Video: 'Heroes' creator Tim King talks about transmedia storytelling

While in LA last month, I had a chance to sit down with "Heroes" creator Tim Kring in the show's production offices. Kring is part of a session I'm hosting on October 24th at the Boston Book Festival.

We talked for about a half-hour. I asked Kring about the ukelele made of mango wood that was sitting on a stand in his office, and he played a couple chords for me. We talked about George Lucas as the original transmedia storyteller, introducing characters like Boba Fett on television first (and in a parade!), and then later weaving them into the narrative of the Star Wars films, books, and of course, toy lines.

The part of the conversation I captured on video covers Kring's approach to transmedia storytelling... some of the books that have spun off from the "Heroes" TV show...how he thinks about the audience's desire to participate in the "Heroes" universe...and a little bit about "Flag of Orpheus," the trilogy of books (unrelated to "Heroes") that Kring is working on with the novelist Dale Peck. (I mistakenly call it "Gate of Orpheus" in the interview...the perils of shooting and asking questions at the same time...)

Excerpt from 'Inventing' in Digital Cinema Report

Nick Dager edits one of the most respected sites that focuses on digital cinema, Digital Cinema Report. The September "edition" of the site includes a new excerpt from Inventing the Movies, which I adapted especially for Nick's site. It covers the many false starts of the digital cinema revolution...from predictions in the 1940s and 1950s that digital cinema was right around the corner... to efforts by Pacific Bell, George Lucas, and Texas Instruments in the late 1990s...to the present day, when we still haven't hit the digital cinema "tipping point."

A snippet from the beginning of the excerpt:

When did the digital cinema revolution begin, and who started it?

A handful of Hollywood soothsayers were predicting the imminent arrival of digital cinema in the middle of the 20th century. In 1949, the independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, who’d helped to launch three Hollywood studios (Paramount, MGM, and United Artists), anticipated the development of video-on-demand systems that would allow movie fans to view the movies they wanted to see at home, as well as methods for delivering a movie electronically to thousands of theaters, saving the studios the cost of making film prints.

A few years later, in 1954, Albert Abramson, a CBS television engineer, published an article titled, “A Motion-Picture Studio of 1968.” In it, he sketched out how digital cinematography and a film-free distribution system would work: movies would be shot with electronic cameras, and then “sent by radio-relay or coaxial cable to the theaters. Five or fifty theaters in an area may be receiving the same program. An area may cover the whole state, a county, or just a large city. But no theater is shipped the actual picture tape.” Abramson also expected that by 1968, a new generation of electronic cameras would be totally self-contained and cordless – capable of capturing 3-D imagery and transmitting it wirelessly back to the production center.

Netflix/Roku Alliance ... USC's Anytime/Anywhere Content Lab ... More with Spielberg and Lucas

- The WSJ, Wired, and TechCrunch all have news and reviews of a new $99 set-top box from Roku, which will deliver movies from Netflix. From the Journal:

At $99.99, the Netflix set-top box is priced like a DVD player and is as simple to hook up to a television. A high-speed Internet connection can either be plugged into the box or the device can pick up a wireless signal.

Netflix's new set-top box, made by Roku, will stream movies from Netflix's library directly to customers' televisions.
Similar Internet-to-TV devices made by Apple Inc. and Vudu Inc. cost $229 to $295.

"We think this is something that offers a big value at a low cost," said Reed Hastings, Netflix's chief executive officer.

The Netflix box, made by Silicon Valley startup Roku Inc., is the first of several devices that will pipe Netflix's streaming service to TV sets. South Korea's LG Electronics is expected to include the streaming capability in a Blu-ray DVD player that it plans to debut during the second half of this year.

Wired writes:

Choosing content to watch is done on your computer, using the familiar Netflix interface. Anything that’s available for instant viewing can be added to the player’s queue -- in fact, the box checks your DVD queue and adds any available content to the Roku player automatically. The upside is that browsing the amount of content on Netflix is much easier on a computer than TV; the downside is that you’ll find yourself wanting your laptop by your side.

What's not to like? Well, the choices are still limited. Netflix has 100,000 DVDs available, but only 10% of them can be procured for streaming. Also, fast forwarding and rewinding is a bit of a chore, given the limitations of video streaming, although the player smartly displays a visual time line of scenes to help with navigation.

$99 seems to me to be a decent price point for a set-top box... though there's still the issue of setting it up, which can be intimidating for many.

- Jon Healy of the LA Times pays a visit to the Anytime/Anywhere Content Lab at USC, where they assess new entertainment technologies for the home. From the post:

David Wertheimer, the ETC's executive director and a former digital guru at Paramount, said that while studios focus on their product, the lab concentrates on the user. The hope, he said, is that its work will show studios and tech companies how to "meet in the middle and provide new kinds of products" that appeal to the next generation of consumers. In addition to interviewing USC students on campus every week about their media consumption habits and attitudes, the ETC brings about 20 students into the lab to talk to its board and try out some of the gear it has assembled.

- Entertainment Weekly has a nice, long Q&A with Lucas and Spielberg. From it:

How much did George nag you to shoot film-free, with digital cameras, the way he did on the Star Wars prequels?

SPIELBERG: All through three years of preparation. It's like he was sending these huge 88 [millimeter artillery] shells to soften the beach, y'know? He never swears at me. He never uses profanity. But he calls me a lot of names. And in his creative name-calling, he topped himself on this one, trying to get me to do this digitally.

What did he call you?

SPIELBERG: I guess the worst thing he ever called me was old-fashioned. But I celebrate that. He knows me like a brother. It's true, I am old-fashioned.
LUCAS: I think the word ''Luddite'' came into it. In a very heated discussion.
SPIELBERG: I said I wasn't, I was Jewish! [Laughter]
LUCAS: The end of it is, I said, ''Look, Steve, this is your movie. You get to do it your way.'' And in the end, I didn't force Steven to do it. That doesn't mean I didn't pester him, and tease him, and get on him all the time.
SPIELBERG: It was all 35-millimeter, chemically processed film.... I like cutting the images on film. I'm the only person left cutting on film.
LUCAS: And I'm the guy that invented digital editing. But we coexist. I mean, I also like widescreen and color. Steven and Marty [Scorsese] have gone back and shot in black-and-white [on Schindler's List and Raging Bull, respectively]. I don't get on their case and say, ''Oh my God, this is a terrible thing, why are you going backwards?'' I say, ''That's your choice, and I can appreciate it.''

Who's Frustrated Now? Katzenberg.

In the early 2000s, it was director George Lucas who was persistently peeved at how slow theater-owners were to install digital cinema equipment; he wanted more screens to show 'Attack of the Clones' and 'Revenge of the Sith.' ('Phantom Menace' was shown on just four digital screens as a test, in 1999.)

Now, in the latter part of the decade, it's DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg who is frustrated at how slow big multiplex operators have been to install 3-D digital projection gear. From Variety:

"In the last 30 days, things have not progressed as well as I had hoped, expected and, quite frankly, been committed to, by all the parties involved," Katzenberg said in response to an analyst's question. "It's ongoing as we speak literally now, but in terms of getting the big three (exhibitors: Regal, Cinemark and AMC) on board and actively moving forward, I feel as though things have dragged along, and it's been pretty disappointing."

Tensions are simmering on both sides of the issue, as the major studios and the top three circuits try to hammer out the size of the "virtual print fee" that studios will pay to distribute their pics digitally, which would be used to defray the costs of digital projector installations.

Katzenberg is hoping there will be 5000 3-D capable screens in the US by next March, when DWA will release 'Monsters vs. Aliens.'

WSLD: What Should Lucasfilm Do?

Over the weekend, I watched 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' with my niece and nephew, who own the whole Indy series on DVD. (My nephew, 5, does a mean imitation of Short Round, from 'Temple of Doom.')

One thing I noticed: Lucasfilm still offers none of its movies, neither 'Indy' nor 'Star Wars,' as a digital download. You can't buy them on Movielink, CinemaNow, Unbox, or iTunes. Interesting strategy from a company that prides itself on being in the technological vanguard...you can either buy the DVDs, or hunt for an illicit digital version on the peer-to-peer networks.

Here are two questions to ponder: why wouldn't Lucasfilm release the 'Indy' trilogy online in advance of next year's new installment, 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' (out May 22nd, 2008)? And if they did, what might they do to promote it?

- What if they offered three or four great clips from each movie, which bloggers and Web site publishers could embed? (The clips might be followed by a post-roll ad promoting the availability of the full movie.)

- What if they offered "sides" from a few famous scenes, which savvy users could edit themselves into: imagine your kid sister running from the giant ball at the beginning of 'Raiders.'

- What if they added 'extras' and 'bonus material' to the download -- something few studios have done with their Internet releases.

- Or what if they experimented with a slightly lower price for the download-to-own version, to see if fans would respond? IE, could you sell a million downloads at $6.99, where you might only sell half a million at $9.99?

- What if Lucasfilm partnered with the guys who made a shot-for-shot remake of 'Raiders,' and released it free on YouTube or another video-sharing site, with an intro from George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, promoting the availability of the originals. (The trailer of the remake is here.

What would you try, if you had the 'Indy' movies in your catalog?

Ridley Scott on 'Blade Runner' ... Will Fans Set Reasonable Prices for Radiohead's New Album?

- Wired has a lengthy Q&A (in text and audio) with 'Blade Runner' director Ridley Scott, on the occasion of the movie's 25th anniversary (has it really been that long?) From the interview:

Scott: ...With digital the painting book is unlimited, and there are advantages and disadvantages, you know. The world in, say, Lord of the Rings would have been nothing like as impressive as that 30 years ago, as it is today where he can literally do anything. Although I must say Star Wars was one of the first — the one that George [Lucas] directed is still, honestly, the best by far. There was the beginning of some interesting digital thinking in that one. [Stanley] Kubrick really showed the way with 2001: [A Space Odyssey], where he had some very simple variations and versions of digital work. It was not digital so much as computer-driven shots. And that was [Douglas] Trumbull. Trumbull was working with Stanley. They got through that pretty magnificently. That was the first of the really great science fictions, where I went, "Wow, that works." Everything up to that one, I always felt, was a bit too much fantasy and not enough reality.

Wired: But that's digitally controlled cameras, which is really — I suppose the mechanical precision is related to current CGI. But today you have a plastic universe. You generate it the way you want it to look.

Scott: You can't say it's not as good, because good things have come out of it, like the variations of some films where they've really used it discerningly, I think is the best way of putting it, rather than going to massive overkill, which is when it becomes the end, not the means. And that's OK, because there are audiences who want that, right? I still have to have the story, so the digital is purely not the end. It's the means to the end.

- Radiohead will offer its new album, 'In Rainbows,' only on its own site, and the band will let fans set the price they want to pay, according to the Wall Street Journal. From the story:

By letting consumers dictate what they will pay for a digital copy of the album, the band will test theories of online pricing that have been the subject of much speculation in recent years -- most notably, the notion that fans will pay a fair price for downloads if given the freedom to do so on their own terms.

At the same time, the digital-sales setup goes against the grain of the standard set by Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store, where music is generally priced at a uniform 99 cents a song and $10 or so an album. Radiohead hasn't made its music available for sale on iTunes, apparently because the band wants to sell only full albums and not let users pick and choose songs.

That'll be a cool experiment to watch.

'Kodak's Reign in Hollywood Threatened by Digital Cinema'

Among the most entertaining people to talk to in the entertainment industry are Kodak executives.

At ShoWest in 1999, Kodak exec Bob Mayson proclaimed that digital cinema would never happen until directors and producers decided to back it. Later that day, George Lucas announced that 'Star Wars: Episode I' would be shown digitally in four theaters later that summer. My favorite quote from that year's ShoWest coverage:

“That sound you heard during the Star Wars trailer was 20 guys from Kodak jumping off the roof of the hotel,” quipped one exhibitor.

This week, Dow Jones has an update on Kodak's digital cinema efforts, and it seems like not much as changed. AccessIT, the leader in converting theaters to digital cinema, has converted 3,000 screens. Kodak has 80. From the piece:

Mary Jane Hellyar, president of Kodak's film products group, said the company's goal is to position itself to be competitive, not necessarily move to grab the dominant market share right out of the gate. "The numbers are reflective of the strategy," she said.

"We're learning from our installations and also learning from what others are doing in the marketplace. It is our goal to be a key player in this space, making sure we're positioned to have the kind of offering that the industry would expect," Hellyar said.