Categories
The Business of Production The Technology of Production

Global Market for 4K to be “Niche”

Broadcast Engineering magazine thinks that the global market for 4K and beyond – ultra HD – will remain small into the foreseeable future.

Categories
Media Consumption

Superbowl score: Internet distribution 3 million; TV 108.7 million!

A record average viewership via traditional TV Network and Cable distribution of 108.7 million (and many more who only saw part of the game) vs Internet distribution of a record 3 million, up from 2.1 million last year (and a total of 10 million who saw some of the game via Internet distribution, according to Yahoo News.

Depending on what you want you could spin this as “Internet Distribution increases 43% year on year”; or perhaps “Internet distribution was less than 3% of the traditional TV audience”. Both are factually true. The traditional method was down slightly (ranking as only the third most watched game) but very healthy.

Of course, this type of real-time, grand sporting event is exactly what the traditional TV and cable channels do very, very well and I believe will continue to do very well, long into the future. It may be all they’re left with, but – at least in my lifetime – I don’t expect an “Internet distribution only” Superbowl.

When you talk about movies, comedy, drama, and that type of TV fare, then Internet distribution isn’t quite so far “out there”

Categories
Assisted Editing Interesting Technology Metadata Video Technology

Lumberjack at the Hollywood Post Alliance Retreat Demo Room

After Terry Curren’s round up of last year’s Hollywood Post Alliance Retreat I decided I should attend this year. While I was working on marketing for Lumberjack – our real time location logging tool – I got an email from the HPA offering spaces in the demo room during the retreat. It was immediately obvious that this was the time and place to reveal what we’ve been working for the last 8-9 months.

Categories
The Business of Production

The numbers behind the Netfix’s House of Cards

Netflix’s new show House of Cards represents a $100 million investment: is it even possible that they can make that pay? The Atlantic has a terrific article The Economics of Netflix’s $100 Million New Show which considers the economics behind the program and reveals another interesting tidbit.

Categories
The Technology of Production

The Multicam Trend: from rare to ubiquitous

For a number of reasons Multicam has been a topic of conversation around our house. During the discussion today, I realized that it was a fairly serious trend that I don’t recall covering in my look back, nor on the Terence and Philip Show’s 2013 predictions.

Categories
The Business of Production

Working on House of Cards seems like a Producer’s Dream.

Ars Technica has a great article on Netflix’s House of Cards. The themes mentioned in the article parallel my own thinking, but I couldn’t help notice that there was no “network notes” nor FCC rules, leaving David Fincher to take the story where it goes.

Categories
Metadata

An Increasing awareness of the value of metadata.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I’ve been preaching the value of metadata for longer than I’ve been writing this blog. Usually to a very quiet house!  Certainly when I started there was very little recognition of the value to postproduction of production metadata. In fact I’ve coined the term “pre-post” to describe how metadata from the set can be used to save time in post. 

Categories
The Business of Production

Same production, different distributor, new business model.

According to Techcrunch Canceled Soaps “All My Children” And “One Life To Live” Coming Back From The Dead On Hulu, iTunes with a new business model.

Categories
Business & Marketing The Business of Production

Do we always have to have “the best”?

Over the weekend Dylan Reeve published a blog post IN DEFENSE OF GOOD ENOUGH. We are so attuned to always wanting/having/striving for “the best” that we can get bogged down and miss appropriateness. He completely nails it at the end:

Don’t think of  “good enough” as settling for something inferior or imperfect, think of it as striking a perfect balance.

Categories
Business & Marketing

How are these people still employed?

In a post titled Old EMI Email Shows They Knew That Giving Away Songs For Free Leads To More Sales Mike Masnick focuses on an email between EMI employees from 2009:

 We are being told that historically the track which is offered for free like this is usually still the top selling track in digital retail.