Mid-year box office report...TV pilot on YouTube...Red digital camera

- In a story headlined 'Signs of Life at the Box Office (if Not a Full Recovery)', Sharon Waxman of the NY Times reports that 2006 is proving to be a better year for ticket sales than 2005, but not as good as 2004. She quotes one 17-year old who hasn't rushed out to see `Superman Returns':

"The movies are repetitive," he said. "It seems like there's about eight stories. It's like I'm seeing the same movie, almost."

Sony Pictures vice chairman Jeff Blake seems to realize the world is changing...Speaking about young men, he says:

"It was almost as if we lived in a world where this group would go to the multiplex every week and choose what they see. Now they don't necessarily go to the multiplex every week, and we have to convince them we have something exciting for them to see."

(Click the graphic at right to see the full-sized graph comparing 2005 to 2006 so far.)

- NY Times TV writer Bill Carter has a piece today about how the creators of a TV pilot called `Nobody's Watching,' which never made it on the air, are trying to spark interest in the show by posting it on YouTube. (You can see it here.) It just might work: `Nobody's Watching' had about 300,000 views so far (prior to the Times article), with zero marketing budget.

- No one has yet seen an image produced by Jim Jannard's Red high-def digital camera, but there's lots of anticipation for its next trade show appearance, at IBC this fall. Here, Jannard talks about redesigning the camera body after last month's Cinegear Expo. Let me guess what his engineering team is thinking: can we focus a little less on aesthetics and product design, and a little more on the innards?