$600 Million in Stamps

Netflix is now attempting to shift the $600 Million a year that they pay in postage into digital distribution contracts with movie studios and media companies. Reed Hastings had the vision when no one else did. They couldn’t put the pieces together. They sat back and now that they see the power of his vision they all want a piece.

Media Owners – Time Warner - http://nyti.ms/heYQoH

Distribution – Comcast - http://wapo.st/gs1XIs

Competitors – OnLive - http://bit.ly/efwRbV

They might be able to chip away, but do they have the motivation to really change their entire business when everything is going just fine? http://read.bi/9UnKj4

Their business model isn’t broken. People aren’t “cutting the cord.” In a national study by Nielsen it was found that less than one percent of households have ditched their cable tv connection. http://es.pn/hB5fHr

Another recent study by Nielsen shows that people are watching more TV today than they ever have. http://bit.ly/LjE4H

The problem for the old guard is that someone will find the special sauce. The secret missing piece that rapidly accelerates the rate of change. We aren’t there yet, but it’s inevitable.

Maybe it will be something similar to what Mark Cuban is suggesting. http://bit.ly/b871Pa

Whatever it looks like it won’t need stamps.

 

The Future of Video Editing

One of my favorite editors Walter Murch wrote an insightful book about editing called In the Blink of an Eye. The book focuses on how he has built his method of editing around listening to his intuition. Film depends so heavily on our sub-conscious experience that when we make films we need our intuition to tell us what works and what does not. Depending on logic alone can leave us with a film that has no heart or life to it.

Multi-Touch Interface for Musician's by Jazz Mutant

 

To bring our intuition to the film itself we have some technology that can either get in the way or enhance the process. This is where multi-touch interfaces could have an exciting impact on filmmaking. If the technology can get completely out of the way and we can touch the clips and play with them directly, maybe we can more intuitively edit them.

 

Analog Love

 

In some ways a return to the good old days of splicing pieces of film together. Sure cutting film and taping it together today sounds like rubbing sticks together to start a fire, but it’s direct and tactile. 

Soon the iPhone will be able to edit video. That will be the first step in taking video into the realm of multi-touch. The Lead Software Designer for Final Cut Pro and iMovie (His name escapes me, someone help me out)  has begun to play with the typical editing interface. His first experiments were in the most recent versions of iMovie. Once all of these ideas are further refined hopefully they make it into Final Cut Pro. Somewhere out there there’s a better way to edit.

Techno Lust

Forget about all of the DSLRs from Canon and Nikon with their ho hum HD video modes, this is a camera worth lusting over.

It is the Ikonoskop DII. Designed and built by some crazy Swedes. The best kind of crazy of course, as in crazy enough to completely reimagine the digital cinema camera. Not only does it look like a prop from Star Wars, this camera will also shoot beautiful uncompressed HD. If you have ever shot RAW with your DSLR you know the joy of uncompressed. Imagine if your DSLR only shot super compressed JPEGs. That’s what we’ve been dealing with in the video world. This camera brings RAW to the video world. Plus it looks like it must belong to Darth Vader.