The short film “Fathead,” produced by the Entertainment Technology Center@USC and shot at the new Amazon Stage in Culver City as an experiment in virtual production and collaborative, cloud-based workflows, has been nominated for a 54th NAACP Image Award in the Outstanding Short Film (Live Action) category. The Image Awards celebrate outstanding achievements and performances in the arts from an African American point of view, and recognize those who promote social justice through their creative pursuits. This year’s awards will air live on February 25 at 8:00 p.m. on BET and various ViacomCBS networks. “Fathead” was directed by c. Craig Patterson and produced by Erik Weaver, ETC’s director of adaptive production. Continue reading ETC Short Film ‘Fathead’ Is Nominee for NAACP Image Award

Last year we told you about VideowindoW, a high resolution clear-glass display that transforms windows, including the entire glass curtain of a skyscraper, into a black and white video screen. This year at CES, Superimaging Display showcased a proof-of-concept demo of a simpler approach to transparent window displays. The company has developed a thin film embedded with nanophosphors that display visible RGB images when excited by ultraviolet light from a DLP projector. The thin film can be attached to any glass surface, and the image is visible but translucent in daylight. Continue reading CES: Superimaging Creates New Clear Window Display Tech

Disney Research Studios has created an AI tool that can make actors look older or younger more simply than the costly and time-consuming visual effects that are the current status quo. While artificial intelligence had been used to age or de-age people with relative success in still frames, the results lacked photorealism when applied to video. Disney calls its app FRAN, for Face Re-Aging Network. FRAN has been trained to identify the parts of a face that change with age and can either accentuate or erase the telltale signs. Continue reading Disney Invents High-Quality Tool to Rejuvenate or Age Actors

Alphabet’s AI offshoot DeepMind has created an AI tool called Dramatron that can help co-write scripts, generating things like plot points, character and location descriptions and dialogue. While a human will still need to manage the process by editing and rewriting Dramatron’s suggestions, the app is designed to make the screenwriting process faster and easier. To deploy Dramatron, users will need an OpenAI API key and, ideally, a Perspective API key to minimize the risk of “offensive text.” In addition to AI researchers, DeepMind tested the tool with 15 playwrights and screenwriters who used it to co-write scripts. Continue reading DeepMind Tool Provides AI-Powered Screenplay Assistance

The streaming wars are spurring a content surge that is driving a demand for production space. The latest beneficiary of that is Television Center, a six-acre Art Deco complex on Romaine Street in Hollywood. The former home of the Technicolor Hollywood film lab is being remade as Echelon at Television Center in a $600-million makeover courtesy of Bardas Investment Group and Bain Capital Real Estate. Plans are underway for a complex of offices and a 620,000-square-foot studio with four soundstages and underground parking for more than 1,000 cars, spanning two city blocks. This is one of several production facilities in the planning stages. Continue reading Streaming Drives Massive Hollywood Soundstage Expansion

Disney+ outperformed its subscriber goals, helping The Walt Disney Company to 23 percent revenue growth in its fiscal second quarter, ended April 2. “Our strong results in the second quarter, including fantastic performance at our domestic parks and continued growth of our streaming services — with 7.9 million Disney+ subscribers added in the quarter and total subscriptions across all our DTC offerings exceeding 205 million — once again proved that we are in a league of our own,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek summarized for investors. Disney+ now reaches 137.7 million subscribers. Continue reading Disney Reports Strong Revenue and Subscriber Growth for Q2

After removing it in 2018, Hulu once again has 4K content available via its service. This time around, 4K content can be accessed through Xbox One devices (Hulu will soon add 4K support for Amazon Fire TV, LG webOS and others). Formerly, Hulu had only made 4K content available via Apple TV 4K and Chromecast Ultra, and the content selection had been somewhat limited compared to rivals like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Now, Hulu has more original content under its belt to offer in 4K, including hits like “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The First,” “Castle Rock,” and others. 

Continue reading Hulu Joins the Streaming Competition in Offering 4K Video

Netflix’s plans for the upcoming release of its Martin Scorsese film, “The Irishman” have shifted due to pushback from major theater chains after they learned of the streaming giant’s plans for a limited run. Netflix now plans to debut the film at the Shubert Organization’s Belasco Theatre in New York City, with showings from November 1st to December 1st that will follow a standard Broadway theater schedule. The company will provide modern equipment for the screenings. The film will debut on Netflix on November 27th.

Continue reading Netflix Film Will Debut on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has launched PlayStation Productions to transform the company’s 100+ video games into film and television projects. The production company, headed by Asad Qizilbash, is at work on its first projects on Sony Pictures’ Culver City lot. SIE Worldwide Studios chair Shawn Layden, who also oversees the new production company, noted that, with 25 years developing games, the company believes “now is a good time to look at other media opportunities across streaming or film or television.” Continue reading Sony Unit to Produce Movies, TV Shows Based on Games

At The Reel Thing, an annual conference at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood on “current thinking and most advanced practical examples of progress in the field of preservation, restoration and media conservation,” Prime Focus Technologies executive director of cloud media services Anthony Matt and HBO director of remastering and alternate versions Laurel Warbrick described the results of their testing of 10K scans vs. 4K scans of 35mm film. Fittingly, they titled their presentation “The Burden of 10K Dreams.” Continue reading The Reel Thing: Prime Focus and HBO Test 10K Scans of Film

Film, and later, digital projectors have been the standard form of displaying movies since the art form’s beginning. But now, says veteran engineering executive in advanced imaging and sound Pete Ludé, so-called direct view cinema displays are poised to displace them. In an afternoon of HPA Tech Retreat sessions looking at new display technologies, Ludé drilled down into the use of emissive displays using millions of RGB LEDs. These giant displays, he said, offer tremendous dynamic range and beautiful pictures in moderate ambient light. Continue reading HPA 2018: Direct View Cinema Displays to Displace Projectors

Storing information, including film, on DNA sounds like science fiction, but Harvard Medical School researchers just encoded Eadweard Muybridge’s 1878 film of a galloping horse onto a strand of DNA in a living cell, from which it can be retrieved and multiplied indefinitely. This is a first, but other researchers previously recorded all of Shakespeare’s sonnets on DNA, and Harvard geneticist George Church, one of the new study’s researchers, did the same with his book “Regenesis” and made 90 billion copies of it. Continue reading Harvard Scientists Store Motion Picture Clip on DNA Strand

Kodak’s digital Super 8 camera was not the company’s only nostalgic throwback showcased in Las Vegas. The camera company has finally entered the mobile market with its own Android smartphone – or at least a phone that licenses the Kodak name. Tech company Bullitt Group is behind the Kodak Ektra, which borrows its name from Kodak’s Ektra camera from the 1940s. That makes sense, since the phone is designed to mimic a point-and-shoot camera, featuring a 21-megapixel rear cam (but no optical zoom) and vintage leather finish. Continue reading CES: Kodak Enters the Mobile Market with Ektra Smartphone

Already the top-grossing R-rated movie in history (earning $761 million worldwide), “Deadpool” has broken another record by selling one million units in Digital HD sales during its first week, the fastest of any superhero title. The film “holds the record as Fox’s best performing Digital HD title ever,” notes The Wrap. “In comparison, ‘The Martian’ hit the one million unit mark in three weeks over Christmas, which was a record back then.” Digital HD includes Comcast, Google Play, iTunes, Xbox, and other digital outlets. “Deadpool” will be available on Blu-ray, DVD and on demand starting May 10. Continue reading ‘Deadpool’ Sets New Record: Sells One Million Digital Units

As revenue from streaming rose 29 percent last year, artists and the recording industry are renewing their effort to get the U.S. Copyright Office to take a second look at the “safe harbor provisions” of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They say that places the onus on policing copyright infringement on them, protecting services such as YouTube where copyrighted material is uploaded without permission. Katy Perry, Billy Joel and Rod Stewart are among the artists who have put a public face on the debate. Continue reading Artists Say ‘Safe Harbor’ is a Shield for Copyright Infringement