20 Mark Question yeh?

Using your wider knowledge of new media technologies, dicuss how far young people's use of media technology differs from that of their parents.



Statistics show that young people do not use gaming technology more than their parents, with 75% of heads of households playing video games, the average age of the video gamer is 30. This is due to game industries aiming their products to wider range of ages such as Nintento and its Girl friendly DS and Family orientated Wii including fitness games. These however are not what young people are using their gaming technologies for as the most popular video game genre being action, young people are more interested in playing these games online, in a more 'pull technology' as they are not restricted by what the game designers wanted them to do in the level but can play by their own rules.

ITs my birthday on saterday

Digital Media Distribution Opportunities for the Film Industry

Computor technology with high speed broadband connection and proccessing power gives the public a new way to experience films. This therefore gives an oppertunity for film distributors to give their audience the films in a way that competes with DVDs in a home cinema system or pay per view on cable but also creates the problem of keeping them secure, "Already today some estimates say there are as many as 500,000 digital movies being exchanged illegally over the web.".

Windows media 9 is focused on 3rd generation of digital media online:
~"Fast Streaming" eliminates buffering delays for a more TV-like 'broadcasting' experience.
~Reduces internet congestion by optimising the video/audio quality for the users bandwith.
~Improved codecs increase video quality by 20% without increasing file size therfore film providers can either increase their quality or decrease their bandwith costs with the new codecs.

Distribution on CDs / DVDs
Most of the major DVD player manufactorers plan to make their players compatible with Windows Media Audio and Video rather than just the standard MPEG2 DVD format. Benefits of this will be the compression rates without loss of quality which will mean that more movies can be stored on one DVD (up to four) without loss of quality.
Some film distributors are selling films on single CDs, two hour movies compressed at around 700kbs fits easily and is a cheap way of distribution.
Digital rights management - users go online to aquire the liscense needed to play their content.

Theater Experiences
Technology can help theaters overcome some of the challenges that are losing profit in theater exhibition.

Some of those challenges include:
The Challenge High Distribution Costs – The cost of sending films out to theaters across the country and around the world is fixed today based on the cost of the film prints themselves, anywhere from $1200-2000 per theater.
No Security – Distributors have little control over a film once it leaves their facilities. They have to hope that it’s delivered safely to the appropriate theaters and doesn’t fall into the wrong hands or is damaged along the way.
Degradation Issues – As a movie is screened it becomes progressively more scratched and dirty, eventually demanding a replacement print.
Limited Programming Flexibility – Currently theater owners are only set up to receive 35 mm films. Since the cost of film production is so high there’s little content beyond major independent and studio movies that can afford to take advantage of a theater screening.
Inflexible Advertising – Advertisers love advertising in theaters because they have a captive audience. But today’s theater advertising is limited to slide shows and rarely a filmed ad. But again, given the costs of film distribution not many advertisers can afford to send a 35 mm reel to each theater and even if many advertisers did so, the theater owners aren’t equipped to switch from one ad reel to the next. The Solution Digital distribution and exhibition of content in tomorrow’s theaters will overcome many of these limitations.
Streamlined Distribution – The distribution process will no longer involve bulky expensive film reels. Films can be sent digitally over the IP network to targeted theaters without ever having to duplicate a 35 mm reel. This streamlined distribution will pave the way for new programming options including concerts, sporting events, distance learning and more. Theater owners can program content quickly and easily, moving content from one auditorium to many, meeting market demand in a way they are currently unable to.
Integrated Digital Rights Management – Digital theater content will be secured before it ever leaves the content owners facility. DRM will enable tracking and license serving so theaters and content owners know exactly when and where the content is accessed.
Digital Preservation – The one thousandth time a digital movie is screened provides the same quality as the first time. There is no breakdown in the digital file as there is with film.
Demographically targeted advertising – Digital ads can be served from one location and targeted to specific theaters based on content being shown in that theater to a particular demographic.

The benefits of moving to digital distribution to theaters are clear. The costs for theater owners have been historically very to purchase the digital projectors and other equipment but some smaller theaters are finding that they can begin to achieve some of the benefits of digital cinema with off the shelf hardware and software. Recently theaters in Seattle and Dallas completed digital screenings of the critically acclaimed independent film “Wendigo.” Using a standard Windows-based workstation, Windows Media for the encoding, deliver and playback, and a DLP projector, the theater owners delivered high quality screenings. Customers were unable to tell that they were not watching a 35 mm film print. Although a digital screening as described above isn’t something that would meet the requirements of a major blockbuster it is a great option for theaters interested in delivering independent and alternative content geared to specific audiences.

Case study feedback #2

Toby - you still have a long way to go to complete your case study for tomorrow. Make sure you read the article linked on the department blog too.

CF

Film technologies

Oppertunity or Threat?
This lecture given by Lord Puttnam said the film industry needs to embrace digital technology otherwise it will share a similar fate to that of the music industry which has witnessed a massive drop in profits due to illegal internet trading.

Puttnam says that digital technology has the potential to substantially reduce distribution costs. Each physical film print costs $1000 or more, which quickly adds up, as in the case of Troy which was released simultaneously on 16,000 screens worldwide at a cost in the region of $16 million.

Digital distribution is taking a long time to catch on. There are only a handful of digital screens in the UK, and not many more in the United States. It’s countries such as China and Brazil which are leading the digital revolution; China, for example, already has 64 digital screens and plans to have at least 500 by the time of the Beijing Olympics.

“The problem is a relatively easy one to identify: Who pays? Solving it is a lot harder. Exhibitors, that’s to say the owners of cinema chains, have relatively little incentive to install or pay for new digital projectors. After all, digital doesn’t significantly add to the audience’s enjoyment of a film. The distributors, who will be the main beneficiaries in economic terms, effectively need to agree a model with the exhibitors whereby, although the projectors sit in the cinemas, it is they who are defraying a significant part of their costs – perhaps, for example, by paying exhibitors a fee to show their films thereby sharing in the costs of the projection equipment. This would be an almost complete reversal of the current model under which exhibitors effectively pay ‘rentals’ to the distributor out of the box-office gross in return for the right to screen a film.”

• Incentive for exhibitors to install digital projectors?
• Changes to audiences experience due to digital?
• Distributors benefits?
• Digital screens in UK?
• Digital cinema - media convergence?

Digital Democracy

Citizen journalism - the democratisation of the media enabled by advancements of heldhelled digital equipment and their increasing availability combined with web 2.0 features like blogging lets members of the public contribute to mainstream media.

Emily Bell talks about the difference between the professional journalist and the citizen contributor - and the fact that the work of the paid journalist is not always qualitativley better than the amateur citizen.

Googlezon presents a vision of the future where the collaboration of Googles storage space and bandwidth with Amazons huge commercial infrastructure to create an environment where members of the public are paid to provide entertaining material for the news based on their popularity, and the offline printed press is aimed at the older, 'elite' generation.

The age of permanent net revolution

~Endism is the perspective that sees new technologies as replacing older ones.
e.g CD roms replacing books
TV Replacing Radio ect.

~Media Ecosystem: The interactions between new and old media are complex. In science, an ecosystem is a dynamic system in which living organisms interact with one another and with their environment. The 'organisms' in our media ecosystem include broadcast and narrowcast television, movies, radio, print and the internet.

~Narrowcast TV: specialist content is aimed at subscription-based audiences and distributed via digital channels.

~The difference between the Web and the Internet is that the Web is enourmous, but its jsut one kind of traffic that runs on the internets tracks and signalling

~Push Pull mediums: Pull mediums - nothing comes to you unless you choose it, youre in charge, e.g. The Web. Push mediums - a select band of producers decide on the content, create it and push it at a passive audience, e.g. Television.

~Blogging- keeping an online diary - suggests that the traffic in ideas and cultrual products isnt a one way street, as it gives everyone access to publication media.

Film technologies: production distrubution exhibition

Technology

~Blue Ray? Why was it not successful?

~3D Cinema? How many are there? How popular are they?

~Celluloid? How many people still use Celluloid? Why?

~Digital Projectors - decline in cinema popularity stops cinemas affording to go digital.



Insitutions

~How much cheaper is Digital than Celluoid?

~Financial losses through film piracy? who? howmuch?





Audience

~How have the public responded to 3D cinema?

~How feasable is it to legally distribute films via the internet to the public?

~How many people still go to the cinema? why not?

The Fourth Estate

What is 'the Fourth Estate'?
The fourth estate refers to the press. The other estates are the courts, religion and parliament. Edmund Burke (18th century) said that the fourth estate was the most important one because it checked on abuses of power by the other three.

Is new media technology responsible for the decline in newspapers?
Teletext has been a faster method for news since the 70's and 24 hour news channels on satelite TV and the internet completely usurped newspapers in the 90's. As new media technologies are providing the news in faster and cheaper ways (The guardian post so much content online that entire issues can often be read online, free of charge), the printed press becomes old news before it is even read.

What does it mean "maybe the internet is already the cyberspace of the fourth estate"?
This means that although the internet has caused the decline in newspapers by providing faster, cheaper access to their content, the origional purpose of the fourth estate can still be carried out by these new media technologies. We can still be told what those in power do not want us to know but it will be from the internet rather than a newspaper.

Feedback #1

Well done Toby - excellent summary and you have found some interesting statistics to back up your pointsn(although I am not sure about the feature film reel costing £700? I am sure it is much more than this...) My only concern is that you haven't sourced where you found those statistics - include a link or at least name of source. You would need to do that in the exam so for revision purposes it would be worth going back and amending this.

A/1

Digital Technology and the film industry

Production:
Advances in digital technology mean that films can be shot straight onto a Hard Drive rather than using a reel of film. This is much cheaper (An average length feature film print costs around £700), also HDs are smaller so they cost less to transport, and can hold much more footage than rolls of film. This allows more creativity in shooting a film as the low cost enables experimentation with the story. Digital tehnology has opened more opertunities in post production aswell, for example, frames from 35mm film can be scanned into a computor for digital editing - this enables effects such as colour grading, shifting focus with lighting or adding completely new elements. This use of technology allows far more creativity with editing as decision changes in the past would not have been possible because of the cost of a re-shoot. It also introduces the possibilty of CGI which enables imaginative scenes that would be impossible to shoot profilmically.

Distribution:
The delivery of film reels to cinemas is a costly process and the use of digital technology would irradicate this, enabling cinemas to download the encrypted film directly. Also, digital technology has introduced DVDs, a more appealing non-linear way of experiencing a film. However, due to the publics increasing access to advanced technology, piracy is becoming more common, lowering cinema ticket sales because people are seeing the films before they are shown. Hollywood claims piracy has cost it $6bn (£3.2bn), digitising films means that copies are easily made and distributed illegally which is a big threat to the industry. By the time the Phantom Menace reached Asia for example, box office receipts were far lower than expected. Piracy was blamed because so many people had already seen it. The second film was given a simultaneous world wide cinema release as a result, probably a good idea as 10 million people went online to download it.

Exhibition:
A projection of a 35mm film roll picks up any imperfection in the frames like dust or scratches, impairing the visual experiance whereas a projection of a film shot digitally gives a crystal clear picture, just as the director intended. Advances in technology have introduced home cinema systems to the general public. This could be a threat to cinemas as one of the last deterrences of viewing DVDs or pirated films was the idea of the "cinema experience" beating any alternative, as this high definition, big screen, high sound quality is being brought into peoples front rooms, they are less likely to pay for it elsewhere. However, digital projectors in cinemas will bring a wide range of new oppertunities as they will be able to project anything with a digital input- from a youtube video to multiplayer gaming, possibly turning the cinema into a universal entertainment centre.

Moral panics and concerns with online technology

Advancements in online technology will open up a range of new opportunities but excessive use could also change our lives for the worse. For example, social networking sites like MySpace are becoming more popular as they are a quick and easy way to keep in touch with people you know and meet people that you don’t. However, as technology progresses people might be less inclined to make the effort to meet up with certain people in person if they are in frequent contact online. Also, as the technology gets more user friendly, a wider range of people will be able to use these networking sites; this means that more young children will be posting personal information that will be read by more adults, if their interaction leads to meeting in real life, this could create dangerous situations for paedophiles to pose as children, increasing the need for moderation on these sites and close observation must be kept on their content.

A moral argument could be made that social networking sites and services contribute to an already appearance obsessed society by creating an environment where a flattering photograph is the only visible part of you as you communicate with your friends. The social networking service ‘Second Life’ is the ultimate example of this as users create an avatar, personalising a virtual representation of themselves that others with interact with.

What is the future for online technology?

1. Who is Chris De Wolfe and what does he say is the future for social networking? What impact will portable hardware have on this area of technology?

~ Chris De Wolfe is the co-founder of MySpace and he says that online social networks are laying the groundwork for the new social web which is becoming more personal, portable and collaborative. Wolfe expects MySpace to have relationships with every carrier and device maker in the world and that half of their future traffic will come from non-PC users.

2. Who is Chad Hurley and what does he say is his company's goal? Is he a positive or negative technological determinist?

~Chad Hurley is the co-founder of YouTube, he says his company’s goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by making the upload process as simple as making a phone call. Hurley is a positive technological determinist because he reinforces the concept of ‘Global village’ by trying to make the world a smaller place by giving users more access to more information.

3. What does Maurice Levy say is the challenge for advertisers and what is 'liquid media' compared to 'linear media'?

~Maurice Lévy says that people are not longer willing to have their entertainment broken up by adverts and so the challenge for advertisers is to find creative solutions to interact with people in genuine and honest ways. Liquid media allows you to move in and out of different settings seamlessly whereas linear media dictates what, when, how etc. the user will consume the information.

4. What parallels does Norvig draw between Edison inventing electricity and the development of online technology in terms of searching for information?

~In that like Edison and electricity, the developers of online technology know that it will make searching for information easier but have no concept of the range of possibilities this information will bring us.

Key issues for audiences and institutions

Concepts:

Digitality -Encoding computor information using binary. Large amounts of information can be delt with at once

Interactivity -Streaming compressed information, can be through the air or via a (ISDN) cable. Wider bandwith means more usage is available at once. Interativity means the feed goes both ways; compression of digital information means you can upload aswell as download


Hypertextuality -Organisation in texts. Non linear texts (DVD) are replacing linear texts (Videos) as non linear texts allow the user to jump around and choose how to consume the information. This is because people now prefer small bites of information to stop them getting bored. Producers no longer control how we take in their information.

Dispersal - How information is shared and communicated. How producers target user and how they maximise their markets. Dispersal accross a wide network provides a large market for producers.

Virtuality -How real something is. What is real? The idea of mimiking the real world. Who is representing the world? Why How?

Convergance -New technologies are converging into one:

• MP3 players can show photos
• DVD recorders with Hard Drives for editing
• Phones with web, email, video, photo
• Satelite boxes with Hard Drives