Film Pirates

The Motion Picture Association of America has been dealing with movie piracy since long before the creation of Web 2.0, but today the MPAA is seeing severe losses of revenue because of this new trend of illegal file sharing. Unlike a pirated DVD being sold on the street, once a movie is uploaded onto the internet can be copied an infinite amount of times and easily downloaded by anyone who has a computer.

In Andrew Keen's book The Cult of the Amateur, he explains the enormous impact that movie piracy has on the industry. Keen says:

But the worst is still to come. As the bandwidth revolution makes it increasingly easy to download movies from the internet, Hollywood is about to become engulfed in the same storm that has wrecked the music industry.

I agree that downloading movies is easy. One can download a full length movie that is still in theaters in less than 30 minutes for free. With technology rapidly advancing, Keen predicts the number of people downloading movies online to jump from 600,000 in 2007 to over 50 million in 2010. He says that 49 million of them will be downloading illegally.

When production companies lose money die to piracy, they are forced to lay off employees and work with a smaller production budget. Potentially compromising the quality of the films they produce. Keen presents an example of this in his book:

At the Walt Disney Company, domestic ticket sales plummeted from $1.5 billion to $962 million between 2003 and 2005, and studio entertainment revenues dropped 13 percent in 2005, largely due to lagging DVD sales. Recently, Disney was forced to eliminate 650 jobs and substantially cut the number of films it produces each year.

I'm hoping that the film industry finds a way to adapt to the changes that web 2.0 is bringing, or else our future will be filled with low-budget cookie-cutter films that no one will even want to pirate.

Fisheye Lenses

Professional filmers in the skateboarding industry use a specific camera setup to capture the best angles for different tricks in different locations. If you watch a skateboarding video you will notice that there are several different types of shots. Some are wide shots of a single trick, some are close ups of a single trick, and some are close ups of several tricks in a "line" where the filmer is following the skateboarder.

To capture the most action in the shot while filming from close up requires a special type of lens called a fisheye. Shown above paired with a Sony VX1000, the fisheye gets it's name because it resembles a fish's eye in both it's look and it's function. The fisheye lens's convex shape allows it to capture video at an extremely wide angle

Fisheye Lenses create an effect called vignetting which makes the outsides of the image less clear and bright than the center. You can actually see the circular edges of the fisheye in the corners of the video. This gives you an idea of how wide the lens actually is.

The video below is a clip from a skateboarding video titled Fully Flared which was produced by the Lakai Footwear team . This clip shows the variety of camera angles and lenses used. See if you can spot when the filmer is using a fisheye and when they are using a normal lens.

MiniDV Trouble

I recently went to Best Buy to buy a Firewire cable and a MiniDV head cleaning kit to try and revive my old camcorder and transfer some old skateboarding footage onto my laptop. After purchasing the items and returning home I tried to use the head cleaner but it failed and proved to me that my 7-year-old camcorder was now obsolete.

I began to search the Internet to see if I could buy a tape deck specifically for transferring video from MiniDV tapes to a computer but had no luck. I realized that I was going to have to buy a new camcorder. I searched Amazon.com to see if I could find some good deals on cameras. I came across the Sony DCR-VX2100, Panasonic Pro AG-DVC30, and Canon GL2. For years I have wanted to own one of these models but they’ve always been a bit out of my price range. After drooling for a bit, I continued on down the list to the cheaper cameras.

While I was browsing through the camcorders I noticed that many of the affordable consumer cameras could film in high definition. Some save the video onto a hard drive, eliminating the need to deal with tapes. Others still use a MiniDV tape but they are a higher resolution HD MiniDV tape. This surprised me because now the HD revolution has reached not only films, but now home video as well. Since I was not too interested in filming in HD and was just looking for a good 3CCD MiniDV camcorder, I continued my search but found nothing worth spending the money on. I decided to save up and put the money I would have spent towards one of the cameras I listed above.

Sometimes the advancement of technology is exciting to me and sometimes it just makes me frustrated. Now if I want to produce professional quality video, sooner or later I will most likely have to move into the realm of High Definition. Leaving me questioning whether or not it is even worth investing in one of the listed cameras. Everything is moving towards becoming completely digital. It might not be long until MiniDV tapes are obsolete.

Producer Jobs

There are now two types of producing jobs that I am interested in. Those are web producing and line producing. I was initially interested in show producing, but after learning about web producing in my Broadcast News class I am looking more into it. I first found out about the position while visiting the Bay News 9 studio and it seemed like a very interesting job.

The show producer’s shift begins with an editorial meeting where they and several other members of the production staff discuss the stories available for coverage. After the meeting the producer sorts through local newspapers, wire sources, and news feeds to decide which stories will go into the day’s newscast. They then must choose the right mix of stories, place the stories in correct order, and make sure the broadcast is precisely timed.

Web producers have a similar job. It is the web producer’s job to make sure that the most important stories are being posted to the website as soon as possible. In news, the Internet is the first priority because it is the quickest way to provide breaking news to the public. The web producer is in charge of the layout of the web page and which graphics accompany each story.

I recently applied for Bay News 9’s summer internship program in producing. I stated in my cover letter that I would like to work with both web producers and show producers, as well as editors, photographers, and reporters. If I am selected for the internship, I think I will gain enough experience to decide on a career that suits me best.

VOs and VO/SOTs

Even though you might have no idea what a VO or VO/SOT is, I’m sure you are more familiar with them than you think if you have ever watched the daily news. These are terms used in the television industry that are short for "voice-over" and "voice-over to sound on tape." Before taking my Broadcast News course I had no idea what either of these were, but I now understand that they are a very important part of a newscast.

A voice-over is a short story, usually around 30 seconds, that is read by an anchor that also incorporates video. The anchor reads the story over the video hence the name “voice-over.” As the anchor reads the story, the footage changes accordingly. For example, my first project was a voice over and when I mentioned Cooper Hall the video was a shot of Cooper Hall. When I was talking about construction the footage or “b-roll” was of construction workers using heavy machinery. If the video does not match the copy, it is known as wallpaper video. This is when video is used just for the sake of using video, which is usually inappropriate.

For my second project I will create a VO/SOT. This is similar to the VO but is about a minute longer and includes a sound bite of someone being interviewed. The voice-over leads up to and introduces the sound bite. After the sound bite the anchor ends the story on camera. Since I will be continuing my story on construction on campus, I will interview a student who has classes near the construction and ask them how much the closure of sidewalks interferes with their commute between classes.

Knowing how to produce a VO and VO/SOT will be very useful to me in my future career as a producer. The show producers are usually responsible for deciding the content of these short stories and how they are put together. Every story you see on the news is a VO, VO/SOT, or a reporter package (a story done by a reporter that includes narration, bites, a stand-up, and accompanying video with natural sound). Next time you watch the news, see if you can distinguish these different types of stories.

Broadcast News Project 1

I recently finished filming for my first project that is due in my Broadcast News class. I was required to film and edit a video and write a voice over to accompany it. I had to find a "hard news" story somewhere on campus so I decided to focus on the construction side on the side of Cooper Hall. In case you haven’t noticed, there is a part of the sidewalk blocked off and a huge hole in the ground surrounded by orange fencing.

In case you're wondering what they're doing, USF's department of Facilities and Planning is installing new pipes as an improvement to the chilled water plant on campus. The plant provides air conditioning and cold water to the campus.

The angle of my project was to focus on how the construction is interfering with transportation on campus. I shot video of students walking around the orange fencing and also video of construction workers using heavy machinery. I turned my project in last week and am eager to find out how I did.

What Comes After HD?

I'm sitting around watching a Blu-Ray movie on my Playstation 3 and I begin to think to myself, "How can video quality get any better than this?" Then I realize that this is the same thing people were thinking when the DVD was invented, or even when the now prehistoric VHS was invented. I thought about my box of old VHS tapes in the attic, most of which I replaced with the DVD version. I then looked at my collection of Blu-Rays and wondered if one day they will be sitting in the attic in a box next to the VHS tapes and DVDs.

I interrupted my movie to do what everyone does nowadays when they have a question. I typed, “what comes after HD?” into Google and began skimming through the results. I came across a technology blog with a post that matched my question. The author of the blog, Christopher Null, listed a few possible technologies that could potentially surpass the HD-DVD.

Lasers have evolved since the first “red lasers” used in CDs and DVDs. Our current Blu Rays and HD DVDs use a “blue laser” which has a shorter-wavelength laser beam, making it possible to pack more data onto a disc. Null says that the next step up would be an “ultraviolet laser,” which could put up to 500 gigabytes onto a disc.

Another possibility still uses lasers, but in a completely different way. Null says that,

Holographic data storage uses lasers to store information in multi-dimensional space instead of just two dimensions, like current optical discs. Theoretically, capacity could be about one trillion bits in a cubic centimeter of storage material, or about 125GB per cc, and maybe a terabyte on something roughly the size of a standard DVD.

Imagine the quality of picture and sound a movie could have if storage capacity is practically limitless.

Flash is a technology that shoves lasers to the side. Researchers have developed a “terabyte thumb drive” that is smaller and more durable than any optical media. As of now pricing is a concern for the technology but Null says that he wouldn’t be surprised if studios start releasing movies on Flash cards by the year 2012.

After researching the technologies in development. It’s hard to think that HD DVD and Blu Ray will be the end. Technology never seems to stop moving forward, capitalizing on itself. I’m happy with my Blu Ray technology now, I’ll try not to think about what new hardware I’ll have to buy next year to "keep up with the Joneses."