Radar Waves

uh oh: yahoo ad insertion sftwr fails to catch tasteless juxtaposition

Catching up on my boingboing (been busy finishing the dissertation and moderating a panel at the millenials conference). came across a creepy item about a real-life andromeda strain scenario, in which peruvians near a recent meteor strike came down with a strange illness - perfect for my not-so-unique combination of technogeekery, hypochondria, and paranoid dystopian apocalyptic visions.

so i checked out the article on yahoo! news, and was astonished to see the netflix ad inserted into the page, which overpowers the actual (boring) photo that accompanies the story. in the netflix ad, ghoulish, decomposed faces grin and snarl menacingly from the frame. they look exactly like they've been hit with an interstellar flesh-eating zombie virus.

maybe there should be some editorial oversight over ad placement, after all...

Lucas sees the light(saber) -- allows Star Wars mash-ups

George Lucas, the man who screamed like a wounded wookie when the Phantom Edit first introduced JarJar-free prequelosity to millions of online nerds, has come around, kind of.

Lucasfilm, which is in the middle of a hype cycle centered around the original film's thirtieth birthday extravaganza, has announced that this time around, fans are being invited to mash-up, remix, and even eff with the official storyline and timeline, using 250 officially sanctioned video clips from all six feature-length films. They're partnering with online video editing site Eyespot.com to do it, which should provide Web 2.0 legitimacy to the plan, plus a huge boost in subscriber numbers for the video site.

Of course, Lucas isn't exactly uploading the master keys to the Death Star; for one thing, Eyespot will use some kind of pattern recognition software to censor out any user-generated clips that contain "nudity, pornography, and the like" (seems like a pretty conveniently broad stricture). Also, remixers will have zero stake in their work; Eyespot and Lucasfilm will divvy up the proceeds from streaming advertisements served to viewers. And don't even think about the possibility of either the source materials or the products being released under a Creative Commons license...

...But all in all, we like this. We are happy. We might even make an all-Jar-Jar-all-the-time edit, if it's not deemed obscene.

Variety's Eulogy: The Death of VHS

We all knew it was dying, Variety provides the euology for VHS. Who knew loneliness could kill a technology? Well, that and retailers sounding the death knell: "no longer shelf space." Here's to a fruitful afterlife on ebay, where it will be reunited with its friends Betamax (surely the two have mended their relationship by now), Colecovision and a large collection of laserdiscs.

IP movies-on-demand about to explode

There's been a recent uptick in what the intelligence-types call "chatter" -- all about soon-to-launch video-on-demand services. iTunes has apparently cut a major deal with Disney, while Amazon signed on a bunch of other majors. Both services should be popping up any second.

Also, apparently, the iTunes/DIS deal is pegged to the release of a widescreen video iPod. This is kind of tantalizing to think about -- have they finally replaced the buttons with a touchscreen? Will we be able to turn the thing sideways? And just how many degrees of abstraction are involved in a touchscreen version of a clickwheel emulator? If this news is true, Apple is once again edging out ahead of the pack -- cinematic aspect ratios are becoming normative even for TV broadcast, so RIP the square screen. Of course, the PSP has been doing the letterbox thing for well over a year by now, but who's counting?

In related news, Apple's apparently also set to launch the iPod phone. So says Digg, anyway. Good thing I just blew all that dough on a Treo.

BTW, check out the LATimes tomorrow (9/6). I'll be opining on this stuff.

UPDATE: Also in video-on-demand news, today the Sci Fi Channel posted the first of 10 original content webisodes gearing up to the October 6 premiere of Battlestar Galactica season 3. This is very smart cross-media programming, brand extension, targeting the hardcore fanbase, etc -- but, also, my wife and I are just plain stoked. Yeah, we're nerds -- wanna make something of it?

UPDATE 2: And here's a link to the LA Times story.

Another genie escapes: Blu-Ray and HD-DVD get hacked

Ars Technica is reporting that some crafty German hackers have come out with a DeCSS equivalent for next-gen, high-definition movie disc formats Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

Even if it isn't surprising, it's kind of ironic. Copy-protection has been one of the key issues in the escalating arms race between these rival formats, and rumor has it that the key reason the PS3 will be shipping so much later than Sony had anticipated is pressure from Fox studios to add additional layers of protection to the Blu-Ray format. When I recently moderated a panel on next-gen movie formats at the Digital Media Summit, it was all about security.

Of course, this new hack, which is apparently based on a script invoking the PrintScreen function (rather than decrypting the DRM), will no doubt be rendered harmless in short order by firmware upgrades to devices, but I have to say it doesn't bode well for any company that bases its strategy on preventing redistribution or remixing film content.

Movie fans should be psyched, though.

Fun with Google Trends: Pirates vs. Superman

pirates    superman   

   

I've been avoiding writing my dissertation (and a few ongoing Radar projects) by futzing around with Google Trends all day.

Here's what I can't figure out: As everyone in the media-saturated world knows by now, Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean totally smashed Warner's Superman Returns in terms of opening weekend gross B.O., with $135M vs. $76M - nearly twice as much. And, as the bottom half of the chart above shows, press for Pirates seems to have outstripped press for Superman (although Pittsburgh Pirates game coverage probably plays a role in that). Yet Google searches for "superman," which had been in a dead heat with searches for "pirates" until this spring, suddenly leapt up when the movie hype started. I know all those people aren't searching for Nietzschean philosophy, so it's gotta be the movie.

I welcome any and all analyses here. How can Pirates win the box office and hype races, yet lag behind Superman when it comes to Google searches?

Censorship in reverse: movie scrubbing co's get kiboshed

Any Radar Waves reader knows that I'm no fan of censorship, so it might come as a shock to hear that, this time, I'm taking the side of the scissors-wielders.

Last week, Federal Judge Richard Matsch of Colorado (best known for his role in the Timothy McVeigh trial) ruled against companies such as CleanFlicks and (now defunct) Family Flix USA, arguing that their business model -- scrubbing Hollywood films of their naughty bits and renting or selling the flaccid remainder to "family-friendly" types -- is a violation of copyright law, because the censoring is done without the consent of the copyright holder.

This is yet another disturbing indication that "moral rights" -- the notion that a content creator (or a corporation that subsidizes content creation) has some kind of enduring control over the ways in which its audience/customers uses said content -- is on the upswing in American jurisprudence. As I understand it, moral rights are a European import, with no legal foundation in American copyright law.

This decision is particularly troubling because it spells hot water for everyone else who is in the business of aiding and abetting innovative uses of recorded media -- mash-ups, remixes, and what have you. Saying that content creators have total control over how their content is used, even post-sale, is another way of saying that consumers have minimal control over how they interact with content, even after they buy it.

IMHO, forcing people to watch the naughty bits in a movie is every bit as much an insult to our personal liberty as forcing people not to watch the naughty bits; call it "reverse censorship," if you like. Some like their flicks cut, some like 'em uncut. Who am I -- or Hollywood -- or Judge Matsch, for that matter -- to command otherwise?

Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't movie rental industry-leader Blockbuster been editing film content for decades?

PirateBay Torpedoed

Slyck is reporting that Swedish IP tongue-waggers The Pirate Bay, perhaps the world's largest and best-known torrent tracker, has been raided by Swedish police. The raid was likely conducted at least in part on behalf of the MPAA, which has called the site "one of our No. 1 targets."

According to a message posted on the site, the charges are breach of copyright law, and contributory infringement. Given the site's long history of transparency and more or less officially sanctioned operations, it will be interesting to watch the case play out in the EU courts. To what extent will international IP treaties trump local laws? How much authority will American business interests continue to exert abroad, as cultural power shifts to Europe and Asia? We will no doubt be revisiting these questions as developments unfold.

I have to say, I'm a little surprised at this turn of events. After BitTorrent's recent distro deal with Warner, you'd think the join-em-rather-than-lick-em mentality was on the upswing here in Hollywood. The potential synergies between PirateBay and Disney's upcoming mega-smashbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest should be -- arrrrhhhh! -- obvious.

Adventures in open source: Elephants Dream released via Web

Somewhere high in the Hollywood Hills, Steven Soderbergh is wetting his pants.

Yesterday saw a minor milestone in participatory culture: the online release of Elephants Dream, a community-financed CGI film made entirely using open-source applications, developed by seven artists around the world.

In addition to its OSS provenance, the film was released for free under a Creative Commons attribution license, so can be used by anyone in any way, as long as the original artists are credited with the end result.

The site's servers are waaaay overloaded (even though the film is a short, they released it in HD with 5.1 channel surround sound, so the file comes to hundreds of MBs), but fortunately, it was also released via BitTorrent, so I'm currently downloading at about 133kbps. I'll update once I've had a chance to download and digest the film.

UPDATE: Watched the film this weekend. It was beautiful to look at and completely impenetrable (at least, to me). Kind of like a cinematic sequence in an XBOX 360 RPG. Suffice to say, Hollywood's not in imminent danger of losing their audience to "open movies." Then again, they are in danger of losing their audience to XBOX 360 RPGs. So I guess it all balances out in the end.

Good Film Marketing/Bad Film Marketing: United 93 and Akeelah

After all the fuss about whether or not America is ready for a 9/11 film, the box office proves that indeed, we are. But most of the media that focuses on the timing of the release of United 93 misses another story. This may be one of the most brilliant movie marketing campaigns we've seen in years, albeit one marked by initial missteps. It would be pretty much impossible for a narrative film (as opposed to a documentary) to market this without being exploitative. After the initial trailers stirred controversy in NY and were pulled from one theater, Universal seemed to switch gears, although I'm having a hard time finding any articles or blog posts about the change in direction. The initial trailers seemed the present the film as an action movie, with, as the new york times called it "adrenaline-pumping trailer." The tracking, right up to its release, was "ambiguous" at best. Universal had its work cut out for it.

then the changes began. the most instrumental component of this campaign has been the families. suddenly, I began to see a mix of ads - some straight clips of the film itself, overlayed with the usual effusive praise (almost entirely from intellectually elite media -and I mean that in the good way - like the New Yorker). The second, and this was the more compelling of the two, didn't feature clips from the film. Instead, it was interviews with the director and the family. and what was the topic? Is It Too Soon?

That's right - the marketing campaign took on the elephant in the room head-on and made brilliant use of the families. Again, it could not be more exploitative but its damn effective. And its exploitative in a way that hides the exploitation - rather than feeling the families are used, the audience is invited to feel a kinship with them, to share in their approval, to share in their pain. and I will admit, I'm not immune. when the trailers began, I too thought "no way. too soon. I'm not paying $14 to see the Feel-Bad movie of the year." but the ads (as well as the publicity campaign) are very, very persuasive. And debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival (without a party - that would be rather unseemly), just a few blocks from the physical reminder of our psychic pain, is just the cherry on the cake.

meanwhile, in this corner we have Akeelah and the Bee, which opened in 8th place this weekend with just $6.3 million. a pretty low showing for a movie that had all the marketing power of...Starbucks behind it. Despite the industry attention it received as Starbucks' first foray into movie marketing and co-production, it's barely a blip on consumer's radar (although it should be pointed out that it performed exponentially better than last year's spelling bee drama, Bee Season with Richard Gere). Perhaps America's appetite for cute kids who are good spellers has worn thin. Maybe we've seen it all before. Perhaps we can't blame the marketing department for this failure, but the anemic push we saw from Starbucks certainly didn't help. if this is what the future of Starbucks' media strategy looks like, well, I can wait for cable.