Video: Next Directions for Entertainment

I had fun sitting down in February to talk with Larry Jordan, one of the pioneers of non-linear editing and the publisher of the site HDFilmTools. We talked a bit about my two recent books, Inventing the Movies and Fans, Friends & Followers, but largely we focused on the ways the entertainment industry is changing for individual content creators -- the new opportunities and challenges that are emerging.

Here's Part I (we talk about innovators and those who resist innovation in Hollywood):



Part II (begins with Larry asking, "Where is the studio system heading?"):



And Part III (why you need to cultivate your own fan base):

Audio: Panel on the Future of Hollywood, from USC

Thursday night's panel at USC's Annenberg School was a lot of fun... I'm posting some rough audio of about half the conversation here. The question it begins with is: "What's the biggest opportunity in the entertainment industry today?" It goes on to cover indie distribution, Internet content, and digital 3-D production.

The panelists were:

- Cliff Plumer, CEO, Digital Domain
- Steve Schklair, CEO, 3ality Digital Systems
- Evan Spiridellis, co-founder, JibJab Media.
- Brian J. Terwilliger, CEO, Terwilliger Productions and Producer/Director of "One Six Right"
- David Wertheimer, former president of Paramount Digital Entertainment and current CEO of the Entertainment Technology Center @ USC

Here's the MP3 file... or just click play below. It's about 30 minutes long.



Here's some Annenberg coverage of the event.

Thanks to Elisa Wiefel Schrieber, Giovanna Carrera, Z Holly, and Dean Wilson for making this event happen!

Talking Tech & the Movies, on KCRW

The folks who produce KCRW's weekly show "The Business" were nice enough to have me on this week (taped a week or two ago...) The show focuses on the movie industry (what other Business could there possibly be in LA?)

This week's edition has me talking about technology's role in the cinema, and the Science and Technology Academy Awards, handed out earlier this month.

And also some guy named Dean Devlin talking about his all-digital production pipeline for the new TNT show 'Leverage.'

You can listen to it or download it here.

I'm in LA for the rest of the week, and it's surprising me how many people listen to KCRW (an NPR affiliate based in Santa Monica.)

Oh, and one more self-promotional mention of Thursday evening's big event at USC. Free. See you there...

'Inventing the Movies': Video, Magazine Article

Fora.TV attended a book presentation I gave in October at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, CA, and they've just posted the video on their site.

And CIO Magazine recently published a piece based on the book, headlined "What CIOs Can Learn from Hollywood." Here's the opening:

The movie industry is full of prima donnas, overpaid incompetents and people who talk endlessly just for the pure pleasure of it. Nothing like your industry, is it?

Hollywood, with its glittery red carpet premieres, may not seem to have much in common with banking, health care or auto manufacturing. But I believe it shares a key trait with every large, well-established industry: how it responds to new business models and technologies.

For more than a century, every time an important innovation knocked on Hollywood's door, the industry treated it like a homely auditioner—giving it the cold shoulder and trying to show it the door. The movie industry ignored or tried to stave off sound, color, television, home video, computer animation, and digital editing and cinematography before realizing that each revolution would help grow the business, ensure its cultural relevance and expand the creative possibilities.

The book's Web site is here.

Video: 'Inventing the Movies' talk at Google

Google just posted the video from my "Authors@Google" talk last month. It focuses on (what else?) Hollywood's love-hate relationship with new technologies. It was fun to give it at Google, of course, since they're in the midst of being sued by Viacom over copyright infringement on YouTube... one of the biggest media vs. tech cases since the Betamax.

Thanks to Kim Weisberg and Ross Peter Nelson for hosting me and treating me to lunch in one of the Google-terias!

(Please rate it and post a comment if you are so inclined!)

Last Two 'Inventing the Movies' Talks for 2008

I'm giving my final two presentations about Inventing the Movies for the year. The first is this Wednesday at the Museum of Science in Boston, at 7 PM; the second is December 10th at the Portsmouth Public Library in New Hampshire, at 5:30 PM. Both are free -- and if you're in the area (or have friends who are), perhaps you'll attend.

This is the same talk I've given recently at Disney, Netflix, Google, Industrial LIght & Magic, and the Rome Film Festival. There are lots of movie clips and historic photos. The talk does three things:

- Presents the complete technological history of Hollywood, in 45 minutes or less
- Explores the barriers that innovators face when they try to introduce new ideas to an established industry
- Challenges your knowledge of movie trivia.

Gabbing About What the Future Holds for Filmmakers

Filmmaker Magazine Editor Scott Macaulay and I had a chance to chat in October about where new technologies are taking the movie business. It was a really enjoyable conversation -- and the core of it is well-captured in the Q&A that appears in the fall issue of the mag. Here's the opening:

Q. You‘ve written a book about innovation in the media arts, and one recent innovation within our new digital world appears to be the decimation of traditional ways in which artists are paid for their work. Do you think there will be a countervailing innovation that will allow artists to get paid again, or, as [Wired Magazine editor] Chris Anderson argues, is all digital media destined to be free?

A. Well, I hope that innovation will offer ways for filmmakers to capture lots of value from their work. I‘m pro making money from creative work. I‘m a writer, that‘s what I do. I worry, though, that preserving the idea of being paid cash for the privilege of watching your movie, whether it‘s a download or a DVD, may be under threat. I had a conversation with one of my students. He has never bought a movie on iTunes, he doesn‘t buy a lot of music, and he said, “Your book and Web site are great — I downloaded the three free chapters, but I haven‘t bought the book.” I think that‘s kind of representative of the fact we may be heading towards the Chris Anderson “giving a lot away for free” economy. The challenge is going to be figuring out the new business models. Maybe they are ad-supported or maybe everyone needs a benefactor, a Medici family backing you up. Or maybe it‘s something else we haven‘t discovered yet.

Q. It‘s so ironic, because all these new models harken back to the oldest artist-support models there are. The patronage model goes back to the 15th century, and the idea that the artist is a traveling showman dates from before recorded media.

A. Yeah, maybe filmmakers will have to make money at live screenings where the audience interacts with them and has a cocktail before the movie and a Q and A after. Maybe it will be a little bit like the road shows of old. I understand, though, that a lot of filmmakers, like Hollywood studios, want to preserve their ability to sell DVDs, which have a great profit margin built into them. But I just know that DVDs are not going to have an infinite lifespan. Physical media is clearly going away. Even Blu-ray DVDs are going to go away at some point.

The Internet: Bigger Than TV?

I've never been called a "historian" before... and I'm sure plenty of real historians would object... but here's an interview I did with Liz Gannes of NewTeeVee last Sunday night.

In it, I make the claim that the Internet as a delivery mechanism for video is more important than television. Television was great, but it only enabled media companies to distribute their content in a new way. The Internet allows anyone to distribute content, reach global audiences, and, ideally, make money.

This Week's Travels

I left on Tuesday for LA and SF, from Boston. Since then, I've visited folks at the Walt Disney Company, JibJab Media, Google, and Pixar. I head to Netflix on Monday.

I've been giving talks to promote the book, and interviewing people as well.

Also, The Conversation began yesterday at the Pacific Film Archive theater, so that has been keeping me busy. (I helped organize it, along with folks like Tiffany Shlain, Ken Goldberg, Lance Weiler, Shayne Gilbert, Alyssa Stern, etc. etc.)

All of which is to say: I have a *lot* of stuff to blog. But not until tomorrow...

But if you want to hear about the book for the low, low price of $15 (includes pizza and beverages), come to the Hillside Club in Berkeley on Sunday at 6 PM (or tell your friends.) The talk presents the complete technological history of Hollywood in 40 minutes. Then we do Q&A and you tell me what I left out.

;)

Panel Video: Tech @ The Movies

Here's some video taken at an event in Cambridge, MA last month called "Tech @ The Movies." It focused on the role that Massachusetts companies are playing (and have played in the past) in the technological evolution of the movie industry. Description and cast of characters below.

Massachusetts companies have played a pivotal role in the evolution of Hollywood. Movies might still be in black-and-white -- and we might never have had "The Wizard of Oz" -- if not for Technicolor, founded by Massachusetts entrepreneurs. And Avid Technology won an Oscar in the 1990s for introducing computers to the movie editing process. You'll hear from a panel of technology innovators who're changing the way movies get made in the 21st century -- helping directors create special effects or helping movie fans buy their favorite pics in digital form. Journalist Scott Kirsner will introduce the panel with a short, illustrated overview of his new book Inventing the Movies, which tells the heretofore untold technological history of Hollywood -- including the stories of Avid and Technicolor.

Panelists:

-Jim Flynn, Founder & CEO, EZTakes and iArthouse

-Jeff Kleiser, CEO, Synthespian Studios; Visual Effects Artist on "Fantastic Four," "X-Men: The Last Stand," and "Tron"

-Patrick McLean, Senior Product Manager, Avid Technology

- Katherine Hays, CEO, GenArts

-Dave Waller, Founder, Brickyard VFX

Talking Hollywood History with Filmmaker Cass Warner Sperling

At the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills earlier this week, I had a chance to sit down with author and filmmaker Cass Warner Sperling.

Her documentary The Brothers Warner premiered on PBS last month as part of the "American Masters" series. Two questions I wanted to ask: how did she get the film onto PBS, and what are her other distribution plans?

But we also talked about Cass' famous ancestors. Her grandfather Harry was one of the four original Warner brothers who founded the great studio. Since my new book deals with the way the Warner brothers helped usher in the sound era (they were also early proponents of Technicolor), I wanted to talk about some of that history. Cass tries to set me straight about whether her grandfather ever really said, "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"



The audio is also here in MP3 form.

There's some video from her film here (in non-embeddable form).

Lots more multimedia about 'Inventing the Movies'

This was a big week for stuff related to Inventing the Movies showing up online...including:

• Video interview with David Tamés of Kino-Eye.com.
  
• Podcast with Susan Heilman of the Museum of Science in Boston, where I'll be giving a talk on November 12th.
  
• A review of the book by software entrepreneur Doug Levin, founder of Black Duck Software
  
• Interview with Andy Plesser of Blip.tv, which talks both about the book and The Conversation, a conference I'm involved with that takes place October 17th and 18th in the SF Bay Area. (Embedded below.)
  

Podcast Conversation with Me & Peter Broderick

To help SXSW launch a new podcast series, Studio SX Online, distribution consultant Peter Broderick and I recorded a conversation last month... focusing mainly on my book Inventing the Movies, but also discussing the broader topic of technological change in the movies -- and the opportunities it creates for filmmakers.

The SXSW site has a 17-minute version of the chat. I've also posted the full, 28-minute conversation (in MP3 form).

Here's the description:

In our first podcast Indie film guru Peter Broderick interviews Scott Kirsner about Scott's new book, "Inventing the Movies," which tells the story of Hollywood's love-hate relationship with new ideas and new technologies, from the days of Thomas Edison to the era of YouTube and the iPod. Peter and Scott also discuss digital projection and cinematography, emerging opportunities for indie filmmakers today, the initial reaction to Dogma 95, experiments by filmmakers like Jonathan Caouette and Robert Greenwald, and how festivals are changing.

'Inventing the Movies' on New York Times "Tech Talk" podcast

I promise this won't turn into Le Blog De Perpetual Self-Promotion, but just a quick link to something that was fun to do: the New York Times' weekly "Tech Talk" podcast (MP3 link). Show notes here.

J.D. Biersdorfer, the host, asked about some the reasons Hollywood reflexively fights new technologies, and also for some predictions about new developments that we'll see over the next few years. (I suggested that movie theaters themselves need to evolve... or else.)

In BusinessWeek: "Innovation Lessons from Hollywood"

BusinessWeek Online ran a piece this week related to Inventing the Movies, titled "Innovation Lessons from Hollywood."

From the piece:

Ever since Thomas Edison and Kodak founder George Eastman helped invent the movie industry in the 19th century, the people who populate it have tended to give the cold shoulder to every new tool, technology, or business model that comes along. From sound to color, television to home video, computer animation to the Internet, each new idea has been dubbed too expensive, too unreliable, just a fad, or a threat to existing business models.

And yet if Hollywood hadn't eventually embraced each of these innovations, it's unlikely that the business would have survived.

Hollywood, it turns out, isn't so different from every other successful, established industry—from health care to financial services to auto manufacturing. Amazing amounts of energy are spent fighting ideas with the potential to expand the business and enable it to survive.

Along with it was a list of "18 People Who Changed Hollywood."

Sundance's Role as a Tech Proving Ground

The FilmInFocus Web site, run by Focus Features, has an exclusive out-take from Inventing the Movies -- essentially a short chapter about the role that the Sundance Film Festival plays in testing and promoting new technologies.

From the opening:

For ten days every January, Park City, Utah becomes a microcosm of the independent film world: there are ambitious young filmmakers vying to get their movies noticed, passionate cinephiles debating what’s worth seeing, and acquisitions executives looking to pick up the next 'Napoleon Dynamite' on the cheap, for eventual nationwide release.

The Sundance Film Festival wasn’t explicitly intended to promote the marriage of indie filmmaking and new technologies, but for more than two decades, since Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute took over an event that had been born as the Utah/US Film Festival, it has done more than any other festival to make that marriage happen.

“…I'm about storytelling and content,” Redford told an audience at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2005, “and technology is not to be an end unto itself, it’s a means to an end.” In his talk at the annual trade show in Las Vegas, Redford used the word “democratization” several times. He saw technology as a key that would unlock the door to filmmaking, making it easier for any talented storyteller who wanted to express herself do so. “…Now the artist is going to be freer and have more protections in terms of their own individual voices,” he said, “and Sundance is basically an organization, a non-profit organization, that supports the ability of new artists to have a place to work and to be free of restrictions, so risks won’t be considered a failure, it will be considered a sign of growth.”

You can keep reading here.

'Inventing the Movies' excerpt in Variety, and Book Talk in Bay Area

Variety was nice enough to run an excerpt from my new book Inventing the Movies this week. It deals with some of the early interactions between Pixar and Disney.

They also ran some "exclusive" content -- a list of several of the worst predictions ever about the future of the movies.

Also: If you live in the San Francisco area, I'll be giving a (free) public talk about the book on October 19th in Berkeley, at the Hillside Club. More info about that and other events is here.

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.

CinemaTech on NPR This Friday

Just found out that I'll be on NPR's "Science Friday" program tomorrow (Friday, 8.22.08), talking about my new book Inventing the Movies.

My segment will be from 12:30 to 1 PM Pacific time/3:30 to 4 PM Eastern. You can listen to it live online, or on the old-school radio airwaves, courtesy of Signore Marconi.

I'd love it if any CinemaTech readers felt inclined to call in...since no one knows better than you guys how the movie industry adopts (and often resists adopting) new technologies, which will be the subject of the segment. The 800 number is 800.989.8255 (good only during the show's broadcast.)

Also, just in time: the book's site is now live, with lots of bonus material, audio, and video.

Cinematographers and Digital Cameras: Why the Wait?

I adapted a section of my new book "Inventing the Movies" to run in the newsletter of the Digital Cinema Society, a group run by cinematographer James Mathers. It touches on the hesitance (as I see it) among top cinematographers to test and then adopt digital cameras.

From the excerpt:

At least since 1972, there have been discussions in Hollywood about the benefits of using electronic cameras on the movie set. One of the pioneers was Lee Garmes, who had begun his career in 1918 as a camera operator for silent films, cranking the camera by hand. As a cinematographer, Garmes had shot the original Howard Hawks Scarface in 1932, and a large portion of Gone With the Wind. He'd also won an Academy Award for Shanghai Express, directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich.

In 1972, at a gathering at the American Society of Cinematographers clubhouse in Hollywood, Garmes, a past president of the group, announced that he'd just finished shooting a feature on videotape, and “hoped never to see another piece of film.” The movie was Why, a drama about teen suicide, commissioned by Technicolor as an experiment in transferring material shot on videotape to 35-millimeter film for theatrical release. But Garmes may have made shooting with video sound too easy for his peers' liking, as when he told American Cinematographer magazine, “Looking at the monitors, the job was so easy. I could have phoned it in.” Most cinematographers preferred for their work to seem complicated, mysterious, magical.

Into the 21st century, proponents of digital cinematography - most notably George Lucas - have continued to face skepticism.

Mathers also posts his own reply to the excerpt, in which he says:

I’m currently well into Scott Kirsner’s book, enjoying it a lot, and seeing many similarities in Hollywood’s technological history to the modern Innovators on the scene today. However, I can’t abide by statements which seem to suggest that Cinematographers are interested in maintaining the status quo only to make their work seem “complicated,” or for fear of looking like “novices,” or only in an effort to maintain their status on set by requiring an unnecessarily large crew.

Modern Cinematography is indeed complicated, whether captured on film or new digital formats. Why should we Cinematographers seek out new technology only for the sake of being on the bleeding edge? If we have tried and true tools that have reliably stood the test of time, why jettison them before better tools arrive to serve our purposes? And nothing makes the hair on a Cinematographer’s neck stand up faster than the implication that with Digital less crew and equipment are needed, because somehow you don’t have to light as much. We are constantly in search of the best tools, not just the newest; and it’s only fear of Producers buying into this type of fantasy that truly worries us. These misplaced attitudes could rob us of the resources we need to do our jobs in controlling light and shadow while serving as the visual guardians of the motion picture image.

(The book is available here in paperback form, and here in e-book/PDF form.)