Categories
General

What else can Lumberjack do?

I haven’t previewed the string-out functions of Lumberjack before, but here’s one from a test today, ahead of the HPA Retreat this week where we’ll be showing it with live demos

Lumberjack stringout

Categories
General

The Terence and Philip Show Episode 51: Avid’s Change of CEO

Terence Current and Philip Hodgetts (that’s me) discuss the implications of Avid’s recent change of CEO. And we manage to do it in 15 minutes.

Categories
The Business of Production

Is the ailing VFX industry a warning for the Studio Tentpole strategy?

David Cohen at Variety wrote an in depth story, with the subhead of High-profile bankruptcies point to fragile underpinnings of blockbuster biz, that takes a look at the problems in the Visual Effects industry as a warning for the Studios’ “Tentpole’ strategy.

Categories
Assisted Editing

Preview Lumberjack at the HPA Retreat Demo Room

If you want to be among the first to see a Lumberjack preview demonstration, but don’t want to sign up for the whole retreat? Good news, there’s a one day, demo room only package. This is your chance to influence the future direction of Lumberjack.

Categories
Business & Marketing The Business of Production

Is Cost per Hour the new entertainment metric?

David Justus writes at GigOm argues that Cost per Hour will be a pivotal metric for both producers and consumers, but I’m slightly dubious (despite wanting it to be true.)

Categories
The Business of Production

Why do we subsidize TV and Movie Production? [Updated]

The legacy media businesses are just plain bad businesses: they apparently never make a profit and require constant subsidizing from local and State authorities; they require constant legislative support for their legacy (and obsolete) business models, and yet the public get very, very little from this investment. There’s no share of copyright, there’s no real payback in money spent locally.  It’s time to let these business stand, or fail, on standard business grounds.

Categories
General

The Many Motivations Of Movie Piracy

Why do people download materials they’re not authorized to download? The “industry” says because people want everything for free, but actual research in the  recently released Copy Culture In The US & Germany survey report from the American Assembly one small but especially interesting component is the list of reasons given for downloading TV shows and movies. The American responses were pretty evenly distributed among the various key reasons, and serve as a laundry list of things that piracy does just slightly better, or slightly more permissively, than most legitimate sources.

Categories
The Business of Production

Are we heading for a Golden Age of Television?

With Netflix’s stated goal of becoming:

…HBO faster than HBO can become us.

Is that going to lead to a Golden Age of Television?

TV is replacing movies as elite entertainment, because players like Netflix, HBO, and AMC are in an arms race for lush, high-quality shows

Derek Thompson, writing for The Atlantic in Netflix, ‘House of Cards,’ and the Golden Age of Television seems to think so. A rare positive thought for our production future.

Categories
Distribution The Business of Production

Musicians Divided on “Cost” of Piracy.

Northwestern Law professor Peter DiCola, has a new study entitled Money from Music: Survey Evidence on Musicians’ Revenue and Lessons About Copyright Incentives. What’s interesting is the divided opinion among musicians on whether or not unauthorized distribution, a.k.a. piracy, helps or hurts their income.

Categories
Distribution The Business of Production

From Archie Bunker to now: what’s changed in TV distribution?

 writes a report on a CES panel he moderated covering with the topic “Who thinks ‘Gangnam Style’ is good content?” His motivation was to:

My goal was to open the discussion, asking if it’s possible to bring scale to niche content — and if so, what’s needed: Great content? Great distribution? Both? And how is it done?