Tag Archives: FM2

Pirates Beware: DVD Anti-Piracy Warning Now Twice as Fierce | Threat Level | Wired.com

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This Wired article looks at the additional anti-piracy warnings that are to appear on US DVDs. Like DRM, this is an attempt at preventing piracy that affects legitimate customers but not pirates. DVDs will now be twice as annoying before you get to watch the film you’ve paid for, unless you have a pirate version which will load immediately.

Hollywood and the federal government have partnered to create updated and even more annoying anti-piracy warnings that will be included in new home-release DVDs and Blu-ray discs beginning this week, the government said Tuesday.

The new warnings now have three scary logos intended to deter those who might violate copyright law by making a back-up copy, ripping a movie to a tablet-friendly file, uploading it to a peer-to-peer network or make illegal copies to send to military service members in Iraq.

via Pirates Beware: DVD Anti-Piracy Warning Now Twice as Fierce | Threat Level | Wired.com.

The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record | TorrentFreak

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This article provides some good analysis of why a massively-downloaded CAM copy of The Avengers didn’t stop the film from having the biggest opening weekend of all time.

A week before its premiere in US movie theaters, a camcorded version of The Avengers appeared online.

Immediately thousands of fans jumped on the release and according to figures collated by TorrentFreak, in the days that followed it was downloaded half a million times. While this may very well be a record for a “CAM” movie, it failed to exceed the download numbers of several other movies that were available in higher quality.

Record or not, the movie’s distributer Disney must have been terrified by this early release. However, this weekend the suits at the studio were able to breathe a sign of relief, or rather, start popping open the Champagne.

With more than $200 million in box office revenue, The Avengers had the most successful first weekend in movie history. It broke the record set by Harry Potter last year by more than $30 million, despite the “massive” piracy.

via The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record | TorrentFreak.

Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling – LA Weekly

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This is a lengthy but fascinating article on how film studios are pushing hard to abandon 35mm film and move to digital projection only, and some of the potential risks this is entails. Great resource for anyone looking at this topic for a case study:

Today, the driving force isn’t so much a single movie as it is the studios’ bottom line — they no longer want to pay to physically print and ship movies. It costs about $1,500 to print one copy of a movie on 35 mm film and ship it to theaters in its heavy metal canister. Multiply that by 4,000 copies — one for each movie on each screen in each multiplex around the country — and the numbers start to get ugly. By comparison, putting out a digital copy costs a mere $150.

via Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling – Page 1 – Film+TV – Los Angeles – LA Weekly.

The online copyright war: the day the internet hit back at big media | Technology | The Guardian

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The Guardian looks at how internet users rallied to combat legislation like SOPA that restricts online use for the benefit of media institutions:

Stark points to a study by Musiksverige (Music Sweden), an industry association, that found music piracy in Sweden fell significantly after the introduction of Spotify, a streaming music service. “It shows what we have said all along: people want to reward artists for their work.”

Alexis Ohanian, Reddit’s co-founder, agrees. “I’m hopeful right now. These are not soundbite issues, they are complicated. If you look at the work that Reddit’s community did investigating Sopa, you can see that there is a lot of thought going into these issues in the community. Like a lot of rights, I think we took our right to a life online for granted until it was challenged. I think we are on guard now.”

Media execs are on guard too. Many look to the music industry and fear they may be next. Since the peer-to-peer filesharing site Napster emerged in 1999, music sales in the US have dropped 53%, from $14.6bn to $6.9bn in 2010. The digital world is a lot less lucrative than selling DVDs.

Last year the movie industry made $30bn at the box office worldwide. Ed Epstein, author of The Hollywood Economist, calculates box office revenue accounts for just 10% of a hit movie’s money. The rest comes from cable and satellite channels, pay-per-view TV, video rentals, DVD sales and digital downloads. All that extra cash comes from sources that Hollywood once railed against, and pressed Washington to crack down on.

via The online copyright war: the day the internet hit back at big media | Technology | The Guardian.

3D film: have the wheels fallen off? | Comment is free | The Guardian

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Good discussion about the waning interest in 3D cinema:

We have seen experimental filmmakers, particularly those towards the end of their careers – Herzog, Wenders and Scorsese, to some extent – playing with 3D. It’s play, it didn’t feel like Herzog is committing to 3D. And we’ve had these turgid blockbusters and nothing in the middle. The kind of films that go up for Oscars – The King’s Speech – that draw in the people who see two or three films a year, those have not been 3D movies. That’s where 3D has missed a trick. If 3D was really going to transfer to the mainstream, then Bond would be made in it. With The Woman in Black – a prime candidate because it is all about things jumping out at you – they obviously made an explicit decision not to use 3D. There’s almost a stigma to it.

via 3D film: have the wheels fallen off? | Comment is free | The Guardian.

How older viewers are rescuing cinema | Film | The Guardian

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This article on the resurgence in cinema viewing by an older audience is relevant for AS Film Studies FM2:

Until recently, cinemas were seen as pretty much a no-go zone for older people. There might be the occasional “silver screening” in a teatime slot, but the rest of the time noisy youngsters would hold sway – crunching popcorn, spilling Coke on the floor and texting during the show. On screen, vampires, aliens, superheroes, childish fantasy, gross-out comedy or preposterous spectacle would probably prevail.

All of the above are still in evidence, but different fare has also come to the fore. In The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel a cast of ageing national treasures grapple with the tribulations of later life. Grown-up dramas such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Descendants, The Ides of March, The Iron Lady and The Artist have elbowed their way in.

The arrival and success of such films reflects a little-noticed revolution. Older people are returning to the big screen. They want something different, and the industry is trying to give it to them.

via How older viewers are rescuing cinema | Film | The Guardian.

3D films lose lustre as home-grown hits win cinema box-office battle | Film | The Guardian

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The combination of disappointing 3D films and surprise hit indies is evident in this look at the overall UK box office trends for 2011:

Despite a record 47 films released in 3D last year, including the final Harry Potter and the latest in the Transformers franchise, box-office receipts for the format fell £7m to £230m, reducing its share of total ticket sales from 24% to 20%.

The Lion King’s re-release in 3D failed to impress, as did Kung Fu Panda 2, with half its audiences opting to see it in two dimensions. As a result, the average takings per 3D film slumped from £8.5m in 2010, when there were just 28 in the genre, to £4.9m, according to a report by research firm Enders Analysis.

Meanwhile, the films performing well at the UK box office are frequently very different to huge budget 3D blockbusters

Home-grown hits enjoyed a record year, taking the second and third slots at the UK box office, in a triumph of storytelling over digital technology. Colin Firth’s Oscar-winning turn as King George VI helped The King’s Speech into second place with £46m, while adolescent comedy TV series turned feature film The Inbetweeners Movie netted £45m. The King’s Speech was made on an estimated budget of £9.5m, The Inbetweeners Movie on only £3.5m.

Their performance meant British films, both Independent and US-backed, took 36% of box office receipts, their biggest share in 10 years. Of those, 14% were independent films, the highest share achieved by features without foreign investment.

via 3D films lose lustre as home-grown hits win cinema box-office battle | Film | The Guardian.

Bang, bang, you’re dead: how Grand Theft Auto stole Hollywood’s thunder | Technology | The Guardian

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This article is an interesting profile of Rockstar and the GTA series. If you are reading this here, however, I’m pretty sure you have heard of Rockstar.

The fastest-selling cultural product in history was created by people you’ve probably never heard of. While this year’s Oscars honoured films in which the movie business sweetly congratulates itself on its own birth – The Artist, Hugo – the most dollar-hoovering entertainment release ever is not a film, still less an album; it’s a video game. Coming out last autumn, Modern Warfare 3 – a blockbuster military shooter made by a Californian game studio called Infinity Ward – took just 16 days to gross $1bn, beating by one day the previous record set by a film about blue people in space. And it wasn’t a freak accident. Global annual sales of video games now dwarf cinema box-office and recorded music: in 2010, games grossed $56bn, film tickets $32bn and music $23bn. (The film industry as a whole still made more, at $87bn.) Even social games on Facebook are enormous business: Zynga, the firm behind Farmville and Words With Friends, is responsible for 12% of Facebook’s revenue. Hollywood is old-school now. And one company in particular has played a pivotal role in this media revolution over the past decade: Rockstar Games.

via Bang, bang, you’re dead: how Grand Theft Auto stole Hollywood’s thunder | Technology | The Guardian.

Warners’ “Disc to Digital” scheme

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Another example of how behind the times the film industry is from Craig Grannell. The LA Times reports that Warners are launching a programme called ‘Disc to Digital’ in an attempt to cut piracy. This will allow DVD owners to bring their DVDs to a shop and pay to have them converted to a digital file.

As someone with a large collection of DVDs, this seems poorly thought out to me. Why would I want to load them into my car, drive somewhere, unload them all, hand them to a shop and pay when I could just download Handbrake for free and have my digital copy within a few minutes? How much would it cost? I could quite imagine the situation where paying the shop to rip a copy costs more than buying the DVD from Amazon.

It’s just odd that Warners would come up with a costly and cumbersome solution to a problem solved long ago by free software.

Dear Hollywood, nostalgia is not a business model – Ideas@Innovations – The Washington Post

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Post-Oscars blog post from the Washington Post about the state of Hollywood and the internet.

The problem with the entertainment industry is not the Internet or overseas foreign pirates — it’s a nostalgia for a past that will never return. Unfortunately, nostalgia is not a business model. The relentless pace of business in today’s digital world means that you either innovate or get out of the way.

And

It’s clear that the business model of Hollywood is built around scarcity, while the business model of Web-based companies is built around abundance. How the leaders of these two industries handle the vast dichotomy between these two models will tell you a lot about the future of video entertainment. During last night’s Academy Awards, the Hollywood message was distinctly one of scarcity, and it went something like this: It is only a few unique individuals, trained for generations, who can create this magic on a consistent basis. Anyone who has spent more than a few hours on the Internet knows otherwise – that the world is full of uniquely talented people, crowdfunding their ideas, embracing off-the-shelf digital tools and experimenting with innovative new formats for film.

via Dear Hollywood, nostalgia is not a business model – Ideas@Innovations – The Washington Post.