CES 2016 Report

TVB Europe

https://issuu.com/newbayeurope/docs/tvbe_mar16/28

It is traditional for press to wait in line for up to three hours just to get into jam packed Consumer Electronics Show (CES) news conferences but this year along with those of the major TV vendors, the queues were snaking round the block for YouTube. Samsung and LG press events were still standing room only – but they lacked the buzz of keynotes from Netflix and YouTube.

It was symbolic of the show's key theme which was of power draining from old TV straight into digital video. 

“I believe digital video will overtake TV to become the single largest way people spend their free time before the end of the decade,” predicted YouTube chief business officer Robert Kyncl, the day after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced the next steps in global domination by lighting up 130 new territories for the OTT subscription service. 

Smartphones are emerging as the TV screen's biggest competitor, and are increasingly being used for long form viewing, not just short clips. Kyncl said the average viewer now watches 1 hour 15 minutes of digital video per day, a number that will grow. Google claims that YouTube on mobile alone reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network and that 600,000 people in the U.S cut their cable subscriptions last quarter. 

Added to that, TV shipments are down, with IHS reporting the biggest annual decline in five years for Q2 2015. It expects no growth in 2016 either. 

The CTA (Consumer Technology Association), which owns and produces CES, was slightly more optimistic. It projects revenues will reach $19 billion for all TV sets and displays in 2016, on par with 2015, as volumes drop one percent to just under 40 million units. Well-established technologies including smartphones, televisions and laptops will lead to a small growth in the CE market this year. While these categories account for 51 percent of the industry’s revenue, the catalysts for future growth are newer innovations such as wearables, virtual reality and drones.

“The industry is at an inflection point, because nascent categories will continue to gain market share,” explained Shawn DuBravac, chief economist, CTA. 

It's doubtful that any of the 3800 exhibiting companies truly achieves the impact they want at CES amid all the white noise and the shouting matches which constitute a stand interview. So let's boil it down. From a tech point of view CES2016 was about High Dynamic Range (HDR) and virtual reality (VR) wrapped in an increasingly omnipresent internet of things (IoT).

Drone data

The CTA expects US sales of drones to reach one million units in 2016, a 145% increase from 2015’s total. The US Federal Aviation Authority has mandated registration of all UAVs in response to increased mid-air incidents involving them, one reason why leading developer DJI launched a beta geofencing system called Geospatial Environment Online (GEO), designed to prevent drones from operating in restricted areas.

GEO fitted, a DJI drone will update maps and restrictions based on unfolding events, including sports competitions. It's expected to go live later this year.

Indeed, data gathered by drones is thought to be an even more compelling business case than pure video. “If you shoot a 3D map and print it with your 3D printer, you can get a 3D model of your house, for example,” suggested DJI executive Brendan Schulman. “There are lots of cool things you can do with the data you collect.”

No giant CE company has yet made a move into drones (Sony has development plans and Intel just acquired drone firm Ascending). “Companies deciding to do drones learn just how hard they are to do,” reckoned 3D Robotics, CRO, Colin Guinn. “It’s arguably the most complicated consumer electronics.”

2016 for VR lift off

With over 120 companies touting VR or AR developments in Vegas, virtual reality was the hit of the show. When Facebook's $600 Oculus launches at end of March it will help VR unit sales this year to top 1.2 million in the US, marking a 500% increase from 2015 (source: CTA) and accounting for $540m in revenues. The Diffusion Group reckons global revenues related to VR will top $18bn (€16.6bn) by 2025.

Among companies entering the fray is Zeiss which applied its knowledge of optics to the VR One GX, a phone-based head mounted display costing $130. Unlike Samsung's Gear VR, a phone-tray solution enables the Zeiss device to work with any smartphone on the market today.

NextVR hosted a private viewing of a live streamed NBA game between the Chicago Bulls and Boston Celtics, produced with NextVR investor Time Warner-owned Turner Sports. The company also reported that it worked with Qualcomm to develop software for the new Snapdragon 820 processor that enables delivery of live 360-degree content to mobile phones.

One area that promises to give the VR market even more traction will be the increasing availability of 360-degree VR cameras. Nikon's unveiling of its first action camera which shoots 360-degree video in 4K from a 20.8-megapixel sensor, was a surprise. Slightly larger and less of a cube than GoPro Hero, the KeyMission 360 features lenses on front and back, is shockproof to 6.6 feet, waterproof to 100 feet, and touts electronic vibration reduction. It's just the first of Nikon’s action cameras range along with a variety of dedicated accessories to be released this spring.

Well-produced content is “desperately needed” to help VR take off, according to Hollywood execs at a panel on the topic. "A lot of good technology is being developed but there’s also lot of bad content," opined Cliff Plumer, president of VR developer Jaunt Studios.

Sony said it would start selling $300 VR PlayStation goggles by Q2 2016 and Fox announced an a minority investment in VR firm Osterhout Design Group. It also unveiled The Martian VR Experience, companion piece to Ridley Scott's feature.

David Greenbaum, one of the directors of the Fox Innovation Lab that co-produced The Martian VR project, added; "We thought we were just doing R&D, but now people want to buy [VR content]. We are investing time and energy in making the best stuff and getting it out there."

However, Eric Shamlin, executive producer at content studio Secret Location, warned: “It’s probably going to be 2017 before VR content is something you can monetize.”

HDR to the rescue

TV and DVD player makers are pinning their hopes on HDR to reinvigorate the living room big screen as the place to experience the best sound and image.

Helping smooth consumer sales by streamlining the marketing speak used to promote a screen's brightness, the UHD Alliance (of CE vendors such as LG and Sony and content producers like Disney, Netflix) announced 'Ultra HD Premium', a top of the range specification for distributing and displaying content.

To meet the specs, screens must 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. In terms of HDR, the screen must meet SMPTE ST2084 EOTF and deliver certain peak brightness levels. 

This should help boost 4K TV sales achieve the $10bn revenue predicted by the CTA in US retail this year 2016. Indeed, all 2016 OLED models from LG feature the Ultra HD Premium seal of approval. Panasonic's new flagship DX900 LED TV series, also has 'Premium' certification as do units from Samsung and Sony.

“UHD sets will be at 21% of sales globally in 2016,” said Steve Koenig, CTA, Snr director of market research. “The vast majority of those will be 50 in. and above. And, as set makers move to 1080p for sets smaller than 50 in. and 4K for sets larger than 50 in., the demise of 720p seems inevitable.”

OTT delivery models can easily accommodate the 20% extra data over ‘normal’ UHD, hence Netflix and YouTube announced plans to launch UHD HDR content later this year. Hastings claimed; “We have over 1000 engineers focusing on better global delivery, more intuitive UIs, incredible picture and audio quality.”

Yet this is a lot more complicated for broadcasters who are still struggling to deliver HD without heavy compression. Frustration with the broadcast HDR standardisation process has forced Technicolor and Philips to marry their respective HDR technologies.

The approach will offer backwards compatibility to Standard Dynamic Range displays, just like the BBC/NHK's HDR proposals and include an HDR solution for live broadcast. But since Technicolor and Philips own a set top box business they are keen to badge their consumer boxes – and screens/STBs of third parties - as offering Technicolor HDR and to compete with rival Dolby Vision. 

Dolby announced that Warner Bros., Universal, MGM, and Netflix will all support Dolby Vision with new releases and catalogue titles mastered in the format. Owners of 2016 LG 4K OLEDs will be able to stream HDR content from Netflix on LG’s updated webOS 3.0 Smart TV platform later this year. And in cooperation with Amazon, LG OLEDs will offer the newest original HDR content via Amazon Video. 

Rounding out the home entertainment picture: Philips, Panasonic and Samsung announced 4K UHD Blu-ray players with support for high dynamic range while Sony opted to introduce its new 4K on-demand streaming service 'Ultra' that is exclusive to Ultra HD Bravia TVs.

Sony also announced the FDR-AX53 4K Handycam targeting YouTubers. “Two years ago I said, 4K for the price of 2K. Last year, I said 4K for 1K,” explained Sony Electronics president and COO Mike Fasulo, without specifying a price for the camera. “This year I say, 4K for everyone.”

Just another appliance

"We believe the future of TV is still TV,” declared Anthony Smith-Chaigneau, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Nagra, presenting the company's new all-in-one TV experience called intuiTV. Targeted at pay-TV operators as a managed cloud-based platform for adding any mix of premium content with live TV, VOD, SVOD, PVR and social TV. 

"The advanced TV market is broken broke and heading toward a cold computer dashboard of coloured tiles," added Smith-Chaigneau. "We believe in unifying this fragmented market for the consumer by having all their entertainment in one place and delivering a much better experience."

With Samsung’s flagship UHD TV KS9500 users can adjust the lighting, watch the baby monitor, and even create “mood schemes” with a group of smart devices. They could even watch TV if they wanted. TV vendors have wised up to the idea that watching TV may no longer be the centre of our lives, but are trying to reaffirm the screen's presence in the living room as a central smart home hub to control the house’s smart devices. 

The CTA suggests the IoT will drive the consumer tech industry to $287bn in revenues, an all time high. “The exponential growth of the IoT and the lightning-fast speed of innovation are key reasons we’ll see such strong growth across so many tech categories,” said Shapiro. “Highly sophisticated technology is becoming more affordable and accessible – improving our safety, productivity and entertainment.”

Julie Brill of the US Federal Trade Commission described what the future of the IoT will look like. “The internet will disappear through it and devices will just start to be connected, the way we think about electricity now,” she said. 

The TV is becoming just another appliance.

BT Sport reveals plans to increase live UHD event coverage

Sports Video Group 

As Sky Sports readies its UHD channel this summer, BT Sport is upping the ante by broadcasting all 42 English Premier League matches to which it has live rights from next season. BT Sport’s COO Jamie Hindhaugh revealed that, in addition, even more 4K transmissions will be added to the BT Sport Ultra HD channel.

http://svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/bt-sport-lays-plans-to-increase-live-uhd-event-coverage/

“We’ve made 52 live UHD outside broadcasts to date and we’re looking to expand,” he said. “From next season we will air every single EPL game and will enhance a number of other events and football matches  including more UEFA Champions League tieswith live UHD.”

To this end the broadcaster is working with its existing suppliers to ensure it has the facilities ready. The suppliers include Arena, which is building three large UHD trucks and in the final year of 38 match per year EPL coverage for BT Sport in HD; and Telegenic which covers rugby league for BT Sport and has recently equipped its T25 4K vehicle with 14 Sony HDC-4300s.

Despite testing High Dynamic Range (HDR), including with the BBC on America’s Cup and FA Cup transmissions, BT Sport will not be adding HDR into its UHD mix until 2017. “There is a danger of causing confusion to consumers who are only just upgrading to 4K TVs,” said Hindhaugh. “We don’t think the industry needs to be confusing the issue today by asking them to go out buy and an HDR-enabled one.”

Hindhaugh said BT Sport is actively trialing the technology and is positive about HDR forming part of its workflow, but not before 2017.

‘There are two main formats for HDR and we’ve trialled both but the standards and the technical pipeline is still not settled,” said Hindhaugh. “The BBC [HDR] version is easier to implement we feel but we are not just BT Sport we are BT TV so we need to look at the version the movie houses have. We think there is a future in which both versions can be played out.”

BT has shot eight events as a HD and UHD simulcast and needs to find ways of doing this efficiently to fulfill its agreement with rights holders.

Explains Hindhaugh, “The big challenge is that the contract we have with rights holders calls for a minimum camera spec around HD and minimum delivery standards. So we need to capture in 4K as would capture in HD and downres the 4K for an HD feed. We are confident this is possible and you will see us doing more and more of it.”

The BT executive was also bullish on Virtual Reality, having trialled the technology with LiveLike at the NBA Games at the O2 in January.

“VR is really an enhancement of the linear broadcast. I don’t personally believe people want to watch a whole live event that way and the lesson from 3D about sport is that 3D limits the enjoyment of sport as a group viewing experience. That said, there are 10 million households with games [machines] in the UK and that is where VR will leap from. If you have a VR streaming app and some live content that is the direction we are looking at.”

BT has been open about sharing its UHD workflow learnings with broadcasters including Canadian cable co. Rogers with whom it shot the NBA match between the Orlando Magic and Toronto Raptors at The O2.

“We’ve had most of the major European broadcasters come and look at how we’ve done 4K and sharing the challenges and opportunities. Working with Rogers for example we were the first broadcaster to deliver live 4K into North America. We are very pragmatic and open about supporting other country’s journey into 4K because we it helps the market grow and makes more content available.”

Is VFX Success Founded on Exploitation and Gender Divide?

IBC

Last month's Oscars were groundbreaking in recognition of the first win for a VFX Supervisor who happened to be female and for underlining London's status as the world capital of visual and practical effects.

http://www.ibc.org/hot-news/is-vfx-success-founded-on-exploitation-and-gender-divide

However, alarm bells should ring when Sara Bennett's well deserved win for Ex-Machina makes headlines and when controversy over the business model of studio VFX work still rages.

Bennett was only the third woman nominated in the category, following Suzanne Benson's win in 1986 for ‘Alien’ and Pamela Easley, who received a nomination for ‘Cliffhanger’ in 1993. The Oscar rules limiting eligibility to craftspeople (rather than producers) was not endorsed by the Visual Effects Steering Committee until 1998 making Bennett the first women with a Visual Effects Supervisor credit to be nominated and to win.

The co-founder of facility Milk collected the Award along with a team of VFX leads from Double Negative.

“While I am extremely proud of her, it is tragic that she is only the second female to win and tragic that she is the first VFX Supervisor to win,” commented Milk CEO and Co-Founder Will Cohen. “Many parts of the film industry have been male dominated. I can certainly see the balance being addressed in VFX with more women coming in at entry level, but there is a lot more work to be done.”

He also points out that more women tend to work in film production rather than creative roles. “There is a stereotypical view that women are great at mutitasking but I'd like to see more men take on production and pre-production roles.”

Milk and DNeg's win for ‘Ex-Machina’ was the fifth in the past nine years for which UK facilities have won the best VFX Oscar. What's more, four of the 2015 nominated movies in the category featured work led by UK shops.

MPC and Framestore were nominated for’ The Martian’, Cinesite teams in London and Montreal completed 138 shots for ‘The Revenant’; and ‘Star Wars’: ‘The Force Awakens’, was supervised by British artists stationed at ILM London. The latter also featured the practical effects wizardry of British special effects supervisor Chris Corbould.

It has taken London nearly three decades to become the world hub for feature film and TV VFX. At this moment only Vancouver and Wellington, New Zealand – home of Weta – compete, and arguably no location trumps the UK's combination of production tax rebates, talent pool and geography in which a multitude of craft companies and expertise are often a short walk away.

“One of the benefits of the UK is that we are collectively very integrated,” said William Sargent, Framestore Co-founder and CEO. “Foreign directors rely on British crews, from carpenters to VFX artists, because UK craft teams exhibit lateral thinking and collaborate as a very cohesive unit. Quite simply, studio executives, directors and DPs like working here.”

At the same, though, UK union BECTU ((Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union) says membership of its VFX division has “skyrocketed” amid concerns about conditions. BECTU claims that on average UK VFX workers do 1.5 hours of unpaid overtime per day.

Although BECTU is not recognised by most UK facilities, membership is said by the union to be rising at houses including Framestore, Double Negative and MPC. It may take MPC to the UK government's Central Arbitration Committee to force recognition. If it wins, BECTU would be able to collectively bargain for better pay and conditions on behalf of members.

Paul Evans, BECTU national officer, said, “Our members don’t believe that their management are managing them well. They are essentially working an extra day per week, without pay."

Its fight echoes the call for wider international union recognition of the VFX community which occurred following the collapse of LA post house Rhythm & Hues, despite an Oscar win for ‘Life of Pi’, in 2013. Protests were staged at the 2013 and 2014 Academy Awards to raise awareness of the issue, but not resulting in an industry change.

The sheer scale of Hollywood's tentpole releases which regularly top 2000 VFX shots and are rising all the time, the tight deadlines and last minute changes imposed on suppliers, and rising competition from vendors in Singapore, China and India with less expensive labour costs, are all putting pressure on facility management which, in turn, knocks-on to staff.

Cracking the encoder/decoder code

TV Technology

With software solutions now in abundance, encoding and decoding have come a long way from the metal boxes of a decade ago. But is software always better?

http://www.tvtechnologyeurope.com/buyers-guide/cracking-the-encoder-decoder-code/01176

The need to deliver to more and more devices is complicated by the rise of video quality expectations for 'TV everywhere'. Consumers want to experience ever-better HD or UHD quality on any screen. These higher expectations are intimately linked with the question of ensuring delivery to a maximum number of consumers through low bandwidth mobile networks where the threat of limited access, slow playback capabilities and unreliable connections is constantly looming.

Multi-screen encoding and transcoding solutions are key to helping broadcasters, programmers, content owners and their multichannel video programme distributors (MVPDs) – such as cable, DTH satellite or telecoms operators – and OTT players to overcome the numerous challenges of delivering reliable, high quality video content to a wide variety of devices.

For ATEME, the proliferation of those screens across different networks – payTV, OTT, and 3G/4G – calls for an increasing number of video formats to be produced at the video head end. Its multi-screen solutions address those challenges with a particular focus on video quality at the lowest bitrates.

Its TITAN Live is a real-time multi-channel/format encoder claiming the highest bandwidth efficiency on the market powered by home-grown encoding technology. TITAN embeds up to 48x3G-SDI inputs and can also receive IP sources from satellite, making it a convergent solution for complex video head ends.

The top two buying criteria for broadcast customers with multiplatform distribution needs are simplicity of use and flexibility. “Getting more done with the same, or even fewer, resources requires software that is easy to use and capable of shielding the complexity of the underlying operation,” says Mark Senecal, manager of product management, Imagine Communications. “In terms of flexibility, broadcast customers require solutions that are able to adapt to new platform launches with new codecs or additional processing requirements, without making compromises on any platform.”

Imagine's key products are SelenioFlex Live addressing multiplatform delivery for linear streams and SelenioFlex File, optimised for handling file-based workflows. The underlying architecture is Zenium, the company's modular software that enables customers to use multiple codecs to address the specific application and desired platforms for delivery, whether for SD, HD or UHD, to any device.

But is a software solution always the answer? There are two sides to this story. It is possible to make the case that with a fixed receiver platform (such as a Roku box) it can be more economical to include hardware decode. But most vendors contend that using software to encode is a much better solution.

“By their very nature, software solutions are more flexible than the hardware equivalent, as they can be updated 'on the fly' without worrying if the hardware acceleration has enough horsepower to accommodate the change,” says Paul Turner, vp of enterprise product management, Telestream. “And the one thing that is constant in this industry is change – new formats are coming out all the time.”

Telestream offer a version of Vantage targeted at the creation of multiscreen assets. It also offers GPU-accelerated Lightspeed encoding. Explains Turner; “The principle here is that if each individual job can complete more quickly via our Lightspeed servers, then the customer can achieve more throughput per hour, with lower CDN costs per delivered hour, all of which contributes to an improved bottom line for our customers.”

But Matrox notes that purpose built, hardware-based encoders for live applications can sometimes offer an advantage. A small, embedded encoder is less exposed to network and internet risks than a general-purpose computing platform running software, says Dan Maloney, senior technical marketing manager.

“At the transcoder level, software will almost always be the preferred solution from a flexibility standpoint, but hardware will come into play when executing latest-generation video processes that surpass the capabilities of standard CPUs. For example, 4Kp60 H.264 Long GOP encoding requires hardware (as provided by Matrox M264 H.264 encoding accelerator) particularly if quality and real time encoding are important.”Clearly, if a hardware solution is selected, be aware that these devices cannot easily be reprogrammed should tech trends change. “Particularly when you need more power for peak seasons, scalability and flexibility of solutions needs to be taken into consideration,” says Jiri Matela, CEO of Czech firm Comprimato. “For this, a software solution is more appropriate.”

Comprimato claims to market “the fastest, standard compliant, JPEG2000 software encoder and decoder” around. Its software codec leverages the performance of GPUs and CPUs to speed up video and image compression and can be used in combination with the video processing GStreamer framework. Comprimato says its codec helps cut infrastructure costs by 70 percent, while reducing development cycles by 50 percent therefore enabling new revenue streams such as UHD video in real-time, High Dynamic Range (HDR) and High Frame Rate (HFR) video.

“By separating the software and hardware aspects of these solutions, it is possible for broadcasters to have different budget cycles for the two components for a single application/solution,” says Tom Lattie, VP, market management at Harmonic. “Typically the software component has a very long lifecycle with minimal ongoing investment, usually in the form of a service level agreement. This allows the broadcaster to receive continuous innovation with little disruption and no significant incremental capital outlay. Conversely, broadcasters can replace lower cost general IT infrastructure components on a more frequent or as needed basis.”

Harmonic says that its Electra X advanced media processor is the industry’s first fully converged platform for broadcast and OTT delivery of SD, HD and UHD content. The appliance features real-time encoding of SD, HD and UHD media, integrated with high-quality branding and graphics, and reliable transport stream playout. Under the hood, the Electra X is driven by Harmonic's PURE compression, the company's proprietary encoding engine.

Harmonic’s Electra X3 was a key element in enabling NASA to deliver UHD video quality at minimum bandwidth, on its new NASA TV UHD channel, transmitted via the AMC-18C satellite. The Electra X encoding technology supports resolutions up to 2160p60 for broadcast and OTT multiscreen delivery. NASA and Harmonic have also begun discussions about adding high dynamic range (HDR) and expanded colour-space technologies to the channel as standards emerge.

“Clearly, broadcasters need an encoder that features codec diversity, offering support for formats such as MPEG-2 and AVC with a non-forklift path to HEVC,” offers Lattie. “The encoder should also support simultaneous generation and output of streams to enable traditional broadcast distribution as well as adaptive bitrate.”

With the industry transitioning to IP workflows, it is equally important that encoding/decoding devices support both IP and traditional SDI interfaces, giving broadcasters the flexibility to deploy in architectures today and migrate to IP when appropriate.

'Ex Machina's Sara Bennett first woman VFX supervisor to win Oscar

Screen Daily

Bennett is only the third woman nominated in the category, also won by Suzanne Benson in 1986; UK VFX highlighted at awards.

http://www.screendaily.com/news/production/ex-machinas-sara-bennett-first-woman-vfx-supervisor-to-win-oscar/5100954.article?blocktitle=LATEST-FILM-NEWS-HEADLINES&contentID=42422

On a night in which British talent dominated the field for best VFX Oscar, Sara Bennett, co-founder of UK studio Milk, became the first female VFX supervisor to win the award.

Along with artists from Double Negative, Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris and Mark Ardington, Bennett won for Alex Garland’s stylish sci-fi Ex Machina.

She is only the third woman to receive a nomination in the famously male-heavy category, which VFX artist Suzanne Benson won for Aliens (1986).

Bennett said: “I am beyond excited!! We are thrilled and honoured to be recognised by The Academy for our work on Ex-Machina. It was a privilege to work with Alex Garland, to bring his incredible vision to life, alongside Andrew Whitehurst and the Dneg team. I would love to see more women in prominent creative roles in our Industry – I was a little shocked to find out I was the third ever female VFX Oscar nominee.”

“I am extremely proud of her and the whole team on the project but ashamed that many parts of the film industry, including VFX, have been so male dominated,” said Will Cohen, Milk co-founder and MD.

“It is tragic that she is only the second female to win and the first VFX supervisor to win. I can certainly see the balance being addressed with more women coming in at entry level, but there is a lot more work to be done.”

Bennett’s principal role on the film was to lead a team of 28 to create a CG brain for the AI robot Ava.

“The win is a testiment to the film’s sophisticated storytelling in which visual effects blend into virtually every frame, as opposed to being more overtly VFX-driven,” said Cohen.

It was a sterling night for UK VFX which claimed four of the five nominated houses. MPC and Framestore (assisted by Soho’s The Senate) were nominated for The Martian,Cinesite teams in London and Montreal completed 138 shots for The Revenant; and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, was supervised by British artists stationed at ILM London.

The win means that UK shops have taken home five of the previous nine VFX Oscars. The trail was blazed by Framestore, on The Golden Compass (2007), continued with Dneg for Inception (2010), Framestore (Gravity 2014) and Interstellar (2015, Dneg).

Light entertainment feels the squeeze

Broadcast 

There's a perfect storm brewing which may leave many producers of light entertainment shows no other option than to relocate, albeit temporarilty, far outside the M25. The likely blitzing of The Fountain Studios for property development only compounds the lack of suitable large studio space for TV in and around the capital.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/light-entertainment-feels-the-squeeze/5100821.article?blocktitle=Features&contentID=42957

“[The situation] is a function of the property industry not the TV industry,” says Fountain MD Mariana Spater. “We haven't failed, but we cannot compete with land prices.”

Fountain owners Avesco Group haves sold the Wembley-based stalwart to developers Quintain for £16 million. Although the deal stipulates that Fountain can lease back the premises for up to five years, this can be terminated at six months’ notice, effectively paving the way for closure.

If rumours of ITV's sale of its south bank building (formerly The London Studios) are realised there will be a major production reshuffle on the cards.

“With penthouse apartments on the river going for £80m a shot, any studio would have to get in an awful lot of shows to get anywhere near that kind of revenue,” Spater adds ruefully.

The squeeze will particularly impact large scale shows like The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent, both long term live finals residents at Fountain. With LE audience-hosting spectaculars trending upwards in terms of room, the demand for laser-levelled stages a minimum 12,000 sq ft is at a premium.

However, BBC Studios & Post Production (S&PP) has done the math and reckons that by the end of 2017, broadcasters will be able to call on more studio space - even with Fountain out of the picture.

“We think there will be a net increase in space,” says commerical manager Meryl McLaren. “There is an element of panic from those worried about short term homes for shows, but over the next 2-3 years we don't think there will be a major shortage.”

The calculation bets on the revamped TV Centre (part of a £1 billion mixed use overhaul of the site) due online from April 2017 with three studios (variously 3500, 8000 and 10250 sq ft) albeit reduced from TVC's previous eight. 

BBC S&PP also plans to continue to lease assets from Elstree, after consultation with clients. Strictly Come Dancing, for example, is likely to remain in situ at George Lucas 2 (a stage also used for The Voice and A League of Their Own), while the BBC's presence will be maintained at one or more of Elstree's 11800 sq ft Studio D (home to Eastenders and ITV Studios' It's Not Rocket Science) and stages 8 and 9 (both 7500 sq ft.

Both Elstree MD Roger Morris and BBC S&PP are pitching for business, like Hungry Bear's Play to the Whistle, should they be forced from Wembley.

“Studio D is perfect for Fountain-sized studio shows,” says McLaren. 

“We are always talking to clients [like Syco],” says Morris, noting that George Lucas 2 “is bigger by 3000 sq ft than Fountain's” although overcoming the clash with Strictly of Saturday evening schedules may rule out The X Factor.

Pinewood is equally capable of stepping in. Its stages already accommodate The Voice and Dancing On Ice (and shows like Red Dwarf, Four Rooms) and from June another five sound stages will open, the largest at 40,000 sq ft, though lacking TX and gallery facilities.

A trio of new studios is also due to open this year at Leavesden but that hasn't stopped other complexes being sounded out about availability.

“We are getting a lot of requests from shiny floor shows,” reveals Charlie Fremantle, MD at Hayes' West London Film Studios. “We've looked at the possibilty of converting a stage into one suitable for live entertainment but the return on the investment is tricky to judge and it's not something that we plan to do at the moment. That said, we're keen to get other types of work in here and if LE show approached us we would jump at the chance and make it happen.” 

Daybreak Productions' feature length drama, Churchill’s Secret recently shot there while ITV 8-parter The Halcyon has just moved in. “More and more productions are asking for 15000 sq ft or more of space – which we can cater for with stages 5 (7100 sq ft) and 6 (9400 sq ft) next to each other,” adds Fremantle.

Wimbledon Film and TV Studios is also open for dry hire of 7500 and 8000 sq ft spaces with a street set to boot. Similarly suitable for sitcom, indie features and drama, the site is not equipped for audience shows.

“Although there is a feeling that studio space is hard to come by we are not fully booked and I doubt any one else is either,” says Sarah Eccles of The Collective which manages the studios on behalf of owners Marjan TV.

As TV producers look to fill up Pinewood and Elstree, 3 Mills Studios anticipates a domino effect as more drama – like NBC's The Royals - comes its way.

“We considered investing in a TV stage but the volume of TV drama and feature work makes that more viable for us,” says studio head Tom Avison. “We are positioning ourselves in terms of high end TV and expect a knock-on in requests from producers unable to accommodate at Pinewood.” 

Look further afield, Bristol-based The Bottle Yard's eight stages are also fit for drama rather than the shiny floor market. Although the studio just added a 5000 sq. ft green-screen, site director Fiona Francombe doesn't envisage enlarging further. “We wouldn't want to grow any more and be confident of maintaining our excellent level of service,” she says. 

With Poldark series two just wrapped and the Deal or No Deal set under dust sheets for the mid-term, the studio is hopeful of recommissions for Trollied and Disney-ABC's Galavant.

In the longer term, more dedicated TV space is coming on stream. By April 2018 Hammersmith's Riverside Studios, closed since 2014, will be back in action with three stages, the largest of which is 6500 sq.ft with gallery suite.

Morris says Elstree plan “the ultimate designer studio” with gallery, transmission capability, integral dressing rooms and wardrobe and a “fantastic” lighting grid. The 21000 sq. ft stage is under construction until 2017.

Hertsmere Borough Council stepped in to save Elstree from redevelopment twenty years ago. The council wouldn't feel forced to capitalise on land prices by selling it for redevelopment, would it?

“We have to be able to earn money to pay our way but we deliver great revenue for Hertsmere and have almost trebled our contribution since 2008,” says Morris. “Our expansion is part of a long term strategy we have agreed with them.”

Pinewood has also put TV at the core of its £200m expansion but with shareholders, notably MediaCityUK owners Peel Group, considering a sale there must be some question over its future. Pinewood calls the process a “strategic review” and points out that unique planning permissions mean the site can only be used for film and TV. 

One canny solution to the issue is simply to make more efficient use of stages. After all, when a space is empty it is not generating income. The BBC places great store by its abilty to turnaround double the number of shows (3-4) per week at Elstree and plans to ramp that up to seven a week thanks to new infrastructure it is currently specifying for TVC.

“I can't see anybody being without a home, so long as productions are flexible in terms of dates,” says Mclaren.

High Dynamic Range: Stepping Out of the Shadows

Broadcast Tech p46 

HDR promises to take footage to a whole other level, capturing TV images that offer unprecedented detail and texture even in the shadows.

http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk//launch.aspx?pbid=f33c9bba-89d1-4e3c-9fc5-3dcc5087dc7c

The Man in the High Castle

Amazon Studios' alternate history of a Nazi-run United States was shot and post produced 5K on Red Dragons.

“From the get-go having the show look very theatrical was important to Amazon,” explains Thor Roos, senior colourist at Deluxe-owned Encore Vancouver. “They wanted to give this 1960s universe a realistic feel.”

Roos says good original photography will deliver the best results in HDR but that the effect will reveal subtitles in everything from set design to costume. “You can see more detail in 4K but HDR takes this to a whole other level. You can see detail in neon lights in the background, spectacular highlights in windows or stained glass. HDR really shines in those moments.”

HDR can be applied after a project's grade or, in some cases, before colour correction but, with Encore supervising editor James Cowan, Roos opted to grade the UHD HDR alongside a HDR rec.709 version.

“We had a lot of creative discussion about how to approach it,” says Cowan. “Should we grade HDR first and make the rec.709 version match that or vice versa? We decided that rec.709 was the hero path because ninety-nine percent of people will be looking at that. That said, we colour corrected both deliverables side by side. We'd take scenes and shots, evaluate them both, see which grade looked best and select that.”

Amazon dictated that the production use OpenEXR, an open source HDR file format originally developed by ILM. Roos monitored the HDR path on Sony's BVM-X300 and checked regular plasmas for rec.709 with Resolve used for conform, colour, titles and versioning.

Cowan estimates that the process added a third more time in the grading suite with knock-on costs to storage and GPUs to power realtime compute performance.

Lacking on-set monitoring, series DPs Gonzalo Amat and James Hawkinson could only view HDR in post but as they saw more graded rushes they began making adjustments on set for exposure and lighting.

A scene in the first episode depicts several characters on a bridge at dawn watching the sun rise. “HDR made the sunrise look beautiful while allowing us to see the actor's faces rather than being silhouetted, which is the effect you would get with SDR,” describes Roos.

Marco Polo

Hired to work as colour scientist for season 2 of ten part Netflix drama Marco Polo, Dado Valentic, founder and chief colourist, Mytherapy, developed a pipeline that enabled cinematographer Vanja Cernjul to precisely control the HDR on location in Hungary, Slovakia and Malaysia.

Rushes were shot on Sony F55, the same as season 1. “In order to acquire HDR you don't need to change the camera or way of shooting provided you have sufficient bit depth to extract the dynamic range from the raw material,” Valentic advises.

With no on-set monitors yet available for displaying HDR, Valentic devised a means for Cernjul to know he was capturing enough information from an SDR display. It's a proprietary process which Valentic won't reveal but it meant Cernjul was able to shoot normally, confident that the editorial team could unwrap the images and create an HDR image from them.

“The workflow turned a Digital Imaging Technician (who oversees on-set data capture) into an on set colourist helping the DP to adjust the image,” he explains.

Having validated the look on Dolby Vision monitors before shooting, the on-set colour metadata was ingested and tracked through Avid, and graded and conformed on Da Vinci Resolve, retooled to function in HDR by Blackmagic Design. A BVM-X300 monitor was used for viewing although Valentic would like monitors that can sustain even greater than 1000 nits of brightness.

“We're not just conforming picture and sound but also conforming colour,” says Valentic. This allowed Deluxe New York colorist Martin Zeichner to finish the grade in HDR and SDR in parallel by monitoring both outputs.

He admits to making many mistakes with HDR in the beginning. “I behaved like a child with a new toy,” he says. “I'm fortunate to have worked on a project of this size in order to learn the pitfalls – what works and what doesn't. There will be a period when everyone is excited by what is technically possible with the image rather than with what the emotional and creative content of the storytelling requires.”

A scene in Marco Polo features an actress against the backdrop of a rain storm walking from outside into a dark room. “You would not normally be able to cover this and see all the detail in the shadows or on her face but in HDR this is a revelation,” relates Valentic. “DPs will no longer have to compromise by having to select which part of the image they want us to see.”

Good Girls Revolt

Amazon episodic newsroom drama Good Girls Revolt was shot on Red Dragon with the post route from dailies to editing kept in rec.709.

“The recommended practice is to start with the HDR version and extract from it a regular HD rec.709 pass but the practical reality of TV is that the majority of storytelling and viewership is in rec.709,” says Pankaj Bajpai, senior colourist, Encore Hollywood. “So we devised the aesthetics of the show in rec.709 and then did the HDR.”

Since HDR opens up a new creative palette to producers, DPs and directors, Bajpai feels it's the job of the colourist to marry their needs with the current restrictions on viewing technology. “Achieving that balance is a huge aspect of how we manage the HDR and SDR versions,” he says.

HDR is at its most dramatic in content with high contrast between light and dark scenes, in explosions or on metallic objects offering opportunities for light reflections. Science-fiction or big budget action movies are obvious beneficiaries. Less so are low key dialogue-heavy sequences.

“I found that if you have a scene in a living room with two people talking on a couch illuminated by a lamp then, in the HDR version, the lamp will appear very bright and actually start to compete for the viewer's attention with the actor's performance,” says Bajpai. “We tried to keep the basic aesthetic of the show as approved in rec.709. There isn't one scene that stands out dramatically differently in the HDR pass but what you experience in HDR is greater texture and depth in the shadows and midtones.”

Examples in 1969-set Good Girls Revolt are the definition of the sky reflected in the glass windows of New York skyscrapers and hotel lobby chandeliers and marble which appear “as if you can touch them.”