Shooting RED 8K for Danny Boyle's Yesterday

Creative Cow 
What if you woke up one day and realized you’re the only one who remembers the music of The Beatles? That’s exactly what happens to Jack, a struggling singer-songwriter, in Danny Boyle’s romantic comedy with a twist (and shout), Yesterday.
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Boyle’s film is based on a story by Jack Barth and screenplay by Richard Curtis. 
Produced by Working Title, the Universal release tells the story of Jack (former Eastenders actor Himesh Patel) who wakes up after a freak bus accident during a mysterious global blackout to realize he is the only one who can remember The Beatles and their songs. The hopeful musician decides to capitalize on the situation, and he claims the songs as his own. The film co-stars Lily James (Baby Driver) as Jack’s best friend Ellie, with cameo appearances from Ed Sheeran and James Corden.
“Yesterday is a romcom with a fantastical element to it, so our challenge was to deliver an aesthetic which is at times delightfully inappropriate but always fun,” says Christopher Ross BSC, who lensed Danny Boyle’s acclaimed TV miniseries Trust as well as features including Black Sea and Dad’s Army.
As with Trust, Ross selected the RED HELIUM S35 8K sensor and asked DIT Thomas Patrick, who also collaborated on Trust, to manage the project including the extraordinary amount of data to be captured for the film’s main concert sequences.
One of these was filmed on the beach at Gorleston-on-Sea in Norfolk, England, with 6,000 extras. Filming also took place at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk. 
The biggest challenges were the multi-camera shoots at Wembley Stadium and Cardiff’s Principality Stadium during live performances by Ed Sheeran on his Divide tour.
“In our story, Ed invites Jack to play a few songs on stage (including “Back in the USSR” and “I Saw Her Standing There”) in front of 80,000 people, so we hatched a plan with Ed’s team to photograph Ed on stage from a variety of angles and then put Himesh into those angles,” Ross explains. 
Filming was done at night at the end of Sheeran’s performance. Boyle and Ross attended several of Sheeran’s shows to understand where to place cameras without obstructing any audience views and for Ross to study the lighting design.
“We chose moments that we thought would best suit our story,” Ross explains. “We picked 30-second to one-minute segments of Ed’s songs that we would then loop the lighting cues over and over again while Himesh was on stage knowing that we could pull the audience from certain shots at certain timecodes that would match with the other shots.” 
Eleven RED cameras were deployed for three nights shooting at Wembley and an astonishing 17 REDs covered each of four performances in Cardiff.
“I drafted in extra help for Wembley and Cardiff where there were three download stations working away almost constantly,” says Patrick, who works with DIT and digital dailies company Mission. “It was a challenge, but I was quite specific with a plan for RED MINI-MAGs and reloads, and the careful prep meant it was much easier at the time. Mags of certain capacities were labelled and ordered for specific parts of each concert with reloads and collection planned well before shooting.”
Each day of shooting the concerts would generate between 10TB and 15TB data for which a lot of SSDs were needed.
“It was tough finding the balance between what would be ideal, and what wouldn’t bankrupt the movie,” Patrick says. “I wrote out a fairly in-depth plan of timings, reload times, contingency, and turnaround times. I worked with the lab to give preference to clearing the 1TB mags first as I knew we needed those back in circulation quicker to allow for the concert portion of those shoot days. That way we could save on sourcing more of those.”
Mission Digital built a huge viewing station housing 10 FSI monitors, all colour calibrated, for Patrick to monitor on-set with Ross, while receiving pictures from every camera via Cobham wireless remotes managed by the Mission Digital team.
Most of the film was recorded in 8K at 8:1 compression, but concert footage went down to 5:1 to give the VFX team at Union VFX a bit of extra information in comping Himesh into the scene.
The additional overhead when shooting 8K also provided a better-quality master in 4K. This decision was also made to cover the 2:1 aspect ratio of the Panavision PVintage lenses that were employed. Based on Panavision Ultra Speed Primes, this lens set was rehoused using elements of original glass from the ‘70s and ‘80s with which Ross had a favorable experience on Trust.
“What I like about the RED HELIUM is its ability to give me a slightly idiosyncratic colour response – kind of like using a roll of Fujifilm NC-400 from back in 2005,” Ross explains. “I quite like embracing quirky color response. I wanted a look that was not a clinical representation of the world.” 
He continues, “To try to make our film as universal as possible we wanted to ground the look of the film in a very particular reality without making it too glossy. That’s why we made the choice of lenses. The PVintage are all quite quirky and don’t really color match in terms of magenta fringing or response to flares. That’s something I wanted to embrace because I feel like part of what makes a production glossy is its homogeneity. I wanted us to be forced to take footage into the grade that doesn’t quite match. There’s an energy to that I wanted to capture.”
Shooting at 8K made the most of the wonderful character of the lenses from Panavision, with the added advantage of a cleaner image when downscaling from 8K to 4K in the DI. 
“My usual method when working with such idiosyncratic lenses is to match at the camera end,” explains Patrick, who used Resolve on set to manage dailies. “On this movie, however, it wasn’t practical. To add any more processes for the camera team on set combined with the nature of some scenes being fast moving and fluid in terms of lens choice and camera position meant it wouldn’t have been a consistent workflow.”
It was set up as a RED IPP2 colour workflow. Patrick implemented a system where mags went through his on-set rig for color work in Resolve before transfer to the download station. 
“I’d create a project each day and match things up with primary tweaks, which allowed for more precise and considered matching than a Livegrade CDL would. I was matching lenses on the fly with LiveGrade, but mostly just for on-set monitoring. 
This project was given to assistant DIT Jon Fenech before a split or wrap, for him to relink his backed-up media to and make an extra check through. Fenech sent this to Mission Digital’s west London lab for them to create dailies using the Resolve project. Ross viewed dailies in Pix and 5TH Kind.
“There were no worries about transfer of color info or compatibility,” Patrick reports. “This kind of workflow is just about timing really. Finding time to grade between setups without delaying backup for Jon.
“Things were kept rather simple after prep. I just kept checking with the lab and having offline media sent back to me to check, and monitoring online dailies for any issues. Archive and delivery to Goldcrest was on LTO.”
Online, VFX, conform and grade was made at Goldcrest Post under supervision of Senior DI Colourist Adam Glasman. He had helped devise the basic show LUT originally for Trust and now transplanted to Yesterday.
“It is essentially a simple Rec709 conversion very similar to RED’s own IPP2-709 LUT with medium contrast and medium highlight roll off,” Glasman explains. “Danny and Chris wanted a fairly naturalistic, slightly documentary look. Where we contrasted it a little was in making a distinction between scenes shot in East Anglia and those in Los Angeles. The East Anglian sequences have a night-time sodium feel to them – warming, yellow but restrained. The color for the LA section is vivid, more saturated.”
The ultimate visual goal was to amplify the fantastical reality of the situations that the main characters find themselves in. “Bringing those two together means having to be beautifully unconventional,” Ross says. “If we’ve succeeded in any way it’s because we found a route through the conventions to a kind of fun way of seeing the film.”

Global media groups seek control over the content value chain

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As if it needed underlining, the recent announcements that Netflix is moving into Shepperton Studios and Sky is creating a new Europe-wide development and production capability called Sky Studios demonstrate that we are in the midst of a golden age of TV content production. These moves also indicate a rethink of many of the basics of how media businesses manage their content pipeline.

https://www.v-net.tv/2019/07/17/global-media-groups-seek-control-over-the-content-value-chain/

“Competition for content is at unprecedented levels, driving stakeholders to be involved earlier in the process,” says Jack Davison, EVP, Consultancy at the content consulting firm 3Vision. “The traditional TV market structure continues to evolve from what was once nation-based TV services to truly global media groups, controlling all stages of the content value chain,” adds Richard Cooper, Research Director at Ampere Analysis.

Netflix has sought economies of scale in taking permanent and exclusive production space at Pinewood’s Shepperton stages near London. The long-term lease, reportedly over a decade, is a vote of confidence in the viability of the UK’s film and TV tax breaks, as well as a sign that the streamer plans to double-down on its originals content strategy.

“Netflix is increasing its production presence around the world, with a view to not only satisfying local market tastes and demand, but also producing content with international appeal,” says David Sidebottom, Principal Analyst at Futuresource Consulting, the market research and insights firm.

Netflix ordered 153 original shows from European producers in 2019, double that of 2018, and 221 productions in total from a budget north of $1bn. Netflix’s annual spend of $12bn has forced other media companies to invest more on making shows in order to keep up.

Among them is pan-European Pay TV giant Sky which, with the backing of Comcast, will double its investment in original programming from £500m ($650m) to £1bn+ over the next few years. This will be delivered by Sky Studios, a new Europe-wide development and production unit that will create productions for Sky channels, NBC broadcast and cable, and Universal Pictures, as well as for other distribution outlets.

“Sky’s originals strategy was driven by a desire to secure great content but through its distribution arm and European platforms it can make the ROI calculation easier,” says Davison. “Now, as part of the NBCU family, there are even more ways to justify its content investment.”

Sky must strive to compete with the seemingly bottomless pockets of the global tech-giants to create the bingeworthy international programming that is essential for subscriber acquisition and retention for its Pay TV platforms and SVOD services. Cooper argues, “Through deepening investment in content creation, Sky becomes less dependent for high-quality, high-profile programming from what are increasingly its direct competition.”

Disney, WarnerMedia and Apple are among the companies building SVOD services that compete, armed with exclusive and fresh content. In the case of Disney and WarnerMedia these services will also use content that has been repatriated from Netflix (though Pay TV deals with the likes of Sky remain).

AT&T will launch HBO Max next spring with content like Friends from the WarnerMedia stable returned at vast expense from Netflix, plus seven original series including a Dunespin-off from Blade Runner: 2049 director Denis Villeneuve.

While Netflix’s content acquisition (as opposed to production) had slowed even before studios started withdrawing content from the market, 3Vision thinks there will still be plenty of opportunities for the SVOD pioneer to find and acquire third-party content. “New window continuums, co-exclusivity and straightforward deals are likely to still be possible for many,” says Davison.

Sidebottom predicts: “Moving forwards, non-scripted content may become more relevant, whilst the sports rights battleground will be redefined. Both [content categories] face the challenge of moving beyond local relevance and rights, to global.”

With competition ramping up, the multi-billion dollar outlays will be unsustainable for some. While subscribers are already paying for multiple SVOD bundles, the industry should be braced for push-back. Ampere suggests that the dominant players —Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu—are already stretching people’s spending limits and so creating the risk of viewer payment fatigue.

An emerging strategy to deal with this is more ad-supported services. Amazon’s rebrand of its IMDB movies and TV service, now called Freedive and ad-supported, is an example.

8K has a mountain to climb, but 4K overcame the same list of challenges

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The roll-out of 4K has a long way to go before it is anywhere near ubiquitous, but 8K is seen as the obvious next step and natural technological progression. It will be the talk of the town at IBC, just as it was in April at NAB , with both enthusiasts and naysayers passing comment. In truth, it is the pragmatists who are worth listening to most closely.

https://www.v-net.tv/2019/07/17/8k-has-a-mountain-to-climb-but-4k-overcame-the-same-list-of-challenges/

The answer to whether we need 8K depends on where you sit in the value chain. TV brands see 8K as the next big thing to upsell at retail – though beware the mess they made of 3D. Component suppliers like 8K because it demands higher performance components and subsystems. Content creators appreciate the archival value and oversampled information of 8K capture.

Content distributers see 8K as a market differentiator, particularly for OTT delivery (as Japanese-owned Spanish streamer Rakuten plans later this year). Consumers might be persuaded of the ‘4K on steroids’ immersive quality of the visuals.

Piers Moore, Global Insight Director at Kantar’s Worldpanel division (which is focused on consumer panel research), suggests any transition to ITU spec UHD-2 is not imminent. “As proven with 4K, there are three keys: price, content and consumer buy-in,” he says. “The price is too high to make it viable for a large consumer base. There isn’t the 8K content, so AI is needed to upscale lower resolution content, but that still doesn’t give you the full 8K experience. That leads into consumers not believing it is worth the price, and without the price being aligned with consumer perception it is hard to sell.”

These concerns might be condensed further: there is virtually zero native 8K content, production costs are exorbitant, let alone the bandwidth for distribution, which no-one outside of the Japanese government’s NHK-run project is prepared to underwrite. And what is the point anyway, since you cannot see the extra resolution? To which the reply is: “Yet”.

“In reality, these are nearly the same benefits and concerns that were voiced 5-6 years ago as we started down the UHD transition path,” argues the newly formed cheerleader for 8K, the 8K Association. “Clearly, these concerns were overcome.”

If we ignore the fact that the bulk of global transmissions are SD (some 60% of Globecast customers in Europe, for example), then 4K UHD has indeed been cracked. So, what’s next?

From a broadcast point of view, it seems like 8K will be introduced by the back door. Several manufacturers exhibiting at IBC, Sony and Blackmagic Design included, view the corporate video market as leading the 8K charge, principally for digital signage. Blackmagic Design’s marketing at NAB centred on 8K even if its 8K-ready video switchers and standards converters operate in SDI in defiance of the leaner, flexi-workflow possibilities of IP. That’s because transporting 4K UHD over SMPTE ST 2110 in live production remains tricky and not necessarily as rock-solid as coax.

“As a manufacturer, we can certainly see the benefits of 8K,” confirms Craig Heffernan, Technical Sales Director EMEA at Blackmagic. “It is crucial when it comes to future-proofing content and down-sampling with better quality. Shooting at such a high resolution also gives editors and VFX artists more data to work with, and an opportunity to zoom deeply into images and reframe without losing as much information.”

There is also interest in Virtual Reality projects. With an 8K frame, it is easier to pull out regions of interest, whether that is  for standard 2D delivery or 3D work. The greater the resolution within that VR sphere that can be stitched together, the smoother the stitching itself. This makes  the whole experience much more realistic for the viewer.

“Content providers will not  be the only sources of 8K material,” suggests Juliet Walker, CMO at Globecast. “UGC, like family videos, GoPro sports footage and also next-generation gaming console-generated video will bring 8K content to the home.”

Even so, 8K television sets are not expected to fly off the shelves. You can buy an 82-inch Samsung 8K telly at PC World today for £10,000 but only 56 million homes worldwide will own an 8K TV by the end of 2025, according to Strategy Analytics.

8K over mobile is a non-starter. Matt Stagg who heads up BT Sport’s mobile division says, “The optimum format for the small screen is HD HFR (high frame rate) and HDR (high dynamic range). We don’t advocate 4K, other than for casting to larger screens in the house (over Wi-Fi). This is the strategy for BT Sport and it should be for every operator.”

He is saying this partly to cap data costs for both consumers and operators as 5G is rolled out, but also because of the genuinely held view that the industry should concentrate on better pixels rather than more pixels.

But home TV screens are getting bigger – about an inch a year according to some reports. Overall sales of 8K TVs are expected to be concentrated in the 60-inch and above screen size categories. More significantly, the fundamentals of TV display R&D are changing. If costs can be brought down, technologies like microLED promise millimetre-thin modular designs, perhaps filling whole walls. The wallpaper screen real estate could be divided for multiple smart home functions.

And why stop there? After all, 8K at 7680×4320 pixels is equivalent to around 33 megapixels and there are relatively affordable still cameras on the market today that record 100 megapixels or more. “8K does not represent an upper limit but it is at the limit of what is commercially practical today,” says William Cooper, who runs the strategic consultancy informitv. “There may be diminishing returns beyond that.”

The DVB has just completed a study mission designed to bring together information on media formats beyond UHD-1 4K, with a preview of results being released at IBC. “These formats have the potential to be commercially viable in the coming years,” says Peter Siebert, DVB Head of Technology.

DVB to demonstrate progress with DVB-I, which aims to harmonise broadcast and OTT

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A new initiative intended to standardise the delivery and presentation of broadband and broadcast delivered television is being put before the operator and vendor community, but is it too late? DVB-I, from cross industry consortium DVB, aims to do for OTT what it did for digital TV. That is, to enable broadcasters to deploy common services across a wide range of devices and to enable manufacturers to offer a single consistent user experience for all video services.

https://www.v-net.tv/2019/07/17/dvb-to-demonstrate-progress-with-dvb-i-which-aims-to-harmonise-broadcast-and-ott/

At IBC 2019, the organisation will present the first demonstration of its efforts to date, with a standardised release promised by year-end. Peter MacAvock, Chair of DVB, says: “There are very real questions about whether we have the appropriate traction in the marketplace and whether what we feel is applicable will, in the event, land with the various different stakeholders, but we are reasonably confident this is the case.

“We are not early – but I don’t think we are too late. The OTT march is fully underway, and DVB-I is designed to provide the type of standard and rigour to the OTT sphere that DVB brought to the digital TV sphere.”

The suite of specifications, which the DVB characterises as an ecosystem, is designed to improve OTT delivery, providing increased scalability and cost savings with the same user-friendliness and robustness as classical broadcast delivery solutions. In particular, DVB-I will allow you to integrate channel lists, the content guide, and simple ‘lean back’ channel selection for services available over both broadcast and IP.

MacAvock explains: “It is focussed on a world where a broadcast service may be unlinked to the broadband delivered services and therefore a question arises: How would you access and even find out about the availability of those broadband services if they are not linked to the broadcast channel?”

When you bring home a new TV set, you (or the nice guy from John Lewis), can set it to auto-tune and display all the broadcast services available. The DVB wants to ensure the same level of simplicity when working with broadband channels, using DVB-I.

Yet, even if there was an IP equivalent to scanning frequencies, many thousands of services would potentially be found. A solution is needed which allows the receiver to locate streamed services that are relevant to the user, possibly based on geographical location, language and genre. The DVB has already braced itself for this contentious issue.

“The listing of services might seem trivial, but it is an extraordinarily emotive topic,” MacAvock declares. “We must respect the individual rules of broadcasters and territories, such as watersheds. We anticipate some difficult discussions, but we are relishing the opportunity.”

One strategy is to leave the market to solve this. Another solution could be for a central authority in each country to provide a service list, and for receivers to be pre-provisioned with the URLs of those lists. However, such an authority may not be available in all countries, and this approach does not fit well with all deployment scenarios, especially those of a more open nature.

The DVB is considering whether there are other possibilities that might avoid the need for country or broadcaster-specific solutions. Clearly, having the user enter URLs manually is not countenanced. MacAvock argues that the scale and cost advantages of a standardised model apply equally to Pay TV providers as well as free-to-air broadcasters. While the television set remains the most important device for video consumption, DVB-I will support any device with an Internet connection including smart phones, tablets and media streaming devices.

“EBU members are not in a position to provide vertical stacks for each and every vendor and device, so our stakeholders are interested in providing a simplified way in which their services can be accessed on any device. With standardisation, EBU members are able to harmonise distribution infrastructure and reduce costs,” says MacAvock.

“Those arguments are also valid for the Pay TV environment. Many operators supply and support their own hardware for each consumer but if we can help them standardise elements of the hardware to minimise their need to maintain the cost of receivers, that is to their advantage.”

MacAvock adds, “It won’t not happen overnight, but many Pay TV operators are actively engaged in DVB-I. They recognise that standardisation in any form will reduce cost, and also that DVB-I can improve their performance.”

40% of UK Pay TV customers look somewhere else for content first – but it may be apps on the operator STB

VideoNet

In the UK, six out of ten Pay TV customers turn to Pay TV first when looking for content, regardless of which device they are accessing it on, or where. Some 20% of Pay TV customers say they do not have a first choice video service, with a similar rate seen among customers at all Pay TV services, according to IHS Markit, which is drawing on research in its ‘Consumer Research: Devices, Media & Usage’ survey (conducted from interviews in markets including the U.S., Germany and UK in November 2018, and released this month).

https://www.v-net.tv/2019/07/17/40-of-uk-pay-tv-customers-look-somewhere-else-for-content-first-but-it-may-be-apps-on-the-operator-stb/

So, among the four-in-ten Pay TV customers who first look somewhere other than their Pay TV offer for content, where are they going? This depends s on which Pay TV service they have at home. TalkTalk customers are most likely to turn to iPlayer and Netflix, along with other apps available on their set-top box. Virgin Media customers are turning to Netflix, while BT customers go to Netflix or Sky.

Although Sky and Netflix have the highest overlap in subscribers, Sky customers are least likely to select Netflix as their first choice. “It would be interesting to see how this changes, with Netflix now on the [Sky set-top] box,” remarks Fateha Begum, Principal Research Analyst at IHS Markit.

This wide-ranging survey threw up a number of interesting trends. In the U.S., time spent on social video viewing has overtaken online long-form video for the first time since 2011, with Facebook’s video-centric strategy credited with driving the rise. According to the IHS Markit survey, time spent on social video registered the highest level of increase, adding more than eight minutes per-person per-day.

Time spent on social video doubled between 2016 and 2018 to reach nearly 39 minutes per person per day. Facebook alone counts for more than half of the increase seen over the two years following the launch of Facebook Watch in 2016. Instagram saw similar levels of increase in 2018, taking time spent to levels seen at Snap, with 7.4 minutes.

While mobile devices have become a key area of growth in terms of video consumption, particularly out of the home, connected living room devices “present new opportunities for social platforms to reach wider audiences, particularly as consumer appetite for short-form viewing improves,” says Begum.

Other findings for the U.S. market indicate that ‘video stacking’, the practice of juggling multiple OTT subscriptions, is most prominent in Pay TV households that have recently downgraded their package or cut the cord. Cord-shavers (who downgraded) had an average of 2.94 OTT subscriptions. In comparison, those that cancelled a Pay TV service had an average of 2.3 OTT subscriptions, indicating that this second group is more likely to be cost-conscious..

The IHS Markit report shows that in France, linear TV viewing held an 84% share of total viewing in 2018 compared to a 99% share in 2008, and good weather could even have suppressed the linear total.

“Although the World Cup was the most popular TV programme of 2018, the data from Mediametrie [France’s audience measurement body] does not indicate live viewing has increased for the year as a consequence,” says Rob Moyser, Research Analyst at IHS Markit.

“An increase in linear viewing over one month would not necessarily skew linear viewing to increase over the year, especially if live TV viewing has been in decline for much of the year. It is also worth mentioning that 2018 was one of France’s warmest years since records began, and would in turn have affected total viewership.”

Meanwhile, in Germany the time spent on Pay TV VOD increased by 23% as the roll-out of PVRs continues. These next-generation boxes also give access to more on-demand services. The study counts Pay TV VOD as any on-demand content viewed via a Pay TV set-top box, excluding third-party OTT services like Netflix or YouTube. It does include broadcaster catch-up TV, content included with a linear subscription, boxsets and transactional content.

“Germany is unique in Western Europe as digitisation was slow and it only completed digital switchover in March 2019,” says Begum. “The transition to digital TV along with advanced set-top boxes is driving the number of homes capable of receiving on-demand services and thus users and usage.”

Online video services in Germany added more than 3 million paid subscriptions in 2018, taking total subscriptions to more than 15 million, while Pay TV subscriptions remained relatively flat at 29 million, adding 450,000 net in the year.

The study found that one-in-five German Pay TV homes use the service less than once a week. So, what keeps these apparently super-light users paying for the service each month? Sports keeps some of them onboard even if they do not make the most of the platform when there are no live games to watch.

“Cord-cutting has largely been confined to the U.S.,” says Begum. “It takes consumers some time to churn from the old TV box even when their consumption habits have shifted. According to our consumer surveys, exclusive content is the biggest driver of subscriptions for Sky Deutschland uptake, whereas Deutsche Telekom over-indexes on wider benefits such as bundling with broadband – although that is not the biggest driver.

“’Free TV services are often bundled and sold for a small monthly fee, and analogue cable is paid through utility bills in Germany, so many households consider it to be ‘free TV’ whereas we would consider this to be Pay TV. They are therefore less likely to churn. So, this 20% statistic [the proportion of homes who subscribe to Pay TV but use it lightly] is mainly seen in Germany out of the countries surveyed. In the UK the figure is circa 10%.”

In Spain, PVR-based time-shifted viewing accounted for a 41% share of non-linear viewing time – indicating that the country’s on-demand platforms have not grown at the same rate as the other countries covered in this report. “In France, for example, PVR viewing stands at 8.8 minutes to Spain’s 9.6 minutes, but its on-demand platforms take up a 15% share of total viewing compared to Spain’s 6% share,” says Moyser.

The IHS Markit research shows that overall, total television viewing times across the U.S. and major European markets have declined slightly as consumers increasingly use non-linear as a substitute for traditional TV viewing, rather than as an addition .

Excluding social media, total average daily video viewing time for the countries analysed stood at 273.7 minutes per-person per-day in 2018. This compares to a peak of 284.3 minutes in 2013, when linear viewing held an 87% share of total viewing in contrast to a 67% share in 2018.

“The decline in minutes suggests a shift in viewing habits as non-linear becomes the television format of choice for more viewers in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands,” IHS Markit reports.

Rob Moyser explains: “During previous years, non-linear television viewing was largely additive to traditional linear TV viewing, driving up the total number of minutes watched. However, non-linear has now become an alternative for linear TV for many consumers. As a result, total cross-platform viewing time is returning to levels seen prior to the rise of on-demand viewing.”

Blackbird Plans Launch into Video Distribution

StreamingMedia

Blackbird, a developer of cloud-native postproduction tools, is moving into video distribution. Blackbird Player is built around core compression technology originally devised three decades ago by R&D director Stephen Streater. The player is likely to debut in prototype at IBC in September.

http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Blackbird-Plans-Launch-into-Video-Distribution-133092.aspx

"We know video streaming is challenged by latency with recent major sports events streamed live suffering from costly buffering," says Blackbird chief executive Ian McDonough. "We also know that watching video currently is a very passive experience for people, because they can't manipulate content. We have the technology to help solve these needs."

McDonough adds, "Rights holders are frustrated by not being able to allow their fans to clip and share video of a sport. With Blackbird Player, users will have instant access to any part of the video and to be able to share it over social, instantly and securely."

From Forbidden Technologies to Blackbird

Blackbird, which rebranded from Forbidden Technologies in March this year, has always been an outlier in video production tech, but you cannot deny the tenacity of Streater's personal vision nor the longevity of the compression technology he patented.

"Speed, size of image, and quality of image is key to making video-over-the-web feasible for a mass consumer market, and we believe our software can deliver it all. The technology should provide a platform for a tide of new internet productions created for niche markets as well as the traditional broadcasting industry."

Streater made that comment in 2000, a year after starting Forbidden, armed with the algorithms he first developed as a PhD researcher in image processing. The first applications for it were nonlinear editing and computer games at Eidos, the company Streater co-founded in 1990.

AIM-listed since 2000, Forbidden's stock has never quite soared. Its fortune could be about to change under direction of McDonough, who joined the UK-based firm in 2017.

"Forbidden had struggled to commercialise the technology," says McDonough, a former SVP and MD, UK and North Europe at Turner, an EVP and GM at BBC Worldwide, and commercial director for A&E Networks Europe.

"It had a misguided commercial strategy, specialising in the post sector mainly in London which, although high profile, is a small business. They were doing three to four figure deals which was not sustainable."

The firm's accounts for 2017 show revenues of £758,835 and a net loss for the year of £2.36 million. A year later losses had risen to £2.57 million, but signs of growth include higher revenue (£870,000) and invoiced sales. A fresh round of funding in 2018 has raised nearly £5.5 million, and the firm is debt free.

"What I saw was an incredible piece of technology at the core of the platform," he continues. "It was something that could replace many of the content interchange stages of traditional workflow automation. Raw materials—video, audio, graphics, stills—are only supplied to the platform through a lightweight codec and could be used for so much more than editing."

Receiving encouragement from networks in the U.S. in late 2017, McDonough felt confident to invest his own money in the firm's future. He and his family bought a stake worth 5.5%. The chief shareholder is Streater, with other investors including asset managers Miton Multi-Cap (20%), Schroders (7%), and Harwood Hale.

"Even in 2017, companies were not entirely sure about cloud, but we could see that the general direction of travel was not going to get derailed. It was good timing, good technology, and the company was massively undervalued."

McDonough set about targeting the fast turnaround high value news and sports markets, specifically exporting the company's technology to North America. In 2018, sales from the U.S. doubled and now comprise 25% of revenue.

Proprietary Algorithms

Part of the pitch is that Blackbird's proprietary algorithms (previously spun into a codec called Osprey and the backbone to cloud production platform ForScene) are the product of years of iteration, test and development.

"H.264 and H.265 are fantastic for streaming high-quality content, but generally in one direction. If you try and manipulate those codecs back and forth in an edit environment, they suffer latency and frame inaccuracy."

By contrast, Blackbird's codec doesn't apply MPEG compression (typically Long GOP) standards and file formats to media, but works in software through JavaScript.

His analogy is that competitors that have tried to solve this cloud postproduction conundrum have put wings on a train to get it to fly, whereas "we created an aeroplane from the ground up."

The translation of Blackbird's platform into JavaScript last year means that it can be accessed and used directly from any browser at frame-accurate at speeds down to 2Mbps. It's available for Linux and Mac. The move increased its addressable market enormously, McDonough says.

Either from a live feed or from video files, a local computer (Blackbird's Edge Server installed on-prem where the original content resides) converts incoming video into the Blackbird format and immediately uploads it to the cloud.

"The cloud challenge has always been concerned with getting full-resolution video into the cloud and to work on it there," says Streater. "For a company with only average resources, that is expensive and impractical."

The Blackbird proxies are used both for playback (without pre-rendering) and for editing. The original content is only involved at the point of publishing—even then it does not hold up operations because publishing proceeds directly from the edge server where the content is being held, not the editor's computer.

Blackbird markets two main interfaces. Forte is a fairly extensive editor featuring several keyboard shortcuts for media pros that mimic how they would use other software. Ascent is a scaled-down version for news reporters in the field, marketers, or social media publishers to clip in and clip out to send to social or to other parts of an organisation.

The current iteration is Blackbird 9, with v.10 in the works. It has partnerships with AWS and Microsoft Azure as well as operating its own cloud instance.

Speed is Key

"Because we don't store original content, in the cloud, just the proxy files, and because Blackbird encoded versions can only be read by another Blackbird player or interface, the platform is highly secure," McDonough says. "The codec allows content to be viewed from the same point all of the time. That means a rights holder can allow unlimited sharing of a clip from their content, but anyone would be accessing it from the same point. Should there come a point where a rights package is no longer valid, you can just delete it once and all those links around the world will delete also."

Sports broadcast and digital services supplier Deltatre is using Blackbird through Azure to extend its OTT editing services for live and on-demand content for football, athletics, golf, rugby and cycling as well as an unnamed major US sports franchise.

IMG recently renewed a relationship with Blackbird, and MSG (Madison Square Gardens) Networks, where the media crew behind the Buffalo Sabres NHL ice hockey team in New York, are using the tech to access, edit, add closed captions and publish video highlights of the games to social media and TV.

Blackbird is claimed to be quicker at doing this than anyone else.

"MSG had taken 48 minutes using Adobe and they pushed us to be quicker. We do it in 3 minutes with Blackbird," McDonough says.

Australasian international rugby union competition Rapid Rugby and live streaming provider Corrivium wanted it in less than a minute.

"We just pushed our software hard, so that from the moment a try is scored in Sydney to publishing that clip on Twitter is 30 seconds. Five seconds after it's happened, the clip is live in Blackbird to be edited and pushed out to social."

Auto clipping is in demand, he says, and Blackbird has a partnership with Veritone with which AI layers can be added.

Nor has Blackbird moved away from post. A recent deal with A&E Networks is a large-scale, predominantly postproduction workflow.

"For [behind-the-scenes NYPD series] Live PD production executives are using Blackbird for review and approval. They could be sitting in an Uber looking at rushes and approving or annotating those on the fly."

He says the network plans to repurpose its content archive, and is in the process of encoding hundreds of hours into Blackbird, making the assets instantly available for production staff to clip and create new programming for digital channels.

"A few years ago, the commercial team of this company were chasing Avid and the toolsets were incredibly sophisticated. But it does not do everything Avid does. You're not making Game of Thrones on Blackbird. But for 95-98% of content out there, we are a very accommodating tool."

The company's growth is dependent on large-scale rollout of cloud post and distribution, but Blackbird believes the "problem of visibility" is industry wide.

"We can solve this issue by rolling out our Player and content creation tools within large OEM systems," says McDonough. "This is how I believe the demand for Blackbird will expand rapidly. There is a long way to go to achieve our goals, but there is an enormous potential market. We aim to build on our position in North America, especially among sports broadcasters and rights holders, OTT or SVOD customers, or any company dealing with large volumes of video and news media groups.

"The need for large companies to make video manipulatable and instantly visible across the whole organisation and its channels is at the very heart of what we offer."

Behind the Scenes: Toy Story 4

IBC

Pixar director of photography Patrick Lin explains how he brings a live-action filmmaking approach to computer animation.

https://www.ibc.org/create-and-produce/behind-the-scenes-toy-story-4/4109.article

Lights, camera, action! is the classic instruction from the director’s chair and still a pretty stable guide to the process of shooting live action. Computer animation inverts this but in many other respects is remarkably similar to real world shoots.

“The order is ‘Camera, action, light’ since the lighting takes longest - for some frames it takes hundreds of hours to render,” explains Patrick Lin, director of photography on Toy Story 4.

The most obvious difference between animation and live action is that everything is built in a computer but there are increasingly strong links between the two forms of filmmaking, particularly in cinematography. Legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins, for example, was consultant on Pixar’s Wall-E.

“My virtual camera is mathematically true to a physical camera,” Lin explains. “It has f-stop, lens distortion, depth of field and I can mimic camera movement with cranes or dollies as if on a physical set.”

As with live action, the DP has a choice of which lens and what type of camera movement will best fit the story. Pixar modelled virtual lenses on actual lenses for the first time on Inside Out, for which Lin was also DP. That film was also the first time the studio had used a motion-capture camera to film scenes in a feature animation, though it had experimented with this earlier on the short Blue Umbrella, which Lin also lensed.

He says: “All the previous Toy Story films were presented with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 but for this we thought it would good to give the audience a fresh feel and a more cinematic experience so we decided to switch format to wide screen 2.39:1. In turn, that gave us the opportunity to use anamorphic lenses.

“We studied a range of lenses and honed in on Cooke Anamorphics. We studied their distortion, lens breathing and how the bokeh shifts so we could capture that ‘Cooke look’.”

Lin also deployed Cooke spherical lenses as part of his virtual camera package. “Toy Story 4 is about change; Woody is resistant to change but Bo Peep embraces it, so we use spherical lenses to illustrate Woody’s emotional situation and the depth of field and distortions that the anamorphics offer when Bo is in frame.”

That’s one example of the detailed thinking that lies behind the specific visual language created for the film.

Once a script is greenlit, the editorial team create stacks of storyboards (drawn by storyboard artists) cut together with temp sound and temp dialogue. This reel becomes the shooting script and informs the DP of the story beats they need to hit.

“I worked with ten layout artists on camera and staging,” Lin says. “We are working constantly with the editor to adjust the pace of the scene, blocking the characters, framing and composition. We give characters their first pose and establish the eye lines.”

Location shooting
The film’s co-DP Jean-Claude Kalache is responsible for lighting including colour and shadows as well as supervising the film’s grade and High Dynamic Range.

“We have built-in tracks and cranes within our computer,” says Lin. “When Bo is feeling emotional toward Woody, we want our camera to be more active and looser, so we mimic the use of Steadicam.”

It may sound obvious, but Lin also must keep in mind that he is shooting toys.

“We are filming toys, but we are not toy camera-operators,” he says. “On a Steadicam, when I push in, I am extending my arm. When we’re tracking the toys, I am walking back with them and taking human steps – ten steps for toys, five steps for human – so the scale feels more realistic.”

Lin referenced Hollywood classic Casablanca for its tracking shots and staging, as well as Kar-wai Wong’s In the Mood For Love. “Since our movie is a love story I liked how [Wong] staged the characters in proximity to each other and the camera progression throughout the film.”

Location scouting is another instance where live action and animation production blur. Lin, Kalache and the film’s set supervisor visited several antique stores local to the studio in San Francisco to prepare a key setting for the story.

“We took a GoPro and walked around to see it from a toy’s point of view,” Lin says. “That’s when we discovered loads of alleyways in between the cabinets and shelves that from a toy’s vantage point are avenues. It’s a cityscape.

 “We also realised that when you move a camera around an antique store it throw’s up really interesting visual patterns but it can also be hard for the eyes to focus. We had to frame the scene in a way that retained the jumble but offered clear storytelling and light it believably so we can direct light into the character’s eyes.”

They also shot footage of a real carnival, both from above and below, to assume the toy’s eye view.

You might expect animation to be precisely storyboarded with no wastage, every frame created making it to the screen. Surprisingly, Lin and director Josh Cooley can give the film’s editor, Axel Geddes, the coverage that you’d expect of live action.

“The camera and staging department will be inspired by the storyboards but won’t always literally put the camera where the boards indicate,” says Geddes. “With a special emphasis on reinforcing the clarity of the storytelling, camera will explore alternative ideas. Maybe a different camera move, maybe a combination of shots to simplify the beat.”

The moment Woody enters the antique mall is five shots in the film, but Geddes was given thirty different versions to play with – variants of camera movement, speeds and ways of Woody walking around.

“If a scene is forty frames, we don’t just do forty frames and give that to the editor - we cover it like a live action scene,” Lin explains. “First, we block our characters, then we shoot that with master shots and close ups and ensure we hit on all the story beats. We deliver that to editorial so they can find the pacing. If it makes sense for a character to turn three frames earlier to hook up better with the next shot, we tweak it. It’s a constant back and forth.”

Geddes says: “I will get tons of coverage. For the scene in which Woody meets Gabby Gabby it was a 4-1 shooting ratio. The thing in live action is that you are locked, and you work with what you have. But with animation, editorial can request new versions of a shot, or other ways of making a scene work in order to give it the right emotional impact. It’s a really collaborative way of working.”

VR innovation
Lin took a degree in live-action filmmaking at the California College of Arts. His first job in the industry was as a camera and lighting assistant for the stop-motion film James and the Giant Peach. That led to work as a motion control photographer on The Truman Showand X-Men. In 1997 he joined Pixar, was layout artist on A Bug’s Life, layout sequence lead on Toy Story 2, lead layout artist on Monsters, Inc., and director of photography on The Incredibles, and Up.

He began work on TS4 in 2015 when he was still involved in other Pixar projects back when the original plan was to make the sequel a romantic comedy. His work began in earnest in 2018 once the film’s ending had been agreed.

“Once it was decided that Woody is going to go with Bo the whole process was then to make sure we earned that ending. It was not easy to say the least.”

During the film’s four-year development, he says Pixar’s camera capture pipeline has improved significantly. “When we started out it was taking some time for us to capture directly into our proprietary software. It wasn’t robust but the time when we finished, we had a fully-fledged capture stage.”