Branding The Web: How Advertisers Are Coming To Terms With Their New Platform and How This Is Liberating Creative Agencies

The internet has quickly entrenched itself in the debates of future of media delivery and audience segmentation. Advertising is no different. I have seen a rash of companies specializing in viral production popping up in London and as I am an old fogey often dismissed them as under achieving ad agencies. Scott Kirsner, whose Cinema Tech blog I often read, has given Variety an exclusive except from his recently release book: The Future of Web Video: New Opportunities for Producers, Entrepreneurs, Media Companies and Advertisers. In it, Scott discusses the implications and cultural shift in media agencies resulting from the rise and rise of vial advertising with Jamie Tedford of Arnold Worldwide.

Arnold argues that advertisers are begrudgingly awakening to the reality that they can't just slap their existing TV ads on the net and expect them to spread. Because there is no audience guarantee or even inclination based around 'real' programming, the ad needs to stand alone as 'surprising, funny, new, comical, sexy or provocative'. More often, for security of investment, advertisers are producing a viral version of a TV campaign. This reversioning aims to hook the discerning web viewers and inspire them to forward it on.

Moving on from the demands of this emerging market, are the benefits of working with virals, for example, working on the web provides 'much greater leeway' to be more 'outlandish and controversial'. He provides the example of Smirnoff's hit "Tea Partay" Agency: Bartle Bogle Hegarty URL: http://www.teapartay.com

The internet also provides opportunity to create and control buzz. Expamples that spring to my mind are Apple and The Blair Witch Project. Apple use rumor sites to create 'groundswell' around nearly all of their products. They can leak information when they want to create a buzz or in the lead-up to an event like Macworld or NAB. When the mills get too powerful or don't play the way Apple likes they can curtail the use of acquired NDA info through lawsuits like that with Think Secret. Blair Witch was the phenomenon that spurred movie buzz on the web that inevitably has lead us here. The realism of the film, the amateurism the scariness all conspired as web rumors to catapult the film into the charts and put millions into New Line's pockets. Kirshner and Tedford use the examples of King Kong and VW, but I like mine better.

The final topic of discussion surrounds whether there is an effective way to advertise around short web films including pre and post roll. They argue no. Media buyers are starved for content to place ads on the the 'rates are going through the roof'. Note to self: Make online films and sell advertising space around them. BUT people hate them. they compare the modest rise of iFilm compared to the shear dominance of th market by YouTube. What the don't address is banners , or more cleverly, product placement. If you can establish a relationship with advertisers as a producer of online content, you could generate revenue through product placement not just branded viral film making. Perhaps a good business would be to work within the web film community generating rev for content through facilitating the placement of products in the films themselves. who cares if it is a coke or pepsi or red bull the character drinks on redbull if you leave the film makers to it as much as poss. and the cost to place a product in a web film is way less than a proper film/commercial/tv show, or indeed producing your own viral. My mate Nick was after a business model for us to make millions the other day in the pub. Well, there you go.

They suggest a different approach by trying to figure out how a brand can give you content free of advertising. For example: Pepsi let you have a free song on iTunes when you bought a bottle. I have also seen Cobra beer sponsoring a lot of web based indie film.

As for the future, i concur that it is a bright one, with limitless possibility where one can blur the lines between content and revenue stream, where aggregators abound and the tail seems very long....

I leave you with the idea that branded films can come with the message to do some good as well.

Scrub Up Charlie Brown

I must say, Zach Braff is just cool.
I give Scrubs way more props than Grey's Anatomy.
From Zach's Blog, here the cast of scrubs adr Charlie Brown Christmas, a yule tide classic:

Red Giant Release Colorista

Can't afford Final Touch or similar to grade your masterpiece? Fear not, Stu Maschwitz and Red Giant to the rescue.

The folks you brought you Magic Bullet, have now released Colorista:

What makes Colorista different?

• Precise Color Balance
  Colorista make your whites look white and your talent look their best with controls for modifying shadows, mid-tones and highlights. The familiar Lift, Gamma, Gain color wheels allow for easy adjustment of color balance and luminance with ultrasensitive control for precise results. Additional, Saturation and Exposure options let you makes flesh tones look natural, plus set the highlight and shadow levels exactly.

• Real time DeepColor RT
  Maximize your performance with the power of the DeepColor RT engine inside Colorista. Playback SD and HD (720p) projects in real-time by efficiently using your system’s graphics processing power. The next-generation DeepColor RT engine preserves quality in every application host so that 10-bit projects remain 10-bit.

• Mask with Ease
  Apply the correction just where you need it. With Colorista you can create a simple circular or rectangular shape to isolate a specific zone. No longer is it necessary to pre-mask a shot to deepen the color of a sky or redefine the actionable area of the shot. The animatable controls for area and feather let you work right in the canvas or composer window.

Benefits to using Colorista over the built-in host application tools

• The easiest and fastest 3-way color corrector for After Effects with full support for 8, 16, and 32-bit per channel projects
• Colorista performs like Premiere Pro's standard three way color corrector, but delivers results up to 5x faster with a fast graphics card, now that's productivity
• With Colorista you can finally do full 32-bit color correction at all times, with no shift in shadow colors and area masking directly in the Canvas window in Final Cut Pro. Plus, the exposure settings make it easy to work with common f-stop settings like plus or minus one-half stop
• If you like Motion but yearn for more powerful color correction tools then Colorista delivers with full support for fast GPU rendering and support for 8, 16, and 32-bit float projects
• You can get all the platforms in one package which means no matter what tool you use, you will have a familiar color correction plug-in at hand

Storytelling: Bambi vs Godzilla and BBC's Born Equal

Last night I was really looking forward to the all-star 90 min premier of Born Equal on BBC 1. Dominic Savage's new offering featured the likes of Colin Firth, Robert Carlyle, David Oyelowo and Anne-Marie Duff. Dominic Savage offers the follow about the film:

Born Equal started life as a film about homelessness but, as the director Dominic Savage embarked upon his research, a markedly different film began to take shape.

"When I began to look into the problem of homelessness, my sense was that there was a really big issue around people living in temporary accommodation for long periods of time."

They're known as the 'hidden homeless' because, although they've got a roof over their heads, it's far from being a home."

Savage visited a number of these hostels and met many different people who generously shared their stories with him - stories he says he'll never forget.

"The film shows huge contrasts between people and how they live, their ideas, what they've got and what they haven't got," says Savage, who points out that although the film is set in London, the same contrasts can be seen all over Britain.

"In the end, what the film aspires to achieve is to encourage people to think more about others, care about the less fortunate and be more aware of what's going on around them."

The strength of the cast and the quality of the trailers looked really enticing. Indeed the film was really good. I was however a bit put of by the comment in the Guide(guardian) that said something to the effect that the film is such a downer, it makes you wonder what's the point. A little off put and a little intrigued because at the moment I am gearing up to write a tragedy, I sat on the couch and was also struck by the continued, unrelenting bad luck suffered by all of the characters. Plot-spoiler: no one wins. Not only that, no one ever looks like they are going to win, with the exception of the day at the beach Carlyle and Duff spend together which only acts to foreshadow the inevitable.

At the moment, I am reading a book on plot(Elements of Fiction Writing, by Ansen Dibell) and early on it forewarns of what I feel this film suffers from. Dibell describes the short satire film in which Bambi hops along and then is promptly squashed by Godzilla's foot. End of film. funny as a one liner short, but a feature would be dreadful.

Anytime you're tempted to write a pure-victim story, in which the protagonist(s) doesn't have a chance, think about Bambi Meets Godzilla and try something else.

An Even Battle is More Fun to Watch

Whether the ending is happy or unhappy in the traditional sense, any story needs to be founded on an effective and strongly-felt conflict, in which opposing forces - whether people, ideas, additudes, or a mix - are at least fairly evenly matched, enough so that the final outcome is in doubt... not an utter mismatch.

Oedipus was doomed from the beginning; but he didn't know it, and he was fighting all the way. The emphasis was on the fighting, not the doom. That's what makes the fighting, the wrestling, become engrossing narrative.

Maybe it is here where Savage loses the way. Because the message is in the doom rather than the fight. All of the characters suffer from their their position in life the lot they were given through fate. Be they rich or poor, the suffering through societies structures of inequality effects everyone and everyone will suffer because of it. This message is the point of the film, but is inextricably linked to the doom more than the fight. The fight by every character moves the action, but the film is ultimately about the doom.

In all a superbly acted and crafted film, but I, like the Guardian critic was left wondering why I watched 90 minutes just to see Bambi, squashed.

Spike Lee's Doc Air's on BBC4

A few months back, I covered the chat about the Spike Lee - Katrina Doc 'When the Leeves Broke'. Since then the Films have aired on HBO in the States and gone on to win the Horizons Documentary Prize at Venice and now it is due to make its UK premier with parts 1 and 2 tonight on BBC 4 at 9PM as part of the Storyville series. Sometimes I wish I had the Sky+ or a PVR, as it doesn't finish until 1130 and that is so past my bedtime! I would have thought the film would have found its way on to BBC2, but never mind, I am always pleased to see the multichannels land good acquisitions.

So for those who do have a PVR, Sky+ or even a good old VHS, pop it on record tonight.

Chris Anderson Laments Additudes About The Niche Consumer Products

In a brief post, Chris Anderson defends the Long Tail theory arguing the NYT critic John Pareles is wrong with the following statement pulled from the NYT here:

"The open question is whether those new, quirky, homemade filters will find better art than the old, crassly commercial ones. The most-played songs from unsigned bands on MySpace — some played two million or three million times — tend to be as sappy as anything on the radio; the most-viewed videos on YouTube are novelty bits, and proudly dorky. Mouse-clicking individuals can be as tasteless, in the aggregate, as entertainment professionals."

Anderson argues, quite poignantly, that people's individual interests are refined and have great quality but differ widely. When a majority of people find a similar interest, it is usually a tame one and equates to the 'lowest common denominator that is mass culture'. He argues there is inherently more value in niche interest and therefore the rise of internet proliferated (long Tail) consumption will lead to a better quality of media, art, music etc.

It end's with a rather scathing quote directed at the common likes and dislikes of TV audiences from David Foster Wallace:

"TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests."

Brightcove's Jeremy Allaire Keynote At The Video On The Net Conference

I found this via DV Guru and it makes for a very interesting watch. I have said several times that Brightcove has the right idea to help indies, producers and niche topic video makers reach broad audiences. In a Keynote speech at the 2006 Video on the Net Conference, Brightcove's CEO, Jeremy Allaire prostrates on the future of rich media communications, internet television distribution and content revenue management.

Some of the key things I picked up on were:

50% of all revenue from video comes from direct consumer purchase rather than commercial sponsorship. I thought this was surprising as just this morning I was wonder whether TV is just a vehicle of advertising messages with content sprinkled throughout to keep the viewer watching the ads.

This shows consumers have a strong interest in high quality ad free content. They also have a desire for niche content as well as a desire to own media and experience different forms of media entertainment eg. cinema, HD TV.

The internet in general is used for video distribution in three main fashions:
1) Retail Bucket - iTunes, Amazon.
2) Niche Subscription - Wrestling, MLB.
3) Branded download stores - CBS, Fox eg Survivor.
This is a focused brand - not aggregated.

He would like to see more "mixed mode" where consumer can pay for no commercials or view with commercials for free.

He also sees a need for an open seller platform for consumers and content creators to mingle, share and sell media.

This all is a precursor to mass adoption of consumer video communication.

He then goes into the details of Brightcove's offerings. Have a look. and checkout Brightcove Here

What's Your Fav Celeb Story

Nerve, the topical resource for the perverted, which I obviously check religiously (for the film reviews), has come out with a tepid read of the 40 best celebrity rumors ever.

The golden age of celebrity rumors may be coming to an end. As Britney Spears spreads her legs to the world and Nicole Richie gets arrested driving north in the southbound lane, truth may at last have outstripped semi-fiction.

Here are my fav’s from the countdown:

29. Angelina Jolie and her brother had an incestuous relationship
At the 2000 Oscars, Angelina Jolie raved, “I’m so in love with my brother right now,” and the siblings shared a long kiss on the lips. Many viewers claimed to have seen tongue, igniting the rumor that the actress and her brother, James Haven, were sleeping with each other

26. Courteney Cox bleaches her . . .
In these heady times, bleaching your anus for aesthetic reasons is totally normal. But way back in the mists of the early 2000s, anus-bleaching was still ever so slightly unusual.

22. Michael Jackson slept in a hyberbaric chamber
In September 1986, the National Enquirer ran a page-one photo of the King of Pop sleeping in a large glass tube over the headline, “Michael Jackson’s Bizarre Plan to Live to 150.”

17. Marilyn Manson, sitcom star
Did Marilyn Manson have a rib removed so he could auto-fellate? Did he play nerdy Paul Pfeiffer on late-‘80s sitcom The Wonder Years?

1. Richard Gere and the gerbil
Throughout the ‘80s, accusations of gerbiling (i.e. “coaxing a live gerbil into your rectum for the purposes of sexual pleasure”) haunted several D-listers, including a news anchor in Philly and a Cleveland Browns linebacker, before permanently latching onto Gere, who was allegedly rushed to the hospital for emergency rodent removal. Hearsay ballooned into the most famous celebrity rumor in history when someone faxed dozens of Hollywood offices a fake ASPCA press release claiming that Gere had “abused” a gerbil.

Check out the rest of the list here.

What's Your Fav Celeb Story

Nerve, the topical resource for the perverted, which I obviously check religiously (for the film reviews), has come out with a tepid read of the 40 best celebrity rumors ever.

The golden age of celebrity rumors may be coming to an end. As Britney Spears spreads her legs to the world and Nicole Richie gets arrested driving north in the southbound lane, truth may at last have outstripped semi-fiction.

Here are my fav’s from the countdown:

29. Angelina Jolie and her brother had an incestuous relationship
At the 2000 Oscars, Angelina Jolie raved, “I’m so in love with my brother right now,” and the siblings shared a long kiss on the lips. Many viewers claimed to have seen tongue, igniting the rumor that the actress and her brother, James Haven, were sleeping with each other

26. Courteney Cox bleaches her . . .
In these heady times, bleaching your anus for aesthetic reasons is totally normal. But way back in the mists of the early 2000s, anus-bleaching was still ever so slightly unusual.

22. Michael Jackson slept in a hyberbaric chamber
In September 1986, the National Enquirer ran a page-one photo of the King of Pop sleeping in a large glass tube over the headline, “Michael Jackson’s Bizarre Plan to Live to 150.”

17. Marilyn Manson, sitcom star
Did Marilyn Manson have a rib removed so he could auto-fellate? Did he play nerdy Paul Pfeiffer on late-‘80s sitcom The Wonder Years?

1. Richard Gere and the gerbil
Throughout the ‘80s, accusations of gerbiling (i.e. “coaxing a live gerbil into your rectum for the purposes of sexual pleasure”) haunted several D-listers, including a news anchor in Philly and a Cleveland Browns linebacker, before permanently latching onto Gere, who was allegedly rushed to the hospital for emergency rodent removal. Hearsay ballooned into the most famous celebrity rumor in history when someone faxed dozens of Hollywood offices a fake ASPCA press release claiming that Gere had “abused” a gerbil.

Check out the rest of the list here.

Offline - Losing the Creative Out of the Editor

I think this may come off like a generalization, but I was in a little drinking hole last night with some friends, 2 editors and a flame Op and we were chatting about work.

Here at the Beeb, I am quite grateful to be free from corporate films as they can be quite soul destroying. However, corporates are a very lucrative industry and many post houses who employ great talent and are responsible for quality broadcast and film work wouldn't survive were it not for the income of corporate films.

My Editor Friends were just coming off a stint on the corporates and going into some series work, they too were near the end of their tether with this onslaught of corporate productions and the self important posers that produce them (again a sweeping generalization, I know some really lovely people that produce corporates, we were just a wee bit drunk and bitter). Anyways, they were desperately pleased to be back on the broadcast side.

My other friend , the VFX Guy, lamented the tedium that goes into effects work on longform shows and is quite well placed in a company that now produces commercials, but even then has suffered through week long rotoscoping jobs that made him go a bit cross eyed.

Sometimes it just seems like a lot of the creativity in Post Production has gone. The editor is too often a functional role, realizing the producer's vision rather than using his/her understanding of cadence, juxtaposition and general experience as a craftsman. The restraints of every shrinking budgets means that time and kit suffer. You may have to use crappy software based conversion tools or text/graphic effects plugins. You may have to cram an hour long project into a few week edit. The editor then just has to do what production want, with perhaps only minor exceptions.

I think the VFX artist still retains some mystery about his/her work as most dir/prods just know what they want and have very little clue how to achieve it. But the VFX artists' smoke and mirrors are hiding less and less as the technology (like in editing) becomes more accessible.

On the flipside, I have recently come across a lot of editors who are 'non-technical' offliners, that just cut films together and don't really care to know about the immensely important geeky side of post work. This is a growing trend with the proliferation of freelance Final Cut Pro. Don't get me wrong I am a huge fan of FCP. I love using it, but it is dramatically impacting the post production landscape. The effects are both good and bad. Such editors lack the fundimental post production knowledge to aid their productions into the finishing stages and often leave their Producers in the lurch several stages later in post.

I think the editors who feel as though they make a difference to the majority of their productions and have been able to develop collaborative relationships with prod/dir over a series of projects should feel rather fortunate.

As well as being attacked by lack of money, bedroom guru's and producers going at it alone, the offline editor's craft and creativity is under threat by the changing way films are made. I have been holding on to a studio daily piece that I wanted to highlight as some great work coming out of London, but reading it again today has made me look at it in a new light.


The piece is on the edit of the Killer's new video, Directed by Tim Burton. Have a read and a watch of the video here.

Basically, great opportunity to cut a video with one of a few contemporary auteurs. Amanda James also got he opportunity to use her expertise in benefit of the project.

With music videos it’s important to establish a performance bed and I felt this especially so on this project as Tim had never shot band performance before. His main concern, given his background was naturally the narrative element, so I had to fairly quickly assemble a rough structure so that he would be able to envisage how the performance and narrative would function together throughout the video.

But, what strikes me now is the increasing trend of editors assembling green screen shots. I imagine it is very difficult to do such an edit and feel this again is a place where the editor loses out in the creative process.

Other than a couple of location setups the entire film was shot against green screen, so we had to imagine when and where the skeletons would be... There was no real back and fourth between us as give or take a scene or two, I pretty much had to lock the whole thing down before they could begin.

But in the end Amanda felt she could add to the creative process both through her understanding of music video construction, but also with 'the level of finesse I applied to the effect shots, I guess he’s not used to that being done to such a degree at the offline stage'.

That last statement backs up my point. With the increasing level of vfx work in productions offline editing is again reduced to a functional task rather than a creative one.

I am just lamenting the fact that a once highly regarded creative role is evolving into a 2 class system where the undereducated, underpaid and undervalued are outnumbering the elite. The industry is turning out more and more functional editors and fewer craftsmen. What do you think?

Evolutions in Techology Owe There Development to Indies

Scott Kirshner has written a piece for Film Art Mag - Release Print which is also copied in his blog Cinema Tech where he argues, developments in film technology have been predominately a direct result of independent producers pioneering new ways of working. This is discongruent to Indie's position of opponents to the Studio system. Yet, without these 'mavericks' some of the inventions and conventions that have made Hollywood what it is today might never have been. He also surmises that the future is no different. Digital content is changing the playing field following the footsteps of early adopters.

His points of discussion include...
The Past: Sound, 3-D, Widescreen, Home Video, Animated Films, Digital Cinematography.

The Future: New Distribution Options, Promotion and Marketing, File(Movie) Sharing, Re-mixes and Mash-ups, 3-D (neuvo), Fan-base Cultivation, Finance, Cheap Kit.
This is worth a read.

Scorsese Does DI With a Dash of HD

Digital Content Producer has a lovely story on Scorsese's process in The Departed. For The Departed, Scorsese built off the workflow he used on The Aviator, also covered by Digital Content Producer HERE. But for this post I will concentrate on the former article.

Background:

The Departed weaves through a contemporary film, tones harking back to classic Noir tradition. Scorsese is at home in the past having made exclusively period films for the past 20 years. Utilising references to John Altman classics like signifies connects this film with the gangster genre that he admires so much. The most blatant signifier is lifted from the Howard Hugh original 'Scarface' in which victims are signified my an X in the screen. Some of these are hidden in the light and shadows. Scorsese fondly reflects on the film technique...

...in the most famous case, if you know the picture, when Boris Karloff, playing the gangster, is bowling, hiding out, and gets shot off camera, you just see the ball drop in the runner of the bowling alley. You never see his body. Then, you see somebody put an ‘X’ up on the scoreboard for a strike in bowling.

Scorsese recreates this reference in The Departed with the title sequence in which the main characters are X'd out highlighting their impending doom.

It is with this loving care to detail Scorsese so deftly constructs a world blending both the old and new, in this, his first non-period film in over 20 years...

The Technology:

Classic filmmakers commonly struggle with or rebuff technological advancements. John Ford was so against releasing editorial control to the cutting room, he is remember to have filmed shot for shot as he wanted it put together. I can understand the desire to maintain a wining formula and today technology can easily cloud the aim and art of storytelling. Some directors even regress. I have heard M Knight Shflksotighodsvn edits on a Steinbeck!

Scorsese is none of these...

Very willingly he has ventured into new ways of working and his collaborative nature allows those who are experts in what they do, to make his film better. Visual Effects Supervisor Rob Legato and a bi-coastal effort by Technicolor provided this film with a unique workflow using HDCam SR, DI and DaVinci grading system.

It was a process built upon extensive work done during the HD dailies process at Technicolor New York, when film shot by Ballhaus was transferred to HDCAM-SR tape and given a detailed color pass by Technicolor dailies editor Sam Daley. The HD dailies process gave filmmakers a strong template to follow in finalizing the imagery during the DI, since Scorsese and his team were able to make decisions during production by viewing 1080p 4:4:4 imagery through an NEC iS8 digital projector — almost as good as viewing 2K imagery for all intents and purposes, according to Legato.

At Legato's behest and under the direction of Nakamura's digital intermediate producer, Devin Sterling, and color scientist/Technicolor Digital Intermediate VP of research and development Josh Pines, along with support from the company's New York operation, Technicolor fashioned an exact technical replica of Nakamura's Da Vinci suite in Burbank, Calif., at Technicolor New York, leading to a bi-coastal DI process. As part of that process, Nakamura first did an initial color pass and pre-trims in Burbank, Calif., while Fire editor Ron Barr handled the digital conform and opticals. All imagery was stored as data in a DVS Clipster system.

During that period, Legato and Technicolor engineers came up with a method of transferring the entire HD preview version of the movie to Cineon color space for viewing on the big screen through the same projector as the evolving DI version. This gave Nakamura, as he prepared to bring the movie to Scorsese for final color correction, a chance to more accurately compare the HD version with the 2K version than if he continued viewing preview imagery in HD color space.

The movie was then transferred to HDCAM-SR (4:4:4 1080p) from the uncorrected original 2K data, and that imagery, along with an eight-reel segmented EDL timeline, was transported to New York.

There, in Technicolor's flagship digital color-timing theater, the HDCAM-SR reels were ingested into that room's Clipster system, converting the media back to data at 1920×1080. Viewing the movie on the NEC iS8 projector loaded with the same LUTs written by Pines and used in Burbank, Calif., (with a Christie 2K CP 2000i digital projector), Nakamura then finalized the color correction choices under the watchful eyes of Scorsese, Ballhaus, and Schoonmaker.

With so much preliminary work done during the dailies and preview processes, and with all the primary collaborators gathered in Technicolor's suite in New York, filmmakers say the final color-timing work took just 10 hours over the course of two days.

I think it is so wonderful how much opportunity we now have to gain insight into the working style of master craftsmen. Thank god for the internet.

Why Did John Hughes Stop Directing?

Is a question me and my colleague were pondering this morning as we suffered through the post Christmas party blues whilst turning on the PC to start another day. A quick glance at imdb and one sees a laundry list of children's and family films that Hugh's has been writing and is still writing with great prolificness. But a glance further down sees a skyrocket of successful directorial exploits that we all know an love, brought to an abrupt end with the 1991 Curly Sue:

Curly Sue (1991)
Uncle Buck (1989)
She's Having a Baby (1988)
Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Weird Science (1985)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Sixteen Candles (1984)

So, what happened. A quick search later I stumbled on this hypothesis by FilmFreakCentral.net:

While the "rich" and the "poor" always learn to get along in Hughes' films, there's no question that his allegiance lies with the latter. Consider the quietly devastating passage from Uncle Buck wherein the slovenly, unemployed Buck, flipping through an album at the suburban mansion of his wealthy brother, notices a wedding photo that has been folded to crop Buck out of the picture: Hughes keeps the scene subjective by lingering on the photograph instead of on Buck's reaction, effectively turning sympathy into empathy. But even at that point, his identification with the underclass was starting to seem a little disingenuous, and once you get to Curly Sue, the last film with Hughes at the helm, his portrayal of poverty is downright paternalistic. I firmly believe that a fear of looking like a hypocrite drove him out of the director's chair--you can be Ken Loach or you can be a multi-millionaire (as Hughes had become by crassly exploiting his ability to churn out a screenplay a week).

See the rest of their piece on John Hughes HERE.

Reel Pop Discusses What Might Have Been...

Steve at Reel Pop has a very amusing collection of alternative endings of some of cinemas classics. I think we don't appreciate generally how different films might have been. Some for the better most for the worse. Taken out of context I really paused while going through these to think about how we piece together stories and the direction we go with the films we make is really our own to tell. Well, that is the romantic. Truth be told the ending that makes the final cut in most movies are generally the one thought best by exec producers.

I particularly like the Little Shop of Horrors more bleak ending. So I copied it in here. But have a look at the rest of Steve's list.




I also like the commentary on how retailers could save DVD sales:

The studios hit upon a great idea when they included deleted scenes and alternate endings to DVDs. Those extras were incentives for people to buy movies they'd already seen, and it worked. Retailers like Wal-Mart should hew to that formula with digital downloads. Instead, they're asking customers to buy the DVD and then pay extra for the download. But if Wal-Mart offered those downloads for free, it would give consumers incentives to continue buying DVDs, and allow Wal-Mart to continue making money on DVDs, which will only lose market share as digital downloads become common practice. Help the consumer, don't make it harder.

Plugins! -What's Out There.

Studio Daily has a comprehensive wrap-up of the latest and greatest available to stretch, melt, ramp, grade, filmise your masterpiece.
Here are some excerpts which rank high on my list:


Automatic Duck
Products: Pro Import AE 3.0 (for AE 7), Pro Import FCP 2.01, Pro Export FCP 3.04, Pro Import CMB
Summary: Import timelines and compositions from a variety of editing and compositing packages into AE, Avid, FCP, Combustion; export comps from FCP into Avid Platforms: Mac OS X; Mac Universal (Pro Import/Pro Export FCP only)
Hosts: AE, FCP, AVX, CMB
www.automaticduck.com
Click here for a Quick Tip on How to Complete A High-Res Conform in AE From Offline Proxies in FCP Or Avid


Belle Nuit
Products: Mimikri, Subtitler, MacMediaSift
Summary: Conform, in HD, color corrections made in SD (Mimikri)
Platforms: Mac OS X
Host: AE, FCP
www.belle-nuit.com; www.mimikri.ch

Boris FX, Inc.
Products: Boris FX 9.0, Continuum Basics, Continuum Complete, Final Effects Complete, Graffiti 5.0, RED 4, BLUE, Title Toolkit
Summary: Compositing, titling and effects plug-ins for multiple NLEs and compositing packages; RED 4 also available for Avid Liquid and Media 100
Platforms: Mac OS X, Mac Universal (Continuum Complete), Windows XP
Hosts: AE, FCP, AVX, SV
www.borisfx.com
Click Here for a Quick Tip on Navigating The New UI in Boris Red 4.0

Digital Anarchy
Products: 3D Assistants, 3D Layer, Anarchy Toolbox, Color Theory, Data Animator 1.1, Geomany, Gradient!, Knoll Spark Pack 3.0, Microcosm 1.2, Psunami Water 1.2, ReSizer 2.1, Text Anarchy
Summary: Broad range of AE plugs that create effects but also offer quick fixes to common problems like animating charts and graphs
Platforms: Mac OS 9/X, Mac Universal, Windows 98 ME/XP, SGI IRIX
Hosts: AE, PPro, FCP, PS (also advanced Autodesk systems)
www.digitalanarchy.com
Click here for a Quick Tip on Transforming SD Video To HD With Scaling And De-Interlacing with Digital Anarchy ReSizer

Digital Heaven
Products: AutoMotion, BigTime, EDL Mirror, Final Cut Plug-ins (DH_Box, DH_Counter, DH_Dropout, DH_Fade, DH_FieldTrans, DH_Grid, DH_Guides, DH_LegalText, DH_Reincarnation, DH_Subtitle, DH_WhipPan, DH_WideSafe)
Summary: Titling and transition for FCP editing and auto tools for Motion
Platform: Mac OS X, Mac Universal
Hosts: FCP, MTN
www.digital-heaven.co.uk

eyeon
Product: AE Plug-in Adapter
Summary: Connects a range of AE plug-ins, including Knoll Light Factory and Trapcode Shine, to Digital Fusion and DFX+
Platforms: Windows, Linux
Hosts: DF, DFX+
www.eyeonline.com

The Foundry
Products: Furnace, Keylight, Tinderbox 1 – 4, Anvil, Tinder
Summary: Sophisticated tools to remove camera shake, create keys and add sky, light rays, fire, sparks, glows and more
Platforms: Mac OS X, Windows
Hosts: AE, SHK, AVX, DST
www.thefoundry.co.uk; www.toolfarm.com (US sales of Tinderbox 1 – 4)

GenArts
Products: Sapphire Plug-ins
Summary: Deep and varied range of lighting, glow, paint, blur, warp and film effects (175+) Platforms: Mac, Mac Universal
Hosts: AE, PPro, FCP, SHK, AVX, CMB, DST, DF
www.genarts.com

Joe’s Filters
Product: Joe’s Filters
Summary: Alpha effects, blurs, adjustment filters and much more (some still in beta), all built with FXScript
Platforms: Mac, Mac Universal
Host: FCP
www.joesfilters.com


Nattress Productions, Inc.
Products: Nattress Film Effects, Nattress Standards Conversion, Nattress Sets 1 + 2
Summary: Create film looks, special effects or convert between PAL and NTSC
Platforms: Mac OS X, Mac Universal
Host: FCP
www.nattress.com

The Orphanage
Product: OprhEXR
Summary: Import ILM’s HDR format for working with High Dynamic Range images; also see Red Giant Software for Orphanage-inspired products
Platforms: Mac OS X, Windows
Host: AE
www.toolfarm.com

Pixel Farm
Products: PFBarrel, PRStable, PFPlate, PFBlur, PFRetime
Summary: Tools to eliminate lens distortions, shaky camera moves, add blur and stitch and retime footage
Platforms: Mac OS X, Mac Universal
Hosts: AE, SHK, AVX, DF
www.thepixelfarm.co.uk

RealViz
Products: Retimer SD, Retimer HD, MatchMover HD 4
Summary: Time-warping, image stitching, panoramas, 3D tracking tools
Platforms: Mac, Windows
Hosts: AE, FCP, CMB
www.realviz.com

Red Giant Software
Products: eLin 1.0, Composite Wizard 1.2, Film Fix 1.0. Image Lounge 1.2, Instant HD 1.0, Key Correct Pro 1.0, Magic Bullet for Editors 2.0, Magic Bullet Suite 2.1, Knoll Light Factory 2.5, Knoll Unmult, Primatte Keyer 3.0, Primatte Plug-In Pack;Trapcode (3D Stroke, Echospace, Lux, Particular, Shine, Sound Keys, Starglow)
Summary: Range of filters and workflow plug-ins from the famous Knoll flares to Trapcode, now exclusively distributed by Red Giant
Platforms: Mac, Mac Universal (Knoll, Magic Bullet for Editors), Windows
Hosts: AE, PPro, FCP, AVX
www.redgiantsoftware.com

RE:Vision Effects
Products: FieldsKit, RE:Fill, RE:Flex, RE:Map, ReelSmart Motion Blur, Shape/Shade, SmoothKit, Twixtor, Video Gogh
Summary: Morphs and mapping tools
Platforms: Mac OS X, Mac Universal, Windows 95/98/NT/ME/2000/XP
Hosts: AE, PPro, FCP, SHK, AVX (supported on some products through Elastic Gasket), CMB, DF
www.revisionfx.com

Synthetic Aperture
Products: Echo Fire, Color Finesse 2.1, Test Gear 1.1, Test Pattern Maker
Summary: Tools for finely manipulating color beyond most built-in color correction and getting accurate video previews
Platforms: Mac, Windows
Host: AE
www.synthetic-ap.com
Click here for a Quick Tip on Tweaking Colors in AE With Vectorscope Precision

Ultimatte
Product: AvantEdge
Summary: Lets you pull keys from your greenscreen footage
Platforms: Mac, Windows
Hosts: AE, PPro, FCP, SHK, AVX, CMB, DF
www.ultimatte.com