Category: media-and-expression

Is anyone really that surprised that Hulu has more viewers that some cable networks in America? Seriously? I mean come on its 2009, have people not been paying attention? Maybe I spent so much time off the broadcast schedule that when theres a line in the sand between the broadcast schedule and on demand viewing, I automatically assume the on demand position. But for good reason. I mean, I'm sure I could draw some graph/chart showing how YouTube has more viewers that almost every single broadcaster out there. How Bit Torrent download is still totally killing pay per downloads stores like itunes. etc, etc. This isn't news, its clarification of what most of already knew wrapped up in a poor infographic.

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Saw this graph of the music sales over various mediums over the last few decades. Looking at the graph its easy to see why the music industry are so pissed off with the radical changes. They have been so comfortable with seeing massive profits off the back of CDs sales that their expecting even bigger profits from the next format. However thats not going to happen. The article on evolver magazine goes into much more detail, although you can imagine what it says without reading it.

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One of the best short films I've seen (Alive in Joburg) is being made into a film called District 9. I had no idea till recently.

If you've never seen or heard of either, the basic premise is that Aliens have come to South Africa and decided to stay. Unlike most other scifi movies, these aliens are not exactly the top of food chain. They do have advanced weapons but are also vulnerable to human weapons. So after being classified as refugees all type of scenarios playout. One example is the start of a blackmarket between the human slumlords and the aliens. The alive in Joburg has a theme of xenophobia running throughout it, which looks to be the same in District 9 too.

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I'll admit it I do watch a lot of films, my film collection is full of weird and wonderful films. So today I almost converted all my DVDs to media files and thought I'd share some of the more interesting films people might have missed. I'm not quite say its films to see before your dead or anything like that, just the kind of films you'd pick out and say “what's this one about?”

• Croupier – A movie about the casino and cheating the casino. The movie is slow moving but builds up to something more like a heist/con film. Clive Owen is fantastic as the higher that everyone dealer and the bump back to earth is received. Well worth catching if you can.
• Irréversible – This is a shocking movie, think Memento with serious balls. The whole thing runs backwards but when you think this movie has front loaded most of the thrills, your treated to one of the most horrid, nail-scraping moments in movie history. The only thing close to this is some of the scenes in Hard Candy. But the connection with the character is totally different.
• Death to Smoochy – Another little known movie which was swamped by something else. This movie starts off like a Disney movie and slowly shows the very dark side of childrens entertainment through a parody of its self. Sounds more complex that it actually is but its entertaining beyond the usual levels.
• Risk – This is almost a unknown film in most circles. Its a con/heist movie with a difference. The whole film centres around insurance and a bleeding heart adjuster. He adjusts special cases handed to him and saves the company lots of extra money. Everything seems fine but its not that simple. What slowly unravels is a scheme with hinges on a careful balancing act/con. Fantastic film.
• Shadow Hours – One night for one bored petrol station clerk leads to a underground world he's never seen before. Parties, clubs, drugs, all night drinking establishments all come alive as he digs deeper into the night. The rush of finding new experiences leads to some unexpected outcomes. Its not a great film but where it ends up is worth watching at least once.
• Young people f***ing – I've talked about this film to death. Generally its a good laugh at 5 couples as they spend a night together. Its everything you wanted to laugh and giggle about sex but was too shy to. Its worth watching many times and reminding yourself that even the most human experiences can be fun when talked about openly and maybe we don't do that enough. Avoid seeing with immature idiots.
• Cashback – This film seems to draw its influence from a combination of Go! and Late Night Shopping. Its the story of a supermarket clerk who works overnight in sainsburys and imagines drawing woman he comes across. Its all a bit strange and surreal but the story of love which is weaved through it works very well. The movie is actually quite beautiful, funny and tragic in parts. Should be on your list of films to see before you die.
• A complete history of my sexual failures – Another movie I've talked about again. Its about a guy who decides to ask his ex-girlfriends what went wrong with there previous relationship with him. He digs up a past which really needs not be digged up but thats what makes it so watchable. It slightly car-crash like, you don't want to see or know but you can't help it. I guess in everyone of us, we've wondered what would happen if… and this movie fills that if. Painful but worth seeking out if only to watch once in the comfort of your own home. Don't watch with ex-partners.
• The last Casino – So you may have heard the story before about the MIT students who take the casinos for millions by card counting in organised teams? Yes they even made a movie recently called 21 but before that the Canadians made a TV movie called The last casino. Although its not quite as glam as 21, its got some really nice touches. It also doesn't take its self too seriously. The ends are similar but the path to the end is different. One of the scenes in the last casino includes a high stakes game in an illegal casino where some cheating is going on. How they get out is almost a moment for film history. Its hard to get, but worth seeking out.
• Dirty Pretty Things – Smart movie which seeks to remind people the hard lives people have coming to the UK to find work and rebuilding their already torn lives. Very fitting with all the news about immigrants taking over jobs, etc.
• Kill Bill.Volume 1 (uncut Japanese version) – And finally the uncut version of Kill Bill has been in my collection for a while but I recently watched the cut version and started noticing parts which should be there. If you've not seen the uncut version the biggest difference is the black and white section when Uma is fighting the crazy 88 is in full colour and extended by about a minute. So you miss the eye pulling and slicing of people in two. If you want the full low down, check out this post.

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I know there was lots of talk about the HTML 5 video element which originally was meant to support the Free and Open video codec and architecture Theora/Ogg Vorbis. But that got written out of the standard specs and each next generation browser went there own way. So from memory, Firefox 3.5 supports Ogg/Theora, Opera supports Ogg/Theora, Safari/Webkit supports Mpeg4/H.264 and Google Chrome supports both Ogg/Theora and Mpeg4/H.264. Anyway, Google just recently bought On2 which could be a interesting move if they decide to open source or free up the VP7 codec (just incase you didn't know VP3 was the base for Ogg/Theora). On2 have always said there codec is more efficient that H.264 and one of the things which always gets thrown at Theora is the lack of efficiency against modern codecs like H.264. To be honest, anything like Xvid or better works for me, but I get the point. So could this latest move finally unite the likes of Mozilla and Safari? Maybe unite against Adobe's Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight platforms? Actually being open would really be a stake in the heart of these closed technologies. Oh by the way did anyone see the HTML5 timed media example from BBC RAD?

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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Rachel McAdams
www.thedailyshow.com

Rachel McAdams pretty much gives away the plot of the whole film in this interview on the Daily Show.

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The Gadget show's wall of fame again and this time its the battle of music download sites. Thankful this time they picked the right one. Napster.

In the red corner: Napster. A bit of a rebel it shook the music industry to its core and changed the way we thought about music for ever. Devised by an 18-year-old college student, Napster launched in 1999. It combined a music search function with a file-sharing system, which effectively meant you had access to all the music on all the hard drives of computers connected to Napster. It was bit dodgy, infringing on copyright law, and the music industry had it shut down in 2001. But Napster lives on in an online music store, and it’s the legacy of the original site that makes it so great.

In the blue corner: iTunes! Proclaiming to be the daddy of online music, iTunes is like having a massive music and video warehouse in your bedroom. It originally launched in 2001 as a digital music player before it converted to an online store. It makes transferring music to your iPod easy as! And it’s this simplicity that’s led to its dominance of the online music world with over four billion songs sold!

Putting my hate for the itunes store and its locked in ecosystem a side, itunes would never have come about unless Napster had come on the scene. Napster took all the risks and got finally sued so much that it went legit. iTunes has a massive audience but its just a large download store and isn't ground breaking. Even the removal of DRM came late to iTunes. No doubt Napster deserves the position on the wall of fame.

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Looks like a good one….

Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war, an elite Army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb.

Credit to Miss Geeky for the meme.

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I'm sure everyones seen this remix of Slap Chop done by Dj Steveporter or even the Sham Wow remix. What got me interested was when Steve turned over the media so others could make there own in response to his. But I just heard the slap chop rap remix is coming to a tv screen near you (if your in america of course). Good stuff.

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Dave sent me this link a little while ago. Its about monetising long form video. What I found interested was the conclusion at narrowcasting.

We're heading to narrowcasting, even if a few topics – sports, financial reporting, and big news – still will command big audiences.

The future market for the traditional boob tube boils down to this: 1) the technically backward, 2) the institutionalized (in prison, in hospitals, in nursing homes), 3) three year olds and younger who don't yet have the cognitive skills to manage a remote.

As I've been saying to broadcast and cable for years now: Change or die.

There was also a range of interesting quotes collected from the web which I think are worth reposting.

Last year, the top 25 shows on blip.tv averaged under five minutes. This year, the number is up to 14 minutes, roughly THREE TIMES longer – an increase accomplished in just 12 months!

Internet video is mainstream now with about 150 million viewers in the US alone (about half the population) and the average viewer is watching 97 videos per month. Pretty amazing when you consider just five years ago, the typical Internet use was watching zero videos per month.

“People are getting more comfortable, for better or worse, bringing a computer to bed with them.” – Dina Kaplan, co-founder of Blip.TV

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I watch a lot of the Revision3 programmes such as Diggnation, Tekzilla, Scam School and of course my old favourite Hak.5. But I've also been getting into some of there newer programmes too. Co-op, Diggreel, ROFL and finally Filmriot.

Filmriot is a strange one, it shows budding film makers how to do some of those film effects you've seen around. Everything from doing decent head gunshots to shooting dusk shots in bright sunshine. A lot of the stuff is done outside the computer using clever camera tricks and I'm sure most of it is learned on a film makers course within the first few months, but its actually very well put together and looks great in HD.

But what gets me is the inline adverts within the show. I think the Co-op guys started the trend of adverts which match in with the style of the show but these guys at Film Riot have taken it to another level. The adverts are actually worth watching just to see what the guys have done this time around. It may have taken them a while to do it and they may recycle them a few times but it certainly beats the standard adverts. I'm not saying this is the future of advertising or anything, just interesting. I posted the another one here.

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R&D TV episode 2 is indeed out and we're noting some interesting blog entries. A cpuple of them have had me commenting. FoodieSarah or Sarah Hartley caused a little stir with her blog entry titled “mash this, whispers aunty beeb.” I personally felt she missed a few key points which I highlighted in the comments. The next web had a entry titled “The BBC wants you to remix Jason Calacanis.” and wins for the best screenshot of Jason Calacanis. The post was a little more balanced and sympathised a lot with the problems we had faced putting the whole thing together.

I started to comment on the next web blog post too but thought it might be worth writing this on my own blog. I saw on Creative Commons that Ridley Scott is going to make a Web version of Blade Runner and its going to be licensed CC-BY-SA which is highly creditable in my book. I'm not saying we have any direct influence on Ridley but surely things like R&DTV adds to the overwhelming feeling that content creators should consider licensing there content openly.

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We've launched R&D TV episode 2. You can download it directly from the BBC in many different flavours of codecs and formats. We got everything from Flash to Ogg Theora. There's even RSS feeds now which is good. Like the last one, were using a Creative commons non-commercial attribution v2 licence and we have made the assets available for anyone in the world to remix. I want to say thanks to everyone who was involved in the project. R&DTV is a collaboration between BBC Backstage and RAD teams, who are: Producers Rain Ashford and Hemmy Cho, as well as Exec Producers: Ian Forrester, George Wright and Adrian Woolard. This months video is maybe a lot closer to what people were expecting, so enjoy it.

I gave a talk at Social Media Cafe yesterday which included a preview of R&DTV and received a lot of feedback, some of it was quite harsh but only harsh because people could see r&dtv was a good project. The lovely Sarah Hartley live blogged the whole thing using Friendfeed. Chi Chi wrote a little bit and talked about her project, which I missed due to a interesting discussion about the history of emoticons. But if you really want to get a full feeling of what people thought of the project, check out the tweets afterwards and this audioboo which was recorded a few minutes after it ended.

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So the story is about a guy who books a cinema seat expecting a IMAX experience but finds out that its actually a slightly bigger screen that usual and better a/v. However its not IMAX,

Fine if your expecting IMAX and get something sub-IMAX then you have the right to get your money back. But what equally bugs me is people who said have you seen insert name of big film here on IMAX. I'm sorry but just because its on a huge screen doesn't make it better. If its shot for IMAX like parts of the Dark Knight was, then great IMAX makes sense but when its not, I'd rather be in a decent standard cinema. I talked a while back about my choice to watch the Watchman film on the DLP projector using digital transfer instead of IMAX. I'm not the only one either.

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Thanks Tim for this link, I was in tears watching this remix of the apprentice. I've seen remixes but this shows such amazing creativity. Its all parody so I assume it should/might be safe from being taken down. (although I 'm not trained to offer any legal advice)

So some content producers will look at this and either go red with anger or white with fear. Because CassetteBoy has done many remixes which totally take the original subject matter out of its original context. This strikes fear into many, and I can already hear the arguments for even tighter control over content. But the thing to remember is a expression of a artist. Enjoy…

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