AV Benelux: Keeping it local

AV Magazine

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/507060a3?page=22#/507060a3/22

In a sophisticated, competitive and small market like the Benelux knowledge of local custom can make all the difference.

The political union that unites the Benelux makes it a big player in the European market in spite of its relatively small geographical size. Rotterdam and Antwerp make it the gateway to northern Europe and the strong economic hinterland of Germany and France.

Belgium is home to several international corporate headquarters, as well as the European Commission and NATO – both generating AV opportunities in the business segment. In addition – and surely linked to this international presence – kit rental companies like AED, Phlippo (both Belgian HQ'd), Ampco Flashlight, Rent-all Group (Netherlands HQ'd) and EML Productions (with a foot in both) have a pan-European reach. To make things even more interesting, Amsterdam is host to two of the industry’s biggest exhibitions - ISE and IBC.

While the markets in either country are broadly similar, ignore cultural differences at your cost. “Many people make the mistake of thinking they can manage Benelux from the Netherlands,” says Filip Cogghe of NEC Display Solutions. “If a company bases an HQ in Holland there's a huge problem selling in Belgium because few people in the Netherlands speak French.”

When it comes to operating in the region, language can be the difference between success - and genuine repeat business success. “Nevertheless, we understand each other very well and there are more things that are aligned than real differences,” says Wouter Dierinck, business unit manager for TD Maverick.

With a high fluency in English it is possible to serve the region from a centralized headquarters. Han Dohmen, sales manager, L-Acoustics says “customers prefer to work with a company that has a local presence, with partners who know their business well, and are able to support the client in the local language. This is especially true in Wallonie.”

Steven Kemland, manager at FACE (a local Powersoft distributor) reports that when pro-audio brands have tried to service Belgium from a general HQ in Europe, it didn't work out. “Big brands which don’t have a good distribution channel in a country like Belgium won’t have any market share at all.”

Players in the Benelux might look across the border now and then for better pricing, but according to Erwin Gyssels, business unit manager at Sanel (Vivitek’s Belgian distributor), they are aware they'll never get the same kind of support they would get if they used a local supplier.

“Most French, German or UK-based suppliers that are successful in the Benelux are so because their products are not properly offered by a local player, leaving the Benelux customer with no alternative,” he says.

Broadly speaking, the Netherlands' market is installation-orientated whereas the rental market is stronger in Belgium, suggests Jan Breel, CEO, Avtrade (a Dataton partner based in Netherlands).

Belgium packs 11 million people into 30,528 sq km, has five state governments, two main languages (French and Flemish Dutch, which is different to Dutch spoken in the Netherlands), several more dialects, and a unifying capital city (Brussels).

“You need to know the dynamics of the market,” urges Cogghe. Luxembourg, 200km from Brussels has opportunities in finance but few local SI's and business tends to be done between Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent. “The Netherlands has several resellers with 25-100 employees but Belgium will have dozens of (often in-house) AV companies with no more than 10 people managing a project,” he notes.

Consequently, even larger corporations buy from smaller AV outfits in Belgium making personal relationships vital. “The step between a manufacturer and the end user is much smaller in Belgium than most other countries,” says Kemland. “A distributor is, in many, cases distributor, dealer and integrator in one.”

The north of Holland is more conservative than the south but the entire country is more relaxed than its western neighbour. “If I visit a customer in Belgium I will wear a suit. If I wear the same to a meeting in the Netherlands even without a tie they will ask me if my grandmother just died,” jokes Cogghe to make the point.

The Netherlands tends to be much more adaptive, more experimental with a “'lets try and see how it goes' mentality,” suggests Dierinck. “When it comes to new technologies and systems in Belgium there's a cultural attitude to prove that it makes sense from a business perspective. That said, Belgium also tends to be more brand loyal culturally, with distributors and partners going for things that they really know fits them well.”

Benelux's size compared to the UK or Germany often puts it in the position of a pilot market for new technologies. Examples include SMART Kapp and Barco ClickShare. “As the economy is smaller, it offers less potential risk and great testing opportunities,” says Dierinck. “Perhaps the reason why the Netherlands likes to try new technology first.”

Polycom reports more ‘as a service’ buys in the Benelux than in other European countries “as customers look to upscale existing voice and video solutions to complete unified communications and collaboration deployments,” explains regional sales manager David Van Dem Berg. “The market is very focused on selling solutions to solve business problems, rather than traditional product-focused selling. Generally, clients in the Benelux require a deeper understanding of the value AV adds to their business overall, to help justify their investments.”

Belgium resembles the French market “probably because we share a common culture,” observes Gwenaelle Villette, business development manager, France & Benelux for Peerless-AV. “The Dutch market is a bit of a late starter compared to its European neighbours [UK and Germany] but is now revealing real dynamism and potential. It appears to be much more opportunistic [than Belgium] and business can be done very quickly.”

Social legislation also creates differences. “Belgian institutions and companies use their own staff more for taking care of AV facilities, while in Holland, companies and organisations tend to go for outsourcing,” informs Gyssels.

Area Hot Spots

Netflix and Uber have established their European HQ in Amsterdam; Delft is considered the hotbed of youth innovation housing the country’s largest tech university; and Eindhoven is declared by Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/) to be “hands-down the most inventive city in the world.” According to data compiled by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Eindhoven produces 22.6 patents per 100,000 residents. San Diego, the next closest, produces 8.9.

Tech companies in Belgium are concentrated around Leuven due to the proximity of Ghent university and companies such as IMEC. Wallonia is still suffering from the reconversion of old and heavy industry, reports Gyssels but slowly things are improving with investment projects (by GSK and others) in area’s such as Brabant Wallon.

“There is a very active corridor between Brussels and Antwerp in the Belgian market, whereas the business is more evenly spread out in Holland,” says Dohmen. “Most of the business (in the Netherlands) is generated in cities like Breda and Eindhoven in the south and Amsterdam and Amersfoort in the north.”

Dierinck earmarks the south of Belgium, (Brussels, and Luxembourg) as “the moment to invest” and capitalise on “a great appetite to develop and deploy new technologies across a variety of industries - in particular education is doing well as a growth area.”

The European Schoolnet, based in Brussels, aims is to link over 29,000 schools to collaborate together. The Future Classroom laboratory, sponsored by Polycom, uses video collaboration solutions to help teachers embrace technology and explore new ways in which it can help education. Another part of the project is the Schoolnet E-twinning. This initiative allows any EU school to work with another school within the EU to share knowledge, experiences or to work on projects together. The platform is built in a way that allows schools to communicate via video with Polycom's user interface.

Verticals

Corporate AV is the bread and butter of the Benelux, but there has been some substantial investment in cultural venues, such as the Continum Discovery Centre in Kerkrade and the National Military Museum in Soesterberg, notes Avtrade's Breel.

When it comes to AV specialisms, notes Daniel Kerkhof, Creston's regional sales manager, notes a strong movement towards LEED and BREAAM certified buildings, “which need advanced technical systems to be able to reach up to the highest levels of certifications.”

In Belgium, Creston identifies potential in renewing football stadiums, “which are mostly relatively old-fashioned.” Each small town in Holland and Belgium contains a local theatre, sports venue and clubs all of which need some kind of AV equipment. “This offers a lot of opportunity per square kilometre,” says L-Acoustics' Dohmen. “Many of the projects – both new and renew – in Belgium have some portion of government funding which can have a serious impact on the duration of the project. Projects can take several years before funds are liberated, and this is part of the reason why building good relationships is so important to this market. It takes more time to really get a foothold here.”

According to Van Dem Berg, the Benelux has seen a big move away from the traditional office and into the workplace of the future. “New Dutch Legislation on flexible working has been recently agreed. This will see the number of remote workers increase drastically as anyone that has been on the job for more than six months can now request to work flexibly. The demand for desktop and mobile video collaboration solutions to support this will be huge.”

The Benelux is prominent in EDM (Electronic Dance Music) with many of the world’s top DJs (such as Armin van Buuren) coming from the region and some of the world’s highest profile EDM festivals are here (such as Tomorrowland near Antwerp). This offers lots of business potential to companies active in this segment when exporting EDM concepts.

Benelux has an 8% share of the digital signage and DOOH market in Europe with a progression of 20% (one of the fastest growing in Europe - *http://www.clubdigitalmedia.fr/SiteAssets/lindex-marché/Full%20report%202015%2003.pdf).

Nonetheless, “the region is 3-4 years behind developments in the UK market,” says Cogghe. “The quantities sold to corporate customers and a booming market for public displays is something we can only dream of. Government investment in AV for publics services like health and education is static at best.”

There is still growth if you know where to look and how to pitch the product. NEC's recent sales include units to Dutch health chain Basic Fit. “The AV market is experiencing satisfying and stable growth despite a volatile economic and political situation,” says Villette. “New jobs are being created in digital signage and there is high demand for qualified personnel.”

Local relationships key

In Belgium, there are cases where non-pro outfits are trying, and sometimes failing, to manage big AV projects. “This can result in uncertainty among the end-user community,” says Villette. “Communication on best practice and a more professional approach to installs is needed, which presents us with an exciting opportunity as an AV solutions manufacturer.”

AV experts emphasis the importance of ensuring the business case for AV tech in verticals is strong and that there is a local connection to launch.

“To be successful in Benelux you will need to collaborate with a big local player or to speak the language natively,” stresses Dierinck. “Relationships in business are the most important things in this region, something that is perhaps unique. There's an attitude here that business is done by people, and invoicing is done by business. It's a very local way of working. So to be successful, a link-up with an existing person or contact within the region is of utmost importance.”

Technicolor and Philips fuse HDR development as ‘full fat’ UHD HDR specs emerge

Sports Video Group Europe 

The number of High Dynamic Range solutions may have reduced but agreement on a single agreed standard may be further away following an announcement by Technicolor and Philips to marry their respective HDR technologies.
http://svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/technicolor-and-philips-fuse-hdr-development-as-full-fat-uhd-hdr-specs-emerge/

The two companies say they will work to produce a joint approach to HDR content creation tools, encoding and decoding software and implementation support. The pact covers all content production, including the live HDR process which Technicolor demonstrated at IBC2015 and which has since been tested by two “major broadcasters” according to the company.

The first results of the collaboration with Philips – which has been ongoing since IBC – will be shown at NAB with commercial deployments planned in late 2016.

Previously the companies had submitted competing proposals to the ITU, alongside Dolby and broadcasters BBC/NHK, for inclusion in future UHD specifications. Frustration with this standardisation process is part of Technicolor’s response.

“One of the reasons we decided to join forces [with Philips] was to make it easier for customers to adopt HDR,” explains Manuele Wahl, senior vice-president of Technology and Trademark Licensing at Technicolor. “It’s been a while since standardisation bodies have begun work on a solution. We think there’s room for another HDR deployment, we think the consumer will adopt it and we think standards bodies will adopt it.”

Technicolor is keen to emphasise that its approach will accommodate full backwards compatibility to Standard Dynamic Range displays. This, says Wahl, will simplify HDR deployments for broadcasters “who will be able to send one signal to all of their customers, regardless of which TV they have. This is a clear demand from broadcasters.”

STB factor

Both Technicolor and Philips own a set top box business which, according to Wahl, is the chief reason for the alliance over that of partnering with the BBC or NHK, both of which also place backwards compatibility as a critical component.

“The reason we partnered with Philips is that it is also an operating company,” explains Wahl. “We think a key element in the deployment is that we will not only offer a specification to the market but a fully developed end-to-end solution with field engineering services. There are several HDR solutions but we share the same view as Philips and we have very complementary technologies.”

Technicolor will lead the joint approach, which will also be branded as Technicolor HDR to the consumer and on set top devices produced by both Technicolor and Philips. Other consumer electronics groups supporting the initiative in either TV or STB hardware will be announced in time, Technicolor said.

“Other partners which have implemented the Technicolor solution (such as Elemental Technologies) will follow the roadmap,” says Wahl. “This joint HDR solution is based on core Technicolor technology enriched with other features. We have around 10 sub-vendors covering STB and TV design working with us on the solution.”

Among them is LG Electronics, with which the French group is collaborating on delivering content in accord with specs of the UHD Alliance. The two companies have gained the endorsement of director Francis Ford Coppola, who has overseen freshly HDR-graded content from his back catalogue.

Technicolor plans to incorporate its HDR delivery technologies in LG devices and displays, intends LG OLED TVs to serve as Technicolor’s consumer HDR reference model and for LG OLED units to be marketed to post-production facilities as reference monitors to view and approve content prior to distribution.

Separately, the UHD Alliance ­–­ which also includes Panasonic, Samsung and Sony, Netflix, Disney and Fox – has announced an ‘Ultra HD Premium’ specification for content for home distribution including HDR.

HDR specifications

The HDR specs are defined as meeting SMPTE ST2084 EOTF with a

contrast performance of either more than 1000 nits peak brightness and less than 0.05 nits black level; or more than 540 nits peak brightness and less than 0.0005 nits black level. The two performance criteria are designed for OLED and LED LCD screens, which have different luminance characteristics.

Ultra HD Premium TVs must also deliver 10-bit colour bit depth, and they must reproduce at least 90 percent of the P3 colour gamut, the same as digitally projected theatrical exhibition.

Curiously, the Dolby Vision HDR format is not stated.

Products and services which meet the performance metrics will be eligible to license an ‘Ultra HD Premium’ logo, with which TV makers can badge and market their equipment. The idea is to reduce all the different and confusing varieties of UHD and HDR away from the retail store and present consumers with a no-nonsense kite mark of top of the range quality.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) expects a bumper year for 4K TV sales with revenue from displays sold in the US this year topping $10 billion, a 65 percent increase year-over-year.

Making Light Work: Christian Berger AAC

British Cinematographer

Christian Berger AAC, The ASC Award-winner and Academy and BSC nominee for The White Ribbon (2009), is renowned for his use of natural light, although the acclaimed cinematographer wants to correct this slight misconception.

https://britishcinematographer.co.uk/christian-berger-aac-by-the-sea/

“I don’t use natural light,” he says. “I create a light which looks very natural because, for me, there is no light more beautiful and richer in atmospheres than natural light in all its variations. But it’s a nice compliment if people think there was no other lighting used. I think I do just the same as what all the famous painters did in the past. I observe very, very precisely the quality and the 'behaviour' of natural light and use it to realise my artistic visions.”

By The Sea will further cement the Austrian's reputation. This third directorial work from Angelina Pitt-Jolie, in which the actor stars alongside Brad Pitt, is inspired by European cinema and theatre of the 1960s and 1970s in both its style and treatment of themes of the human experience.

Set in France during the mid-1970s, Vanessa, a former dancer, and her husband Roland, an American writer, travel the country together. They seem to be growing apart, but when they linger in one quiet, seaside town they begin to draw close to some of its more vibrant inhabitants, such as a local bar/café-keeper and a hotel owner.

Pitt-Jolie actively sought-out Berger for the movie because of his cinematographic philosophy. “When I asked them 'why me?', Brad said that they'd found an interview with me on YouTube (A River Of Light) in which I discuss my views on lighting for film,” says Berger. “It made them curious because I mention how important it is for me to have a different working method on-set – one which favours actors and gives directors more freedom by minimising technical restrictions.”

Berger's Cine Reflect Lighting System (CRLS), first employed on Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher (2001), changes the working method by offering a set uncluttered with cables, stands or filters. Pitt-Jolie was attracted to the freedom this would give her to tell the intimate story of a married couple's fragmenting relationship.

Perhaps Berger's European heritage also inspired the director's intention to capture the spirit of the period in the south of France. “Reproducing the feel of that time was essential, which is how we came to reference the Nouvelle Vague and directors Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman and Roberto Rossellini,” says Berger. “This was a general reference – not related to a specific film – but one intended to capture a mix of humour and melancholia or tristesse.”

From first contact with the filmmakers in April 2014, Berger went to LA to discuss visual ideas and block scenes. Art director Tom Brown and Jon Hutman scouted locations in Greece, Croatia, Italy and Turkey before alighting on the Maltese island of Gozo. Principal photography began mid-August until November 2014 in an empty bay where production designer Jon Hutman had built a hotel and a café. This mix of studio and on-location conditions resulted in many challenging light situations.

“It was very important in the production design to be connected to nature so that from any window or balcony in the hotel or café you can see the sea and rocks,” Berger explains. “I loved the horizontal structure in the nature that surrounded us, like the sea horizon or the coast structure, which was one of the reasons for shooting in Cinemascope.”

It was not only hot in Malta, but most of the time the production had to work with quite harsh sunlight too. Gaffer Jakob Ballinger created a unique rig for the CRLS mounted on the 'hotel' roof that allowed Berger to quickly change and stabilise the required atmospheres from day-to-night and from night-to-day. The CRLS uses a 1200W HMI lamp with parallel light beams and very high output, calibrated as near as possible to the quality of daylight, and a set of high-tech CRLS reflectors to modulate and direct the light. The smaller units are typically 400W HMI or halogen Dedolights but adapted for the CRLS.

“Even on a rainy day, we could keep the 'sun' stable or could change very fast from early morning to late afternoon or to any desired atmosphere,” explains Berger. “And we could always maintain a free view of the sea or the rocky hills through the windows of the set. The most challenging situations were when we had to make night shots over the whole bay including the hotel and café.”

Other scenes included landscapes and scenes of a beach, one scene on a sailing boat, which required some dextrous work with a Russian Arm from a working boat.

For an artist with such a clear affinity with the treatment of light, Berger's choice of digital is intriguing. He says, though, that he is not ideologically aligned to any media.

“For me it's never fundamentally a question of grain or pixel. I am not swayed either way. My first experience with video (on Caché/ Hidden, 2005) was not a good one, but in the last three films working with ARRI Alexa it has been good. Angelina gave me the freedom to choose and I chose the Alexa XT Plus, rated at 800 ASA. A sensitivity which is more than enough for me and you can really use the 13-stops of dynamic range.”

Accompanying the Alexa, Berger selected ARRI/Zeiss Master Primes and a 45-250mm Fujinon Alura zoom.

“I really have to compliment not only my crew, but also the production crew I had on By The Sea because they were so good and efficient,” adds Berger, who credits camera operator, Gerald Helf; second camera and steadicam operator, Robert Stopfer; focus puller,

Dieter Knestel; and dolly/key grip, Emmanuel Aubry. Berger oversaw the grade at EFilm in LA with experienced colourist Mitch Paulson.

Jolie-Pitt, he says, didn't require a lot of coverage; most scenes were shot single with occasional two cameras. “Her direction on this movie was concentrated more on shots to vary the acting,” says Berger. Pitt has been quoted saying that he felt comfortable expressing the scenes this way because of a set unencumbered by distracting technical paraphernalia.

“Brad loved to make variations so he'd play a whole scene more aggressively, or more tenderly or with more or less distance,” says Berger. “It was great to see how they responded to the liberation of a free set. We probably shot enough that in the edit you could create two to three different films.”

Of the finished picture Berger says, “I always like to make any film better if I see it for the first time in the cinema, but my hope is that I could serve the style of the picture which the director wanted and at the same time keep my own signature.”

Of note: Jakob Ballinger has launched a website for directors of photography and gaffers to educate and involve them with the further development of the CRLS – www.thelightbridge.com.

Programmatic TV Advertising Will Make Strides in the UK in 2016

Streaming Media Europe

The United Kingdom may lead the world in the adoption of programmatic advertising, but significant barriers still remain before it takes over.
http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Programmatic-TV-Advertising-Will-Make-Strides-in-the-UK-in-2016-108283.aspx]

Programmatic trading is well on its way to dominating the digital ad space and momentum is building to transfer its benefits to TV, with the U.K. arguably leading the way. Barriers blocking the technology's path will likely see broadcasters and agencies adopting the automation and data gathering efficiencies of programmatic transactions first, while real-time auctions lag some way behind.

“Programmatic TV makes sense around automation, the area which will really start to gain traction in 2016,” says Thomas Bremond, European managing director of video technology company Freewheel. “However, programmatic has to solve a few questions before broadcasters fully embrace it from a technical and a business standpoint.”

The technical barriers vary from country to country, he says. Those with a high penetration of digital terrestrial TV—a one-way street as far as return path data is concerned—make addressable advertising methods hugely difficult.

“Even for those countries with more set-top box-driven markets there are [privacy data] laws preventing change to the advertiser dynamic,” says Bremond. “This also makes programmatic in its full sense a tough value proposition.”

Rich Astley, U.K. managing director for online ad platform Videology, is more bullish. “2016 will be a seminal year for programmatic TV and for the U.K. in particular,” he says. “There are a lot of products launching from broadcasters and tech companies and the end goal is simple: Advertisers are requiring better access to audiences and more granular information about audiences, and agencies are looking for more automation and efficiency in the way they trade.”

The U.K. is well placed for programmatic TV's introduction, he argues. “It has a strong infrastructure for both programmatic and addressable TV. It has very advanced platform operators in Sky, Virgin, and, to an extent, BT, but also a very forward thinking trading economy where there's a lot of innovation pushing for change. From an infrastructure standpoint it has high broadband speeds and a very strong adoption of connected TV in both internet connect STBs as well as app-based devices.”

By contrast, the U.S. market, Astley says, is much more fragmented. “There are a few players like Cablevision which are very advanced in programmatic and addressable, but some bigger media companies are delivering only a fraction of their inventory using addressable techniques,” he says. “In many cases, the infrastructure is dated and may not even be IP-enabled so dynamic insertion won't exist for some time.”

Recent research by media regulator Ofcom (in its International Communications Market Report 2015) suggests the U.K. is more advanced in terms of online video consumption than nations such as the U.S., Japan, and Australia. Some 42 percent of homes own a connected TV, more than half of U.K. adults own a tablet, two-thirds own a smartphone, and 31 million adults (70 percent) use free-to-air digital catch-up services like BBC iPlayer and ITV Hub.

In January 2016, Sky launches Sky AdVance, an evolution of the Sky Adsmart addressable ad platform, which connects ad buys across online and TV screens. Sky Media, the pay TV broadcaster's ad sales division, expanded its TV audience measurement capabilities to harvest data from 3 million households in October, providing program, spot, and sponsorship viewing as well as recency and frequency data.

“This combined TV, online, and mobile knowledge opens the door to advanced cross-platform understanding and delivery,” said Jamie West, deputy managing director of Sky Media, in a statement. “The scale of the data we now possess gives us the ability to interweave TV and digital advertising like never before.”

Commercial broadcaster Channel 4 has rolled out a programmatic market around its nonlinear VOD and live streaming offering All 4; and ad-supported broadcaster ITV has struck a programmatic deal with RadiumOne enabling TV and online ads to be synced. ITV Ad Sync+ will extend reach “to include people who may be watching the TV show but start multi-screening during the ad break” according to RadiumOne “or those who fit the target group of the TV ad but weren't watching TV in the first place, but are currently online.”

Astley, however, identifies compliance as a “huge challenge” to the pace at which the industry can evolve. In the U.K., all spot ads for broadcast are managed by clearance service Clearcast, and it is not clear how this longstanding regulatory process can transition to a dynamic ad-insertion model.

“With multiple different ads potentially rotating in from multiple brands you need to make sure that when an ad request is made you can return an ad that manages the compliance for a particular show and day part [time of day],” he says.

Bremond agrees; “There is a lot of regulation in the U.K. which makes it very cumbersome to introduce programmatic. Broadcasters need to be 100 percent sure what ad is going to come back. TV is still a very premium medium and needs to be managed in a different way to digital.”

However, Nick Reid, managing director of ad-buying platform TubeMogul, believes compliance is only an issue if programmatic TV involves real-time bidding and airing. “Programmatic is simply the use of software to optimize (and potentially buy) advertising. It would be very easy to introduce an approval process to the system if required.”

Tubemogul, Videology, and Freewheel have been working to address compliance issues with Channel 4. “The issue with TV is how to make this happen in a STB or broadcast manner,” says Bremond.

Channel 4 is exploring a solution that delivers ad break scheduling and ad decisioning, potentially in real-time, and potentially using BARB and the broadcaster's own first party data. “We believe this has greater value long term since it is less reliant on third-party STB technology,” explains Jonathan Lewis, C4's head of digital and partnership innovation. “We are deliberately not referring to this as programmatic but as automated ad allocation. It will be probably by ready by the end of 2016.”

All U.K. broadcasters are working out their long-term direct-to-consumer strategies. “For example with All 4, Channel 4 now has a very strong direct-to-consumer product which can be accessed by any connection and doesn't require a user to have any bundle or package,” observes Astley. “It's a totally dynamically addressable product. The next step is to manage the relationship with platform operators, such as Virgin or Sky, which requires a lot more cooperation for making an addressable product via their STBs. I do think we will start to see strong levels of addressability of direct-to-consumer product in the U.K. market, but programmatic and addressable products via STB and platform operators will take more time to get agreement on.”

Freewheel's Bremond agrees that real-time bidding of broadcast premium video will take a while to fully introduce.

“Online display ads will soon be 80 percent traded, but premium video is a very scarce and policed inventory,” says Bremond. “Does it make sense for those with scarce inventory to go down that road? Most players are taking time to understand the impact it will have from a pricing and metric perspective. The key question for broadcasters is 'do they want to jeopardize reach and impact to get down to individual level?'

“Broadcast sellers are more driven by automation and use of data,” he says. “These are the cornerstones of programmatic and will be the focus in 2016—not real-time bidding.”

VFX overtime concern swells union ranks

Screen Daily

EXCLUSIVE: UK union BECTU says membership has “skyrocketed” in recent months due to overtime conditions.

http://www.screendaily.com/news/production/vfx-overtime-concern-swells-union-ranks/5098295.article?blocktitle=LATEST-FILM-NEWS-HEADLINES&contentID=42422

Union BECTU says membership has “skyrocketed” among the UK’s film visual-effects community as a result of its recent campaign highlighting unpaid overtime.

The UK’s largest entertainment union reports that hundreds of artists have joined in the last two months, making the VFX sector its fastest growing membership chapter.

“This is a sign of the strength of feeling,” Paul Evans, BECTU national officer, told Screen in an interview for an upcoming feature on the UK’s VFX sector. “Our members don’t believe that their management are managing them well.”

BECTU claims that on average UK VFX workers do 1.5 hours of unpaid overtime per day.

“Normally it is hard to get people to join a union because VFX is such a dispersed workforce but overtime is a massive issue,” he said. “They believe overtime could be managed properly. The magic bullet could be overtime payment.”

Attention is concentrated on The Moving Picture Company (MPC), which recently worked on The Martian and Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, but other leading Soho shops are in BECTU’s line of fire.

BECTU has amassed the 50 percent of workforce (around 65 members) it says it needs to solicit trade-union recognition at MPC’s compositing department. That would mean that legally BECTU could bargain collectively on behalf of those full-time employees on overtime pay.

Evans said membership is rising at facilities including Framestore and Double Negative and a 50 percent threshold at those companies could lead to demand for recognition in the new year.

“At the moment, management doesn’t care,” claimed Evans. “VFX employees are contracted to work 40 hours a week with overtime ‘to be expected from time to time’. But overtime is regularly required.

“People who work on location understand that there is no alternative to overtime. But there are alternatives in visual effects. Facilities could manage things in a way that arranges for cover and doesn’t overwork people.”

MPC, Framestore and Double Negative were contacted by Screen but none were available for comment.

Code of Practice

Facilities trade body UK Screen has previously criticised BECTU for publishing what it called misleading information in its February 2014 survey VFX Working Time Charter.

UK Screen CEO Sarah Mackey has pointed out that its VFX members created and sign up to the UK VFX Code of Practice which she believes to be the only CoP in existence in the global VFX market.

“In addition, VFX companies invest heavily in training the UK-based workforce and on making pathways into the industry more accessible,” said Mackey. “Ensuring the maintenance of a highly skilled talent pool and cutting-edge R&D is key to attracting a critical mass of high-profile VFX projects to the UK.”

Mackay also points to Creative Skillset’s 2014 Workforce Survey which reported that 91% of the UK VFX workforce have a permanent contract, compared with 70% of the creative media workforce, and that average income of the VFX workforce is £45,900, “significantly higher than the wider creative media industries workforce (£33,900) and the UK working population (£27,271)”.

There have been calls from prominent visual-effects artists in the US, such as Digital Domain co-founder Scott Ross, for the formation of a US national or international union for the VFX community.

This came in the wake of the 2013 bankruptcy of VFX shop Rhythm & Hues, which collapsed partly because of financial demands placed on it to complete Life Of Pi. The 2013 and 2014 Oscar ceremonies were picketed by members of the VFX community demanding worker rights.

High-pressure deadlines

A chief complaint is the last-minute changes and high-pressure deadlines placed on VFX suppliers by studios.

“Studios are aware that their actions have consequences but they are not looking to sting people out of pay,” commented VFX producer Barrie Hemsley (The Martian), who was also interviewed for Screen’s upcoming feature on the UK’s VFX sector.

“They do expect to get what they paid for, in time and at the right quality and they will demand changes to perfect the picture or improve its marketing. The problem is that when these conversations happen, those doing the work will inevitably suffer from unrealistic deadlines. No one is ever asked not to work late to change a shot – they just want to know if it is possible. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of vendors in post to manage this.”

Unlike other film departments, said Hemsley, visual effects has lacked effective union representation because its work crosses over so many disciplines.

“Visual effects begins at storyboard stage and is always the last to finish. VFX is involved in development and fixes across every aspect of production and because of that has never had a defined set of working conditions. For example, what constitutes a working day when a facility is in one timezone and a director in another?”

In May of this year, long-time film employment negotiations between BECTU and production trade body Pact ended in stalemate, with the union deciding to set new pay rates for its crew working on US inward investment features and productions in receipt of the UK tax break.

2015 Review: studios round-up

Broadcast 

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/2015-review-studios-round-up/5097820.article?blocktitle=2015-Review&contentID=44199

New studios were opened and existing spaces expanded as high-end TV and film tax credits continued to take effect, but Scotland looks to be missing out.

RISING DEMAND 

In the year to June 2015, spend on UK production was £1.2bn – down £350m on 2014 but up nearly £100m on 2012/13. Spend on high-end TV in the first six months of the year was £279m across 30 productions, including ITV’s Downton Abbey and Endeavour, BBC1’s War And Peace and BBC2’s The Dresser.

The government stoked the fire in April by dropping the minimum that high-end dramas have to spend in the UK to qualify for tax relief from 25% of their total budget to 10%. At the same time, it upped film tax breaks to 25% for all qualifying expenditure, rather than just the first £20m. Fuelled by tax credits, the UK has cemented its place as a world centre for film and TV production, and studios cannot build fast enough to keep pace with demand.

In March, Pinewood Group raised £30m to part-fund the £200m expansion of its Buckinghamshire site, greenlit at the end of 2014. Intended to address capacity constraints, the Pinewood Studios Development Framework will double the existing space through the addition of 323,000 sq ft of studios and stages, including three 40,000 sq ft studios. Phase one, costing £65m and comprising five stages totalling 170,000 sq ft, is expected to be completed early next year.

“Pleased to announce #StarWarsVIII will be filmed here in UK @Pinewood- Studios – great news for @starwars fans & our UK creative industries,” tweeted chancellor George Osborne, who also suggested LucasFilm would invest £100m and secure 3,000 jobs for the production.

Warner Bros-owned Leavesden Studios has a masterplan of its own, pumping millions into building three sound stages that will increase its capacity by a quarter. Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them is being shot there.

Elstree Studios is mid-way through a construction project that will also increase the studio’s size by a quarter, and Belfast’s Titanic Studios has also expanded, with a £14m doubling of infrastructure to accommodate another two series of HBO’s Game Of Thrones.

But it isn’t just the most high-profile studio brands that are in demand. Marvel movie Doctor Strange began principal photography at Surrey’s Longcross Film Studios last month and will shoot until the new year.

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE 

“High-end TV drama is driving huge potential for growth in the nations and regions,” Iain Smith, British Film Commission chair and executive producer of Mad Max: Fury Road told Broadcast in August.

No more so than along the M62 corridor linking Leeds with Liverpool. In the summer, Screen Yorkshire allied with property investor Makin Enterprises to convert a former RAF base at Church Fenton into a studio facility, promptly enticing ITV drama Jericho to shoot there.

Pending council approval, Liverpool could soon open its first film studio. The £25m scheme, on the 4.5 acre site of a former Littlewoods warehouse, would create 900 full-time jobs and present a boon for a city that hosts more location shoots than anywhere outside London.

In the middle of this northern renaissance lie the existing facilities of Dock 10 in Salford and The Space Project to the east of Manchester, which housed Big Talk’s Houdini & Doyle for ITV, and Jellylegs Productions’ Sky 1 sitcom Rovers.

“We are already working in collaborative fashion and see each part of our offer combined under the banner of a northern powerhouse to rival London,” says The Space Project chief executive Sue Woodward.

The Space Project is now constructing a new 30,000 sq ft stage, reckoned by Woodward to be the biggest in the north of England. It is part of the wider 6.8 hectare Outer Space, which will include 55,000 sq ft of associated facilities, such as lighting storage, “to encourage the supply chain to come here and support productions”.

Producers of two feature films are reportedly interested in booking the site when it opens next year, and Big Talk is understood to have booked a return from spring 2016 for its revival of ITV comedy drama Cold Feet.

SCOTTISH AMBITION

Scotland may be the most cinematic part of the UK, with castles and dramatic landscapes – and no shortage of talent – but the absence of dedicated large-scale studio space is one saga it could do without.

Holyrood reported this year that Scotland saw just £30m of the £1bn revenue associated with the UK film industry. Scottish Greens culture spokeswoman Zara Kitson cited one example in The Scotsman: Doune Castle stood in for Winterfell in early episodes of Game Of Thrones, but when the show decamped to Belfast around £160m of revenue was lost to Scotland.

With the Scottish government hampered by EU rules about public subsidy, the frontrunner for several proposals tabled this year remains a private-sector initiative located outside Edinburgh. Developer PSL Land submitted plans in May for a film and television complex on an 86-acre site at Straiton, south of the city. It is estimated that the £135m development, expected to open in 2017, will create 600 jobs.

However, speaking to Broadcast in August, Creative Scotland director of film and media Natalie Usher said: “We can’t dictate the speed of progress, but it is positive.”

Challenged by MSPs on the progress of the project a month later, Creative Scotland chief executive Janet Archer couldn’t confirm that a studio would be in place within three years.

Nonetheless, Scottish production spend was a record £40m in 2013-14 and Creative Scotland successfully lobbied for a £1.75m development fund as an incentive to attract more international and UK work.

Recent features to shoot north of the border include Gillies Mackinnon’s remake of Ealing classic Whisky Galore!, Steven Spielberg’s The BFG and Guy Ritchie’s Knights Of The Roundtable: King Arthur. Major TV productions include returners Starz’s Outlander (Left Bank Pictures) and BBC Alba’s Gaelic drama series Bannan, plus BBC1 four-parter One Of Us (Two Brothers Pictures).

SPACE SQUEEZE 

The reopening of Wimbledon Studios in August did little to alleviate the problems caused by increased demand for TV facilities, given the permanent closure of key space at Teddington a year ago and on-going refurbishments at Riverside Studios and Television Centre.

That is, of course, good news for the likes of Fountain Studios in Middle sex, where managing director Mariana Spater reports consistent business through 2015, with bookings including The X Factor and Hungry Bear’s 1000 Heartbeats for ITV, and strong enquiries for early 2016.

Studios are responding to the increased workload not just by adding more stages, but by getting more from the space they already have.

At Elstree, BBC S&PP shot Celebrity Juice and Virtually Famous simultaneously, using multiple LED lighting positions on a grid to speed up turnaround.

“Whereas large-format shows like Strictly Come Dancing and The Voice UK are so massive they have to sit in the space for their entire run, we can record episodes of different panel and quiz shows on the same studio footprint,” says BBC S&PP commercial manager Meryl McLaren.

Celebro Media Studios in central London offers a highly automated set-up with three robotic cameras, “for broadcasters wanting to make a live programme with fewer personnel in a space that typically requires 20 people to operate it,” explains chief executive Wesley Dodd.

Salford’s Dock 10 mooted the possibility of shooting a panel show with locked-off 4K cameras and reframing the high-resolution shots in post to achieve similar cost-savings.

The ability to shoot in one location and vision-switch live or post-produce in another is also opening up options for producers and studios. Umbilically linked to Dock 10 by fast internet, The Space Project offered Dragon’s Den the extra space it needed while allowing the production to post at its previous home in MediaCityUK. “

Extending the fibre network across the M62 corridor, linking stages to post, will boost the entire region’s economy and make it easier for clients to rock up to the north, plug in and play,” says Woodward

2015 Review: technology round-up

Broadcast 

Drones were everywhere, IP foundations were laid and HDR took over from UHD as the industry buzzword - but VR generated the most excitement.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/2015-review-technology-round-up/5097832.article?blocktitle=2015-Review&contentID=44199

IP TRANSITION

The global transition to IP (the internet- based video transport protocol) made significant strides in 2015, underpinning every aspect of production and distribution, and forcing the stalwarts of broadcast manufacturing back to the drawing board.

In January, Imagine Communications (formerly Harris Broadcast) acquired multi-screen video delivery firm RGB Networks as part of a fast-tracked £132m re-engineering of its entire product line.

Quantel Snell also performed a reworking of its routers, switchers and encoders and, in September, rebranded as SAM (Snell Advanced Media) to distance itself from the era of proprietary hardware. Similarly, Avid stepped up its efforts to be more ‘open’ by allowing products from the likes of Apple and Adobe to use its shared storage system.

Avid chief executive and president Louis Hernandez Jr describes the move as “a big statement”.

“Why allow Apple and Adobe to use their NLE [non-linear editing] on Avid’s shared platform? Because the problem today for the industry is not the need for a better editor; it is the economics behind the entire workflow,” he says.

Few concepts illustrate the advantage of moving to IP better than cloud playout. In place of vast banks of machines requiring manual attention, software applications linked to data centres provide broadcasters with the ability to launch channels, insert targeted advertising or localise content as quickly as internet-only rivals.

“Instead of waiting a business-scrippling six months to get a channel to air, we can host processing in the Amazon cloud and launch in seconds,” says Jay Weigner, managing director of software provider Cinegy.

These changes were reflected at IBC in September, where it was calculated that the combined budget of 11 IT giants appearing at the show (among them Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, HP, IBM and Cisco) was five times that of the other 1,690 exhibitors combined.

“Rather than reinvent the wheel, it has become more cost-effective for broadcast companies to ride on the back of the IT industry’s investment in R&D,” says IABM director of technology John Ive.

To overcome the locked-in syndrome that has plagued the broadcast kit industry, vendors joined forces this year to show how video could be sent reliably over IP.

The EBU’s demonstration was a landmark in that regard. It corralled a dozen rival manufacturers to support its Sandbox LiveIP project, which implemented a working IP studio at Belgian broadcaster VRT.

“The IP studio gives us an opportunity to think of new ways of making content,” says EBU director, technology & innovation, Simon Fell. However, he warns that issues of interoperability, standardisation and latency of signals in a live environment are causing customers to hesitate and will need to be ironed out in 2016. “IP studios are in the pre-natal stage at this point.”

UAVS

The regulation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has attracted a lot of column inches and the number of drone-related incidents reported to police increased fourfold in 2015. One operator was fined £1,125 for filming a promotional video of a running event in Hyde Park without consent from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Witnesses testified that the drone flew 10 metres from pedestrians.

Such near misses, some with planes in mid-air, prompted the House of Lords to suggest in March that all commercial operators register their UAVs. In the US, where incidents have also multiplied, a database was mandated in October.

“Drones are becoming such an important creative tool for fi lm-makers in the UK that there needs to be a policy shift to address exactly who is licensed, who is rejected and who will police the industry,” argues film producer Kevin De La Noy.

Not that this is deterring producers from using the technology. UK indie True North bought a drone to capture footage for shows including Channel 4 property series Building The Dream. UAVs have also been used for sequences in ITV soap Emmer dale, and to capture action from the Henley Royal Regatta and golf ’s US Open and PGA tournaments.

Filming in crowded stadiums, however, remains too dangerous. “The risk of something going wrong means that no rights holder has the stomach for it,” says Sunset+Vine digital strategy director James Abraham.

VIRTUAL REALITY

The technology generating the most excitement this year was virtual reality, with experiments in 360-degree video ranging from sports to Strictly Come Dancing, in anticipation of consumer take-off as headgear like Facebook’s Oculus Rift and HTC Vive goes on sale.

In theory, VR gives viewers an unprecedented sense of presence within a story or event, with news coverage an unexpected beneficiary. BBC News Lab, for example, shot VR packages of the migrant crisis in Calais. “You get a voyeuristic sense of being present,” says BBC R&D’s Graham Thomas.

Al Jazeera Media Network, tech incubator for the Qatari broadcaster, filmed VR from Syrian refugee camps and a Cambodian children’s circus. It 3D prints its own rig, which is fitted with 14 GoPros. “By open-sourcing this design, we are encouraging indie producers to give it a shot,” says producer Ousama Itani.

Pay-TV companies are betting that live-streamed or on-demand 360- degree video will shore up or expand audiences. Having trialled the kit on shows like Penny Dreadful, Sky upped its investment in Silicon Valley VR developer Jaunt to £1.08m, part of a £42m round that also included The Walt Disney Company.

Last month, Comcast and Time Warner weighed into a £20m funding round for NextVR, which trialled live VR broad - casts of a Democratic presidential debate and the opening game of the US basketball season.

Comcast also backs AltspaceVR, a start-up that has devised a social media platform for the medium. In November, Google added VR support to YouTube, allowing viewers to upload or stream 360-degree video to be viewed on smartphones using its Google Cardboard headset.

VR production is a work in progress but the first generation of Heath Robinson-like camera contraptions are about to be superseded by a new round of professionally designed models such as Jaunt’s Neo, Google Odyssey and Nokia Ozu.

Augmented reality could also be one to watch in 2016, not least if Microsoft’s Hololens and Google-backed Magic Leap, a means of projecting 3D images directly onto the viewer’s retina, come to market. The latter was due to have been used by Framestore and presenter Brian Cox in a live astrological experience at July’s Manchester International Festival, but the technology wasn’t deemed ready.

HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE

Within a decade, there are predicted to be 1,000 UHD channels worldwide, but 4K pictures are not yet compelling enough for consumers to buy new sets or subscribe to UHD services. The answer, to which the industry turned its attention this year, is to supplement more pixels with higher frame rates for live action, a wider colour palette and, most importantly, higher dynamic range (HDR), which provides a greater contrast between the whitest whites and blackest blacks and delivers a highly visible picture enhancement.

Delegates to IBC’s many sessions on the topic were urged to think of it as akin to the introduction of colour 80 years ago. “It’s hard to believe unless you experience it,” says Pixar’s senior scientist Dominic Glynn, who supervised Inside Out, the first movie to be released in HDR. “We can show the audience colours they’ve never seen before.”

Post-producing content in UHD HDR for theatrical and home entertainment is relatively straightforward. In May, the UHD Blu-Ray specs were finalised, with Sony ready to release the first movies in the format early next year.

But broadcast UHD HDR doesn’t look like it will be resolved for another year. Capturing HDR is easy but there are differences of opinion over encoding the information and piping it to the TV set. The BBC is keen to ensure that a UHD HDR signal can be displayed not only by HDR-enabled TVs but in the vast majority of household sets with the standard dynamic range of HD. Since this approach arguably involves a compromise in quality, others are backing proposals from Dolby and Technicolor.

Lack of a standard prevented BT from including HDR in its UHD channel at launch. In September, BT TV managing director Delia Bushell said the broadcaster would introduce it within two years. Grass Valley, Technicolor and Sony have developed workable HDR acquisition for live broadcast but while outside broadcasters continue to test the technology for BT and Sky, none will invest in the kit until standards are in place.