Canadians treated to Super Bowl ads for last time

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The best thing about Sunday’s low-scoring NFL Super Bowl football game was the ads, hands down.

The CRTC has outlawed the simultaneous substitution of American ads with Canadian ads for the last three Super Bowls.

However, the “New NAFTA” trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States will again allow the practise, once it’s ratified.

That means this was the last Super Bowl that Canadians could watch the big budget U.S. ads.

It’s all about money. Bell Media can’t sell its ad space for as much when almost half of Canadians switch to the American network instead.

In case you missed them, here are the Super Bowl 2019 commercials.

My take: these were my favourites in no particular order:

  • Stella Artois with Sarah Jessica Parker and Jeff Bridges
  • Mint Mobile chunky milk
  • Devour Meals food porn
  • Bubly and Buble
  • Michelob Ultra ASM
  • Amazon Echo fails

Distribution lessons learned the hard way

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Avril Speaks, writing on Dear Producer, shares her recent experience with the distribution of Jinn by Orion.

“I recently had a conversation with a friend who used to work in distribution and she said, ‘Distributors make money off of your ignorance.’ Truer words have never been spoken.”

Avril shares these lessons:

  1. Know, Show and Prove: Every filmmaker should have an idea of what they want to happen to their film after it’s completed.
  2. “Meaningful Consultation” is Meaningless: Once you turn over your film to the distributor, it is theirs and they have the right to do with it and package it however they please.
  3. Day and Date Releases Aren’t What They Seem: Know that the focus for day-and-date releases is more on VOD than it is on theaters, which means that if you had high hopes for a theatrical presence, you might need to rethink your expectations and your marketing strategy.
  4. Negotiate Delivery: Do not sign a contract without seeing the deliverables list first.
  5. Speaking of Delivery: Your distributor will have lots of demands that are difficult for you to achieve with limited resources (which is why I advise you ask for a portion of your MG upfront).
  6. Minimum Guarantee: Ask for a portion of your MG to be paid upfront so that you can pay for delivery expenses.
  7. “Let’s just finish the film; if we get a distributor, we’ll let them handle everything else.” Your distributor will not pay for your music, they will not pay for your clearances, they will not throw you a party, they will not handle all of your marketing and press needs.
  8. Reach Out: Find yourself a community of producers who can help you walk through the process.

My take: it seems if you have a year or two to invest in your brainchild, self-distribution is an option to seriously consider.

Infographic: Film genre popularity over the last 100 years

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Bo McCready has release a fascinating infographic illustrating the relative popularity of film genres since 1910.

Visit the page and click on the ‘Click to Standardize Axis Range’ button to be truly able to compare genres with each other.

Hover over each graph to reveal the top five IMDB voted or rated movies for each year in each genre.

Some observations:

  • Two in five movies are either comedies or documentaries.
  • Four in ten movies are either thrillers, horror, action or romance.
  • The remaining two in ten movies are either crime, sci fi, fantasy, war, musicals or westerns.
  • Genres declining in popularity over the last two decades: romance and crime.
  • Genres increasing in popularity over the last two decades: documentary and horror.

My take: I love charts because they graphically add meaning to data. See The Numbers for a different take on film genres. The American Film Market has analyzed genre popularity around the world too.

Netflix sued over ‘Bandersnatch’

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Netflix is being sued by Chooseco of Vermont for damages of up to $25M for use of its trademark “Choose Your Own Adventure” in hit “Bandersnatch” reports Eriq Gardner of The Hollywood Reporter.

The company claims the dark themes in “Bandersnatch” harm its wholesome brand.

Contradictorily, they also say Netflix was in talks to license the phrase but failed to conclude a deal.

Read the court documents.

My take: I immediately registered the reference when watching the film. Who knew “Choose Your Own Adventure” the phrase was copyrighted? Did Netflix think the nod to CYOA was flattering and would be appreciated? Did they think a possible suit would be good publicity? Most importantly, who signed off on the Errors and Omissions insurance?

Bird Box bests Bright by four

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Netflix has another bona fide hit on its hands.

It tweeted on December 28, 2018, that over 45 million accounts had watched Bird Box, the “best first 7 days ever for a Netflix film!”

With 137 million global subscribers, that means almost one in three watched the “American post-apocalyptic psychological horror-thriller film.”

Actually, given multi-person households and un-monetized account sharing, the number of viewers could be close to 200 million.

In comparison, the Will Smith vehicle, Bright, did 11 million views in three days last year.

Why the success? I think it boils down to:

  1. Sandra Bullock’s star power
  2. its genre: high concept horror
  3. the timing of its release in Christmas Week
  4. social media around the blindfold image and then the #BirdBoxChallenge

In fact, Netflix ended up tweeting asking folks to stop it.

Aja Romano has some great Bird Box insights on Vox.

My take: [I will admit] [I have not seen this yet.] What I think is most interesting is how Netflix trumped their recommendation algorithm and placed an ad for Bird Box front and centre on everyone’s main screens. Every third account took the bait. This is the digital equivalent of Hollywood bulk buying TV ads in mid-December to fill cinemas on Christmas, traditionally one of the busiest days of the year. Another way Netflix has beaten Hollywood at its own game.

Netflix scores with trippy interactive movie ‘Bandersnatch’

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The Black Mirror team have handed Netflix a major win with interactive movie ‘Bandersnatch.’

Netflix has dabbled with interactive titles before, but only for kids. This outing is definitively all-grown-up with drugs, madness and violence.

As summarized on SYFYwire:

“To experience the film, viewers begin watching it like any other program or movie. But as Bandersnatch moves along, a series of choices appear on the screen, roughly every few minutes or so. Using a remote control, console controller, or keyboard, viewers make the decisions for the story’s protagonist, sending the narrative off in any number of new directions.”

Over five hours of completed scenes were shot.

“The branching narratives have been developed through a new Netflix software called Branch Manager, which can also allow viewers to exit and start all over again if they choose. The project is supported on most TVs, game consoles and either Android or iOS devices as long as they’re running the latest version of Netflix.”

How complex is the story map? See this picture or this summary. Warning: contains spoilers.

My take: I love this! The theme of who’s in control is perfect for an interactive movie about a programmer programming an interactive video game. The fact that the movie has been gamified (as the various endings have different point ratings) is hard to miss. Makes my first interactive musings look simple in comparison. I would love to make a Netflix Interactive Movie!

LG announces new Ultra Short Throw 4K projector

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Will you still be on Santa’s Nice List in January?

LG will announce its latest CineBeam Laser 4K projector at CES 2019 in Las Vegas within two weeks.

The HU85L uses Ultra Short Throw (UST) technology that lets it project a 90-inch diagonal image when the unit is a mere 2 inches from the wall.

It can project a 120-inch image when placed 7 inches from the wall.

Here’s a review of last year’s model:

My take: Not cheap at something like $3,000 (3K for 4K?) but would mean you could dispense with a TV in your living room.

AI-generated photos now life-like

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Tero Karras, Samuli Laine and Timo Aila of Nvidia have just published breakthrough work on Generative Adversarial Networks and images:

“We propose an alternative generator architecture for generative adversarial networks, borrowing from style transfer literature. The new architecture leads to an automatically learned, unsupervised separation of high-level attributes (e.g., pose and identity when trained on human faces) and stochastic variation in the generated images (e.g., freckles, hair), and it enables intuitive, scale-specific control of the synthesis. The new generator improves the state-of-the-art in terms of traditional distribution quality metrics, leads to demonstrably better interpolation properties, and also better disentangles the latent factors of variation.”

I’ve blogged about Nvidia’s GANs and image generation before, but this improvement in quality is remarkable.

If I understand it correctly, the breakthrough is applying one picture as a “style” or filter on another picture. Applying the filters in the left column to the pictures across the top yields the AI-generated pictures in the middle.

Read the scientific paper for full details.

Of course, we’ve seen something similar before. Way back in 1985 Godley & Creme released a music video for their song Cry; the evocative black and white video used analogue wipes and fades to blend a myriad of faces together, predating digital morphing. Here’s a cover version and video remake by Gayngs, including a cameo by Kevin Godley:

My take: Definitely scary. But if that’s the current state of the art, I think it means we are _not_ living in the Simulation — yet, even though Elon Musk says otherwise.

Fandor latest streaming service on the ropes

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Matt Lopez writes in The Wrap that Fandor has laid off its whole 40-person staff as it looks for a buyer in order to continue.

He adds context:

“The layoffs come a month after Defy Media shut its doors, laying off an estimated 80 staff, and less than a week after Otter Media announced it was cutting 10 percent of its staff. The news also follows WarnerMedia’s closure of its classic movie streaming service FilmStruck, a shutdown that Fandor ironically tried to capitalize on by offering a discount to former FilmStruck subscribers. Other video-centric companies that have been met with layoffs this year include WarnerMedia’s DramaFever, which shutdown in October; Refinery29, which lost 40 employees that same month; and Mic, a news-focused media outlet that laid off most of its staff towards the end of November.”

My take: it’s always sad when a streaming service can’t continue, especially one that revered classic, cult and indie movies. At $6/month, Fandor wasn’t expensive. My problem is that I only have so much time to devote to consuming screen entertainment. Sorry, Fandor, you were on my radar but Netflix and Prime have my eyeballs for now.

Netflix Canada raises prices amid more competition

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Barely a year after it raised prices, Netflix is doing it again.

Netflix vs. Amazon Prime vs. Hulu Plus

The CBC reports that the streaming juggernaut will be upping prices by $1 or $3 per month, depending on the plan.

According to the CBC:

“Netflix says the move will help fund upcoming TV series and films as well as overall improvements to the Netflix platform.”

Recently, Bell Media doubled the price of its Crave streaming service to $19.98, now including Hollywood movies and HBO.

Emphasizing the shift to cord cutting, the CBC claims:

“Bell’s move marks the first time Canadians will be able to legally obtain new HBO shows without a cable television subscription.”

Also, on the horizon is the revamped Criterion Channel that…

“…will be picking up where the old service left off, programming director spotlights and actor retrospectives featuring major Hollywood and international classics and hard-to-find discoveries from around the world, complete with special features like commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, and original documentaries. We will continue with our guest programmer series, Adventures in Moviegoing. Our regular series like Art-House America, Split Screen, and Meet the Filmmakers, and our Ten Minutes or Less section will all live on, along with Tuesday’s Short + Feature and the Friday Night Double Feature, and of course our monthly fifteen-minute film school, Observations on Film Art.”

For less than Netflix.

My take: Also in the wings are Disney’s standalone streaming service and Apple’s rumoured content hub. Obviously, it will get expensive to sign up for every streaming service out there. What will differentiate them? Ease of use, codec efficiency and, mainly, content exclusivity. 2019 will be the year the media landscape fractures into specialty outlets. Gone will be any semblance of one service for all audiences.