Russell Wald: Why It’s So Hard to Have a Balanced Discussion About Deepfakes

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With the Presidential election looming and the fear that more deepfake videos will be unleashed, calls for national regulation of AI is growing. If nothing is done the internet could soon be awash with synthetic media and confidence in verifiable truth will fade forever.

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This is the most pressing concern for Russell Wald, director of policy for the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), who advises the US government and other institutions on how to shape AI regulation.

“The reason I’m worried is if there’s a ubiquitous amount of synthetic media out there, what are ultimately going to do is create a moment where no one’s going to have confidence in the veracity of what they see digitally. And when you get into that situation, people will choose to believe what they want to believe, whether it’s an inconvenient truth or not. And that is really concerning.”

In a IEEE Spectrum podcast with senior editor Eliza Strickland, Wald said what is needed is a system in which generative AI platforms (and perhaps social media platforms) verify media.

“You’re not going to be able to necessarily stop the creation of a lot of synthetic media, but at a minimum, you can stop the amplification of it, [by putting] on some level of disclosure that signals that it may not be what it purports to be and that you are at least informed about that.”

Regulators are looking at the issue domestically and in places like China and Europe, which is arguably the most advanced global territory. Even here, though, it could be well over a year before an AI Act is passed into law.

One suggestion is to impose some sort of watermark on genuine media to separate it from fakes, but there are a lot of unanswered questions about who bears responsibility for this, or who is potentially liable for the creation and dissemination of fake videos.

Wald thinks the terms of AI regulation need to be stripped right back to the data input into the models in the first place.

“We need to look at transparency regarding foundation models. There’s just so much data that’s been hovered up. What’s going into them? What’s the architecture of the compute? Because at least if you are seeing harms come out of the back end, by having a degree of transparency, you’re going to be able to go back to what [initial source data].”

He expresses concern about the inherent bias in current and future AI models and likewise argues for policy and lawmaking bodies to include a “diverse set of people” to be able to ensure that when these models are released, “there’s a degree of transparency that we can help review and be part of that conversation.”

Companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft have recently been vocal about the need for regulation. Wald views this positively but also as an ultimately cynical exercise in corporate risk management.

“They would rather work now to be able to create some of those regulations versus avoiding reactive regulation. So it’s an easier pill to swallow if they can try to shape this now at this point. Of course, the devil’s in the details on these things, right?”

Of greater concern is that even if we came up with the optimal regulations tomorrow, “it would be incredibly difficult for government to enforce it.”

There is next to no investment in the US in infrastructure to track and catch AI lawbreakers, he says.

“We need more of a national strategy part of which is ensuring that we have policymakers as informed as possible on this. I spend a lot of time with briefings with policymakers. You can tell the interest is growing, but we need more formalized ways to make sure that they understand all of the nuances here.”

Because of how fast the technology is moving we urgently need a workforce that understands AI and so can quickly adapt and make changes that might be needed in the future.

“We’ve got to recruit talent,” he says. “And that means we need to really look at STEM immigration. We need to expand programs like the Intergovernmental Personnel Act that can allow people who are in academia or other nonprofit research to go in and out of government and inform government so that they’re more clear on [AI].”

What we are seeing today with generative AI is just the tip of the iceberg. AI development is growing so fast it makes the need to regulate all the more urgent, provided discussion is balanced.

“Let’s not go to the extreme of, ‘This is going to kill us all.’ Let’s also not go and allow for a level of hype that says, ‘AI will fix this.’ We need to have a neutral view that says there are some unique benefits this technology will offer humanity and but at the same time there are some very serious dangers so how can we can manage that process?”

Policymakers also need to educate themselves, he suggests. Not to the extent of using TensorFlow of course, but to at very least get to grips with what the technology can and cannot do.

“We can’t expect policymakers to know everything about AI but, at a minimum, they need to know what it can and cannot do and what its impact on society will be.”

Ah, Youth: How Oliver Curtis Captures That Exuberance for “The Buccaneers”

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With director Susanna White’s “The Buccaneers,” an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s unfinished final novel set in the 1870s, Apple TV+ adds a period drama with a modern spin to its lineup. 

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The story turns on the fallout of intercontinental marriages of convenience between five wealthy American heiresses and Englishmen long on family trees but short on cash. The women travel from New York to England, where they vie to pair off with aristocratic, eligible young men.

For cinematographer Oliver Curtis (“Stay Close,” “Vanity Fair,” for which he was nominated for a BAFTA), who worked on the first two episodes, the contrast was a natural setup. 

“The theme of the clash of cultures from these vivacious, energized, young American women coming over to musty old England to meet their potential suitors has got a natural kind of transformative quality. You’ve got the color, light, and energy of their New York life, and then the dour, desaturated world of old England,” he told Motion Pictures. “It’s all about forward movement in people’s lives. It’s a playful show, full of light and color. The cinematography had to reflect that.”

Opening With a Oner

From the opening moments of the show, the expansiveness of this world and its characters are established via a long, meandering one-shot throughout an opulent New York home.

“Susanna and I designed … an opening statement of energy, of movement, of exuberance,” Curtis told No Film School. “So it was a real marker, if you will, for what you are getting yourself into with this show. And also the fact that it’s driven by the movement of our lead character played by Kristine Frøseth.”

Not only did the take need to incorporate different spaces with the cooperation of dozens of actors and supporting artists, but Curtis also had to consider what tools to use with his Steadicam operator, Alex Brambilla.

“Because we start close and wide on the flowers and as we sweep in, you get more compression as it gets busier with people inside. So we probably went onto a slightly longer focal length there. And then when we got up to the landing after Kristine meets Christina [Hendricks] there, I think we widened out a little bit more so that when we do the hidden edit transition, we were on a slightly wider focal length, which would allow us to get separation there.”

They avoided any reflective surfaces with the coordination of the camera ops and cast. Eagle-eyed viewers might catch the one hidden cut in the sequence.

“There has to be a hidden cut because the first half of it is on location and the second half is on a build,” Curtis said. “So where we go into the rooms, we built that because we couldn’t find a building that gave us those two spaces. Plus we needed green screen beyond the windows for the street, which was just outside Glasgow City Chambers doubling for Madison Avenue.”

Camera Techniques Express Characters

The story theme of a clash of cultures gave the DP a clue that there was going to be an evolution of the show’s look. “You’re going to start with the modern American Vision and move to the old world vision. So that was an exciting prospect and thinking about how we were going to evolve that,” he explained to Patrick O’Sullivan.

The other aspect of the show he had to consider was to marry the grand interiors and big ballroom and dinner scenes with close ups of intimacy and expression. This drew him to using a larger format sensor of the Alexa LF combined with portraiture lens of the Arri DNA glass.  

“It’s got all of the tropes of a period drama that you’d expect, but it’s also surprising and different in a lot of ways,” Curtis added.  

Dynamic camera techniques, including tracking and Steadicam shots, reflect the characters’ infectious spirit.

“When you’ve got an ensemble cast and the blocking is fairly fluid and not too static, the camera has to adjust and configure itself around their movements,” Curtis told IBC365. “Also shooting ‘B’ camera most of the time gave the editor coverage to build pace and find the action within the scene.

Lighting, Then and Now

“Something I hadn’t really taken on board previously is that the clothing from that period was much more reflective than most modern fabric. The bustles and corsets are textured and reflect the light so you get a lot of animation in the costume and movement.”

In the 1870s, electricity was available in the homes of wealthy New York society, while British aristocracy still had gas, oil lamps and candles. Curtis leapt on this as a storytelling device.

“The New York interiors are flooded with light, they are bright and open and accessible but when our heroes arrive in London the light hardly penetrates indoors. We keep the lighting levels low key there to build that contrast. Gradually as the women infiltrate high society the light starts to flood in.”

Glasgow City Chambers was used for interiors of London’s Grosvenor House, scene of a grand debutante’s ball. The building featured a magnificent white staircase, which White thought ideal to stage a parade of white gowned debutantes.

It was a very challenging space to work in. A giant sky light overhead meant the DP had to compete with all the vagaries of the Glasgow weather, and the staircase itself descended around an atrium, making it tricky to position and move a camera.

“We managed to work our way down the building in stages,” he told IBC. “Where there were doorways leading onto council offices I asked [production designer Amy Maguire] to build window plugs (where designers create a window) so we could bring daylight into the belly of the building where otherwise it would be gloomy and dark. This created interesting pools of light and contrast where we could stage different beats of the story. It was an unusual piece of staging for something that could otherwise have been a conventional ballroom scene.”

He used helium balloons to help light spaces in period houses partly to protect the delicate cornicing from rigging. They came in useful during the debutante’s ball scene, too, where the balloons were towed down the staircase as the camera team worked their way into the bowels of the building.

The British cinematographer expounded on his process with O’Sullivan, recalling that at one point in his career he was mostly shooting commercials.

“And as marvellous as that was in itself, traveling, seeing the world earning good money and making some interesting work it, you know, it can get very stultifying,” he said. “You kind of find yourself yearning to be able to hold a shot longer than two seconds and work with actors, I think it is great to have a good mixture [of work] so that you stay fresh and challenged.

He started out his career shooting on film and says his goal remains to shoot in camera as much as possible. “You also have to be cognizant of the post processes and the ability you have in the grade to work with the colorist. Colorists are artists, too, and they can bring an awful lot to a show and surprise you with some of the solutions and make transitions which you thought wouldn’t work. 

“It’s really important to have that in your back pocket. And I suppose my dialogue with the DIT and the VFX onset is one of reassurance that I just, I can say, ‘you know, look, I haven’t got the time, or the resources perhaps to deal with a certain problem, but do you think that will be okay, in terms of exposure, in terms of separation?’ These are experts around you doing their job for a reason, and you’d be foolish not to take on board their input.”

The foundation of his craft remains lighting and shooting it the way that you want it to be done, “if you walked away from it that day and never saw the image again, which is often the case on commercials. Because you can’t follow commercials through post production as much as you can drama. You have to trust that the image is there. So yeah, I try to walk away from set feeling that yes, I have got the essence of that, and it looked the way I wanted to look, and I’m not going to have to do too much in post.” 

How AI Reunited The Beatles for “Now and Then”

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The Beatles, guided by producer George Martin, were famously pioneers of new technology in making seminal studio albums like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album; so using an AI tool to complete their final song should be seen as a natural evolution.

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As John Lennon’s son Sean Lennon says in a making-of video, “My dad would’ve loved that because he was never shy to experiment with recording technology.”

“Now and Then” was built from a recording made by John Lennon shortly before his murder in 1980, using the same AI technology that director Peter Jackson used in his documentary Get Back to clean up and separate voices in archival recordings.

Co-produced by Paul McCartney and George Harrison’s son Giles Martin, the track features elements from all of the Fab Four — including a Lennon vocal track that was first recorded as a demo tape in the 1970s.

The track was included on a cassette labelled “For Paul” that Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, gave the three surviving Beatles in the 1990s as they were working on a retrospective project.

At the time the band members tried to complete Lennon’s demo but considered it unsuitable for release. It wasn’t until July 2022, Jackson told David Sanderson at the Sunday Times, that McCartney contacted him for his help in producing a new version.

The audio software, called Mal (machine audio learning), allowed Lennon’s vocals to be separated from the demo. The track was then rebuilt with new performances from McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with Harrison’s guitar parts from their shelved recording session in the SC.

As is clear from the making of doc the chief difficulty with using the original cassette recording was that Lennon’s vocal was too indistinct in places with the piano and the sound of a TV playing in the background.

Weta’s AI, developed for Get Back, managed to cleanly isolate the vocals from the background allowing the mix to finally be made.

As Jackson explained to Rob LeDonne at Esquire, the tech originated from forensic investigation work developed by the New Zealand police.

“When it’s noisy and they want to hear a conversation between two crooks or something, they can isolate their voices. I thought that’d be incredible to use, but it’s not software that’s available to the public.

“So, we contacted the cops and we asked, “Do you mind if we brought some tape to the police station and we ran it through your confidential audio software?” So, we did a 10- or 15- minute test and the results were really bad. I mean, they did the best they could. But you realize that for law enforcement, the quality and fidelity of the audio doesn’t need to be good, so it was far, far short of what we could use.

Weta took the theory of it and made a tool capable of producing high quality audio. “To hear some of those early songs in a fully dynamic way… You realize what you’ve been hearing is quite a limited range of audio,” Jackson said. “You don’t realize how crude the mixing on some of the early songs were, how muddy they were.”

In the making-of video below, McCartney expresses his doubts about making full songs out of Lennon’s demos, out of respect for the late songwriter’s unfinished work.

“Is it something we shouldn’t do?” McCartney says. “Every time I thought like that I thought, wait a minute, let’s say I had a chance to ask John, ‘Hey John, would you like us to finish this last song of yours?’ I’m telling you, I know the answer would have been, ‘Yeah!’”

Martin says human creativity is still at the heart of the song. Even if AI was involved, it wasn’t used to create synthetic Lennon vocals. “It’s key for us to make sure that John’s performance is John’s performance, not a machine learning version of it,” he told David Salazar at Fast Company. “We did manage to improve on the frequency response of the cassette recording…but it’s critical that we are true to the spirit of the recording, otherwise it wouldn’t be John.”

Jackson also directed the video for the track which contains a few precious seconds of the first-ever film ever shot of The Beatles on stage in Hamburg in the early 1960s.

“A Beatles music video must have great Beatles footage at its core,” he said as part of a lengthy statement about the project on The Beatles website. “There’s no way actors or CGI Beatles should be used. Every shot of The Beatles needed to be genuine. The 8mm film is owned by Pete Best, the band’s original drummer. Clare Olssen, who produced the video, contacted Best to get a few seconds of his film.”

Angela Watercutter at Wired suggests that “‘Now and Then’ signals, if anything, not just the last Beatles song but the first in what could be a long stream of work that’s salvaged or saved using artificial intelligence.”

Indeed, Jackson has hinted at the possibility, as The Guardian’s Ben Beaumont-Thomas reports, of more Beatles music to come culled from archival footage he went through when editing Get Back, the eight-hour docuseries about The Beatles.

“We can take a performance from Get Back, separate John and George, and then have Paul and Ringo add a chorus or harmonies. You might end up with a decent song but I haven’t had conversations with Paul about that,” he said.

“It’s fanboy stuff but certainly conceivable.”

The Era of Media Consolidation is Not Over

IBC

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Pressure from Wall Street and the weak economic landscape could drive further M&A among US media giants, but weather the next 24 months and they might all survive.

The era of major media consolidation is entering a new phase. While we have seen significant M&A in recent years, such as Disney’s acquisition of Twentieth Century Fox, the 2019 merger of CBS and Viacom and Discovery’s acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T, the landscape is still changing, and further consolidation remains possible. 

There are several factors that have led to the point where consolidation is again on the minds of both investors and media CEOs.

“There is a lot of pressure from investors now for further consolidation to reduce the number of players, to build scale and, for some companies, to build expertise in advertising to feed the monster that is the demand for streamed content,” said Guy Bisson, Executive Director & co-founder at Ampere Analysis.  

Media companies must do all this without exponentially growing their content spend which has been the overriding trend for the last ten years.

Consolidation Cycles 

The history of the industry over the last three decades has been of cycles and waves of consolidation. Broadly, this has been driven by two different strategies: vertical and horizontal.

In the mid-nineties when cable and satellite companies began to merge with content owners they were doing so in the form of vertical integration in order to control the value chain through the cycle of content windows. 

More recently, horizontal integration has been favoured to achieve scale in programming and distribution because of the rise of streaming and the globalisation of content distribution. It’s why Disney acquired 21St Century Fox in 2017 (for $71 billion) and is the rationale behind smaller scale consolidation such as the emergence (since 2004) of ITV Studios which is amalgamated from dozens of production and distribution companies into an entity with scale and global potential.

“We’re now in a phase where streaming has started to saturate and subscriptions have hit a ceiling,” Bisson said. 

“It’s been a phenomenal few years during which all major studios launched DTC services, coinciding with a boom in demand which was artificially inflated by lockdown. The pandemic accelerated an outcome that would have occurred a few years down the line. Coming out of that we find a very crowded market in which there is a base dominant player (Netflix) and global markets are saturating.” 

Evidence from Ampere’s consumer data shows that the number of paid streaming services taken per household has been flat for more than two years. Spooked by Netflix’ profit slump for two straight quarters in 2022, there’s been a cooling of opinion in Wall Street where investors no longer see streaming as profitable a business as it once was. Bisson:

“I don’t agree with all the doom and gloom around streaming but taken in the round all of these factors lead to the thesis that not every major player existing today can survive. Therefore, they must consolidate.” 

Some estimates claim as much as 90% of U.S. media is controlled by just six companies. They are Comcast, Walt Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, Sony and Fox. All are major content companies with a global streaming footprint.  

Big Six to Big Three? 

Consolidation by its nature concentrates power in the hand of the few – a factor of globalisation and the need for scale. Talk at TV sales market Mipcom last month was that this could reduce to five or even just three.  

“Three seems far too few especially now advertising is coming back to the fore as a serious revenue generating alternative,” said Bisson. “Advertising opens up additional opportunities to maintain scale for some of these companies to retain their independence.” 

So who survives? Well, although not included in the ‘top six’ media companies by revenue, Netflix seems to hold top spot among analysts. The $180 billion company reported a profit of $1.68bn on revenue of $8.5bn in the last quarter, beating market expectations and swelling subscribers to 247 million.  

“Netflix have a base position in the home streaming bundles,” Bisson said. “All the data we get, such as what services consumers take, in what combination and what happens when they churn, suggests that Netflix is a keystone of the streaming bundle. That’s the given, then you are laying other services on top. 

“That doesn’t mean no-one would buy Netflix and be part of a consolidation push but Netflix as a service or product is in a very strong position that is unassailable. Unless they royally screw up their content offer.” 

Perhaps it is better to ask which of the major media conglomerates is in the weakest position. Each has taken a different strategic approach which insulates them to a degree. 

“Of all the studios it is Disney that has led on streaming (Hulu, Disney+ and Disney+ Star) and doubled down on streaming as the priority for content. They were the first to start seriously thinking of the streaming window and changing attitudes to theatrical windows, transactional windows. Disney’s sales and distribution and licencing of content have all changed toward a streaming first model in the last 12 months.” 

Disney’s reported divestment of its India operations to local rival Reliance Industries is a logical move, say Ampere. 

“While streaming has expanded globally there’s a realisation that only about 70 countries actually deliver decent value. Clearly, there’s a huge opportunity in India or China but the customer value in DTC is so low there to make it difficult to achieve succeed especially against local competition. In order to get to profitability with the pressure being put on by Wall Street focusing in on the core market makes absolute sense.” 

Despite growing its streaming business (Disney+ now reaches 112.6m customers globally), Disney’s focus is on cost cutting and mega-bundles having just reached a deal with Comcast to acquire NBCU’s 33% stake in Hulu for $8.6bn. 

Ampere describes Disney’s strategy as focused on a series of core pillars: reaching streaming profitability; developing ESPN as a fully-fledged direct-to-consumer offering; a new integrated entertainment bundle domestically; and revamping the studio business. All of these strategies feed one another and feed the streaming window.  

As it rolls out international uber-streamer Max, WarnerBros. Discovery shares with Disney an aim for content breadth across multiple genres targeting multiple demographics. “They are both generalists and share a similar approach,” Bisson said. 

“We are, of course, back to a traditional pay TV strategy of providing content for all the family in a cost-effective tier to increase subscriber retention. Disney (and arguably Warner Bros. Discovery) are the first to get there, but others will all follow. It’s a strategy we said was essential to the future of streaming back in 2019 and, had the pandemic streaming boost not happened, surely would have been necessary sooner.” 

WBD saw its stock fall on release of its third quarter figures this month. The company saw 700,000 fewer subscribers to Max at 95.1 million, below the analyst forecast of 95.4 million and blamed the tough advertising environment as well as repercussions from the Hollywood strikes. 

In addition to owning Paramount+, Paramount Global holds traditional TV assets including CBS, Nickelodeon and a slew of other cable networks, as well as Paramount movie studios. “Paramount are perhaps one tier down [from Disney and WBD] but have a much larger content library than people give them credit for,” said Bisson.  He thinks Paramount is converging toward a mixed strategy centred on Paramount+ as well as payTV and licenced content. 

In its recent Q3 figures, Paramount reported a 38% increase in revenue with 2.7 million net additions to Paramount+ bringing its subscriber count to 63 million. The company also narrowed losses in its streaming segment to $238m from $343m a year ago. 

Because of its Comcast parentage, NBCUniversal is the most entrenched in payTV infrastructure. Comcast owns Sky, the largest payTV operator in Europe.  Revenue at the company’s Peacock streaming service rose 64% from a year earlier with paid subs increasing by four million to 28 million but the company still expects Peacock to make a $2.8 billion loss this year. 

“While WBD and Paramount have a mixed strategy that still preserves to some degree the old business lines this is fundamentally the case with NBCU because of the heritage of its infrastructure-based business.” 

Better times ahead 

However, Ampere’s analysis suggests that “from the perspective of their direct businesses” all the major media content owners and distributors are on the verge of profitability within 24 months.  

“At which point market sentiment will shift again toward streaming and some of the pressures for consolidation will begin to wane,” he said. “The impetus for consolidation will wither somewhat in about 18 months. The question is whether there will be consolidation in the interim.” 

Big Tech Big Pockets 

The driver is likely to be from Big Tech seeking to build content scale through acquisition more so than studio on studio consolidation. 

Amazon, for example, is lacking an advertising led streaming service yet momentum in the market has shifted heavily towards this.  

“All the Studios been in the advertising channel business for decades but tech companies don’t have a longform TV advertising ad sales heritage that is absolutely essential to weather the market changes,” remarked Bisson. “People have reached the ceiling in terms of their streaming stack. They don’t want to pay for more services. That’s why, as much as the content, advertising expertise is now a commodity.” 

When Netflix launched its premium AVOD tier a year ago this December it did so with sales infrastructure from Microsoft in a partnership which benefits the tech giant as much as the streamer.  There are now 15 million global monthly active users on the tier. 

Apple, with its focus on hardware sales, remains somewhat of an enigma. “They have a very specific strategy which has been about building a small volume of very high budget and highly curated content,” Bisson said. “It has worked pretty well for them to date.” 

Apple also made a first serious foray into sports in a ten-year deal to live stream all MLS games, which some see as a prelude to a multi-billion dollar bid for Disney’s sport network ESPN. 

“Apple is positioned as a premium product much like every other Apple product. They could have bought MGM in 2021 when Amazon stepped in [paying $8.45bn]. It’s nowhere near a certainty that Apple needs to acquire a large production entity.” 

Will AI swing balance of power? 

Into this mix comes the power of Generative artificial intelligence which all the studios are developing models for inhouse.

According to media commentator Peter Csathy it’s the Big Tech companies that will ultimately make the most money and have the most control and power, not Hollywood.

“Let’s look at the realities of economics,” he said in a recent webinar. “Big Tech has multitrillion-dollar valuations. Whereas the biggest traditional media company out there, which is Disney, has $150 billion market valuation. Ultimately, Big Tech is the big winner here. And I would say that Big Tech is the big winner on the backs of creators, artists, musicians.” 

Certainly, creators, artists and musicians can learn to leverage AI for their benefit, he said but, “the scale of it all really inures to the benefit of Big Tech.”

Bisson isn’t so sure. He views AI as a tool for all and open to anyone to use including the studios. “It is not a singular unique advantage for those developing AI.  

“AI has many interesting uses for media companies and one of the things that clearly needs to be done is better integration of different services, better content discovery, content recommendation, navigation between services and ad targeting. That is what AI should be very good at solving. It always comes back to who controls the data that is necessary for that AI to function. And just now no one is particularly eager to share the information required to allows that to happen. 

“Frankly the technology is already here for that to happen without AI. It hasn’t happened because of the silos of data and protection of audience data.” 

He notes that there’s long been a theory in the media business that if you own the device to watch it on you therefore become the dominant platform – but that this has never succeeded. 

“I’m not going to say ‘Content is King’ (because anyone who repeats that cliché deserves a slap) but if you don’t have content you don’t have a service and it doesn’t matter what AI you’ve got.” 

Canada: Northern lights

AV Magazine

Having emerged a year later than the US from Covid hibernation, Canada is making up for lost time with a rush of construction, upgrades and AV opportunities. 

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The new normal in Canada post-pandemic has been busier than anticipated with a wave of new construction driving AV business into 2024.

Pro AV is back “in full swing” says Caitlin Doherty, vice-president of Erikson Audio which distributes Powersoft. “The key dealers are growing and with that growth there is room for partnerships with more manufacturers.”

Canada’s 40 million population is the same size as the state of California making it a “smaller, more practical market” for Mark Bohs, Datapath’s Sales Director (Americas). “Despite the government trying to combat inflation by raising interest rates, the economy remains strong and many provinces, plus their larger cities, are still growing. Audio visual is an excellent market to be in.”

Jason Mcleish, sales director, Uniguest says Canada “is becoming a very proactive forward thinking market primed for digital technology to help address customer engagement challenges. It’s picking up pace and only likely to get better.”

Q1 and Q2 were “extremely busy” for Atlona and many of its integration partners, reports Christina Cruziero, the company’s regional sales manager. “Industry-wide, sales look strong across Canada and many businesses expect sales to be up on 2022. Everyone has their eye on interest rate fluctuation, but overall the outlook is positive.”

Julie Legault, president of Techi + Contact which partners with management platform Utelogy says expects AV growth to continue into 2024. She also sounds alarm on interest rates. “If they continue to climb there could be a market slowdown later into the year. Typically, the commercial market is not as sensitive as the consumer or prosumer markets, so the outlook remains very positive.”

That demand has created an issue. Matthew McKaig, Crestron’s director, Dealer Channel, says, “Our integration partners are still feeling the pressure from those installations that are still being completed.”

François Corbin MD, d&b audiotechnik describes the market as going from famine to feast. “It’s been relentless – tons of production work and installation projects, too many to participate in them all. That said, we’ve been hearing more and more concern about things slowing down from 2024 onward. There appears to be some uncertainty as to what the coming years will look like. Inflation has certainly had an effect.”

Meanwhile several commentators note the country has been slower to move out of the pandemic compared to the US. Ben Cook, senior market development specialist, Shure, says, “While Canadian customers tend to be more brand loyal than other regions, supply chain difficulties have led many of them to make purchase decisions based on availability. This has forged new business relationships but has also created an environment where manufacturers easing out of supply chain constraints need to work even harder to win back local customers.”

“While delivery times and stock situation have become much better for GerrAudio Distribution, its vice-president and director of sales Geoff Maurice, says they are still fighting to fill orders “to satisfy as many tours and projects by their deadlines as possible. It’s been a strenuous mental exercise to try to move gear around and keep everyone happy.”

The most growth for GerrAudio stems from the rental and live side of the business, which is also the one that shuttered the most during Covid. “We saw a lot of companies do what they should have done on a much more regular basis with respect to selling off old and outdated gear,” adds Maurice. “We’re now seeing them re-equip tenfold over what they would normally do. Covid has definitely changed this workflow for the better, but it has also diversified our customers’ offering.”

Venue upgrades
In the live events market Datapath cites a solid recovery. “Things are starting to return to pre-pandemic levels,” says Bohs. It’s a view echoed by Cook who says live events have “grown steadily” while the pro audio side “seems to be making a comeback. The number of concerts in Canada is still down at least thirty per cent. Out of the ten big festivals held in the Toronto area, only four have restarted since the pandemic.”

The Canadian market re-opened at least a year later than the US making it a busier than usual summer 2023 in production. Corbin reports a lot of new blood coming into the industry needing to be mentored and trained: “There’s a huge shortage of labour and qualified technicians to support all the work.”

Houses of worship, by contrast, never slowed down for d&b audiotechnik. “This is a growing vertical, the latest trend is object mixing and it is hard for us to keep up,” says Corbin.

Recent installs of d&b’s Soundscape system include a 1,500-seat sanctuary in Red Deer, Alberta, where the worship experience is enhanced through the object-based mixing. “It’s wrong to think that object mixing is only for musicals or performing arts centres. We’re getting requests for applications from sports venues, malls, dance clubs, and restaurants.”

Sports
Unlike the US, Canada doesn’t have major sports leagues like the NBA, MLB, or NFL across the country but it does have ice hockey. Christie’s senior sales manager, Joe Mercier reports interest in projection mapping ice surfaces from smaller hockey clubs. “They are looking to replicate what NHL teams are doing, albeit on a smaller scale. We’re also seeing interest in permanent projection mapping projects from cities and towns.”

The sale of the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club (to a local entrepreneur) brings forward the possibility of an upgrade to experiences within the 18,652-seat Canadian Tire Centre stadium.

Datapath has been involved in recent upgrades to the Rogers Centre where MLB team Toronto Blue Jays play. They added signage throughout their stadium by expanding their Triple Play Signage and IPTV systems. Bohs predicts more sports venue upgrades ahead of the 2026 Fifa World Cup which Canada shares hosting 48 matches with Mexico and the US.

Says Mcleish: “Fan experience has been a huge topic in sports and entertainment and the teams in Canada are jumping on that train too. Whether it’s digital menu boards to help up-sell deals and high value items, digital signs in retail spots, engagement apps to create personal connections or interactive TV in corporate boxes, teams are seeing the opportunity to connect, engage and create additional revenues from technology.”

Back to hybrid
As elsewhere the return to work is characterised by hybrid strategies. While a full return to the office “has not and probably will not occur, the partial return has reignited sales,” says Clint Hoffman, president, Lightware Americas.

“The biggest change in the corporate market is empty offices,” says Cook. “Canadian companies and employees are not going back like our US counterparts. Likewise, we’ve discovered the four-day work week.

“This is happening everywhere – colleges, banks, insurance companies. Now companies are hoteling their offices, renting them out to smaller companies who are desperate for space.

“Small and single-day use cubicles have seen a large boom. These spaces represent a budget-minded group of customers looking for a small and cost-effective solution. Demand has been down for the larger, more premium conferencing technology while demand for these smaller solutions has increased dramatically.”

Crestron thinks organisations will develop better strategies for the “modern hybrid workplace” — and understand what they’ll need to provide employees with to “make the commute worth it.” McKaig expects to see organisations continue to provide better technological solutions to their employees throughout 2024.

Corporate office vacancy rates in Canada in the first quarter of 2023 were at an all-time high of 17.7 per cent, according to real estate firm CBRE.

“The softness in the Canadian market is reflected by the state of the corporate office market,” says Jason Knott, D-Tools’ data solutions architect. “That high vacancy rate directly affects the ability of integrators to install corporate boardrooms with AV, digital signage, communication and collaboration, distributed audio, access control and sound masking solutions. Likewise, there is a spillover effect that reduces demand in urban hospitality, bars and restaurants that have fewer patrons.”

On the residential side, average home prices were down in most provinces in June and July as interest rate hikes by the Bank of Canada took effect. That means slower home sales.

On a positive note, overall home prices are up for the year in every Canadian province, says Knott. “That increase builds home equity, which could spur the residential remodelling market in Q2.”

The post-pandemic campus
The education and corporate verticals remain Atlona’s core focus, and it has seen strong momentum in both areas. “The higher education space is where we see the most activity recently, and the forecast points to a swift rise in campus-wide upgrades,” says Cruziero. “We’ve been strategic about stocking products throughout the global supply chain challenges, and that has helped us win a larger share of business.”

Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario recently added Atlona’s AT-WAVE-101 wireless presentation switchers in 75 of its learning spaces. According to Cruziero these compact devices align well with post-pandemic classroom integration trends as well as BYOD/BYOM requirements.

McKaig says many educators want “Hy Flex spaces” that afford the ability to teach in-person and remote students at once. “New education facilities are increasing with the job demand for technology and tools for career growth,” he says.

The money budgeted for AV solutions in Canada is generally a fraction of that for most US schools, he says. “A great example from my experience as an integrator – we outfitted a US college football team’s locker facility, and the budget was larger for that one project than some of the buildings I’ve seen here that will house 3000-4000 students. The concept of ‘conservative spending’ is a very big difference between us and the US.”

Another trend is the amount of money being diverted to healthcare, notes McKaig, specifically in the building and renovation of hospitals. Many large hospital projects are underway, and the amount of tech in these new facilities is staggering, he says. Additionally, UC technologies that bring doctors to rural care facilities using Microsoft Teams or Zoom are becoming the norm.

Construction boom
Many Canadian cities have major construction going on as the country’s population and economy expands. The Greater Toronto Area and Southern Ontario Region, which comprises about 36 per cent of the population, are an AV hotspot, according to Bohs. Buildings comprise high-rise office towers for banks and condominiums. “This area is growing fast and there’s strong demand for AV,” he confirms.

Says Cook: “We are adjusting to a growing population and experiencing a housing crunch. Our integrator partners are feeling this and struggling to hire enough talent to meet demand. There are many initiatives here to help boost the workforce and increase adoption of crucial trade skills.”

Visitor attraction, event venue and waterfront park Ontario Place is rebuilding and expanding, reports Cruziero. The Ontario Science Centre is relocating here creating AV opportunities to pursue. There are also three new hospitals under construction, including Niagara South Hospital and a research facility for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Further west, Calgary is rebuilding the Scotiabank Saddledome, home of the NHL’s Calgary Flames team.

“There is business to be had in even the furthest-reaching provinces,” says Cruziero, but Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary remain the busiest cities for AV business. They are tourist destinations and “major hubs for immersive sound and productions for tours, studios, Cirque and video creation,” says Corbin, noting also the strong movie production capacity of each.

While Ontario remains the dominant activity area, Maurice reports “a significant surge” from East Coast provinces like PEI and Newfoundland particularly as artistic and cultural centres: “These areas have always had a strong connection with arts and entertainment but also have province-wide support.”

McKaig pinpoints smaller regional technology and government hotbeds like Halifax, Kitchener/Waterloo, Winnipeg, Regina, and Saskatoon. The cost of living in those cities is often less than half of the ‘big three’ cities in Canada, he says. “These regions can offer business government grants, more cost-effective real estate, and, quite often, some incubator spinoffs from higher education, which can create tech-heavy jobs.”

For example, Kitchener/Waterloo (about an hour northwest of Toronto) boasts two substantial universities and a larger vocational college that create a ton of skilled jobs for the likes of Google, Blackberry, Manulife, and Toyota. It’s dubbed the ‘Technology Triangle’. “They’ve even purchased billboards in the Silicon Valley, California trying to entice people to the KW area by dubbing it ‘Silicon Valley North.’”

The business culture varies significantly from region to region, making it difficult to paint with broad strokes. Eastern Canada leans into its French cultural influences, says Legault, which has been particularly impactful on the arts, including live performance technology.

In contrast, the western and central parts of the country often take cues from the US. Trends that emerge in the US typically trickle northward, though usually with a slight time lag, he says.

“However, Canadian businesses are increasingly setting their sights on European markets, thanks in part to growing interest in international trade shows like ISE.”

A key distinction between the Canadian and US markets is trade policy. “Canada isn’t subject to the same trade tariffs, providing Canadian businesses with unique opportunities for sourcing AV technologies and forming partnerships,” says Legault. “This has the potential to shape the market in ways that diverge from its neighbour.”

Noisy neighbours
Typically, Canada follows the US market closely on a smaller scale but business culture is different. Cruziero contrasts business in Canada as “congenial, light on pressure and less formal” than the more aggressive meetings south of the border.

“Canadians often want to work with Canadian companies and with Canadian distributors, especially in rural areas,” says Corbin.

“The commercial border between the US and Canada tends to irritate people here who would like to deal with the US. Also, there’s almost no population density in Canada. Our population is spread along the border (which covers 8,890 km). To cover the whole market, from coast to coast, with only Canadians, you need quite a team or a lot of time to travel from place to place.”

“Essentially the US is equivalent to Europe, Canada is more like Australia,” says Mcleish.
Most Canadians live within an hour of the major municipalities but “each of them has very different cultures and demographics,” says Cook, “so it’s important for us to adjust our approach as needed.”

McKaig confirms Canadians “preference for dealing with other Canadians” when scouting a solution. “Often options that could be procured in the US and not in Canada might have an organisation pivot to a different solution that has a support mechanism in Canada. That’s a critical reason for the large Crestron presence here.”

Product lifecycles are typically longer in Canada. “We adopt and use technologies until we simply cannot use the product anymore,” he observes. A cycle of 7-10 years is normal in higher-ed institutions. “Canadians love to get involved in cutting-edge technologies — but by nature, we’re drawn to technologies that have already been proven.”

GerrAudio’s Maurice voices concern about the quick pace of IP adoption. He says that while 100 per cent necessary and the future of AV, the increase in IP products is moving a bit too fast for most customers. “We have an aging demographic that knows less and less about these emerging technologies and fewer key people who know how to deal with them. I expect this to come to a head at some point. We’ve already seen a few projects stall because the technology wasn’t ready for prime time.”

Howard Lerner at Peerless-AV has been working in the region for 20 years and says it seems like business is better than ever with sales activity across verticals including hospitality, healthcare, education, corporate and finance.

“The AV industry in Canada is very active. We’re seeing a lot of increased activity in areas such as dvLED as well as for core products such as standard mounts and digital signage kiosks. Canada is bustling with opportunities and growth and there is an overall openness to listen and learn, communicate and build mutually beneficial relationships.”

A final positive appreciation from Mcleish; “It’s a great market to try new things, to bring solutions to market and to build relationships. Canada is big enough to matter from a revenue perspective, but small enough to build personal connections and community within the AV sphere.”

Charlotte Bruus Christensen Takes a “Raw Yet Cinematic” Approach to “A Murder at the End of the World”

NAB

At first glance, a murder mystery set at a remote luxury retreat for some of the world’s most influential people recalls shows like The White Lotus  and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, but new seven-part FX series A Murder at the End of the World has a different spin.

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“With its time-jumping structure, uniquely eerie tone and warnings about artificial intelligence and climate change, it is also unmistakably the work of the idiosyncratic creators behind Netflix series The OA, Sound of My Voice and The East,” Esther Zuckerman writes in The New York Times.

Those creators are Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij — a creative team who’ve been together since their first short film in 2007.

Their new show — marking the first time Marling, a writer and actor, has stepped behind the camera as director — is an Agatha Christie-inflected whodunit, featuring a Gen-Z amateur detective played by Emma Corrin (Diana Spencer in The Crown).

Emma Corrin and Harris Dickinson in “A Murder at the End of the World.” Marling also co-stars as the wife of Clive Owen’s tech billionaire, who invites a motley crew of guests including an environmental activist, a roboticist and an astronaut to his Icelandic retreat, where one or more of them wind up dead.

“It was really eerie, actually, to see the number of things that, when we had set out to write it four years ago, were science fiction,” Marling told Zuckerman. “When we talked about any of this stuff with people, we had to explain what is a deepfake, what is an AI assistant, what’s a large language model — how does that work? And then by the time we were editing it, to see everything come to pass.”

To film their story, Marling and Batmanglij sought out acclaimed cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen, ASC, who shot horror hit A Quiet Place; All the Old Knives, directed by Janus Metz Pedersen; Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, Molly’s Game; and Denzel Washington’s film Fences.

“At heart this is a coming-of-age story about a child of the internet who knows more how to live her life in cyberland than in the real world,” Christensen tells NAB Amplify. “The script had this larger than life quality as if the world of the internet can’t be contained or quite grasped.”

She continues, “As a teenager I remember thinking the stars were so beautiful but there was an unfathomable distance between them and me. That is how I think we all felt about the cyberworld in this story. You can’t put it into a cage.”

The Danish DP has enjoyed a long-standing relationship with director Thomas Vinterberg, which began when her own short films caught his attention. This led to Christensen’s first feature film, Submarino, which earned her a Danish Film Academy award for best cinematography. She also shot The Hunt and Far from the Madding Crowd for Vinterberg.

 

“From what I know, Zal loved The Girl on the Train (shot by Christensen for director Tate Taylor) but it was one of those processes where our agents got in touch. I was in New York having just shot Sharper (dir. Benjamin Caron) so we had our first meeting there and it was like first love. No one who meets Brit can fail to fall in love with her.”

 

Having shot a number of features back-to-back, Christensen wasn’t particularly looking for a TV project. Instead, it was the co-director’s passion and the story itself that convinced her to take the job.

The central character’s crime solving cyber skills might recall The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. Christensen says their chief cinematic reference were the films of great Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieślowski, and in particular the Three Colors trilogy (1993-1994 Red, White and Blue).

“We learned a lot from Kieślowski movies and wanted to emulate that tone, something very raw yet cinematic and truthful,” she says. “It’s the way that he took simple ideas and then photographed that idea.

“In these days when you can move the camera so much, even virtually, you can have it fly through a keyhole, under a bed, through a wall; we wanted something that felt raw and which retained those happy accidents, those glitches or scratches that are evidence of something real. We wanted an analog style.”

She elaborates, “Our question to ourselves was how do we make it feel minimalist? For us, perfection was imperfection. We didn’t want to be afraid of imperfections but to embrace all the things that can go wrong and not try to fix everything in post. You really have to work hard to protect that because the instinct from your colleagues in post-production is to fix things.”

To photograph the series she selected the ARRI Alexa equipped with a set of spherical lenses from Panavision that Christensen had previously used on the three-part BBC mini-series Black Narcissus — which Christensen also directed.

“The image needed to be messed up a little and these lenses added that less-than-perfect quality,” she said, explaining that Panavision’s VP of optical engineering, Dan Sasaki, “detuned the lenses to achieve a softness and vignetting to break up the digital sharpness and cleanness and push the lenses to capture a less perfect image.”

She devised LUTs for each of the three principal locations in New Jersey, Iceland and Utah. “The color contrast was important to creating an energy between scenes as we move from white ‘desert’ to ‘red desert,’” she says. “Among our first creative conversations was about how to delineate between the real world and the cyberworld.”

She approached the show “like a seven-hour movie, as one story and one journey in terms of lighting,” operating the A camera with occasional second unit work for pick-ups.

While Batmanglij and Marling swapped directorial duties on the episodes, Christensen lensed all seven over the 100-day production period.

“I love prep and being in control of what we’re doing but here I learned how to prep while shooting,” she explains. “If Zal was directing for three days than Brit would be prepping her next block of two to three days and vice versa but I was busy shooting all the time.

“So when either director came to me with a new idea that they’d thought about I had to be quick to re-evaluate. So, I learned to go and chat with the director who wasn’t directing that day in my lunch break to tap into their thoughts and to prep for the next block while shooting.”

The billionaire’s Icelandic retreat recalls the opulence of the Roy family in Succession or the forest mansion in the sci-fi feature Ex Machina. It was built on soundstages in New Jersey and presented the biggest production challenge to the DP. The budget wouldn’t allow for the build of the entire set so they built half, dressed it for half the show, and then flipped it around, dressing the other half of the hotel weeks later.

“It’s a circular hotel but we only had space to build half of it at a time so we’d shoot the one half then, with the other half of the set dressed, we’d shoot the same scenes but in the other mirrored half. We also had to connect those scenes to Iceland. We had snow on the stage to link to snow in Iceland.”

Working within a LED Volume might have solved the need to dress and redress the scale of sets but would not have delivered the analog aesthetic they desired.

While the co-creators and directors naturally sing from the same sheet, Christensen says that they were different in the way they executed things. Making her directorial debut, “Brit is a very organized with thorough prep and previz. She needed that security while Zal allowed for a more spontaneous approach. It’s not quite improvisation but he wasn’t scared of seeing what happens on the day and reacting to that.”

Although she says that the shoot during winter and under COVID conditions in Iceland was particularly tough, Christensen wouldn’t hesitate to work with the duo again.

“Their passion for the story and the camaraderie they bring to set is something to be valued. It was a full on experience but I have to underline that Brit and Zal were an amazing team — which, trust me, does not always happen.”