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Home » The Past Week in Review, for April 25th

The Past Week in Review, for April 25th

The Libya conflict claimed the life of filmmaker and photographer Tim Hetherington (left), shown here with Sebastian Junger, who wrote a remembrance of him in Vanity Fair. Photo credit: Tim Hetherington.

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

This week we have a look at some of the news from the Tribeca Film Festival, whether or not transmedia means anything of importance, and how DSLRs like Canon’s 5D now get important help from industry mainstays.

Now in its tenth unspooling, the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) continues to add value to its feature debuts by adding streaming media, VOD capabilities, and forays into social media and as well as more standard mixes of panels and speakers that offer insights on the state of New York’s media industry.

At theWrap’s inaugural conference about the independent film business, Harvey Weinstein said that The Weinstein Company is on track to outpace even its most profitable years at Miramax. An article on their website said that Weinstein figured that the company would get some 200 films being held by debtors out of hock (there’s still $335 million in debt overhanging company operations) within two to three years.

If you would like the video of Weinstein’s talk at theWrap’s session, click here.

Executive director of the Tribeca Film Festival Nancy Schafer talks about the TFF’s first 10 years with indieWIRE. According to Schafer, the “power of cinema to foster change” still constitutes the real roots of the TFF.

TheWrap’s inaugural conference on independent filmmaking also included a talk by R. Eric Lieb on transmedia as the “future of storytelling”. Lieb, president of Blacklight Transmedia, described transmedia as a type of storytelling in which creative elements “are disbursed systematically across different media channels” in order to create a unified media-based entertainment experience. Article is here.

Still not sure what transmedia is? Earlier this month the PGA had codified the nomenclature to move it into the producer’s groups purview. Here’s what a transmedia producer must do according to the PGA:

A Transmedia Narrative project or franchise must consist of three (or more) narrative story lines existing within the same fictional universe on any of the following platforms: Film, Television, Short Film, Broadband, Publishing, Comics, Animation, Mobile, Special Venues, DVD/Blu-ray/CD-ROM, Narrative Commercial and Marketing roll-outs, and other technologies that may or may not currently exist. These narrative extensions are NOT the same as re-purposing material from one platform to be cut or repurposed to different platforms.

A critique from Filmmaker Magazine’s Scott Macaulay on the term and its viability is here.

Lieb had been in town to present at the a conference on transmedia co-produced by the IFP. As a term and concept, transmedia has garnered disdain according to the IFP’s Mark Harris. As Harris says on this posting from on Filmmaker Magazine’s site, “(Independent filmmakers) think it’s just marketing, or they don’t understand why people can’t just sit and watch a good film.”

Read more here.

Variety offers its usual extensive range of coverage of the festival, from reviews to distribution deals to a telling look at how varied the festival has become in Anthony Kaufman’s Tribeca: Decade of Expansion.

If this first spate of warm weather has your thoughts drifting to the out of doors–including, of course, that classic New York refuge of rooftops–you’ll want to check out Rooftop Films’ lineup for their 15th annual summer series. Screenings start May 13th and runnning through August 20th.

Independent Film Week 2011 gets a new venue as per this article on IndieWire. The two groups behind the week of new work–Independent Film Project (IFP) and the Film Society of Lincoln Center–have announced that they will relocate the event to Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center; it will include joint programming during the New York Film Festival.

We just couldn’t get to most of the many new product announcements at NAB 2011 in our posting last week, but hopefully our suggestions of where to go for more info helped.

But if you want to check out one more series of short, smart NAB articles that will leave you with a better sense of how and just where all the new tech fits together, I can highly recommend David Leitner’s five-part Mondo NAB that he wrote for Filmmaker Magazine.

A move by two important players announced at NAB 2011 caught our notice the other day, so we thought to mention it here.

At the show, Technicolor announced a strategic alliance with Canon USA. What’s the big deal? This is the first time a world-brand lab of Technicolor’s size and sophistication will work to enable DSLR users to make use of Tech’s color-science, delivering a suite of creative tools to cinematographers using Canon EOS DSLR cameras in motion picture and television production.

Here’s Below the Line’s short article on the news.

This is pretty impressive stuff, considering how readily the output from Canon’s large sensor DSLRs has made its way into feature film and TV projects. The new suite of creative tools include Technicolor’s CineStyle; paired with Technicolor’s Digital Printer Lights, the two apps will provide “seamless pipeline from principal photography into editorial.” You can read the full release here.

For indie filmmakers, broadcast lenses suddenly became more relevant at the show as large, single-sensor camcorders proliferated. Check out Mitch Gross in Abel Cine’s blog on how the lenses–with their high zoom ratios with wide apertures in a relatively compact size–are now usable via a custom optical adapter the rental/sales house now offers.

Finally, in this touching tribute in Vanity Fair, Sebastian Junger remembers his “collaborator, confrère, and friend” Tim Hetherington, the Restrepo co-director who was recently killed while covering the fighting in Libya.

Author and filmmaker Junger co-owns the Chelsea bar and restaurant The Half King, where Hetherington frequented when he wasn’t on assignment in a dangerous location, according to a blog on the LA Times website.

About Dan Ochiva

New York City-based journalist and NYCPPNEWS founder Dan Ochiva writes and consults on film, video, and digital media technology.

Community & Partner Links

How Sony’s New Virtual Sound Technology Can Change How We Hear Films

Kami Asgar and Jessica Parks are post-production heavyweights who work with major studios, namely Sony. As a sound designer (Asgar) and as a post executive (Parks), their collective resume touches on everything from Apocalypto to Grandma’s Boy to Venom.

Parks has recently shifted her focus from supervisor to hands-on sound design, and we talk about how it’s never too late to pivot on your career path and find the thing you love doing wherever you are in life.

Click on this link to read the rest of the article on No Film School’s site.

NJ – Governor Murphy signs $14B Incentive Program Bill – the NJ Economic Recovery Act of 2020

 Film tax credits — amending existing programs to include provisions for so-called New Jersey film partners and New Jersey film-lease partners and allowing an additional $200 million of tax credits annually over 13 years.

Click this link if you want to read the full article on the Lexology site. http://bit.ly/35NtDx6

Film Commish announces date for production restart

In her December 18, 2020 news update, MOME Commissioner Anne del Castillo announced that the Film Office is now accepting permit applications for production activity that begins on July 27th.

She also announced awards now (Awkwafina) and more. To read all of the Film Commish’s bloggy sort of news column, click here.

Stimulus Offers $15 Billion in Relief for Struggling Arts Venues

The coronavirus relief package that Congressional leaders agreed to this week includes grant money that many small proprietors described as a last hope for survival.

For the music venue owners, theater producers and cultural institutions that have suffered through the pandemic with no business, the coronavirus relief package that Congress passed on Monday night offers the prospect of aid at last.

To read the full article on The New York Times’ site, click here.

If you want to start production, here’s the latest news from the Mayor’s Office

Phase 4 production guidance is available on the Film Permit website. All production activity, whether it requires a Film Permit or not, must comply with New York Forward Industry Guidance.

For more information see, please refer to the State Department of Health’s Interim Guidance for Media Production During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. Please review the guidelines and FAQ before submitting permit applications. The Film Office is operating remotely, so please allow additional time for Film Permit processing.

The above paragraphs contain links to the various FAQ – just mouse over the relevant words.

Nikon to Stop Making Cameras in Japan

Nikon has fallen on hard times as of late as its camera sales have cratered, and now there’s a new indicator of how dire its financial situation is: the company is reportedly pulling the plug on making cameras in Japan after over 70 years of doing so.

To read the full article on Petapixel’s site, click here.

NVIDIA Uses AI to Slash Bandwidth on Video Calls

NVIDIA Research has invented a way to use AI to dramatically reduce video call bandwidth while simultaneously improving quality

What the researchers have achieved has remarkable results: by replacing the traditional h.264 video codec with a neural network, they have managed to reduce the required bandwidth for a video call by an order of magnitude. In one example, the required data rate fell from 97.28 KB/frame to a measly 0.1165 KB/frame – a reduction to 0.1% of required bandwidth.

To read the rest of this article on Petapixel, click this link.

 

 

 

Union Health Plan Dodges Film Workers’ Suit Over Virus Relief

Law360 (October 9, 2020, 5:22 PM EDT) — The Motion Picture Industry Health Plan’s board can’t be sued under ERISA for allegedly flouting its duties when it relaxed plan rules in response to COVID-19, a California federal judge has ruled, nixing a proposed class action filed by two cinematographers who still couldn’t qualify for benefits.

In an order entered Thursday, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner granted the board of directors’ motion to dismiss Greg Endries and Dee Nichols’ Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit accusing board members of breaching their duty to treat all plan participants fairly.

Endries and Nichols, members of Local 600 of the International Cinematographers Guild, said in July that the board left them and others “out in the cold” in its attempts to address the problems COVID-19 caused for plan participants.

But Judge Klausner agreed with the board’s contention that the case, which alleged a fiduciary breach, should be tossed because plan administrators don’t act as fiduciaries when they amend health care plans.

Read the full article on the Law360 site by clicking here.

Russo Brothers Received Close to $50 Million From Saudi Bank

Anthony Russo and Joseph Russo photographed at the PMC Studio in Los Angeles for the Variety Playback Podcast.

The Russo brothers, directors of the all-time top grossing film “Avengers: Endgame,” quietly secured a roughly $50 million cash infusion for their production company AGBO from Saudi Arabia earlier this year, multiple sources tell Variety.

In a deal brokered and closed at the beginning of the pandemic, the Russos received the investment from an undisclosed Saudi bank in exchange for a minority stake in the brothers’ Los Angeles-based shop.

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