The Future of Movies: Machinima

It seems like whatever happens in the music industry (MP3's starting to make CDs obsolete) always affects the movie industry a few years later (iTunes starting to make DVDs obsolete), so I always pay very close attention to the music scene as a crystal ball in which I can peer into the near future of the movie biz.

A friend of mine forwarded me this article about Peter Gabriel and how he's been on the cutting edge as an entrepreneur of his own music. Gabriel has been known to do some cool stuff over the years, especially his brief foray into computer games with Eve, which wasn't a "hit" game but had such striking imagery and sounds that it still resonates with me today.

Anyway, in the article, this part in particular grabbed my attention:"[Gabriel] foresaw the time when the public would be able to take music and mix it the way they wanted to hear it."

As I gaze into the crystal ball, I see the future of filmmaking as something quite similar to this, startlingly interactive compared to today's films, where users will have more freedom to sculpt their own film, including even the way stories unfold. Google Wave is already hinting to us how filmmakers could be collaborating in the future. In the same way musicians are shifting towards creating and offering multiple overlaying tracks for users to mix and match their own tracks, computer software will simplify the process for users—either solitarily or collaboratively—to create machinima-like films with total control over every filmmaking aspect: music, actors, story, dialog, setting, etc. This will result in an explosion of shoestring budget home-made videos entertaining in themselves, the most popular of which might even be made into conventional films since these cheaply made machinima would essentially be a feature-length polished pre-vis storyboard. We'll start to see this in the mainstream in the next 5-10 years, but in 20 it will dominate global culture, even to the extent of having a cable/internet channel of nothing but machinima films. I'd bet money on it. The programmer or software company who devlops a machinima producing program that's intuitive, capable, and fun will make money hand over fist.

The animated film Renaissance was an eye-opener for me. Its motion capture technology let the actors record a scene... and then, afterwards, the director chose whichever angles he wanted the camera to render for his final cut. That's 100% the opposite of how films have been made in the last century—first plan the scene, then shoot the actors. This new, inverted workflow is highly adaptive and will become very popular because users can create infinite variations of scenes and generate fantastical settings constrained only by the user's technical mastery of the software. At some point in the development of these new "mo-cap" films, even the actors will become obsolete, or effectively so since computerized actors will become realistic enough for mass consumption. We can already see the beginnings of this with Afterworld, a 100 part series of 3 minute animated storyboards.

Low budget projects allow for wider experimentation and the most creative of those experiments can sometimes become the most popular... so the question at hand is how to monetize this emerging industry. It could be through ads, it could be through donations, or it could be through investment. The advantage machinima has over all other forms of cinema is that it's so cheap to make that it won't need much to break even. And, if it's a labor of love, any extra profit is just gravy. In the Brave New World of free, homemade high-quality machinima will dominate.

Here's a professionally made machinima short to promote Team Fortress 2. Funny stuff. We'll be seeing a lot more of these in the coming years.

Piracy is a Hydra

I went to a workshop on copyright the other night. It was extremely informative, but even the lawyer giving the lecture acknowledged that something major needed to be done to address the current situation of massive pirated downloads. Having worked as counsel for Tower Records, she represented them in that famous lawsuit against Napster because Napster had been dumb enough to specify in their business plan, "We're going to put companies like Tower Records out of business." Well, Napster went under, but then so did Tower Records. Ironically, Napster was reincarnated under a subscription-based model.

One attendee mentioned The Pirate Bay, which is an anti-copyright organization run out of Stockholm, Sweden. The Pirate Bay hosts a server indexing all BitTorrent files currently available, which means that if you go to their web site, you can find an "index" link to any film, movie, or song they have. When you use BitTorrent on that index link, it finds all the people who have a small fraction of that song on their computers and assembles all those parts into a complete file for you to watch or listen to. This is called, "hyperdistribution". As an American, by using BitTorrent, you have almost certainly infringed the copyright of the artists and their producers... but that doesn't seem to stop anyone from doing it. The Pirate Bay has gotten a lot of heat from the MPAA and record companies, and their offices were even raided by Swedish police in 2006. After that raid, however, The Pirate Bay was up and running again only three days later.

A few months ago, I discovered a site that goes a step farther—Watch-Movies.net. You don't even need BitTorrent to use this site. All you do is go to their site, type in the movie you want to see, and find the file that works the best for you. Invariably, these files are made from illegal camcorders in movie theatres, so you can see films still in general release. The quality is not always high, but if you're willing to sacrifice quality, then you can see practically any movie you want, for free, as long as you have access to the internet. Even though watch-movies.net stopped working quite suddenly (due to someone complaining, no doubt), Watch-movies-links.net Watch-Movies-online.tv Watchmovieslinksonline.com was started up not long thereafter.

A Whois lookup on Watch-movies-links.net returned this:

Registrant:
Name: Private Protection Co.LTD
Organization: Private Protection Co.LTD.
Address: NO.1111 Chaoyang Road, Beijing
City: Beijing
Province/state: BJ
Country: CN
Postal Code: 100000

Administrative Contact:
Name: Private Protection Co.LTD. Zhuhai Branch
Organization: Private Protection Co.LTD.
Address: NO.1 Meihua Road
City: Zhuhai
Province/state: GD
Country: CN
Postal Code: 519000
Email: ad9ad10c6983b7ffe00bb2a6fac1fdf4@domain-private.com

Dispute Contact:
Name: Todaynic.com,Inc.
Organization: Todaynic.com,Inc.
Address: 6B XIHAI Building, No.221 Renmin E Road, Xiangzhou District,
City: Zhuhai
Province/state: GD
Country: CN
Postal Code: 519000
Phone: +86.756-2281763
Nameserver Information:
ns3.01isp.com
ns4.01isp.net

As expected, Watch-Movies-Links.net is based in China, one of the largest violators of copyright. In doing research for my movie business plan, I learned China permits only 20 foreign movies to be shown annually in their country. If the tables were turned, and the best movies were always made in China, and the American government said I could only see 20 foreign movies per year—of which only a fraction were Chinese—I'm sure that I, too, would be a pirate without any ethical reservations. Since China is still under the yolk of communism, an ideology which divorces the individual from private property, I'm unsurprised when I hear Chinese citizens (proudly) call their country, "The nation of fake."

The ability for companies to brazenly violate copyright reminds me of the Hydra from Ancient Greek mythology. Hercules' Second Labor was to kill the Hydra, but "upon cutting off each of its heads, he found two grew back, an expression of the hopelessness of such a struggle". In this case, the MPAA, music companies, and the world's police are Hercules, and the Hydra is both the Pirates and the consumers who use BitTorrent. Try as they might, authorities can't seem to kill hyperdistribution. Shut down Napster? Here's BitTorrent. Shut down The Pirate Bay? They're up three days later. Shut down Watch-Movies.net? They switch domains. Sue consumers? You get a consumer backlash.

Why does piracy continue to flourish despite the continued assault from authorities? Because piracy at its core isn't a legal or technical matter, and thus cannot be solved with legal or technical tools. Piracy is in its essence a social problem only catalyzed by an unenforceable (and thus unrealistic) legal code and an astonishingly efficient delivery system. Rampant piracy is really just a symptom of users who want to consume content, and who aren't particularly interested in the hassle of paying for it. Sure, if it's easier to find content and pay for it than to download it over BitTorrent, they'll pay (thus the success of iTunes). But here's the bitter pill nobody wants to swallow: if a user goes out of their way to watch a pirated copy, they probably weren't a paying customer to begin with. Far from being a curse, users who watch pirated shows and movies and listen to pirated songs possess one unique benefit—a user who watches or listens to a pirated copy might like it enough to buy it on CD or DVD and/or recommend it to others... which is impossible if they never even watched or listened to it.

Sites like Hulu.com and ABC.com with its own media viewer show how the entertainment industry is evolving to come to viewers. Instead of not showing content online and "forcing" viewers into downloading episodes illegally, they're creating user-friendly parameters to make it easier for people to get the content they want, whenever they want it. The theory goes something like, if they're going to dally about with a mistress, at least we want to control who and where that mistress is... because we can make money off of that.

Lawrence Lessig makes an excellent point about copyright. The way the law is currently set up makes it too hard for providers to let users share, remix or use content. In an internet digital culture where sharing is the norm, copyright law is so restrictive that it's now stifling creativity. That's why I've become a fan of the Lessig's Creative Commons License.

My friend Nik said it best when talking about the pervasiveness of spam: "As long as you have a backwater country that doesn't crack down on spammers, you're always going to have spam. The only way to really fight spam is to manage it." Maybe one day, every country in the world will indeed have a police authority able and willing to protect the rights of every content producer around the world. I fear, though, that such a day will be long after my children have already grown up... and during that time, our culture will have since become accustomed to violating copyright as the norm.

Pulse

I first heard of Barack Obama from an NPR interview in 2005. I didn't know who he was, how his name was spelled, or what he looked like. Yet—impressed by his pragmatic and rational approach to politics—I remember muttering under my breath, "This guy is going to be our president someday." (I can even tell you which intersection I was sitting at when I said it.)

And 50 weeks ago, I wrote a blog post called Why we're going to have a President Obama. I've said a lot of things about Obama in the last year, but that February 9th, 2008 post is the one I'll always remember.

It tells me, in a highly imperfect and overly simplified fashion, that I seem to have my finger on the pulse of this country. And that's a very very comforting thought.

iPhones storm the market

When the first iPhones were released in July 2007, I was not a fan. However, I've had a change of heart since then because I see the iPhone in a different light now.

As a mere cell phone, an iPhone is extremely expensive, but if you see the iPhone for what it really is—a telecommunications mini-computer seamlessly synchronized with your desktop/laptop—then the iPhone is just about the best thing ever invented. Planning your trip? Get directions and check out traffic on the fly. Buying a book or DVD? Check out reviews online—or even buy it online—while you're still in the store. Listen to podcasts or music while you workout. Play a game while you're waiting in the dentist's office. Read the U.S. Constitution or Declaration of Independence. Tune your guitar. Take photos. Read wikis. Keep your grocery list. Check news from AP. Read email. Text. Oh, and it also works as a telephone.


Since the iPhone was introduced in July 2007, it's rocketed from 4% market share to 23% market share. Most of that seems to be from dissatisfied Palm users, which feels accurate: I used to own a Palm, but I've since moved all my address management to my iPhone. Although Blackberry's market share is pretty much holding steady, iPhones are slowly chipping that lead as well. Link.

My prediction: in 6 months, iPhones will overtake the Blackberry'market share and in a year, Blackberry's market share will dip below 30%.

Bad news for the Yes on 8 voters

I had another epiphany a few days ago about gay marriage, and it's extremely bad news for anyone against gay marriage in America...

A gay marriage ban is inherently discriminatory and—because the American constitution is based on total equality—gay marriage bans will eventually be ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. It's just a question of when.

Maybe it won't happen with the current Supreme Court, but it will happen. It has to.

So, bad news for everyone who voted "Yes" on Prop 8 this year: like all the male chauvinists who lost when women were granted suffrage, and like all the racists who lost when blacks were granted civil rights, you're also going to lose on this issue. Why? Because you can't stop progress. Some traditions become extinct because they ought to become extinct, and this is one tradition which deserves to die.

What drives me crazy about the Yes on 8 crowd is their oft-heralded refrain, the so-called "activist" judges. I have no tolerance for that nonsense—judges are lawyers who've been through law school, who preside over countless cases to rule fairly, and are best prepared to interpret what equality and fairness means in our constitution. If a judge deems a practice unfair, and an appeals judge agrees with him, it's time to STFU and move on.

On a side note, I continue to be amazed how some Christians, normally a group promoting equality and goodness towards all, are on the wrong side of history about this issue. Then again, Christians did start the crusades, among other perversions of the Christian teachings. I wonder if a Christian sect ever rationalized slavery due to the rules set up for it in the Bible (Exodus 21:7)?

LECTURE: Redefining Digital Content Distribution

Below is the complete text of the lecture I presented at The Conversation in Berkeley on October 18th.

Redefining Digital Content Distribution, or
Why Apple is About To Get Its Ass Kicked
by Ross L. Pruden

I’m a filmmaker myself, and I’ve spent a long time studying movie distribution so I’m excited to share my predictions here at The Conversation. By the way, I should add that I’m a two decade Mac user so I share no joy at the prospect of Apple’s possible demise.

HOW WILL IT END?
I’m currently writing a business plan for my own film company, yet when I get to the Marketing & Sales section for my plan, all I see is a US-Letter Sized question mark. Movie piracy is more pervasive than ever before—not necessarily a bad thing—and newer distribution models are still competing for dominance. How is this all going to end?

On my blog, I discuss how digital content is being distributed, and a recent post called iTunes’ Death Knell describes how iTunes in its current incarnation faces some potentially fatal challenges from its competitors.

THE OLD MODEL
Our dominant model for digital content distribution of music, movies, and software has been historically rooted in physical ownership, i.e., movies are sold on DVDs, games come on CDs, and music comes on a CD or on MP3s. As broadband becomes more pervasive, we see that dominant model shift from a physical product-based ownership to a virtual license-based ownership.

Let’s say I buy a new movie at a store for $25. I buy it on DVD, take it home, and get ready to play it. Then my precocious daughter smears her cheese snack all over my new DVD. I’m out $25. Or maybe I buy a CD for $15. Or a new PC game or application for $50-$300. And then my house burns down. Once the physical product is destroyed, you have to repurchase it. In a digital age, where copies can be made instantly and without degradation, this is unacceptable.

THE NEW MODEL
And we already see a slow exodus to the online world. More people are using online applications like Google's Docs & Spreadsheets instead of Microsoft's Word & Excel. Netflix offers an online movie service called Watch Instantly. Users even create their own radio stations on Last.fm, Pandora. The trend is slowly moving towards constantly accessible streamed content.

Right now, iTunes lets me buy a complete season of 24, but at half a gigabyte per episode, I need 12 gigabytes to store an entire season. Storing three seasons on my laptop starts to become unmanageable. Or maybe I have my entire music library on my desktop, but my laptop only carries a fraction of that. As a user, I want to have access, anywhere, to all the content I’ve ever purchased—forever. The only way to accomplish that is to sell content licenses to stream content whenever users want it.

STEAM
The Valve Corporation, responsible for the famous Half Life games on PC, maintains a gaming network called Steam. Steam is a license-based platform offering over 250 games and boasting 15 million users. If you visit someone’s house, all you have to do is log into your Steam account and you can download and play any game you own that you’ve purchased through Steam. If you need hard drive space, you can delete games from your hard drive and download them again later. If your house burns down, there's no scrambling with customer service to prove you bought your content—you only your Steam account username and password to have access to any of your games.

For the consumer, license-based distribution also makes upgrading very attractive: for example, if I bought a $20 DVD and later on I want to buy a $35 Blu-Ray DVD, I can “upgrade” my DVD license with that $15 difference and then download the newer hi-def version. Customers would never need to worry about being gouged for purchasing a newer version reissued every few years.

ITUNES, MEET DECE
Although iTunes is popular now, it only sells product, not product licenses. You buy MP3s and if your hard drive crashes, those MP3s are gone. Worse, each company's proprietary DRM means MP3s purchased on other platforms like Zune cannot be played on your iPod.

DECE—which stands for Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem—is a new license-based platform for movie content. Its financial investors are Warner Bros., Fox Entertainment, NBC Universal, Sony, Paramount, Comcast, Best Buy, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Philips, Toshiba and Verisign. Disney and Apple are not on this list.

DECE will allow:

1. a TV episode to be just as easily accessed on Microsoft's Zune as it would a Philips broadband-enabled TV set;
   
2. an unlimited number of copies of a video to be created or burned onto a disc;
   
3. the consumer does not even need to store a copy at all, but stream it from a server-based "rights locker" that can be tapped from any location.

HOW IT WILL END
Okay, so how will it end? What might license-based distribution actually look like in the real world? It would probably interact seamlessly with the internet and use corporate sponsorship for those unwilling to pay a monthly subscription. One such scenario could go like this:

You're over at a friend's house and you're talking about a movie you just rented online through a web site. You want your friend to watch it, too, so you sign on to that web site and the film starts to download immediately.

While you're online, another friend—in a different location—sees you're about to watch a movie and sends you a text or video message, via the web site: do you want to all watch it at the same time? You send him a virtual invite or "guest pass"—which would be limited to only 5 or 6 per movie—and now your remote friend has joined your virtual “audience”.

After the film is over, one of your friends is so impressed with the film (which he’s essentially seen for free) that he decides to buy it himself. Another of your friends recommends the movie to his friends. The remote friend might be by himself and perhaps he likes to surf the web while watching films, and so he clicks on some of the sponsored links related to the film's topic matter, e.g., clothing choices, charities the movie's actors have started, other movies the director or producers have made, other movies you're recently watched and rated, etc. Or, if the remote friend is watching your rented movie, he could pay—at any time—to watch the rental himself so as to remove all the embedded advertising links and overlays.

We’ve only spoken about music, movies, and software, but how about books? Wouldn’t it useful to remotely access the contents of any book you've ever bought? No reason why children need to lug around heavy book bags if they can instantly view or print any chapter they want to read.

TWO THINGS
Two things are clear about the current state of digital content distribution for movies:

1. iTunes has the dominant model for physical product-based distribution—you buy a movie or TV show through iTunes and you can be watching it within minutes.
   
2. iTunes no longer has the competitive edge on providing the distribution model consumers will ulimately want and if iTunes doesn’t work out an arrangement soon with the founders of DECE to sell movies through iTunes with DECE’s “rights locker” features... well, Apple is about to get their ass kicked.

Thank you very much. Please come find me on Facebook or visit my blog!

***
UPDATE: Since the writing of this lecture, news has been reported of a new music streaming web site Lala.com. Lala.com lets users listen to any song without limitation, for free, in the hope that some users decide to buy the songs. Much like Steam has done for games, Lala.com allows iTunes users to upload their library and listen to their music from any location.

MORE UPDATES: Apple acquires Lala.com. Just keeps getting better, doesn't it?

October 15, 2008 6:58PM

While watching the third and final presidential debates tonight, I had a premonition at 6:58PM—beyond any doubt—that Barack Obama would be voted the next President of the United States. Two minutes later, I felt I saw the future unfolding.

McCain said he'd like to hear what kind of "fine" that "Joe the Plumber" would get under Obama's health plan and Obama responded "Zero", explaining that small businesses get an exemption under his plan.

Now look at McCain's face:


For most of the presidential debates, McCain has smiled or he's had his mouth closed. Instead, here he looks at Obama, nearly incredulously, as Obama flatly rebukes him, and then explains—with the usual Obama eloquence—the details of his health plan. It's hard to see on this clip, but in the video, McCain's face looked ashen, almost angry. All I could picture in my mind was McCain's spin doctors pulling out their hair, screaming at their TV sets for McCain to "reset" back to his pleasant happy face. Small moments like that leave a small subconscious impression which gently tips undecided voters towards the more affable candidate.

I guess a month from now it'll be easy to say how sure everyone must have been that Obama had it all sewn up so early, especially when you look at this election map where Obama is close to clinching more than the magic 270 electoral votes (thanks to NPR's interactive map):


However, there are several things which make this race uniquely advantageous for Obama to convert my strong hunch to certainty. Firstly, the candidate himself: he exudes confidence, charm, vitality, eloquence, hope, and he's remarkably intelligent. Secondly, he's running his campaign with virtual tools like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, and even sponsoring ads in video games. Thirdly, he's built a massive pro-active grass roots campaign (through those aforementioned virtual tools) from which he's consistently asking for donations. Fourthly, he's using those donations to force McCain to hemorrhage money to retain states he'd once taken for granted, and Obama's fiercely stumping in tossup states like Florida and Ohio. As of this writing, Obama is ahead in the Florida polls by almost 5 points. Since the margin of victory in Florida was so slim in 2004, there's a strong possibility Obama's fevered drive to register 500,000 new voters will flip Florida from red to blue. And everyone knows Florida is iconic in tipping the election.

I now hear that Obama has purchased a national half hour TV spot right days before the election... Obama beat the "unbeatable" Clinton simply by staying in the race long enough to let the voters get to know him. Given Obama's track record of political victories, one has to wonder if McCain ever really stood a chance at all.

So I'll bet money on it now—come January 20th, we'll have a President Obama in the West Wing.

Yes we will!

Joining The Conversation

I heard about The Conversation this summer and immediately bought a ticket:

[P]ioneers at the forefront of change in cinema, video, games, media and technology are coming together to share ideas, insights, and innovations. Our focus is on new tools, new distribution channels, and new rules.... The format of the gathering will be experimental: rather than a traditional conference, short talks and demos, "fireside chats," and roundtables will spark a dynamic series of overlapping conversations.

Their guest list is enough to make any independent filmmaker salivate—Peter Broderick, for instance. His recent article in Indiewire about the New World of Distribution for indie filmmakers is germane to how (I think) digital entertainment will be distributed. Hunter Weeks is another gem on the list—he's one of the co-creators of 10 MPH, a documentary about two guys crossing the United States on a segway. Week's movie home page is an exquisite example of how to use the internet to market your own movies. Other notable invitees hail from Netflix, Createspace, Filmbaby, JibJab, Lucasfilm, ILM, The Webby Awards, and YouTube. See the complete list of speakers at the bottom.

One really appealing part of The Conversation—you can throw out your own ideas. I thought about it for awhile and this forum seems ideal to mention some of my own predictions on the future of digital entertainment. Frankly, in one form or another, I've been observing, discussing, and molling over the movie industry for three years and have a pretty well-informed opinion about it. So I decided to make a presentation of my own about license-based entertainment which will be a riff on a recent article I wrote about iTunes' Death Knell. My ardent hope is that my presentation isn't eclipsed by someone else's brilliant 90 minute lecture. I do hate redundancy.

The Conversation takes place all day this Friday and Saturday. Tickets are still on sale, but a little steep now at $150. But if you have nothing to do, come be my own peanut gallery!

COMPLETE LIST OF SPEAKERS

• Alex Afterman, Founder, Heretic Films
  
• Alex Lindsay, Founder, Pixel Corps
  
• Arin Crumley, Director, As the Dust Settles and Four Eyed Monsters
  
• Barbara Robertson, Journalist, CGSociety, Computer Graphics World, Digital Production
  
• Chris Thilk, Director of Marketing, Spout LLC
  
• Cliff Plumer, Chief Technology Officer, Digital Domain
  
• Dan Gregoire, Founder, Halon Entertainment
  
• Dana LoPiccolo-Giles, Co-founder, CreateSpace (formerly CustomFlix)
  
• Danae Ringelmann, Co-Founder, IndieGoGo
  
• Dean Valentine, CEO, Comedy.com and Founder, Symbolic Action; former CEO of UPN and President of Walt Disney Television
  
• Diana Barrett, Founder, The Fledgling Fund
  
• Evan Spiridellis, Head Art Guy, JibJab Media
  
• George Strompolos, Content Partnerships Manager, YouTube
  
• Graham Leggat, Executive Director, San Francisco Film Society (Moderator)
  
• Gregg Spiridellis, CEO Guy, JibJab Media
  
• Hunter Weeks, Director, 10 Yards and 10 MPH
  
• James LeBrecht, Berkeley Sound Artists
  
• Jason Harris, President, Mekanism
  
• Jeremiah Birnbaum, CEO, SF School of Digital Filmmaking
  
• Jesse Keane, Chief Technology Officer, CinemaNow
  
• Jim Sommers, Senior Vice President, ITVS
  
• John Batter, Co-President of Production, DreamWorks Animation SKG; former Group Studio General Manager, Electronic Arts
  
• John Gaeta, Visual Effects Designer, Speed Racer and the Matrix trilogy
  
• John Knoll, Visual Effects Supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic
  
• Jonathan Marlow, Executive Director, San Francisco Cinematheque; formerly at Vudu and GreenCine
  
• Josh Wiggins, Senior Director of Global Strategic Sales, Ascent Media
  
• KC Blake, Anywhere/Anytime Content Lab, Entertainment Technology Center@USC
  
• Ken Eklund, Writer & Creative Director, "World Without Oil"
  
• Ken Goldberg, Director, Berkeley Center for New Media
  
• Lance Weiler, Filmmaker & Editor, The Workbook Project
  
• Michael Ferris Gibson, Director, 24 Hours on Craigslist & Producer, Truth in Numbers: The Wikipedia Story
  
• Michealene Cristini Risley, Independent filmmaker, Tapestries of Hope
  
• Mike Curtis, HD for Indies
  
• Mike Shiley, Director, Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories & Dark Water Rising
  
• Nick Braccia, Creative Director, Deep Focus
  
• Peggy Weil, Artist & Game Developer, "Gone Gitmo" and "The Redistricting Game"
  
• Pete Ludé, SVP, Sony Electronics
  
• Peter Broderick, President, Paradigm Consulting
  
• Phil Tippett, Founder, Tippett Studio
  
• Reed Hastings, CEO & Founder, Netflix
  
• Rich Bradway, Associate Dir. of E-Commerce & New Media, Boston Symphony Orchestra
  
• Richard Kerris, Chief Technology Officer, Lucasfilm Ltd.
  
• Scilla Andreen, CEO, IndieFlix
  
• Scott Kirsner, Editor, CinemaTech
  
• Ted Hope, Co-Founder, This is That
  
• Tiffany Shlain, Filmmaker & Founder, The Webby Awards
  
• Tim Napoleon, Chief Strategist for Digital Media, Akamai
  
• Wendy Levy, Director of Creative Programming, Bay Area Video Coalition
  
• Woody Benson, Managing Partner, Prism VentureWorks

Archiving for 3008

The map before me was unlike any other—it detailed the locations of various sunken ships around the island of Bermuda. All sizes and ages of ship were there: modern ships along with old cuttys and Man O' Wars. It was a divers' map, but also a testament to how the oceans function as a de facto archive for sea vessels. Were it not for those horrific marine catastrophes, these vessels—including precious insights into each ship's respective civilization—would have remained a black hole in our memory.

The Egyptians, the Ancient Greeks, the Macedonians, the Mayans... how much of all of these civilizations still endure to modern scholars? How much has been lost to the unrelenting storms of time? How much been saved?

Hans told me once of a devastating storm in Nepal. The building preserving Nepal's historic documents was breached and priceless national treasures were strewn about like forgotten plastic grocery bags. Some poor government official was left running around snatching up whatever documents he could find, surely in denial that his country's priceless records were irreparably damaged.

"Can you imagine that?" Hans asked me. "Picking up a piece of paper like that off the ground... and the ground must have been wet from the rain. For that Nepalese government official, it would have been like us trying to rescue our Declaration of Independence."

I heard a story once of this group of U.S. filmmakers filming in Russia with a part-Russian crew. At the first meeting, the director stood up and said, "We should all feel honored to be a part of this production. In this very location, Sergei Eistenstein filmed Battleship Potempkin—", and then one of the Russian crew members muttered, "And probably with the same equipment."

***
The Economist had an article once about a videotape which had been discovered in 1992 containing footage of Senator George McGovern during his campaign against Richard Nixon in 1972. McGovern lost to Nixon's landslide vote, so the footage had a unique historical value.

But they couldn't play the tape.

The video was in a format no longer playable by existing video players. There were only two functional video players still able to play the tape, and the plan was to transfer that videotape to some other format for long-term archiving. The machines were very fragile, reserved for only the highest priority projects. One of the machines was owned, quite rightly, by the Library of Congress, and they rejected a request to use the Library's machine. The other machine—wait for it—was owned by the Nixon Preservation Society. (The name of the group is different, but the gist is the same.) Naturally, they said no, as well.

This videotape found in 1992, only 30 years after it had been created, was effectively garbage. Maybe one day someone will have created a new technology to read the data on the tape, but maybe not.


Even film on celluloid, while it has more longevity over videotape (i.e., you can still shoot film on a 50 year old film camera, and play 50 year old film on a 50 year old film projector), decays over time, as the restored prints for Star Wars: A New Hope have illustrated. For instance, the Sistine Chapel has collected so much residue that the original image is barely even visible. If paintings don't even last well over time, what long-term hope is there for digital entertainment? Stone tablets are the only proven vestiges to last thousands of years, so all audiovisual content—TV, movies, documentaries, news... in short, everything we've come to know as defining the modern age—seems fated to perish.

And even the value of preserving our audiovisual history can be seen as a luxury when compared to our very survival. How would we cope if something like Waterworld happened where the entire earth is flooded and all structures built below 44 meters (a skyscraper's 17 stories) would be underwater? All the earth's archives would be in jeopardy. Technological advancement would grind to a halt and, eventually, recede. So how would we pass the earth's knowledge to descendants 500–5,000 years into this aquatic future? All DVDs and CDs would be useless: in a moist future, CD and DVD players' moving parts would stop working after half a century, if not sooner. All film projectors would stop working after two centuries. Stone tablets would sink to the bottom of the ocean. All paper dropped in the water would eventually disintegrate.

Yeah, I'm afraid the future is plastics... buoyant plastics. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that a floating, durable plastic or composite is about the only thing which would last 500 to 5,000 years. Thus, if you really wanted to offset another dark age by preserving the world's essential knowledge for future generations (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.), then you should:

1. Compile as much knowledge as you can into one book printed on buoyant plastic. (Or make the pages from etched stone tablets, and securely attach them to a floatable plastic.)
   
2. Assume the book will wear down over time—print the type deeply into the page.
   
3. Assume most languages will degrade—include a language primer with intuitive icons on every page.
   
4. Assume many of these books will perish—print a million of them and position them around the world.
   
5. Assume some pages will decay or be lost over time—make the information redundant across many pages.

And movies? In the harshest of long-term futures, barring some technological advance where media players upgrade despite the fall of civilizations, we should assume no digital content will last more than 200–300 years. Even so, the Ancient Mayans told stories with graphic pictures and their carved stone panels still exist today... so we could simply "paint" pictures in our floating plastic books with a Wall Street Journal-type pointillism. No media player needed to see that.

And besides, graphic novels never really get old, do they?

1.8 miles & 14 minutes

A supertanker can carry up to 300,000 tons of crude oil and at a maximum speed of 18 miles/hour, its inertia is so strong that it can still take 14 minutes and 1.8 miles to perform a "crash stop" maneuver (from "full ahead" to "full reverse").

I think of supertankers on days like this when I hear that Obama has finally taken the lead in superdelegates, and everyone knows now that Hillary Clinton won't win the Democratic nomination... but here we are, watching the shore approach only a half a mile away and knowing a crash will be coming very soon.

Prediction: Clinton will drop out of the race on June 15.

Epic 2015

Some insightful predictions on how the world will look in the coming years:

The book's the thing

While looking over my the two and a half years of blogging about the film industry, it occurred to me that I write a lot about the form of digital entertainment, i.e., how digital content is delivered to consumers. For example, I was early to note how Netflix was developing downloadable movies through their site, how Universal was offering download-to-own DVDs, and how Steven Soderbergh tried to combat piracy by releasing his film Bubble in theatres and DVDs simulatenously.

A number of my readers have been after me to do a book, citing that many of my posts are entertaining and informative about the film business. Between my own projects and other work, I've thought about it. Indeed, a man cannot live on blog alone. Given my inordinate fascination about The Shape Of Things To Come for digital entertainment, a book about piracy in the entertainment industry seemed like the next natural step.

However, I've been testing the winds to see which direction I should set sail. Filmmakers in the mini DV world live in perpetual anxst, one foot in each camp: I'd like to get a sweet studio distribution deal, but will I fare better if I offer up my film for a $1 download? If I'm going to write a book on music and movie piracy, I have to figure out exactly how I feel about it, and why.

Over the last two months, I've started to see the entertainment industry in a different light. I used to get violently angry when I saw movies getting copied. "It's immoral and illegal!" I used to say. "Why does everyone keep doing it? Don't they know they're destroying the entertainment industry?"

However, after hearing about how pervasive piracy is in India, China, Brazil and Eastern Europe, I changed my mind about it... a lot.

The world has changed. People treat digital content much more differently than they would a car or a house. And digital content is different. You can't duplicate a car 1,000 times and give those duplicates away for free. So why are we applying the rules of car ownership to something so inherently different? The fact is, the world is deciding on its own how it wants to pay money for this new kind of object—we can steadfastly enforce our car ownership rules on it and watch people steal anyway, or we can listen to what the world is telling us and find a way to work within that framework.

Anyway, here's a section of the book I started writing, which will probably end up in the introduction somewhere:

Let's say you owned a shop selling pastries in a small town somewhere. Every morning at 8:00 sharp, you unlock the front door, turn off the alarm, get ready for business. Your doors open at 9:00 and you serve your customers as they come in. One pastry costs you $1 to make, and $5 to sell, leaving you with a nice revenue of $4. Kids in the neighborhood stare longingly at your yummy pastries through your shopfront window, and while you're busy serving customers, they might try palm a pastry or two without you seeing, but you almost always catch them. Once you've caught them, you might call the cops and have them prosecuted, or you might dismiss it as a harmless nuisance. At 5:00 that evening, you close your doors, turn on your alarm, and go home. This is perfectly sensible approach to doing business and making a living. In fact, you could do this your whole life, and even teach your children to do it, if they wanted to. There is enough profit in it to allow your business to continue well into the future.

Now let's say your shop selling pastries suddenly had some alterations to it, some real and some magical. Let's imagine that anyone could buy one of your pastries and duplicate it perfectly... which they gleefully do, and pass along these duplications to everyone they know. Additionally, your shop now has no windows so anyone can lean in and take a pastry from your storefront before you even know what's happened. Your business still has an alarm, but now it has a 24 hour delay before going off so by the time the cops come, the thieves would be long gone. On top of that, everyone in this small town is constantly awake so you can't possibly stand guard all day long to ward off thieves. Even if you could successfully jail all the offenders, the local jail is nowhere near large enough to hold all the offenders. Worst of all, many of the thieves don't think what they're doing is fundamentally wrong; for years, they've been grumbling that $5 per pastry is really too high a price to pay, and they're finally "balancing the scales" by taking back what is owed them. Your revenues plummet, and you shout at anyone who will listen, how could everything have become so unfair to your once idyllic lifestyle?

This is the state of the movie industry now. Where once a small town business thrived under the buying and selling of the commodity business model, it now exists in a different game with different rules. The Old Pastry Shop existed under a capitalist framework derived from an Industrial Age, and the New Pastry Shop functions within a new economic model forged from the Information Age.

As with all evolutionary processes, only the animals who adapt to their new environment will thrive, while the others clinging to their old traditions will starve over time and, with venomous hissing, eventually self-extinguish. When DVDs are priced at $35 and CDs are priced at $20, movie and music producers have only themselves to blame for seeing their customers rationalize pastry theft.

Our world is smack in the middle of a war over how to most effectively monetize the distribution of digital content. We've already seen some successful business models emerge, but only time will tell if these new approaches have any stamina. In a global market of the Information Age where digital content is no longer bought and sold under the old storefront paradigm, piracy is the genie that won't go back in the bottle. Thus, the question movie and music producers—and even software developers—must ask themselves now is, how do we make money off this new model?

Because the alternative is death by a thousand cuts.

Global Photolinking

After watching the amazing animé Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, I think it was Naresh who remarked, "They tout this as cutting edge technology, but the fact is that real cutting edge technology is being used right now... we just won't see it for a couple of years."

Prepare yourself to witness Sea Dragon & Photosynth, one of the most impressive technological developments of the 21st century. Its implications on global communication and networking are staggering... in fact, once bandwidth limitations become moot, I think this kind of user interface will dominate the internet.

Network TV, the hungry giants

The best article I ever read about the inner workings of TV production was Minimum Headroom by Benjamin J. Stein, and I read it in the February 1988 issue of Playboy magazine. Yes, you read that right—we do sometimes read it for the articles. Not that I was a Playboy subscriber, but a fellow screenwriter matter-of-factly handed me the article and said, "Read this."

20 years later and all the machinations laid down in Stein's article are still painfully true because the main principles haven't changed: the more people have at risk, the more gunshy they get. TV delivers a weekly product which must deliver on its promise as many as 24 times a year... and some kinds of revenue streams dry up quickly if you lose your audience because you try something nobody has ever done before.

Stein's premise centered around the principle of self-censorship: top network execs want something fresh and original, so they order their assistants to go forth and find a new series, something more like Monty Python or Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Their assistants may indeed find hundreds of fresh and original scripts, but hesitate recommending the really original stuff for fear the new series is so original that it can't find an audience. Who recommended this steamy turdpile???, a network exec might scream after the show spectacularly flops. And so ends the new career of a rising network exec, punished for following orders to find something fresh and original. Thus, top network execs are only recommended the safer choices, similar remakes of The Cosby Show and Golden Girls. Hesitant to be remembered for backing a series that killed the network, even the top network exec reneges on his promise to provide "fresh and original" programming. The cycle continues.

This is why programming quality on ad-based network TV has taken a nose dive, and subscription-based cable TV has thrived: network TV dies without its advertising so weekly ratings become disproportionately important while cable execs can experiment with more ease of mind.

Consider the immensely clever Firefly, a Joss Whedon creation which could have successfully found a larger following... if only FOX hadn't cancelled it after 13 episodes. Or Tim Minear's (a Firefly co-creator!) more recent series Drive, cancelled after only 4 episodes, again by FOX. By contrast, a series like HBO's Six Feet Under and Deadwood can take risks and not worry about losing too many viewers because truly original programming is what HBO subscribers are expecting. But for network TV, too much is riding on the line... if a series on network TV doesn't look like it's going to find an audience immediately, it gets the axe. Network TV is a hungry giant wandering around for a big meal: a house salad—which is sufficient for many—isn't going to satisfy his mammoth appetite.

This can only end badly. Most of these giants will starve and die off, but some of them will have to learn to live with smaller appetites. This will most likely have a ripple effect for everyone else in the industry—lower salaries for network execs and series creators will spur an exodus to cable networks like TNT and Lifetime, a paucity of network programming will foster more creative advertising and/or more original programming. But who knows how it will finally play out?

Here's a great article that explains why this summer's best TV isn't on the main network channels:

Rick Kushman: Best dramas not on broadcast networks
By Rick Kushman - Bee Columnist
Last Updated 6:49 am PDT Monday, August 20, 2007

This has been some summer for TV dramas.

If you've been watching the broadcast networks, that makes no sense to you. TV's big dogs are twiddling around with game shows and talent contests. But out on cable, and just basic cable, there's some good television going on.

Here's a partial list of the new stuff: "Saving Grace" on TNT; "Damages" on FX; "Mad Men" on AMC; "Burn Notice" on USA; "Army Wives" and "State of Mind" on Lifetime; and "Kill Point" on Spike TV.


And here are some of the stars involved: Holly Hunter, Glenn Close, Kim Delaney, Lili Taylor and John Leguizamo.

That doesn't include the continuing cable series airing this summer like TNT's "The Closer" and FX's "Rescue Me." That's about as much excitement as you'll find in the networks' new fall seasons, and the success rate is already way higher. All of the new cable shows are drawing solid ratings or good reviews, and most have been renewed.

And notice what some of these networks are. Lifetime, home of women-in-peril movies and sap. Spike, ground zero for testosterone-fueled anything. Their new shows have the old Lifetime and Spike DNA, but they're still better than anything either network has done in a while.

So, what's going on here?

It all starts with two facts about summer. First, fewer people watch TV when the weather is good and the days are longer. Plus, the networks can't afford to make new scripted dramas and comedies all year long, so summer -- when TV use is down -- seems a good time to bail and go with cheaper game and reality shows.

Cable networks, on the other hand, can live with lower ratings. They spend less on their original shows -- usually that means fewer big-money stars and faster production schedules -- and they air a lot of repeat programming. (They also get revenue from the cable systems, such as Comcast, that carry them, but the class on TV financing is for another day.)

In any case, TNT, USA and the others can survive with smaller audiences. If 3 million or 4 million people watch a basic-cable show, that's a good payday. If 4 million viewers watch "Shaq's Big Challenge," which was about the number for ABC's good-hearted reality series this summer, it's a disaster.

And because the broadcast nets don't air many original dramas in the summer, that lets the cable folks launch their new shows with much less competition.

The last piece of the picture is that the bar has been raised on cable, by shows such as "The Closer" and FX's "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck," by pay-cable channels HBO and Showtime, and by all of the competition out in the culture for viewer attention and entertainment dollars.

"Cable has kind of changed the landscape," Hunter, star of "Saving Grace," told TV critics last month. "It happens to be made for less money. And so risks can be greater because less cash is at risk. And it's not in competition with the networks. So every single thing about it adds up for the people who were wanting to take some chances."

Specifically, that means, say, AMC doesn't have to try to make a show with a broad- enough appeal to draw 10 million-plus viewers. And often, broad appeal means rounding off some of the sharper edges and themes of a series.

Instead, AMC is a smaller cable network that just needs to give people a new reason to tune in, and it's doing that with "Mad Men," a smart, moody period drama about Madison Avenue in 1960.

(The show is averaging a bit more than 1 million viewers, which is still a big increase over anything AMC has aired recently.)

Matt Weiner, the creator of "Mad Men," wrote for HBO's "The Sopranos" and told TV critics he believes his show has benefited from the HBO-like patience and creative freedom AMC showed Weiner when he was developing the new series.

"These people, they really like this thing," Weiner said. "They want to do a show based on quality, and when you hear them say the word 'quality,' they're not saying it in that fake way... They really mean it."

Stars such as Hunter, "State of Mind's" Taylor and "Damages' " Close all told critics separately during the TV Critics Association press tour in July that the writing on some cable shows is actually better than anything they're offered in the feature world, and as Close said, it's always a good career move to "go where the writing is."

And because the cable networks are trying to be original and challenging -- to offer something different from the often-safer network fare -- a lot of the new cable dramas feature anti-heroes like Close's and Hunter's characters. And they feature women leads who are over 40 years old or, in Close's case, 60.

There are a lot of reasons for that, but a big one is that many of the cable shows are just trying to break old molds. Taylor said that television and movies used to work off of basic formulas, which made for simple, unrealistic women characters.

But the demand for better TV forced writers to break out, and female characters became "less two-dimensional and more complicated."

Less two-dimensional and more complicated pretty much describes the entire crop of new cable shows.

Successful is another description, and that's got the broad-cast networks thinking they can't give away their summer audiences much longer.

ABC entertainment president Steve McPherson told TV critics that maybe the networks have to revamp their annual plans: "We'd like to get some original scripted (shows), both drama and comedy, on next summer."

Apple is "the new Sony"

The Disney-Pixar deal makes for some eyebrow-raising cross-pollination. Read what Andrew Neff at Bear Stearns had to say:

Apple is 'the new Sony' - Bear Sterns
By Jonny Evans

Apple has huge growth opportunities and appears likely to emerge as the "nexus of the digital lifestyle evolution", an analyst explained this morning.

Apple is rapidly transforming into the firm Sony always wanted to be, said Bear Sterns analyst Andrew Neff.

"In a sense, Apple is becoming what Sony always wanted to be: a visionary that seamlessly integrates the best-of-breed hardware with content to fundamentally alter the way we live - and iPod is just the beginning, like Walkman before it," he wrote, according to Forbes.

Neff warns investors not to underestimate Apple, a company that creates products that are renowned for their ability to create disruptive change, he warns.

Apple's move into video, for example, has changed the way video is created (Final Cut Pro, iMovie) and how it is consumed (iTunes Music Store and iPod video).

Looking ahead, Neff predicts Apple will make further moves into consumer electronics, suggesting it may even reveal an HDTV device with iPod features built in, a new mobile phone, or even an iPod camera may emerge.

Neff's comments appear as his colleague, Robert Peck, warns that search giant Google may have plans to launch an iTunes-competing service of its own.

Bear Strerns rates Apple as an "outperforming" stock with a $103 target price.

And then, there's the word on the street. Roberto's Myspace bulletin about this cracks me up:

Disney=Pixar=Apple Computers=Pixar=Disney?!

Steve "owns" Apple.

Steve "owns" Pixar.

Disney owns Pixar, now.

Disney owns Pixar owned by Steve who owns Apple Computers, Inc.

On top of that Steve is Board Member at Disney, Pixar CEO, and Apple CEO.

John Lasseter, the UTTER AND IMMACULATE GENIUS Creative Director (AKA Genius) at Pixar is now Creative Head Cheese at Both Pixar and Disney overseeing both creative projects AND theme parks?!

And Disney will work EXCLUSIVELY with Steve's Apple Computers with Digiital Software AND Video Media, not to mention content for the Viddy iPod AND the fact that Disney has TV stations galore with cool stuff?

Yes! This shall be known as Disney Year 1 EAE (Era After Eisner).

(Eisner SUCKED! He was a horrible horrible man who hated children and puppies and sucked the blood out of Disney and ousted Roy Disney! HE OUSTED ROY DISNEY! WHAT A SICK F**K!!!)

THIS is going to be interesting. :-D