Archive for the ‘Film’ Category
They’re gonna put me in the movies
Today’s NY Times has an article about Cast It Systems , a company that securely catalogs, tags, shares and otherwise handles digitized auditions for casting directors and their associates. It includes tools for comments and tracking, as well as obviously making geographical location less of a factor.
The productions pay a fee to access the database, making possible events like the recently launched open casting call for Twilight – which I would assume had more value as a publicity generator than as a practical way of acquiring talent.
That cynicism aside, Cast It Systems counts all the major studios and many production companies among its customers. It has successfully been used for The Proposal, The Hangover, Steven Spielberg’s Munich, Star Trek, HBO’s Hung, and many other projects.
Eric Hayes and Chris Gantos predict their services have potential for use in sports and even placement in mainstream jobs.
(Title lyric by Johnny Russell and Voni Morrison, via Buck Owens and – later – the Beatles.)
We will find your sheep somewhere
The Internet consistently reminds us that amazing work is being done by musicians, filmmakers, and all kinds of other creators who do not have the sanction or support of a big company behind them. Take a look at David Packer’s charming 55-second short Tree Power, or check out his YouTube channel or Sheep Films to see the sort of thing people get up to in their home studios.
(Title lyric from the Dresden Dolls.)
I’m searching through these films
The beta version of the Ultimate Movie Site is now live. The site offers all kinds of information about movies and relevant people, which it then blends together with news, video clips, original content, social networking capabilities, games, e-commerce, ads, and other features intended to make the whole thing one big film-loving community. I think it looks very promising and worth keeping an eye on.
Ultimate Movie Site gets its basic information from Baseline. It also has a partnership with Netflix that lets that service’s subscribers stream movies immediately without leaving UMS. Other partners include MovieTickets.com, Amazon, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, and the Facebook app Movie Degrees.
(Title lyric by John Foxx.)
I don’t wanna miss a thing
Technology has the power to improve our lives in unexpected ways. RunPee.com is a wiki-style site that taps the power of the hive to determine the best bathroom break times while watching a movie.
The project is the brainchild of Flash Platform programmer Dan Florio, aka polyGeek. Florio half-jokes that he was inspired to create the site while watching the 187-minute-long King Kong.
Movie fans are invited to contribute their own opinions. Moderated postings give a description of a scene, how many minutes in it is, and how long a “break” is available. There’s even a description of what transpires during the suggested break time, which to avoid unwanted spoilers is only legible after a specific mouse click.
Mobile and iPhone app versions of RunPee.com are in the works in response to overwhelming demand, Florio said.
(Title lyric by Diane Warren via Aerosmith.)
Bring it in and let us see it
The first Open Video Conference, being held in NY on June 19-20, is bringing together producers, techies, distributors, lawyers and others involved in “the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video.”
The conference is a production of Yale Internet Society Project, Participatory Culture Foundation (creators of the open source Miro internet TV player) and Kaltura (developers of a full open source video platform), in partnership with Mozilla, Creative Commons, and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Among the many speakers and presenters are producer Ted Hope; Daily Show and Air America co-creator Lizz Winstead; Blip.tv CEO Mike Hudack; John Lech Johansen (famed DVD DRM cracker and co-founder of the Doubletwist universal media platform); Eirik Solheim, project manager and strategic advisor at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (where they’ve launched a promising initiative to distribute TV programs using P2P); Jamie King, director of the Steal This Film documentary and co-founder of Vodo; Clay Shirky, author and professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program; and Yochai Benkler, Professor at Harvard’s Berkman Center and author.
(Title lyric from British Sea Power.)
They’re making big bangs of their own
The Produced By conference has a great agenda. I’d like to hear Oscar-winning producer-director James Cameron discussing his upcoming 3D tentpole Avatar, especially if he will be showing any of it. Also, I’d listen to anything Gale Anne Hurd and the production team of Clint Eastwood and Rob Lorenz had to say.
But one session in particular stands out as being truly forward-looking. The New Big Bang: Participant Content and the Future of Storytelling will explore collaborative storytelling and the implications of emerging platforms. The four speakers are: Yair Landau, Founder and President, Mass Animation (and also General Partner, Jerusalem Venture Partners and former Vice Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment/President of Sony Pictures Digital); Jeff Gomez CEO, Starlight Runner Entertainment (Hasbro’s Transformers, Coca-Cola’s Happiness Factory, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean); David Kirkpatrick, Chairman and Executive Managing Officer, Plymouth Rock Studios; and Frank Moss, Director, MIT Media Lab.
Other highlights include a stellar panel of independent producers: Lawrence Bender, Roger Corman, Norman Lear and Michael London. Mark Gordon and Lawrence Gordon will be discussing all aspects of being a producer. There’s even a selection of the best giving insights into performance/motion capture production technology.
(Title lyric by Kevin Godley and Lol Creme.)
The movie I seem to see is hardly there
An aficionado named Rob Richards maintains a blog devoted to appreciating the backgrounds in animated cartoons and films.
The site is a real labor of love. Rob often painstakingly removes the characters from a frame, then reconstructs what the characters were blocking from view, basing his work on other frames in the shot.
But he does branch out. Several weeks ago, Hampa Studio in Spain sent Rob a background from their short film Margarita (pictured), simply because they were so proud of their background artists’ work.
Another perspective was contributed by Patrik Spacek, a CG artist who is honing his abilities by creating fully rendered 3D scenes based on his favorite 2D movies. Click here to see what Patrik came up with for the interior of Geppetto’s shop in Pinocchio.
(Title lyric by Bright Eyes.)
It is time we get away to the movies and magic
Microsoft is winning the battle for the living room, according to this article from Silicon Valley Insider. More than a million people who already own an Xbox 360 are using it instead of DVDs to stream movies from their Netflix subscriptions. That same capability is now being added to Windows Media Center, which is built in to most versions of the much derided but omnipresent Windows Vista.
(Thanks to Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, for drawing my attention to the article.)
Most Xbox 360 users already know about the growing library of TV programs, trailers, movies and other content available through the Xbox Live Marketplace (in addition to games, of course). What surprises me about this isn’t really how many households are getting their entertainment this way, it’s the fact that most entertainment executives don’t believe this type of setup is in the mainstream.
(Title lyric by Brian Wilson.)
Traditional media quote of the moment
“I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet,” said Sony Pictures Entertainment chief executive officer Michael Lynton. “Period.”
Is there any new business?
Last night a panel discussion hosted by Zócalo addressed the question, How Will Labor Discord Change Hollywood? Or at least it tried to. Moderator Jon Healey did his usual excellent job and tried to keep everyone on topic, but most of the panelists preferred to rehash the home video revenue sharing formula and strategize how to get the actors’ contract to expire simultaneously with the writers’ and directors’.
But I guess that was to be expected from a panel that consisted of AFTRA National Executive Director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth, actress Kathryn Joosten, actor Ron Ostrow UCLA’s David R. Ginsburg, and Veoh founder and Chief Innovation Officer Dmitry Shapiro. Spot the odd one out.
Overheard during the enjoyable reception afterwards, during a chat about Slumdog Millionaire: “Even winning Oscars has been outsourced.” (Lyric title by Neil Young.)
