BVoD services (accounting for 20% and 18% of total viewing respectively), whereas Channel 5 remains predominantly linear-based, with 95% of all its viewing going to its broadcast linear channels and 5% to its BVoD service, My5.

Daily average viewing time to ITV’s BVoD service ITVX increased by 57% year on year to nearly four minutes per person per day in 2023, while the proportion of total viewing to ITV via BVoD rose from 7% to 11%.

Reorienting around VoD continues to be a key focus for broadcasters. This has seen them expand their catalogues, experiment with ‘windows’, and refine the streaming user experience, among other initiatives.

The PSBs will also hope to benefit from new availability and prominence rules – part of the Media Act that was passed in May 2024 and to be implemented by Ofcom – designed to ensure online PSB services are both available on popular TV platforms and capable of being easily found and discovered by audiences.

The amount of content available on BVoD has increased significantly over the past two years. Cumulative catalogue hours available across BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4 streaming and My5 totalled 65,923 in May 2024, up by 47% compared to May 2022, as charted in the report.

SVOD hits a plateau

SVoD was the primary driver of overall UK market growth, generating about £700m more than in the previous year, just under £4bn in total, with this increase largely 30 driven by price rises.

However, with the rate of stacking holding steady at 2.3 subscriptions per household throughout 2023, the pure subscription market is believed to have plateaued. The next phase of market growth is set to come from ad-supported tiers.

Netflix remains the #1 SVoD provider in the country with 58% of households. Over two million of Netflix’s 16.7 million UK households were estimated to be on the streamer’s advertising-supported tier.

Netflix also remains the most-watched SVoD, averaging 21 minutes per person per day in 2023 and accounting for over half of total SVoD/AVoD viewing time for all age groups. Disney+, while in third place in terms of household penetration of these services, ranked second in terms of daily viewing (9 minutes), slightly ahead of Amazon Prime Video (7 minutes).

While British audiences are satisfied overall with SVoD packages, some viewers express dissatisfaction with elements of it. Ofcom’s survey found that nearly half of adults and teens (46%) agreed with the statement: ‘there are too many video-on-demand services’ and 42% agreed with ‘I find the amount of content available on video-on-demand services overwhelming’.

While some audiences are unsubscribing, most (68%) said ‘they would miss video-on-demand services if they were no longer available’. Audiences’ reluctance to give up these services, despite the cost, may explain the plateauing of subscriptions to SVoD services, according to Ofcom.

Sports up and news down

Live broadcast TV dominating the viewing diets of the over-45s. Big TV ‘moments’ capturing live national and international events rank highly in 2023’s list of most-watched programmes, including the New Year’s Eve Fireworks (12.1 million viewers), The Coronation of The King and Queen Camilla (12 million viewers) and the Eurovision Song Contest (10.1 million viewers). 

The most-watched event so far in 2024 has been the UEFA Euro 2024 men’s final between England and Spain, with the BBC's and ITV's coverage together averaging 15.1 million viewers that day.

“But while live TV may not have the universal pull it once did, its role in capturing those big moments that bring the nation together remains vital,” notes Ian Macrae, Ofcom’s Director of Market Intelligence.

News was the genre with the largest year-on-year viewing decline on linear. Current affairs programming also exhibited decline.

Ofcom reckons this trend may be driven by factors including an increase in the use of social media platforms for news (which includes PSBs’ social media channels) and a decrease in the overall level of interest in news.

On SVoDs Brits prefer to watch films, with Netflix’s Chicken Run: Dawn of The Nugget and Disney+’s Elemental topping the list of most watched content (measured over a 28-day period to be comparable to broadcast TV programme audiences). Films account for over a quarter of viewing, while drama remains the largest genre with about two-fifths of viewing.

Tough financial situation

The extent of the difficulties facing broadcasters was evidenced by a 7.5% year-on-year decline in combined revenues for commercial PSBs, digital multichannels and pay-TV operators, falling by £824m to £10.2bn. Linear ad spend fell by 13.6% and total TV ad spend (linear plus BVoD) by 8.9%.

“The challenging macro-economic environment significantly coloured the performance of the commercial PSBs, as well as many digital multichannels (which rely primarily on income from advertising),” said Ofcom.

Pay-TV operators including Sky, Virgin Media and EE (BT) saw their collective revenue decline by 3.6% to £6.2bn, as continued subscriber declines failed to offset price rises.

Although connected TV advertising grew by 21% in 2023 to £1.2bn, a survey of marketers conducted by ad-tech provider Teads revealed some hesitancy to invest in this format, which suggests unrealised potential.

However, improved trading conditions this year, aided by higher levels of consumer confidence and inflation now slowing, could see the market return to growth.  The Advertising Association / WARC is forecasting a 3.9% increase in total TV ad spend in 2024, driven by a projected 14% increase in BVoD spend.

 

 

 

What the 8K OTT Tests at the Olympics Signal to Broadcasters

NAB

article here

The Olympic Games have been a testbed for 8K broadcasting since London in 2012, with a new project to showcase ultra resolution from Paris.

The baton has now passed from Japanese broadcaster NHK to chip-maker Intel, which will use the occasion to demonstrate how 8K can be streamed live over the internet.

To be clear, this is a tech demo only, with a select number of events being captured natively in the format and distributed to a handful of rights holders, presumably with demo rooms set up with 8K TVs.

What’s Different From the Beijing Olympics Test?

What’s new is that the test, organized by Olympic Broadcasting Services and Intel, will aim to show how live 8K signals can be compressed using Versatile Video Coding (VVC) / H.266 and sent with minimal latency over the internet to screens on the other side of the world (or the US).

“Our goal at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 is a step closer toward making 8K mainstream, and to deliver live 8K streaming using advanced h.266/VVC encoding technologies that reach the highest quality at the lowest bitrate possible around the globe,” explained Intel’s 8K lead Ravindra Velhal.

The demonstration of an end-to-end 8K VVC livestreaming experience “provides a pathway for the future of low-latency, broadcast-grade 8K livestreaming over the internet.”

How They’re Broadcasting an 8K Olympic (Test)

The nuts and bolts of this tech demo are as follows:

“Broadcast-grade cameras” in select Games venues in Paris capture live content in 8K at 60 frames per second in HDR at 48 Gbps bitrate mixed with 32 audio channels.

A purpose-built “broadcast in a box” encoder powered by Intel Xeon CPUs processes that raw content in less than 400 milliseconds and distributes it across the internet “within seconds.”

At the other end, more Intel gear is required to decode the signals content “in real time,” before displaying the video on an 8K TV.

Velhal explained that technologies in Intel Xeon CPUs “analyze each scene, frame by frame” and that its algorithms have been trained to process fast-moving data “without compromising on latency and quality.”

The overall latency from camera to TV “is just a few seconds, a figure unachievable in the past,” he added.

“Together with our industry and technology partners, we are solving the world’s biggest distribution roadblock that stands in the way of 8K live broadcasts. Paris 2024 proves that the future of low-latency, high-definition 8K livestreaming is here.”

Understanding Audience Demand

It’s worth noting that, while OBS is producing its world feed coverage in UHD 4K HDR, there’s been a retrenchment of that higher resolution among sports broadcasters worldwide. The complexity of UHD production and the cost of transporting higher bitrates is not considered a viable trade off when paired with consumer demand. 

UEFA, for instance, only broadcast the recent major soccer competition European Championships in HD 1080 HDR. There is a lack of demand for 4K UHD among world broadcasters, the majority of whom have not upgraded their infrastructure from HD. HD plus high dynamic range is considered by many to yield the best bang for buck picture quality especially when there is no appetite among consumers to pay a premium for 4K pictures. 

Intel may be looking toward streamers like Netflix, Amazon and Apple who are increasingly involved in live sports broadcast and who may see a key differentiator which that can commercialize in a high frame rate 8K live streamed content.

Intel has previously worked with OBS at the  Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 to produce a claimed world first 8K virtual reality feed — but the market dial has not moved on this format either.

In a Paris Olympics preview at NAB Show in April, Yiannis Exarchos, the CEO of OBS, said that its rights-holding broadcasters would in total broadcast more than half a million hours of content from the Games. (You can watch the full video below or read on for highlights.)

“Hopefully this will result in more or less half the earth’s population experiencing the Games,” he said. “This describes a little bit of the value that the Olympics still has a huge aggregator of audience. In a world of such incredible segmentation of audiences, the Games brings people together.”  

But this can no longer be done on the back of traditional ways of working of producing and telling stories, Exarchos emphasized. “The achievement of these incredible athlete’s stories is emotional but the way you have to do [tell these stories] and the way this content is consumed are very, very different.”  

He continued, “Of course, you still have a very big number of people who consume the Olympics in quite traditional ways. But if we talk about younger generations and the proliferation of digital media you have to look at it in a different way. This is why we are having to produce so much.” 

In order to feed “the insatiable beast of digital” Exarchos described needing to produce a very high level high quality production for traditional television, but also tons of content for digital for social. 

“So the Olympics is a big problem of scaling. A few years ago, [we made] a fundamental strategic decision to exploit as much as possible the opportunities that IP technology was bringing.

“This signaled our strategic transition from relying mostly on traditional broadcast technology into exploring the possibilities of IP. So today, we arrive at the point where actually software-defined broadcasting is a reality in Paris. We will produce [certain] sports without using traditional broadcast equipment and with software and off-the-shelf hardware.”

If ChatGPT hasn’t been trained on movie screenplays, why does it seem like it has?

RedShark News

article here

Filmmakers may fear that the new wave of Generative AI tools have been secretly trained on their work and there’s evidence that this is indeed the case.

The first known feature-length script generated by ChatGPT to be filmed has a central character who is a failed writer. His name is Jack. 

Coincidence? The director and co-producer of The Last Screenwriter thinks not. 

“The central character is called Jack and he's a troubled writer. Maybe The Shining came in there somewhere,” says Swiss filmmaker Peter Luisi who shot and edited the drama conventionally albeit entirely from a screenplay credited to ChatGPT.

That screenplay was derived from the following prompt:

‘Write a plot to a film where a screenwriter realises he is less good than artificial intelligence’

“If you read the screenplay then everything is so generic but when you watch the film you are reminded of other films,” Luisi says. “I would say 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ex Machina and Her are things that come up 

“So I think there's no doubt [ChatGPT] was trained by other films, and it's not okay - but it's impossible to prove it."

Luisi’s film is experimental and intended to provoke debate about the nature of GenAI in cinema. Arguably if he had not done this it would be only a matter of time before another filmmaker did.

He says he is not afraid of any legal action not least because The Last Screenwriter was made not for profit by his production company Spotlight and is distributed online for free at www.lastscreenwriter.com where all the prompts and making-of documentation are displayed too.

Luisi is a successful filmmaker too, having been Oscar nominated three times including for co-writing Switzerland’s 2007 entry Vitus and is either director, writer or producer of eight features including Bon Schuur Ticino (2023).

“I want to stress I didn’t do this movie because I can’t write and that I could have used the money to make another film which we could have sold. I feel like we are giving something to the filmmaking community instead of taking from it, although I realise not everyone sees it that way.”

The Last Screenwriter was going to premiere at the Prince Charles Cinema in London the other week before an online backlash prompted Spotlight to withdraw it. 

“I was surprised at the severity of the accusations,” he says. “In retrospective I should have known it would happen because people don’t inform themselves. And yes the tagline for the movie is ‘the first screenplay written by AI’. That’s what people get upset about. I would argue if they took the time to read why and how we made it then most people would not be so upset.”

ChatGPT developer OpenAI is a black box when it comes to any form of transparency about the data it has scraped from the internet. It is subject to several copyright infringement lawsuits in the United States which may unlock the truth. AI developers use the argument of ‘fair use’ which is to say, provided what their technology produces is not a direct copy then it’s a new work that has broken no law and owes no-one any residuals.

Luisi says he wouldn’t use ChatGPT to make the movies he loves.

“I think ChatGPT is a very, very mediocre writer at the moment. I do believe the screenplay for our film is fantastic - considering it was written by a computer.

“I really don't know how that's possible. That still blows my mind. I mean, you have dialogue that makes sense and characters with proper connections. It's just so difficult in my opinion to write a movie that I don't know how a computer can do it.”

If OpenAI has been feeding its machine with 120 years of movie history we have our answer.

Ironically, by using ChatGPT to produce the screenplay for The Last Screenwriter, Luisi has also trained it to become better.

IBC Conference: How Virgin is “reimagining the traditional TV format”

IBC

Curated local content, integration with the TV guide, and programmatic advertising are keys to Virgin MediaO2’s FAST strategy.

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Pay TV operators are joining the free ad-supported TV (FAST) bandwagon to beat out competition from connected TV (CTV) platforms from manufacturers like LG and Samsung, but doing so in a controlled strategy to keep the consumer within their own ecosystem.

“As basic pay TV channels decline, we think there’s a natural growth for FAST to fill that gap but we don’t expect or plan on having hundreds of such channels,” says David Bouchier, Chief TV & Entertainment Officer, Virgin MediaO2. “We’re reimagining the traditional TV format.”

The operator began its journey to FAST in the UK a year ago with the launch of 19 channels including three from Pluto TV (Catfish, CSI: New York, and 5Cops) and others from partners like A+E Networks EMEA, All3Media International, Banijay Rights, Blue Ant Media, Extreme International, Fremantle, Little Dot Studios and Tastemade.

Earlier this year Virgin added another 11 FAST channels including UKTV Play Full Throttle (UKTV); History Hunters (A+E Networks); Qello Concerts (Stingray), and Real Crime (Little Dot Studios) all available for customers with a v6, TV 360, or Stream set-top box.

“A traditional paid television operator such as ourselves has to respond to new competition coming in from CTV manufacturers where multi-channel availability is now available through IP direct to the TV screen,” Bouchier says. “At the same time, traditional providers of paid channels are themselves going over the top (OTT) through direct-to-consumer (DTC) subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services.

“So, for us, it’s about ensuring that we keep our services as the destination point for household viewing. Whether they are viewing SVOD from Netflix or Disney+, watching the traditional national networks like BBC and ITV, or watching premium sport through Discovery, it’s all about Virgin remaining the user interface (UI) of choice.”

Careful curation

Prior to joining Virgin Media, Bouchier was a member of the management executive of BSkyB in the UK, where he was responsible for handling the company’s investment in German pay TV, before moving to News Corporation as MD of Programming for Sky Italia. He subsequently returned to the UK and established his own pay TV broadcast businesses, creating several pay television channels.

“The distinction between ourselves as CTV providers is around content strategy,” he says. “Whereas they start from ground zero in terms of content and aim for volume, we have lots of great basic and premium channels. We don’t need 150 channels.”

In fact, Bouchier says Virgin will evolve to about 50 FAST channels from its current 30.

“The key thing is that we curate, we don’t aggregate,” he stresses. “We don’t do volume. FAST is complementary programming to our existing pay channel and local is the key.”

What Bouchier means by ‘local’ is English language content carefully chosen to resonate with UK audiences.

“In the early days when setting up FAST it was predominantly supported by back-end technology providers. We’d have hour-long meetings talking about technical delivery which is all very well but you get to the end and I’d ask ‘what channels do you have?’, and they’d reply, ‘we have pages and pages of channels’ and they’d send me an excel spreadsheet detailing them all.

“But that wasn’t necessarily what we wanted. Channels from the US that our viewers have never heard of won’t resonate.

“So we made sure that our first FAST channels are predominantly English programming. We worked with many of our traditional suppliers and tried to hit on the genres that we know audiences like which are Family, Kids, Mystery and Crime as well as long-running factual series like Homes Under the Hammer. We have a great deal with DAZN for a channel dedicated to women’s sport.

“Speaking generally, they all perform as well as one of our basic long-tail pay channels,” he says.

Seamless viewing experience

Another key point for Bouchier was to make the channels visible in the TV guide (EPG) alongside its other pay and free offerings.

“This is a critical point I want to make to fellow operators. It was very important to bring them into our EPG so they have the greatest exposure possible and are perceived as part of the regular broadcast linear channels.

“Our customers are used to channel surfing and seeing multichannel in our EPG,” he continues. “No one has done it like this. If you switch on Samsung TV, for example, and get Samsung TV Plus, it sits separate from where you watch the main broadcast channel. We wanted to integrate FAST into our existing EPG.”

That led to certain challenges because, if the channels sit within the EPG they have to be licenced by Ofcom, and therefore have to conform to Ofcom requirements.

“It’s not a huge hurdle certainly for traditional channel providers but you may need to handhold providers from outside the UK through the process.”

Dynamic advertising

Aside from curated, local content and integration into the EPG, the third pillar of Virgin’s FAST strategy is monetisation. Virgin Media works with Amagi and Magnite, including its video ad server SpringServe, to manage and develop FAST services on Virgin TV, with the opportunity for Virgin Media and its channel partners to monetise FAST through targeted, dynamic advertising.

“FAST allows us to tap into new sources of advertising by accessing revenue from programmatic advertising which has traditional only been available to online.”

Getting to that stage required Virgin build a new front end to the user interface in order to obtain opt-in consent from customers to deliver a targeted ad program.

“The advantage for advertisers is they get more granular data. If they want access to customers watching crime programming, automated programmatic advertising enables them to bid for our inventory in a much more dynamic fashion.”

The number of pay TV channels has declined as providers move to ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) which is more economical than traditional linear. FAST fills the gap.

“Everyone’s got to make money out of it and the UK with Germany hold the second biggest advertising markets in the west after the US. So there is upside potential because we are a lucrative ad market and there’s some way to go to maximise those monetisation levels.”