Stan Winston on Art & Innovation

Special effects innovator Stan Winston died on Sunday, at 62. He'd won four Academy Awards for his work in movies such as 'Aliens' and 'Jurassic Park.' Here's the LA Times obituary.

I interviewed Winston in 2005. He told me that he was "a storyteller and an artist first."

"For me, the way that I've been able to have had the chance to be innovative technically is to think innovative thoughts artistically. The art has to come in front of the technology."

Making a movie, Winston told me, "is the most collaborative art form of all time. Every artist is not only an artist, but a tool for another artist, and at the top of that food chain is the director."

We talked a lot about his collaborations with James Cameron and Steven Spielberg ... and how they often volleyed back and forth on the best way to achieve an effect -- stop-motion, CGI, animatronics, etc.

"Every brilliant director I've worked with has been my partner in creating new technology," Winston said. When Spielberg asked him if he could build a 25-foot dinosaur for 'Jurassic Park' - a T. rex that could act - Winston said, "I don't have a clue. But we'll figure it out, because that's what we do."

Winston was clearly someone who had great fun doing breakthrough work.

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.''

Spielberg Concedes He May One Day Have to Shoot Digitally...

...but he hopes it isn't soon.

From some Chicago Tribune Cannes coverage:

"Making a film on celluloid," [Spielberg] said, is a threatened mode of expression.

"Digital cinema is inevitable. It's right around the corner. And someday," said Spielberg, "even I will have to convert."

The official Cannes site has a slightly longer Spielberg quote that offers some more nuance:

"The film is being released digitally on a lot of screens, about 300. Making a film digitally and releasing a film in the same digital process gives a beautiful image. It creates an extraordinarily clean, sharp image, but making a film on celluloid - as I’d like to do with all of my pictures –then transferring, releasing it, and projecting it digitally is a very inferior image. So the decision to go out to a vast number of motion picture theatres was a simple decision for me to make. But digital cinema is inevitable, it’s right around the corner and even someday I will have to convert, but right now I love film.”

How 'Crystal Skull' Almost Didn't Have a Digital Release

Variety's Pamela McClintock writes today about the continuing spat over whether the digital 3-D roll-out is proceeding quickly enough. But there's an interesting aside in it about the plain old 2-D digital release of the new 'Indiana Jones' movie.

McClintock writes:

There was an outcry among theater owners earlier this year when Par suggested it wouldn't supply digital prints of Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," because Spielberg wanted the movie played only as film on 35mm screens. Filmmakers including Spielberg sometimes balk at having their movies shown in digital when they were shot on film.

Not providing a film like "Crystal Skull" on digital would slight theater owners who have made the conversion, according to exhibs. Theater owners have long argued that there's no reason to make the transition if the product isn't there.

Par changed its position and will be releasing digital prints of "Indiana Jones." Exhibs aren't entirely mollified, though, since digital prints will go only to those houses where all the screens are digital. If there's a mix of screens in a theater, that theater will get only a film print.

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?

Lotsa Tuesday Links: Mark Cuban + Video...Unbox + TiVo...Technicolor + Satellites...Warner + Total HD...Spielberg + EA...And More

- Mark Cuban has some hypotheses about the value of video. Number 5 is especially interesting, and one thing I've been focusing on in my presentations and panel discussions lately:

5. The greater the number of content alternatives at any given point in time, the more expensive it is for any given piece of content to acquire an incremental viewer. The cost may come in the form of investment into the production of the content, advertising, promotion or placement. It may come in the form of sweat equity from hustling to promote the content.

- TiVo users can now order Amazon Unbox movies directly from their television set, rather than from a Web-connected computer.

- Technicolor Digital Cinema says 'Transformers' is the first movie sent by satellite to theaters in the US and Europe.

- Warner's Total HD discs, which offer a movie in Blu-ray format on one side and HD DVD on the other, have been delayed until 2008. Is that the same thing as dead in the water?

- The Wall Street Journal reports on what Spielberg has been working on in his partnership with videogame developer Electronic Arts.

- A fun story about copyright squabbles on YouTube; in the case of Uri Geller, the site may actually have been too quick in removing a video from its library.

- The schedule for Comic-Con 2007.