Author Archives: Michael Korican

About Michael Korican

A long-time media artist, Michael’s filmmaking stretches back to 1978. Michael graduated from York University film school with Special Honours, winning the Famous Players Scholarship in his final year. The Rolling Stone Book of Rock Video called Michael's first feature 'Recorded: Live!' "the first film about rock video". Michael served on the board of L.I.F.T. when he lived in Toronto during the eighties and managed the Bloor Cinema for Tom and Jerry. He has been prolific over his past eight years in Victoria, having made over thirty-five shorts, won numerous awards, produced two works for BravoFACT! and received development funding for 'Begbie’s Ghost' through the CIFVF and BC Film.

Michael Bay is back — but not on the big screen

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Netflix continues to attract high-profile filmmakers to its streaming platform.

December 13th’s 6 Underground stars Ryan Reynolds, was written by Deadpool duo Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, and is directed by none other than Michael “Mr. Bayhem” Bay.

I know what you’re thinking. Michael Bay? That 1990’s hack?

Well, did you also know that, as a director, his films have grossed over $6 billion?

Then there’s this:

My take: this film looks like a lot of fun! We’ll certainly watch it over the holidays. (btw, that is a really long trailer clocking in at a solid three minutes!)

Distribber, and other aggregators

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As the news of Distribber‘s bankruptcy spreads, Noam Kroll has a great summary: What All Indie Filmmakers Can Learn From Distribber’s Failure.

What is an aggregator? In simplistic terms, film distributors might get your film into theatres whereas aggregators might put your film online. Aggregators have relationships with all major online outlets and know what they want: both for content and for deliverables.

Noam mentions a couple of aggregators to check out:

Stephen Follows has done some excellent analysis of Distribber’s movies. Its most successful client seems to have been Survivor:

What kinds of movies did Distribber attract?

My take: if I had a feature to distribute, I’d probably go with FilmHub because I don’t have the kind of cash other aggregators demand up front.

Netflix floats bonuses for winning filmmakers

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Lucas Shaw writes for Bloomberg that Netflix Plans to Pay Bonuses to Filmmakers When Movies Succeed:

Netflix vs. Amazon Prime vs. Hulu Plus

“Netflix Inc. plans to pay filmmakers, actors and movie producers a bonus if their films are successful, a new incentive aimed at winning projects that might otherwise go to rival studios.”

This would be a departure for the currently-leading streamer:

“The bonuses are different than Hollywood’s traditional “back-end” arrangements, where filmmakers get a percentage of box-office money. Since Netflix’s films don’t get released widely at theaters — if they hit the big screen at all — there’s no hope for a big payoff there…. Netflix has never offered back-end deals. It covers the full cost of production and pays producers a premium on top of that, granting them a profit before the project is even released. These deals are a safer bet because the producer is guaranteed to make a significant amount of money, but they also cap the potential profit.”

For a great primer on the various business models, see Joe Flint‘s article The War for Talent in the Age of Netflix in the Wall Street Journal:

“For decades, the formula for producers to make big money in TV was for a show to stay on the air long enough to have 100 episodes or more — enough to sell reruns to other TV networks. The bulk of the profits for production studios and show creators have come from those “syndication” deals, not the initial fees to produce and air the show. The creators of “Seinfeld,” “Friends” and “The Simpsons” made hundreds of millions of dollars this way, as stakeholders who were entitled to a cut of the profits…. Netflix did away with that model when it started wooing superstar producers to make content exclusively for the service, including “Grey’s Anatomy” creator Shonda Rhimes and “Glee” producer Ryan Murphy. Netflix paid nine-figure upfront fees to Ms. Rhimes and Mr. Murphy. Netflix doesn’t sell reruns of its shows to other platforms, so there weren’t any syndication profits to be had for the producers, and the producers wanted a bigger check to work for Netflix.”

With the streaming marketplace to get much busier in November, it seems as if Netflix has been forced to consider sweetening its deals with filmmakers.

My take: with number of streaming services to double very soon, feature and episodic producers have more choice of outlets than ever before. How will the various streamers differentiate themselves, thereby attracting different audiences? How much overlap will the market bear, meaning how many services will folks pay for?

Sandvine profiles Internet usage in 2019

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Cam Cullen,VP of Global Marketing for Sandvine, has announced the release of the 2019 Global Internet Phenomena Report (registration required.)

There are lots of valuable takeaways here.

For instance, this year Netflix has been bumped into second place for downstream traffic by HTTP Media Stream, the collection of video streaming sites that use a standard video streaming protocol that Sandvine does not track individually.

Nevertheless, Netflix still accounts for 12.6% of global downstream traffic.

More:

  • Video is over 60% of the total downstream volume of traffic on the internet.
  • Netflix is 12.60% of the total downstream volume of traffic across the entire internet and 11.44% of all internet traffic.
  • Google is 12% of overall internet traffic, driven by YouTube, search, and the Android ecosystem.
  • Gaming traffic and gaming-related bandwidth consumption is increasing as gaming downloads, Twitch streaming, and eSports go mainstream.
  • BitTorrent is over 27% of total upstream volume of traffic, and over 44% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) alone.
  • Facebook applications make up over 15% of the total internet traffic in APAC, the Asia-Pacific region.

And fragmentation is only going to get worse. “There are a number of new services that will be launching in the next year that may yet again change the traffic landscape by the next Phenomena Report:

  • Disney+: Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and decades of TV and movies, all priced extremely well with compelling original content. How could this fail?
  • Apple TV+: With the offer of free original content with purchase of an Apple device, this could drive up usage in Apple-heavy markets.
  • Universal: Another library with decades of content, with attention being given to “The Office,” which was one of Netflix’s most watched TV shows.
  • HBO Max: Warner Bro’s offer with another massive content library that will build on HBO Go and will leverage popular TV series, especially “Friends”, this service promises to be, ‘there for you when the rain starts to fall.’
  • Other video services: DC Universe, Facebook Watch, and Discovery have all announced planned services.
  • Google Stadia: It’s not just streaming video that is coming, Stadia is maybe the “Netflix of Gaming,” perhaps something totally unique with bandwidth requirements between 10-35Mbps and expectations of low latency.”

Even more interesting: over 43% of the internet is consumed by Netflix, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple.

“The biggest bandwidth consumption for applications or content libraries for each brand included:

  • Google (Alphabet): YouTube, Android Market, Google Search, Google Docs, Google Drive, DoubleDlick, Gmail, and Crashlytics
  • Netflix: Netflix Video
  • Facebook: Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Video, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Oculus Rift
  • Microsoft: Xbox Live, Windows Update, Skype, Outlook 365, Office 365, SharePoint, OneDrive, Windows Store, LinkedIn
  • Apple: iTunes, iCloud, Apple Software Update, FaceTime, Apple Music, Apple.com, iCloud Photo Stream, Mac App Store
  • Amazon: Amazon Prime, Twitch, Amazon.com, Alexa, Amazon Glacier, Amazon Music”

I highly recommend registering and downloading the 23 page PDF for all the insights.

My take: I think the most interesting stat here is the 43% share of the Internet by the six largest tech companies. It won’t be long before their share is more than half. What happens when more than half of the traffic on the information super-highway is by the Big Six?

Meet the world’s smallest stabilized camera

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Insta360 has released the world’s smallest action camera, the GO. It is so small it’s potentially a choking hazard.

They call it the “20 gram steady cam.”

Here are some specs:

  • Standard, Interval Shooting, Timelapse, Hyperlapse, and Slow Motion modes
  • 8GB of on-board storage
  • iPhone or Android Connections
  •  IPX4 water-resistant
  • Charge Time: GO: approx. 20min, Charger Case: approx. 1hr
  • .Mp4 files exported via app at 1080@25fps; Timelapse and Hyperlapse at 1080@30fps;  Slow Motion: 1600×900@100fps and output at 1600×900@30fps

Some sample footage:

See some product reviews.

You can buy it now for $270 in Canada.

My take: this is too cool! My favourite features are the slow motion and the barrel roll you can add in post. This technology sparks lots of storytelling ideas!

Theatrical dreams, quantified

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Stephen Follows and Bruce Nash in a post for the American Film Market answer the question How Many Independent Films Get A Theatrical Release?

For 2017 films, as of mid-August 2019, the answer is, “Not many.”

Fully three out of four films did not report any box office earnings. And only one in six reported theatrical earnings of over $100,000.

However, some genres performed better than others:

“Large releases are the realm of the drama, with 23% of independent dramas earning over $100,000 at the domestic box office. Comedies (16%) and thrillers (15%) are also more likely to get into this top tier.”

In addition, provenance matters:

“Adaptations are three times as likely to secure a large theatrical release compared to independent films with original screenplays. That’s a significant jump, and shows how hard it is for an independent film based on original material to get a substantial theatrical release.”

They conclude:

“Seeing a film played in a theater is still regarded as the best way to experience the art form. It’s also, understandably, the goal of many film producers…. However, the numbers say that an independent film will, five times out of six, not go on to make much money in theaters. Knowing how to maximize revenue from the home market remains an essential skill for an independent producer.”

My take: these are sobering statistics! But then I think of how many films I’ve seen in a theatre versus the number I’ve seen at home. The one bright light in exhibition is Theatrical-On-Demand. See Tugg, Gathr or Demand.Film

Curation coming to Netflix?

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Sarah Perez of TechCrunch reports that Netflix tests human-driven curation with launch of ‘Collections’:

“Netflix is testing a new way to help users find TV shows and movies they’ll want to watch with the launch of a “Collections” feature, currently in testing on iOS devices…. According to Netflix, the titles are curated by experts on the company’s creative teams, and are organized into these collections based on factors like genre, tone, story line and character traits.”

A Netflix spokesperson confirmed the test, saying:

“We’re always looking for new ways to connect our fans with titles we think they’ll love, so we’re testing out a new way to curate Netflix titles into collections on the Netflix iOS app.”

My take: This is fascinating because it’s a bit of deja vu all over again. Years ago Netflix bragged that its algorithm would learn from our viewing habits and only recommend movies to us that it calculated we would want to watch. It worked to some extent; my home screen is quite different from my wife’s. However, we both still have to do a lot of scrolling to find something we want to watch. I think brining back curation is an acknowledgement that we all yearn for some degree of commonality. Remember that, before the internet changed everything, the media was a de facto curator, only showing us what they had already selected. I would like to see a blending of curation and algorithmic selection so that I can see what the masses are consuming in Collections, and personalized offbeat suggestions in Recommended for Me.

2019 Internet Trends Report released

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In June at the Code Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, Mary Meeker delivered the 2019 instalment of her Internet Trends Report:

There are lots of insights here. Some to note, courtesy of CMF Trends:

The Internet’s penetration rate is now 51% of the world’s population. The two countries with the largest untapped markets are India followed by China. Nevertheless, one third of users live in those two countries.

Use is growing. Average daily online use has passed 6 hours for the first time. Moreover, mobile use has surpassed TV viewing this year.

Here’s the full slide deck or PDF.

My take: one takeaway for me is that the freemium model is alive and well. Unfortunately, two of my favourite tools did not figure this out (never having had paid levels) and have disappeared: Toonlet and Ujam Studio. 8- I wonder how the freemium model could be adapted to fiction films. Give away the movie and charge for the (DVD) extras (remember those)?

Inside a Virtual Production

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BBC Click has revealed glimpses of the virtual production techniques Jon Favreau harnessed before the “live action” Lion King was digitally animated.

The discussion of virtual production technology starts at 0:40. Details begin flowing about the Technicolor Virtual Production pipeline at 1:38.

Director Favreau explains further at 8:01 below:

My favourite line is: “We’d move the sun if we had to.”

Here’s Technicolor’s pitch for virtual production:

More here.

My take: Am I the only one that thinks it’s absurd for photo-realistic animals to talk and sing? I can buy the anthropomorphism in most animation, as the techniques they use are suitably abstracted, but this just looks too real. Maybe thought balloons?

Korean AI can predict your film’s chances

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I would have loved to have been at the 2019 Storytelling Workshop in Florence, Italy, when Koreans You Jin Kim, Yun Gyung Cheong and Jung Hoon Lee presented their paper “Prediction of a Movie’s Success From Plot Summaries Using Deep Learning Models”.

Their idea is to train an AI to read summaries of movies and then pass judgement:

“The primary hypothesis that we attempted to answer is to predict a movie’s success in terms of popularity and artistic quality by analyzing only the textual plot summary.”

It’s all very complicated and, I’ll admit, is on the edge of being incomprehensible to me.

One thing I did gather — their AI seems better at determining which films will NOT be good:

“It seems that predicting ‘not popular’ or ‘not successful’ movies performs better than that of predicting ‘popular’ or ‘successful’ movies.”

My take: Another of the takeaways for me in this paper was this chestnut: “The frequency of sentiment changes may signal the success of films.” Even though they’re talking about summaries of films, I believe this could mean the greater the number of reversals, the greater the success of the film. Could this be true? Maybe. Maybe not. But maybe. No, maybe not. Definitely — maybe.