Film+Video

Some Chris Ware awesomeness.

Chris Ware at Fantagraphics.

Via Prolost.

Opencut is an open source film competition where (for a $25 entry fee) you get digital footage shot on a RED camera and a shooting script. A description of the first project, “Susannah” is available at the website.

Major studios announce day-date DVD/VOD/iTunes releases, and Apple is going to lose a dollar on each movie it sells. Don’t worry, they’ll make up for it on volume.

Video game industry thriving, despite piracy.

Apple buys chip designer P.A. Semiconductor, who just happen to design low-power processors for things like hand-held, portable devices.

NBC is apparently going to get it’s Silverlight on for the 2008 Olympics.

Adobe opens up the .swf and .flv file formats with it’s Openscreen initiative, as well as dropping licensing fees for Flash-on-devices.

With Open Screen Adobe is also launching an open source porting project to port the Flash player to new devices. This is particularly exciting in the mobile space, where certain carriers haven’t wanted to put the Flash Lite Player on their devices despite popular demand from the community. That’s right, iPhone - you’re on notice.

This counters Microsoft’s deal with Nokia to put Silverlight on future devices. Apple is not a participant.

Interesting idea, if not very plausible: If “3G iPhone” isn’t an “iPhone”, could it be available to providers other than ATT?

Fora TV raises a few million in in venture capital.

Benten Films is a very cool DVD label.

Dish Network is testing mobile TV.

Very Independent Producers is Ted Hope (The Brothers McMullen, Safe, The Ice Storm) and Christine Vachon (I’m Not There, Storytelling, Velvet Goldmine, Boys Don’t Cry) discussing a wide-range of topics and anecdotes on producing independent film.

Errol Morris discusses Standard Operating Procedure. David Edelstein review. Trailer:

• The One Second Video Festival.
• Feedflix mashes/illustrates your Netflix RSS for sharing. (My Feedflix page.)
• The Microcinema YouTube channel is full of goodies.
• Download Johanna Vaude’s Hybride.

• The Fall looks awesome.
• Shepard Fairey does covers for 1984 and Animal Farm.
• ColorToy is an online color-scheming tool.
• Download Richard Serra’s Prisoner’s Dilemma (1974).

The Animation Show:

The Animation Show was started as an annual feature-length theatrical compilation of short films from around the world, exclusively curated by Mike Judge (Office Space, “Beavis and Butt-Head,” “King of the Hill”) and Academy Award nominated animator Don Hertzfeldt (Billy’s Balloon, Rejected, The Meaning of Life).

As animation continues to be plagued as the single most misunderstood film medium, the animated short film is sadly undervalued and underexposed in American cinema, despite widespread appreciation throughout the rest of the world. With luck, popular animated shorts may see limited theatrical play, but most are relegated to the dungeons of the internet, or with luck, DVD.

In Cory Arcangel’s “Permanent Vacation,” two computers are engaged in an endless loop of bouncing out-of-office auto-responses.

Stanley Donwood, a frequent colloborator with Radiohead (artwork for OK Computer), has an April show in Tokyo.

P2P Art: There’s no original:

Art made for - and only available on - the peer to peer networks.
The original artwork is first shared by the artist until one other user has downloaded it.

After that the artwork will be available for as long as other users share it.

The original file and all the material used to create it are deleted by the artist.

Light Industry is a new experimental cinema/multimedia space in Brooklyn. From the Wholphin blog:

There are many established outlets for the experimental world but consistency is difficult. Museums and film festivals are often event based and deal with high profile press and premieres to get folks in the door. Underground microcinemas are great but bills are tough to keep up with and getting the word out to fans across a big city is not cheap or efficient.

Which is why the new venue Light Industry is so exciting. Based in Brooklyn, the multimedia space is being invented by stalwart experimental cinema champions Thomas Beard and Ed Halter. Focusing on a weekly schedule, each event will be organized by a different artist, critic or curator. You may see an artists’ own collection of shorts, or a writer’s favorite lost film, or a collection of silent boxing movies discussed by a curator working in an entirely different field.

Download Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Download Richard Serra’s Frame (1969).

5 Ways In Which The Hills is JUST LIKE An Antonioni Film.

2008 Producers Institute for New Media Technologies
Bay Area Video Coalition
May 30 – June 8, San Francisco.

Nine documentary teams have been chosen to prototype innovative interactive, mobile, multimedia, and game projects to engage and build audiences for their social issue storytelling during the 2008 Producers Institute for New Media Technologies

Funded by generous lead support from the MacArthur Foundation and additional support from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Producers Institute for New Media Technologies connects independent producers and their socially relevant content to emerging models of storytelling and distribution. Through the Institute, documentary production teams from across the US and South America spend ten days at BAVC working with technologists, designers, and programmers to develop new models of participatory media. Mentors from leading technology companies, including Apple, Adobe, Google, MobiTV, Current TV, and others, work with teams to design and develop working prototypes, which are then presented to funding and review panels at the end of the Institute.

Blockbuster is apparently looking to develop a set-top box to deliver streaming video rentals. While it would seem that such a device would have an advantage in the size of it’s content library, especially after purchasing Movielink, what really differentiates this (assumed proprietary) box from a “cable channel” that you need an additional piece of hardware for? My guess is that this fails.

The Killer App set-top is going to come from the following field: Apple, Tivo, PS3, XBox. Each has liabilities and competitive advanges:

AppleTV: Tied to iTunes (good and bad); Closed, (bad, but hackable); Content library (good); Interface+ease of use (good); Weak Hardware (bad).

XBox: Solid hardware (good); Microsoft (bad); Content Library (bad, but moving in the right direction-see the deal for exclusive GTA4 content); Closed (bad, but seems “hackable”).

PS3: Excellent Hardware (good); Limited content library (bad); Sony’s conflict of interest as CE manufacturer and content owner (bad); Continual software updates which add functionality (good); Closed (bad); Broadest range of functionality (good).

Tivo: Ease of use (good); Willingness to experiment and partner (Unbox, podcasting) (good); Closed (bad) Unbox-no HD (bad); Content Library (bad).

Dark Horse: Adobe Media Player and Adobe TV. Can Flash and Air be the OS for a set-top box? Why Adobe Media Player Could Matter.

When I was a kid, our media players weighed 145 lbs.

Adobe Media Player, due next month, apparently will be bundled with other Adobe products/plug-ins.

We’ve confirmed that Adobe Media Player, which is almost certainly coming out in April, will be included as an update to existing Adobe software Adobe Reader, Acrobat, Flash and Shockwave. In some cases, users will have to opt in to adding the AMP download, and in others they will have to opt out, according to Ashley Still, AMP product manager.

Film+Video

Stream is an awesome new site/blog for film and video makers.

Cool video for Holy Fuck’s Milkshake:

Spout has an interview with Beautiful Losers director Aaron Rose.

Trailer for the Patti Smith documentary, Dream of Life.

Found. The giant cameras of photographer John Chiara.

Chiara photographs cityscapes in a process that is part photography, part event and part sculpture – an undertaking in apparatus and patience.  Many times this process involves composing pictures from the inside of a large hand-built camera, that is mounted on a flatbed trailer, and produces large scale, one of a kind, positive exposures.

KQED Spark segment on Chiara. (Real Video warning)

Mac goodies. Toast 9 hits the “shelves” with expanded Blu-ray (video) support (curious about that “new audio fingerprint technology fills the blanks for you!” stuff. Seems like that would make it easy to prohibit you from copying/burning as well. Ripe for conspiracies. Jotstick is an interesting-looking screen recording/demo recording app. VideoSpec is a utility for profiling and accessing info about video files (Codec, format, tracks/streams, bitrate, etc…).

D.I.Y. OR DIE

interviews and performances from: Lydia Lunch, Ian MacKaye (Fugazi), J Mascis (Dinosaur jr.), Jim Rose (Jim Rose Sideshow), J.G.Thirlwell (Foetus), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Richard Kern (Filmmaker), Ron Asheton (Stooges),

Torrent of iPod/iPhone version, including interviews with Ian MacKaye and Steve Albini

Buy @ Amazon.

(via Greylodge)

Worthwhile: Saving the HDi platform for non-HD DVD media.

MS Don’t Kill HDi! An Open Letter from Format War Frontline

On a technical implementation level HD-DVD was farther along than Blu-ray, even at the time of its death. HDi comprised a powerful tool and a competitor that raised the stakes on its rival, especially because it was accessible earlier. HD-DVD specialists took advantage with Advanced Features on HD-DVD releases, powered by HDi. Warner’s In-Movie Experience and Universal’s U-control presented a new quality of viewer experience.

Without expensive AACS requirements, HD-DVD appeared to be taking off on its own as a favorite among producers who didn’t require strong copy protection, such as independent producers and international distributors. HDi’s common heritage with Ajax-style web development in its use of XML and ECMAScript (Javascript) attracted a new fleet of HDi specialists, inspired by the format capabilities and potential to take viewer experience to new levels. This low barrier to entry made the labor for HD-DVD production cheaper than Blu-ray Disc, and the formation of the AIC emboldened this community to invest in their education and skills. (We still offer a fine library of HDi modules at metacommons.org.)

Playing with HDi on your Xbox. Free HD DVD emulator for Xbox 360.

The Xbox 360 HD DVD Emulator is a development and test tool that allows you to run complete HD DVD projects - video, audio, and advanced interactivity - on your Xbox 360 from an external USB drive or networked PC.

Interested in exploring BD Licensing? Start here. Good luck with that.

Some nice demos of advanced BD interactivity.

BD Live demo.

No BD in the Xbox? Microsoft says no Blu-ray for Xbox 360.

Bob Cringley has an interesting, and somewhat inaccuate, piece on Apple’s implementation of Blu-ray. There is absolutely no way that iTunes is going to compete with BD, regardless of the compression efficiencies of H.264… and Macs can’t play 1080p? Seems like my new iMac 2.4GHZ can do it in most situations, though it’s probably at the upper-bounds of it’s abilities. It does play back 1080p Matroska files fairly reliably. Introducing hardware H.264 decoding to Macs is interesting though, and speculation about that is old news.

How about iTunes/BD-Live integration? A section of the iTMS for BD “extras”? games, expanded content, etc… in addition to providing some insight into what type(s) of advanced/extended content consumers actually want, it would allow producers to extend and differentiate value-added content, most likely creating additional revenue streams or at the very least, another marketing channel. Duh.

The new Old Media—Lionsgate to include iPod-enabled versions on it’s releases. Wal Mart clearing out DVDs, as sales decline.

Retail giant Wal-Mart is making less room for the back-catalog DVD titles that help widen studio profits while more customers either download high-definition films or order them on-demand from cable companies, according to one analyst.

Film+Video

Future Shorts is a World-wide short film label.

Music

The Microsound Scene: An Interview with Kim Cascone. Husker Du poster archive. Download: Tortoise Live 07-10-1998. John Ries’ new band, The Night Watchers: Who’s Lady R U? (.mp3). Julianna Barwick: Sanguine.

Books

Noise/Music: A History by Paul Hegarty. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky.

Visual

United Visual Artists. Terrorist organization logos. Dark and Fleshy: The Color of Top Grossing Movies.

@ Flickr. The Long Exposure pool. On expired film. The Expired Film pool. The Polaroid Abuse pool. Awesome Holga/Diana/polaroid shots. A History of American Graphic Design.

Golan Levin: The truly soft side of software—

I’ve switched from Greencine to Netflix, due to Greencine’s complete lack of customer service. Here’s the RSS for my Netflix queue.

Mac Goodies

Newsfire is now free. Best MacOS newsreader after NetNewsWire. Secrets is a preference pane to access hidden/secret prefs in the OS and numerous apps.

DIY

From Here to Awesome I’ll let them explain it:

DIY iPod video projector

Mobmov is DIY guerilla drive-in movies. Lance Weiler interviews founder Bryan Kennedy. Secret Cinema. How to convert your HD DVDs to Blu-ray…or you could just buy Blu-ray versions and avoid the hassle…or you could rip and transcode for your AppleTV.

Downloads

Cory Arcangel’s Colors. Via Rhizome—

Artist Cory Arcangel, in keeping with his practice of providing public tutorials for his art projects, recently made his video application “Colors” available as “Colors PE” or “Personal Edition.” Arcangel used “Colors” to screen Dennis Hopper’s film Colors in his 2006 exhibition “subtractions, modifications, addenda, and other recent contributions to participatory culture” at Team Gallery, and the same version of the work will be exhibited in the upcoming show “Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today” at the MoMA.

Download some Kenneth Anger. AppleTV Junkie has a complete AppleTV HD listing. HD Podcasts. HD Movies.

Video+Film tech

• Beet.tv has an interview with Adobe’s Ryan Stewart on AIR and video distribution.
• Adobe demos a cool 3D, compound lens.
• Quicktime stream of Apple’s presentation at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium.
• Notes and News from the HBS Entertainment & Media Conference @ Cinematech.
• Facebook launches Facebook Film and Facebook Music.
• Apple is hosting a media event on Thursday March 6th to detail the iPhone SDK.
• Blockbuster Sees Future in In-Store Kiosks, Movie Downloads.
• Disney+ABC launch an experimental, new-media studio.

“Art”

Flickr Pools: America Fuck Yeah! and Nasty X-Rays. Run Motherfucker Run is an Interactive 3D/video installation. Rainbow Divider. Reload the page.

Besides the limited (or outrageously expensive) production tools available to non-studios for producing Blu-ray discs, the Finishing Line breaks down the costs for developing your first project:

_$2,500 : License Fee to author and distribute Blu-ray
_$3,000 : One-time fee to AACS. (I think this is billed per production company / individual)
_$1,585 : Per complete Blu-ray project
_$.04 : Four cents per disc. Fee paid to AACS
_$.01 : One penny per disc paid to Sony to handle all these payments on your behalf

That’s in addition to the actual cost of authoring and replication. Don’t expect a lot of micro-indies or indie-music Blu-ray discs anytime soon.