Category Archives: Coming Soon

More celebrities are about to rise from the dead

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Alex Lee, writing in WIRED UK, reveals that the messy legal scrap to bring celebrities back from the dead is only going to get weirder.

Recall that earlier this month Twitter convulsed when it was announced that 55-year dead James Dean had been “cast” in a new Vietnam war movie called Finding Jack.

(Never mind that numerous actors in franchise films have already been resurrected with CGI to continue playing roles into which they once breathed life: Peter Cushing, Carrie Fisher and Paul Walker.)

Here’s where the weird comes in.

As reported by Alex, the estates of dead celebrities hold “rights of publicity” that are typically licensed to companies for exploitation.

But, as soon as 70 years pass after a celebrity’s death, that right expires. Sometimes, it’s just 50 years.

Jennifer Rothman, professor of law at Loyola Marymount University and author of The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World says when the term expires:

“That would make them fair game.”

Of note, a new company has emerged to represent dead celebrities: Worldwide XR.

My take: This was bound to happen in our digital age. It’s just too easy to juggle the bits to create new audio and visuals. I think the backlash speaks to an unspoken feeling that this violates basic privacy and the passage of time. On the other hand — it also has the power to raise the dead and allow us to go on living forever. Or conquer space:

Michael Bay is back — but not on the big screen

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Netflix continues to attract high-profile filmmakers to its streaming platform.

December 13th’s 6 Underground stars Ryan Reynolds, was written by Deadpool duo Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, and is directed by none other than Michael “Mr. Bayhem” Bay.

I know what you’re thinking. Michael Bay? That 1990’s hack?

Well, did you also know that, as a director, his films have grossed over $6 billion?

Then there’s this:

My take: this film looks like a lot of fun! We’ll certainly watch it over the holidays. (btw, that is a really long trailer clocking in at a solid three minutes!)

Theatrical dreams, quantified

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Stephen Follows and Bruce Nash in a post for the American Film Market answer the question How Many Independent Films Get A Theatrical Release?

For 2017 films, as of mid-August 2019, the answer is, “Not many.”

Fully three out of four films did not report any box office earnings. And only one in six reported theatrical earnings of over $100,000.

However, some genres performed better than others:

“Large releases are the realm of the drama, with 23% of independent dramas earning over $100,000 at the domestic box office. Comedies (16%) and thrillers (15%) are also more likely to get into this top tier.”

In addition, provenance matters:

“Adaptations are three times as likely to secure a large theatrical release compared to independent films with original screenplays. That’s a significant jump, and shows how hard it is for an independent film based on original material to get a substantial theatrical release.”

They conclude:

“Seeing a film played in a theater is still regarded as the best way to experience the art form. It’s also, understandably, the goal of many film producers…. However, the numbers say that an independent film will, five times out of six, not go on to make much money in theaters. Knowing how to maximize revenue from the home market remains an essential skill for an independent producer.”

My take: these are sobering statistics! But then I think of how many films I’ve seen in a theatre versus the number I’ve seen at home. The one bright light in exhibition is Theatrical-On-Demand. See Tugg, Gathr or Demand.Film

Curation coming to Netflix?

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Sarah Perez of TechCrunch reports that Netflix tests human-driven curation with launch of ‘Collections’:

“Netflix is testing a new way to help users find TV shows and movies they’ll want to watch with the launch of a “Collections” feature, currently in testing on iOS devices…. According to Netflix, the titles are curated by experts on the company’s creative teams, and are organized into these collections based on factors like genre, tone, story line and character traits.”

A Netflix spokesperson confirmed the test, saying:

“We’re always looking for new ways to connect our fans with titles we think they’ll love, so we’re testing out a new way to curate Netflix titles into collections on the Netflix iOS app.”

My take: This is fascinating because it’s a bit of deja vu all over again. Years ago Netflix bragged that its algorithm would learn from our viewing habits and only recommend movies to us that it calculated we would want to watch. It worked to some extent; my home screen is quite different from my wife’s. However, we both still have to do a lot of scrolling to find something we want to watch. I think brining back curation is an acknowledgement that we all yearn for some degree of commonality. Remember that, before the internet changed everything, the media was a de facto curator, only showing us what they had already selected. I would like to see a blending of curation and algorithmic selection so that I can see what the masses are consuming in Collections, and personalized offbeat suggestions in Recommended for Me.

2019 Internet Trends Report released

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In June at the Code Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, Mary Meeker delivered the 2019 instalment of her Internet Trends Report:

There are lots of insights here. Some to note, courtesy of CMF Trends:

The Internet’s penetration rate is now 51% of the world’s population. The two countries with the largest untapped markets are India followed by China. Nevertheless, one third of users live in those two countries.

Use is growing. Average daily online use has passed 6 hours for the first time. Moreover, mobile use has surpassed TV viewing this year.

Here’s the full slide deck or PDF.

My take: one takeaway for me is that the freemium model is alive and well. Unfortunately, two of my favourite tools did not figure this out (never having had paid levels) and have disappeared: Toonlet and Ujam Studio. 8- I wonder how the freemium model could be adapted to fiction films. Give away the movie and charge for the (DVD) extras (remember those)?

Korean AI can predict your film’s chances

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I would have loved to have been at the 2019 Storytelling Workshop in Florence, Italy, when Koreans You Jin Kim, Yun Gyung Cheong and Jung Hoon Lee presented their paper “Prediction of a Movie’s Success From Plot Summaries Using Deep Learning Models”.

Their idea is to train an AI to read summaries of movies and then pass judgement:

“The primary hypothesis that we attempted to answer is to predict a movie’s success in terms of popularity and artistic quality by analyzing only the textual plot summary.”

It’s all very complicated and, I’ll admit, is on the edge of being incomprehensible to me.

One thing I did gather — their AI seems better at determining which films will NOT be good:

“It seems that predicting ‘not popular’ or ‘not successful’ movies performs better than that of predicting ‘popular’ or ‘successful’ movies.”

My take: Another of the takeaways for me in this paper was this chestnut: “The frequency of sentiment changes may signal the success of films.” Even though they’re talking about summaries of films, I believe this could mean the greater the number of reversals, the greater the success of the film. Could this be true? Maybe. Maybe not. But maybe. No, maybe not. Definitely — maybe.

Another streamer announced: BET+ joins crowded market

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With the tagline “Stream Black Culture. Anytime. Anywhere. Finally.” BET has announced the launch of its streaming platform BET+ this Fall.

So what’s BET+?

“It’s a new online streaming service. It’s thousands of hours of your favorite black content. It’s the movies that you love. It’s the tv shows you grew up with and new series you can’t live without. And it’s exclusive originals from the best black creators. No commercials. At all.”

Variety has more details and claims Tyler Perry “likely has a stake in the venture as he is contributing his own library, which is a big selling point.”

They quote Perry:

“In our industry, the way people consume content is constantly evolving. I’ve paid attention to my audience and what works for them and, for that reason, I’m very excited not only about the idea of partnering with BET to create new and exciting content, but also about the idea of giving people a personalized experience through the ability to curate the content they love to consume. On a personal level, this will also be the first time I’ll be working in areas like unscripted and variety television, which will afford me the opportunity to work in fresh, creative ways with new voices and to discover new talent.”

My take: Although no pricing has yet been announced, I believe BET+ will be one of the winners in the upcoming streaming sweepstakes. Disney+, AppleTV+, et al, will be going up against these 100+ streaming services.

Tips for Indie Film Posters

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John Godfrey, writing on Film Independent, says that indie film posters need to work harder.

You’re going up against every other film, most with budgets many times larger than yours. The key, John says, is your concept:

“The key to a successful poster is the concept behind it…. When you bring a designer on board, give them as much to work with as possible, every available image as well as letting them watch a screener of the film. No amount of synopsis or breakdowns can help a designer understand a film better than watching that film. Film is a visual medium — and so are movie posters. There are many parallels between the two, and there are sometimes iconic graphic devices used within a film that as a filmmaker you might not pick up on, but that a designer’s eye will be drawn instantly to as a subject to expand upon.”

John also reminds you that your poster needs to work in many formats:

“Your traditional 27×40” movie poster is excellent for film festivals and your IMDb page, and is the perfect way to commemorate the countless hours poured into production, with a framed print on your wall. However, that’s only a small portion of the usages your poster will be needed for. Once streaming, your poster will have to be in a horizontal format on many services. A horizontal format would also be useful right off the bat as the poster frame of your trailer on Vimeo and YouTube. A square format is very useful for social media.”

For some recent examples of great concepts, Ethan Anderton posting on /film lists his favourite film posters from 2018.

My take: I’ve mentioned before that I sometimes start with a logo that expresses a project’s identity even before writing the script that gives it a voice. It’s also worthwhile exploring the graphic design requirements of some of the streaming services so you know what they don’t allow (things like titles, laurels, URLs, etc.) so you can make sure to get all your visuals during production. For a compilation of movie poster themes, there’s none better than Christophe Courtois.

Samsung’s new AI can bring photos to life

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Ivan Mehta reports in The Next Web that Samsung’s new AI can create talking avatars from a single photo.

Egor Zakharov, Aliaksandra Shysheya, Egor Burkov and Victor Lempitsky of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and the Samsung AI Center, both in Moscow, Russia, envisioned a system that…

“…performs lengthy meta-learning on a large dataset of videos, and after that is able to frame few- and one-shot learning of neural talking head models of previously unseen people as adversarial training problems with high capacity generators and discriminators. Crucially, the system is able to initialize the parameters of both the generator and the discriminator in a person-specific way, so that training can be based on just a few images and done quickly, despite the need to tune tens of millions of parameters.”

But why did the researchers set out to do this?

They wanted to make better avatars for Augmented and Virtual Reality:

“We believe that telepresence technologies in AR, VR and other media are to transform the world in the not-so-distant future. Shifting a part of human life-like communication to the virtual and augmented worlds will have several positive effects. It will lead to a reduction in long-distance travel and short-distance commute. It will democratize education, and improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. It will distribute jobs more fairly and uniformly around the World. It will better connect relatives and friends separated by distance. To achieve all these effects, we need to make human communication in AR and VR as realistic and compelling as possible, and the creation of photorealistic avatars is one (small) step towards this future. In other words, in future telepresence systems, people will need to be represented by the realistic semblances of themselves, and creating such avatars should be easy for the users. This application and scientific curiosity is what drives the research in our group.”

Read their research paper.

My take: surely this only means more Deepfakes? The one aspect of this that I think is fascinating is the potential to bring old paintings and photographs to life. I think this would be a highly creative application of the technology. With which famous portrait would you like to interact?

IFC Films Unlimited SVOD to launch on Amazon Prime Video Channels

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Brent Lang reports for Variety that IFC will launch its SVOD service IFC Films Unlimited on Amazon Prime Video Channels.

“In an interview, IFC Films co-president Lisa Schwartz said that the company has quietly been unwinding many of its licensing deals in recent years with an eye towards starting its own service. It will still maintain its distribution pacts with Showtime and Hulu, which have some of IFC’s films in first pay television window. The goal is to start releasing movies on IFC Films Unlimited in the second pay television window. “This is part of a deliberate strategy,” said Schwartz. “We watched the landscape shifting and realized that we’ve got such a terrific large library that we might be better served by taking some rights back and releasing those films under our own roof.” Although IFC’s subscription service is launching on Amazon, the company hopes to add other platforms. “We’re going to continually evaluate as we grow our subscriber base,” said Schwartz. “But our goal is to make this a destination where you can find great films.””

The service will cost $5.99 USD per month after a 7-day trial and requires Amazon Prime Video Channels.

What’s that? From Amazon:

“Channel subscriptions from Prime Video are paid monthly subscriptions to third-party premium networks and other streaming entertainment channels. Eligible Prime members have the option to purchase these subscriptions directly through Prime Video. All of the movies and TV programming included with the subscription are then available to watch on demand, on all compatible Prime Video devices — including TVs, Blu-ray players, Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, Fire tablets, computers, and Android and iOS mobile devices.”

In other words, like Roku.

But wait, there’s more!

Jared Newman of TechHive reports that Apple TV has just launched “channels” too!

“With Apple TV Channels, you can sign up for services like HBO and Showtime directly through the TV app on iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs. You don’t have to download separate apps to start using those services, and you can manage all their subscriptions through iTunes billing. Apple TV Channels also supports offline viewing on iOS, so you can download Game of Thrones episodes before your next flight.”

See his chart showing which platforms play which Premium Channel Services:

Macworld has a chart comparing the cost of AppleTV’s premium channels with the native apps, monthly and annually.

My take: this was bound to happen. As digital content continues to proliferate in apps from individual curators, forces of consolidation are appearing to counter the splintering of the viewing environment. It’s a battle between two or three big players to recreate your TV set of old within their app/device. I predict Netflix will go the Premium Channel Service route too.