(Image: Presenting his new film ‘Twixt’, Francis Ford Coppola tries on an Edgar Allan Poe mask that contains 3D glasses.)

The Past Week(s) in Review: For August 22 and August 29, 2011

This edition of TPWR covers the past two weeks of news.

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

This week we share the good news about local production, learn about a filter that can save you from DSLR headaches, and find out that an older, established filmmaker is more experimental than ever.

Mayor Bloomberg on the set of Pan Am with Media & Entertainment Commissioner Oliver and other officials. Photo credit: The Mayor’s Office.

Upbeat about Production

More good news on the growing number of prime time TV shows filming throughout the five boroughs. According to a recent press conference held by Mayor Bloomberg, we have some 23 shows now shooting regularly; eight of them were selected from 20 pilots shot in the city earlier this year.

Bloomberg made the announcement from the Steiner Studios stages of Sony Pictures Television’s “Pan Am”, set to debut on ABC this fall. Steiner, based in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, is now expanding to double its size. It is already the largest soundstage production facility on the East Coast, with the expansion adding some 2000 jobs to the 2200 jobs at throughout the Yard.

In a release, Steiner Studios Chairman Douglas C. Steiner thanked the Bloomberg administration for its continued support of the entertainment industry. “This onslaught of film and television production is a direct result of the mayor and other elected officials working together to make New York City competitive and hassle-free,” he said. This was taken from an article in The Hollywood Reporter, which you can read here.

Variety credits recently enacted long-term tax incentives granted by the state. An improvement over the previous year-by-year incentive extensions, the five year term offers a more stable environment for the studios for budgeting and other planning. The Variety article says that business boosters, including local studio heads, have learned to be “savvy in lobbying for production incentives at the state capital.”

QR Talk

Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, won the director the fest’s Directing Award. Major prize talk continues to build for Durkin as well as actors Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes well in advance of the film’s October 21st release. But there also seems to be a good bit of interest in Fox Searchlight’s use of QR (quick response) codes on early posters to trigger the trailers.

The gimmick here is that the previews aren’t available any other way online–you really do have to use your smartphone to scan the QR codes on posters you might find on the streets of Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Los Angeles–to get to these specific trailers. Entertainment Weekly’s Inside Movies claims to have had the scoop on the first use of these smart-phone-only posters.

Photo credit: MGM
Kubrick Invents the iPad, Personal TV Follows

Seems that it’s not the monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that garners interest these days but the “iPad like” TV notepads two of the astronauts on the Jupiter probe use. Samsung indeed cites these objects in the movie–they’re the size of a notepad and feature a functional video screen–as an example of prior art in its court case against Apple, who claims the Korean manufacturer has infringed its patented iPad design. You can read further details on Foss Patent’s blog here.

Following the lead of personal media, John Clancy, CEO at Azuki Systems, writes on Mashable that the future TV is “all about personalization.” We all knew that, and Clancy’s company makes platforms for mobile phones enabling cable companies and others to offer a good video experience on the go.

The basic argument isn’t new either: Since viewers no longer make plans to sit down and view specific content on a regular basis–we all want content whenever and wherever we happen to be–cable companies and channels like HBO want to offer video service alternatives that keeps up with their viewer’s habits.

While content creators and service providers are “making a mad dash to get screen time on mobile and other connected devices”, these new delivery options are stumbling because experience is not seamless when using the various devices. Azuki, of course, provides the one item Clancy says is lacking–the “key ingredient for success — personalization.” Metadata behind the video is used to split longer shows into smaller chunks so that viewers can catch clips on the go. Worth a read if just to learn how much control can be exerted over your distributed video.

Photo credit: metaio
Siggraph Notes, AR, & ARRI

Over at Studio Daily, editor Beth Marchant offers a quick take on SIGGRAPH 2011. Top tech presentations at the show in Vancouver, says Marchant, included Nvidia’s Project Maximus (a graphics technology that allows users to access and scale different parts of the GPU as needed) and Amazon’s “Cluster GPU Instance for its EC2″ –this service allows smaller facilities to rent processing power to render scenes. Meanwhile, BlackSky Computing ups the ante on cloud computing schemes like Amazon’s EC2 cloud by claiming it isn’t very effective beyond the capability of working with short sequences. BlackSky may enter the market for high-performance processing and rendering with its own competing service.

Augmented reality may offer a whole new way to use smartphones, or it could just be a gimmick for gamers. With that conclusion still up for grabs, you might take a look at an intriguing video “Roadmap of AR and the Vision of an Augmented City” to get a better idea of what the latest developments offer. Created by the Media Processing Division of chipmaker ARM and the R&D department of German-based AR company metaio, the video shows how more powerful smartphones capable of realtime 3D motion tracking will provide real-time contextual, digital information overlaying urban scenes.

You have to wonder why they haven’t offered this already since the Munich-based company has been around for much of the history of cinema, but ARRI CSC has launched its own Expendables Online Shop. Found at arricscstore.com, the store offers all the items you’ll need for handling camera, lighting, and grip work.

Photo credit: Kevin Brown
Wormholes, CDN Woes, & Bird Talk

In an area within MIT’s student cafeteria, you can find a Plexiglas dome that sits over a video screen. You can find the exact similar setup in Stanford University’s cafeteria. What is it? First, consider that there is an always on, high-speed link between the two conversation areas. (The plexi dome acts as a chamber to funnel audio while not disturbing others nearby.) Meant to make realtime long-distance interactions casual and arbitrary, the designers of the system act all science-fictioney by calling the link a wormhole. See if it heralds the future of long distance interactive communication by reading the the rest of the article on the Boston Globe’s site.

Over on the GigaOM site, reporter Stacey Higginbotham offers us an inside look at content delivery specialist Akamai and the “scary future of streaming video.” Seems that within two to five years, the throughput requirement for certain single video events will reach some 50 to 100 terabits per second. That is about the equivalent bandwidth of what it takes to distribute a TV quality stream to a large prime time audience today. Problem is that this is an “order of magnitude” beyond the largest online video events held today, according to Higginbotham, and that’s without adding all of bells & whistles of interactivity, which many claim we desperately want. See what you think by reading the article here.

The LA Times interviews Pixar’s Brad Bird for an article entitled “Hollywood isn’t Brave Enough to Copy Pixar’s Process”. While Pixar has become “the gold standard among popcorn films”, Bird opines, Hollywood studios are doing everything to copy the famed animation studio except actually taking the time and effort to really, truly develop a good story first. A good storyline is a central tenet of the vaunted Pixar process. Read more about Bird’s thoughts on current trends in animation by clicking here.

Photo credit: Mosaic Engineering
DSLR’s Savior, Flash & Jobs

In short review/article on his site, DSLR enthusiast Philip Bloom claims a new anti-aliasing and moire filter from Mosaic Engineering solves the two most serious problems–aliasing and moire generation–you will face when shooting with Canon’s 5DmkII. It seems the filter removes the interference patterns on details that are generated by the camera’s line skipping. Is this a simple cure for what Bloom calls the “bane of shooting with DSLRs and the single biggest problem”? Read it here and decide.

Fast and efficient Flash memory rules in the world of consumer computing (i.e. iPads, smartphones, digital cameras). Except in limited cases, the price of solid-state storage has remained too high to allow it to move into the world of large-scale computing like data centers. Now, Pure Storage, a new start up, says that it can use consumer level flash storage along with its software to pull the price of Flash storage down to less than that of hard drives. That’s a mighty achievement if true. Read more here in Steve Lohr’s article in the Times’ Bits blog.

There have been plenty of testimonials to Steve Jobs on his resignation from Apple. At least read one of them from someone who has something to do with our industry: Here’s a note from George Lucas, who sold Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division to Jobs, a sale which famously created Pixar Animation Studios. But of course that only came after a number of years of development and many millions invested in the new operation. Read more of Nick Wingfield’s article in the reporter’s Wall Street Journal blog by clicking here.

Elle Fanning & Coppola on the set of ‘Twixt’
Still Going Strong

Francis Ford Coppola brought Val Kilmer and the composer of his latest film Twixt to the recent Comic Con convention for a talk. What made that panel more than just the usual dog and pony, says reporter Jason Adams on JoBlo.com, is that this original horror tale-said to be inspired by one of Coppola’s own dreams–will be presented as a live performance. That’s right–Coppola claims to be returning to the early days of cinema when things weren’t so locked down to present some of the “magic and spontaneity of live performance art”.

Coppola, working with electronic musician and soundtrack composer Dan Deacon will “change the experience to suit the audience” in real time. Read more about the ever experimenting FFC and his new idea for presentation by clicking here. Twixt premieres at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival.

As an aside: If you would be curious to see how an earlier, eager Coppola marked up a page from “The Godfather”–and a heavily marked up page it is with “Hit hard and bloody!!” among the exhortations he made to himself–then click here.

Raul Ruiz
Memories of a Cine Magician

Raul Ruiz, the little heralded filmmaker (at least in the U.S.), passed away recently. (If you haven’t had a chance to see one of his many intriguing works, check out his transfixing Mysteries of Lisbon, which is still showing at Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center.)

Producer James Schamus posted a touching remembrance on Scott Macauley’s IndieWIRE blog, calling the director/author “one of the truly great, idiosyncratic and visionary voices of world cinema.” Both Schamus and Macauley—along with a raft of downtown notables of the time including Christine Vachon, Michael Kirby, John Zorn, Kathy Acker, and Jim Jarmusch—worked or acted in Ruiz’s 1987 film The Golden Boat, a goof on the New York art scene at the time.

This bit from AP’s obit sums up his career neatly: “A favorite of cinephiles, Ruiz rebelled against the conventions of moviemaking in an extensive, varied body of work that didn’t result in a widely-known masterpiece, but left behind a vast, labyrinthine collection of experiments, curiosities and innovations.”

The Past Week in Review: for May 24, 2011

Graffiti for the digital generation? There’s an app for that.
Photo credit: Graffiti by Ezo, photo by the Daily News

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

Our look at the most relevant news items from the prior week includes Web distribution of movies, gear to help field production, and a non-aerosol method of painting your graffiti tag.

Moving Movie Distribution to the Web

In his article on GigaOM, Pulp Fiction and Other Miramax Classics Coming to Netflix, author Janko Roettgers says that starting in June Netflix will be streaming select movies from Miramax’s library. While a majority of the Hollywood studios are still holding back from wide scale distribution, Miramax had already signed a deal licensing its catalog to iTunes earlier in the year.

More Power, Recording Options

AbelCine, one of the city’s leading rental and sales houses for all manner of video gear, now manufactures too. The company is selling a line of power hook ups—introduced at NAB 2011–that make for a more flexible way to power camera accessories in the field.

Their UniBob Universal Power Breakout Box, for example, is about the size of a fat camera battery and allows a number of accessories to be powered at once. The unit takes in power via a large Lemo-8 connector, which delivers over 300w each in both 28v & 14.4v power. There are three 28v outputs and three 14.4v outputs.

On the AbelCine blog you can also find a useful comparison chart that lists a number of the camera mounted HD recorders that turned up at NAB 2011. Their Camera Mounted Recorder Comparison Chart, with details on recording format, media, and inputs, also includes info on Codex and S.two recorders for those who want to shoot in ARRIRAW, Arri’s 14-bit RAW Uncompressed format that can be output from its Alexa camera.

Web Distribution, Taking it to the Cloud, Web Animation

If you are involved with putting together web distribution setups, you might be interested in reading Derrick Harris’ Microsoft’s VidLab Shares Its Tricks to Killing Latency.

While there is nothing especially unique about Microsoft’s methods, such an overview can still be useful to get a sense of what goes into moving huge video files through the various servers and transcoders that make up a large, modern web distribution system. Harris notes that VidLab launched with a 300TB array in place, while today it’s grown to become a 3.5-petabyte data warehouse.

There has been a lot of talk and probably more than a little hype on the importance of moving to cloud services. The cloud already offers solutions for storage and open access computing, while Apple’s upcoming Lion OS and Google web-only Chrome OS will move us further into that virtual world. To help in getting your bearings, check out this article by Derrick Harris on GigaOM, which offers up the most salient details from a report by analyst firm Forrester.

The report ranks some 16 private-cloud products from companies such as VMware, HP and IBM. The report is said to not go into very precise comparisons because the nature of the private cloud market is still so young.

While the future of web animation is supposed to reside with such open source software like HTML5 instead of Flash, many have felt frustrated about the slim pickings for software to create those apps.

In the article Skip Flash, Build Animations in HTML5 With Hype from Mashable, we get background on the new software app Hype. The Mac app doesn’t require any coding, but is said to be easy to use for anyone comfortable with software such as Keynote or PowerPoint.

AR Graffiti

Graffiti, of course, has long been a part of the New York scene, although after years of clamping down on the aerosol art form, less and less of it turns up save for the occasional Banksy bombing.

This might be a good excuse to at least call for a resurgence of graffiti for the digital age, in this case as an AR app. Yes, there’s now an app for that: McCann SF built one for the iPhone for the San Francisco Arts Commission. As this article on Digital Pivot has it, you only need the GraffCity app along with the iPhone’s accelerometer to turn iPhones and iPod Touchs into virtual aerosol cans.

Street artists, as the article points out, can “make their mark without worrying about the mess and hassle.” Well, that doesn’t sound like much of a street artist to me—at least to a New Yorker’s sensibilities—but with its AR angle, this might harken to a future digital city view that we will all partake of at some point.

(If you do want a charge from some true NYC aerosol artists, here’s an article from the Daily News that celebrates the aesthetic, including Ezo’s work, featured on this page.)

Criterion’s release of a newly transferred “The Sweet Smell of Success” points up great B/W cinematography by James Wong Howe.

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week, just so you don’t have to.

This past week brought news on hot new camcorders, contests, Kevin Smith, the ever-reliable-for-drama Weinstein Bros., and a new look for a classic New York tale.

Just a week ago director/DP/author Jon Fauer traveled to Japan to get a peek at what might be Sony’s answer to upstart Red: a prototype camera system that shoots beyond 4K by subsampling from a huge 8K sensor. Unusual for such a large sensor system, the camera will have a high frame rate mode going to 120 frames per second. Fauer says the complex project could be a breakthrough for practical 4K productions. One key factor, he says, is that Sony makes all the crucial parts, including the sensor and high-speed SR Memory Cards with their 5 Gbps sustained data rate. The story is here.

DV editor David E. Williams goes into much detail on the rest of Sony’s line-up presented at the press tour in Japan. That post is here.

More practical cinematography—that is, if 3-D production can yet be said to be anywhere close to practical–comes via a one day 3-D production workshop on Saturday, March 19th at StudentFilmmaker’s Broadway workshop. To be taught by Julian Chojnacki DGA and SOC, attendees with work with one of the few standard rigs out there, Panasonic’s AG-3DA1 camcorder. While not many would peg that rig for anything beyond industrial and educational use, any hands-on work will put you above the competition at this early stage. More info here

The Abel Cine blog has a video on using the rental house’s new AF100 ENG Kit for the Panasonic AF100. That single sensor camcorder has become an immediate favorite for its relatively lowball pricing and design—and that it hit the market well before Sony’s still to be delivered competitive model, the HandyCam NXCAM with E-Mount. The Sony camcorder has higher specs, but the Panasonic has already drawn modders such as Abel Cine who employ the Hot Rod Tuner and HDx2 B4/PL Optical Adapter to allow attaching 2/3-inch lenses.

Just too tired of having to read your Facebook and Twitter pages? Developer Ustream helps address that boredom via its new iPhone app that combines both a mobile video viewer and video broadcasting capability. Takes just one click to post to Twitter and Facebook. Sounds like one more way to bring down the networks of Verizon, AT&T, et.al, but who am I to discount our self-mythologizing ways?

Augmented reality—it’s essentially the layering on of digital info over the real world—inches closer to the everyday. At the recent GDC (games developer conference), Sony detailed how augmented reality will work in its NGP, the next generation Playstation platform. The huge gaming market might push AR to wide use. Read about it here.

Meanwhile, a blogger on Handheld Hollywood tries to make the case for the iPad 2 as a mobile production tool. While we know the Pad is finding a place on set–to review takes or even act as a slate–this fellow goes over every technical detail to seriously make the case for it as your digital filmmaking tool. You be the judge.

Looking to improve how you manage your New York-based business? Well, you’re too late to attend tomorrow’s sold out Sixth Annual Small Business Summit, hosted by the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce. However, you can plunk down $29 for what is promised as “live remote video access to all sessions”. Those sessions run from 8am to 5pm, so looks like you’ll get your money’s worth of virtual conferencing. Click here for more.

One major shindig that finished this past weekend, the annual TED conference, has its many free videos posted for all. TED, originally dedicated to technology, entertainment, and design, has grown from its small, geeky beginnings into an important tech-oriented gathering that covers everything from “quantum physics to paper-cutting” as Steven “Hackers” Levy puts it. The videos of the presentations are anything but dry—the speakers pride themselves on making the most arcane topics relevant, and dare we say fun—so don’t hesitate in trying at least one from their top-shelf list. Click here for that.

Picking up distribution, of course, is a filmmaker’s final hurdle. Kevin Smith came up with a solution that kicks self-distribution to a new level–he packed Radio City Music Hall to push his new horror movie, “Red State.” Folks paid $54 to see the movie and then sit through Q&A with Smith and cast. Not sure how many Indie productions could pull that off. In any case, read more here.

A longish essay by “film finance expert” Jeff Steele on, of all places, the HuffPo, lays out other strategies for a “complete democratization” of the film industry, one said to make “every man, woman and man-child to be his or her own mini-studio”. If you’re not too frightened by that thought, you can read more here.

If you’re involved in advertising, you might want to consider Shoot’s 9th Annual New Director’s contest. The April 4th deadline is approaching, so if you can use the promotion, see the application details here.

Sony’s “Behind the Lens” film student contest has also been announced, with submissions accepted through March 15th. Winner gets a PMW-F3 camcorder.

Two filmmakers who claim their animated film projects were deep-sixed through the Weinstein Studio’s “indecisiveness and general incompetence” have sued. Seems they were also paid to keep quiet about this until after the Oscars, so that the studio’s campaign for “The King’s Speech” wouldn’t be sidetracked. You can read the details here, including an embarrassing episode involving M&Ms.

Echt Broadway movie “Sweet Smell of Success” has been restored and includes a new Blu-ray transfer courtesy of the Criterion Collection. Written by Broadway press agent Ernest Lehman and the great Clifford Odets, the film stars Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis playing against their good-guy types. Hands down one of the best takes on a now lost era, the mid-1950s milieu of New York theaters and nightclubs. There’s wonderful black & white cinematography by the great James Wong Howe to boot.

Wayfinder’s cellphone app helps you find MTA info.

Augmented Reality (AR), as its enthusiasts insist, will sooner or later change the way we interact with the world.

We’ve presented some of the AR apps now making life easier for New Yorkers (NYC BigApps Winner Does AR) and important writers covering the scene (Chris Greyson on Mobile AR).

Now you have a chance to experience AR from the start-up level on up by attending the monthly meeting of ARNY this Tuesday evening, July 20^th. Hosted by Ori Inbar, these meet-ups offer a relaxed approach to digital tech centered around short, snappy presentations in a spectacular venue (local scouts take note).

These get togethers are a good way to learn how leading New York developers are moving this technology to a top position in Silicon Alley’s push to carve a place for East coast digital media entrepreneurs.

Among other presentations, you’ll see the “first ever live demo” of Moo Vision, an app created for Ben & Jerry’s and a State of the Union on AR Eyewear by Chris Grayson.

ARNY uses Meet Up to both enroll new ARNY members and sign up for the actually meeting.

If you have any interest in AR-you know,augmented reality-you’ll want to check out Chris Grayson’s audio podcasts with-some-slides, available on Viddler. While these 40 minute-long or so talks might not win an audience via offering punchy graphic design and peppy delivery, Grayson is a relief; he’s very thorough and doesn’t slip into a cheer leading style that sometimes seems a too common mistake in presentations on AR.

His calm, thorough explanations of what goes into some of the most interesting but little discussed technological innovations going on today are an education. Apps aimed at the rapidly growing mobile market are evolving at a blistering pace. (Did you know that apps designed for Apple’s iPhone make 99-percent of the profits that is made among all mobile apps?)

While you can start the series from the beginning, I came in at chapter 3. (You can access that video here.)

I can suggest starting with this one–about halfway through the presentation I saw some of the capabilities of new mobile AR apps that both give me a geeky sense of awe and ring every civil liberties and privacy warning bell.

These apps include some with the capability to employ data taken from a live facial scan of you taken with a cell phone video camera to identify you on the fly. The apps have a facial recognition capability, which identify you (not sure what database they were using to do that) and then quickly pull associated info about you from the web.

The person of interest in your cell phone is soon seen with Facebook and Twitter icons floating around them—now you just have to click on one to get all the personal info they’ve posted.

Of course if you had access to other databases with even more pertinent info—such as bank account balances or medical history—that would come up to before you even had a chance to say hi.

That’s just scary.

Updates: If you want to learn more about mobile AR, you might visit Columbia University’s site, as they’ve very active in researching real-world applications for the technology.

Going a next step, the group Augmented Reality New York sponsors monthly meetings where members and others present some of the latest research and product development. More info on that here.

You might also want to check out Chris Grayson’s comments (below) for links to his full series of talks on AR.

From Apple’s U.S. Patent Office filing

Nick Bilton on the Time’s Bits blog jumps in on the now time honored exercise of speculating about future Apple products from the background of recent high-level hires. Wearable computing inventor Richard DeVaul, who helped start AWare Technologies, might be inventing iViz (don’t know if that’s copyrighted, okay?) sometime soon.

Even the slick Wayfinder interface won’t keep you from looking silly waving your cellphone around.

I cover AR (augmented reality) as it’s a new, useful technology that takes one aspect of VR—the generation of another, parallel world—and brings it down to earth. (And it’s cool.)

Or maybe a little lower than down to earth, as Wayfinder, the winner of NYC’s first app competition helps you to find the closest subway entrance. Google Android phone users only at this point, although one of the runner up apps is for the iPhone. Called NYC Way, it bundles “30+” info apps on various useful NYC info for city residents and visitors.

Here’s a NYT blog on the competition results.

A more snarky version of that info from All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka.

Want the actual Wayfinder site?

And the NYC Way runner-up, 30+ NYC iPhone apps.

Image courtesy Nigel Parry

AR sometimes even leaves Robert Downey Jr. going in different directions.

Flash in the pan? Well, probably not, although AR as advertising’s flavor du jour was just one of the thoughts tossed from panelists at the SobelMedia event held today at the Time Warner Samsung experience Center. (I discussed it in an earlier posting earlier here.)

Actually, it seems AR will be one of the new media moneymakers of 2010 since the technology builds off the proliferation of faster, higher screen rez smart phones. Meanwhile, you’ll start to see attempts by print media to reinvent itself with the new, sexy tech, such as Esquire magazine’s Robert Downey’d December issue, which was presented in a little depth at the event by Esquire’s Creative Director David Curcurcito.

For a quick, frothy wrap up of the event turn to Kelly Samardak’s posting here.

Maybe the coffee wore off, but Kelly doesn’t mention the one app noted by a panelist that just might be immediately useful for anyone in the industry who still has to ship videocassettes around: none other than the good old USPS offers an AR app that–as long as you have a Webcam–will show you what size box you need to ship that pile on your desk. Click here to see more on that.

With the many ad agencies headquartered in New York, expect to see any number of shows, panels, and other events during the year touting this or that approach as the most exploitable angle of the technology.

While there doesn’t seem much of an immediate play for video creators in AR, the Esquire venture–the first by a major magazine–shows how moving images might still play a part.

And if you’d like useful, ongoing information about AR, check out this blog from Tish Shute, founder of Ugotrade. I spoke with Tish at the event and was impressed by her enthusiasm, writing chops, and varied background, which includes anthropology and motion control for film production.

Want to see what everyone else in the world is doing with AR in one spot? She spots June’s ARE2010 conference in Santa Clara as the one not to miss. It’s the first global conference dedicated to “advancing the business” of augmented reality.

If you’d like to meet with other New Yorkers trying to figure out AR on an ongoing basis, you might want to check out ARNY (Augmented Reality New York), which hosts monthly meetings.