The hidden treasure...

The following Screendigest article caught my attention today.

I find the revenue question to be the hottest topic today for broadcasters and content providers. To name a few influencers: migration of TV viewers from analogue TV to the digital screen, decrease in the amount of time spent watching TV programmes, growing popularity of VoD that allows to skip 'annoying' commercials, other. ALL of that challenge broadcasters' worldview and put a pressure over them to find (!!!) the way to bring their money back...

Europe's TV broadcasters trapped in a downward spiral as advertising revenues plummet.

With TV broadcasters in the five biggest western European markets already struggling in a challenging advertising market this year, media analyst Screen Digest predicts that the worst is yet to come. Screen Digest's latest analysis reveals an industry in a downward spiral of economic slowdown, advertising recession, deflated prices and audience fragmentation.

Three of the big markets are suffering the most. In the UK despite outperforming a sluggish advertising market in the first six months of the year, ITV's full year guidance points to a 3% drop in ad revenues. The once untouchable French broadcaster TF1 has taken a double whammy of a 3.6% drop in revenues and a loss of its audience, in particular during the crucial prime-time slot. As a result the company is forecasting a 3% drop on full year revenues. Leading Spanish broadcasters Telecinco and Antena3, having enjoyed many years of strong growth, have been brought down to earth by a deep advertising recession, the rapid rise of new competitors and concerns over the imminent introduction of more stringent advertising regulations.

Two markets have bucked the trend so far: Germany and Italy. The German ad market has remained flat and RTL Group has claimed a record share of the advertising pie, in no small part as a result of the new sales model launched by competitor ProSiebenSat.1 which was subsequently rejected by the market. In Italy, Mediaset has outperformed a flat TV advertising market increasing ad revenues by 2.2 per cent year-on-year.

In the UK, ITV scrambles out of one 'tunnel' only to get stuck in anotherIn recent years ITV has been in a 'tunnel' of declining audience share and revenues but in 2007 the company appeared to have its turned fortunes around by halting the drop in both audience and ad revenues. However the credit crunch, with its challenging economic conditions, has meant that just as ITV managed to get out of this tunnel it has fallen into another one – this time not of its own making. ITV is already experiencing a major advertising downturn this quarter and has said that revenue may shrink by 20 per cent in September.

This month the full effects of the recession are expected to start to impact ad revenues, with financial and telecoms clients cutting budgets first. Retailers are still investing their budgets in TV advertising, but as the recession on the high street looks set to deepen, this strategy is likely to be short-lived.

Vincent Létang, Screen Digest Analyst for Advertising says "It may seem paradoxical that as TV audiences are still growing, TV advertising revenues are falling. The reason is that the demand for TV advertising is flat – and so broadcasters have been forced to drop their prices. It is cheaper to advertise now on TV than at any point in the past 20 years. The fact that commercial TV viewing has been growing this year to reach all-time highs adds to the pains of the British broadcasters. In a period of low demand, over-supply of audience simply fuels the downward price spiral."

An emerging ‘architecture of participation’

Over the past couple of years, an exciting convergence of tools, ideas and networks under the labels Web 2.0 and ‘social software’ or social media became centre of mass attention. More to it, now we are facing the innovation on the consumer Internet that aims to support work and education related processes.

The ‘always on’ culture of internet access combined with the fact that more and more people are now sharing their ideas through blogs, wikis, messaging and other online tools, is creating a critical mass of connectivity that is driving innovation. Tim O’Reilly, who coined the phrase Web 2.0, saw this new generation of social tools as part of an emerging ‘architecture of participation’, and this phenomenon has great potential to socialize online learning to a greater extent than we have previously seen. Transforming it into learning in YOUR own way…

Though, the personalization agenda is not only about interface options and learning styles, but the whole experience of how, what and with whom we learn. As a good example - http://home.disney.co.uk/.


Viva Experience! Viva Innovative and Experiential Marketing!

Pixar - A Human Story of Computer Animation

Interview with Brad Bird (Writer/Director, The Incredibles, Pixar Animation Studios), Ed Catmull (Co-Founder and President, Pixar Animation Studios), Alvy Ray Smith (Co-Founder of four centers of computer graphics excellence (Altamira, Pixar, Lucasfilm, New York Tech)) and a Microsoft Fellow, Andrew Stanton (Writer/ Director, Finding Nemo, Pixar Animation Studios), and Michael Rubin (Moderator, Author of Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution).



[Recorded May 16, 2005] All rights reserved by Computer History Museum.

Disney Magic 1.0 vs. Disney Magic 2.0

As times are changing and interests are emerging, Magic transforms. Old and so well-known Magic of Disney Cartoons has transformed into New and Exciting Magic of Nowadays Dreamers, Magic of so-like-real Animation Heroes.

Disney 1.0:



Disney 2.0:

Pure Amazement...

Wow...I haven't seen anything more Pure than this... And I am not talking about the new Disney Interatcive game for a sake of playing... What I m amazed by is the Purity of its user-experience...clarity of its picture...greatness of its design...

"Pure is an unexpected step up for quad-bike racing games, not simply because it comes from Disney Interactive who have never produced anything close to it before, but because other ATV games, such as the ATV Offroad Fury series, had already mapped out the basic formula. With grandiose vistas and refined jump physics, Pure delivers a new sense of timing that is invigorating and wicked." ~Kris Abel, ctv.ca, Tue 16 Sep 2008

...See with your own eyes, Experience with your own soul... It's Pure Magic...

Pixar + Disney Animations =.........

"Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios, the two most recognizable names in feature film production for the western moving pictures market, have each come into possession of a general manager that will now oversee the overall operations of the animation units, helping compose and give the go-ahead to what many hope will be another interesting chapter in feature-length cartoons. In an announcement from Ed Catmull, the President of both Disney and Pixar animation studios, Jim Morris (Pixar) and Andrew Millstein (Disney) will now be guiding the venture undertaken by their respective units."

~ Disney-Pixar Steps Up General Management, Animation Insider
September 15th, 2008 by Aaron H. Bynum

P.S. Yep, seems I was right in my predictions :)

It was obvious that Disney and Pixar Animation will merge together as 3D-digital animation so rapidly took over analogue. With all my love to Disney, original Disney animation is no more than a remarkable history...masterpeace from the past... Pixar - being compared to a fresh breeze - turned out to be replacing whole air...

What else would you say after watching Toy Story, Nemo, Ratatouille and Wall-E!

~Storytime: NBC Universal~

NBC Universal [http://www.universalpictures.com/] is one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. Formed in May 2004 through the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, NBC Universal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, and world-renowned theme parks. NBC Universal is 80% owned by General Electric and 20% owned by Vivendi.

Universal has achieved both popular success and critical acclaim with its recent Academy Award winners Atonement, The Bourne Ultimatum, King Kong, Brokeback Mountain, Ray, A Beautiful Mind, The Pianist and Lost in Translation. Classic, Academy Award-winning films from Universal include All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Schindler’s List (1993).

But what of the most interest, is this video clip:


Your Studio and You

Money are not that always funny...

"These days, scores of films are finding there's no room at the multiplex. The reason: Hollywood is flush with roughly $13 billion to $18 billion in financing for movies that poured in over the past few years, according to bankers and producers, vastly expanding the number of pictures getting made. The flood of money is paying for films made by relative newcomers as well as veteran film investors and producers." ~ Lauren A.E. Schuker and Peter Sanders, Wall Street Journal

That dynamic has turned movie distribution into a free-for-all, with too many films vying for too few slots in theaters each weekend. Last year, more than 600 feature films - mostly independent movies not produced at a major studio - were released theatrically in the U.S., up from 466 in 2002, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. That's an average of 2.6 more movies every weekend that are battling for the public's attention.

More than 3,600 feature films were submitted for consideration at Sundance Film Festival this year, and although many of those were tiny digital flicks that have no chance of commercial release, the number is up from about 2,000 feature submissions just five years ago.

The frothy marketplace means more choices for movie fans and more headaches for a struggling industry. In 2007, domestic box-office revenue totaled $9.68 billion, up from $9.3 billion in 2006, according to box-office tracker Media by Numbers. Box-office revenue has grown since 2005 because of higher ticket prices, but attendance started dropping last year. This year, attendance is down 4.74 percent from the same time a year ago. Lower attendance should trim box-office revenues for 2008 to about $9.6 billion, Media by Numbers projects.

Today, the credit crunch is putting the brakes on outside film financing. But Hollywood executives fear the glut created by the recent spate of overproduction is going to be felt for at least a couple more years. Some people say the worst of the oversupply problem is still about a year away...

Continue reading here

Maestro, music, please!

Every Masterpiece is simple... It doesn't take much to create it, you reckon?
...behind 3 minutes of any animated clip, there are thousands of hours of work, hundreds of highly-devoted and inspired people, and an unbelievable level of creativity!

To share an example of Success, please read the article on 'How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity' published in Harvard Business Review, September 2008.

Listen to Ed Catmull discuss managing creativity.

We gotta wear 3D shades

"...The DreamWorks visionary has been busy behind closed doors but has now come out and announced a tie-in deal with Intel to create a 3D film brand called InTru 3D (do you see what they've done there?), which will combine Intel's new standalone graphics chip with 3D technology the company acquired from start-ups...

... all of DreamWorks' films will indeed be shot in 3D from next year onwards..."

AVreview.co.uk

Tribute to Bill Melendez

Bill Melendez, 'Peanuts' animator -- and voice of Snoopy -- dies at 91

by Charles Solomon, Special to The Los Angeles Times

Melendez supplied Snoopy's laughs, sobs and howls. He experimented with making sounds that suggested a voice and speeding them up on tape. In his nearly 70-year career, the animator worked on Disney films including 'Fantasia' and 'Bambi,' and Warner Bros. characters such as Bugs Bunny. He's best known for the 'Charlie Brown' specials.

Animator, director and producer Jose Cuautemoc "Bill" Melendez, whose television programs and theatrical films featuring Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" characters earned four Emmy Awards, an Oscar nomination and two Peabody Awards, died Tuesday at St. John's hospital in Santa Monica, according to publicist Amy Goldsmith. He was 91.Melendez's career extended over nearly seven decades, including stints at Walt Disney Studios, Leon Schlesinger Cartoons (which later was sold to Warner Bros.), United Productions of America and Playhouse Pictures. In 1964, he established Bill Melendez Productions, where he created his best-known works, including the holiday classic "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965). Over the years, his films were honored with two additional prime-time Emmys, three National Cartoonist Society awards, a Clio Award and 150 awards for commercials.

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" won an Emmy and a Peabody; CBS has rebroadcast it every holiday season since. Breaking with tradition, the filmmakers used an upbeat jazz score by Grammy-winning composer Vince Guaraldi and real children for the characters' voices, rather than adult actors imitating children.

Melendez supplied Snoopy's laughs, sobs and howls. Schulz insisted that as a dog, Snoopy couldn't talk. Melendez experimented with making sounds that suggested a voice and speeding them up on tape -- assuming a professional actor would do a final recording. But time ran short, and Melendez ended up serving as Snoopy's voice in 63 subsequent half-hour specials, five one-hour specials, the Saturday morning TV show and four feature films. In his later years, Melendez chuckled over the fact that he received residuals for his vocal performances.

Working with Mendelson and Schulz, Melendez brought the "Peanuts" characters to the big screen in 1969 with "A Boy Named Charlie Brown." Time magazine reported that "when 'A Boy Named Charlie Brown' sticks to a boy named Charlie Brown, it becomes a good deed in a naughty world, bright, nonviolent and equipped with an animated moral, the way Snoopy is equipped with a tail."

Three sequels followed: "Snoopy, Come Home" (1972), "Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown" (1977) and "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!!)" (1980).

"Bill Melendez brought his special warmth, charm and directness to the Charles Schulz characters and brought them to life," animation historian and Oscar-winning filmmaker John Canemaker said Wednesday...

Full article can be found here

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P.S.

*Gimmicks that move the world*: 3D movies

According to the Wired E-Magazine ['Movie Industry Doubles Down on 3-D' article, 14 April 2008], the proliferation of home theaters, movies-on-demand and portable video players cause the reason why moviegoers have fewer reasons to actually "go" to a movie.

Filmmakers and studios alike have pledged their allegiance to 3-D too bring back and boost high level of revenues. Disney and Pixar announced this week that it will release all of its films in 3-D, starting with Bolt, which is slated for a November release. Dreamworks Animation says that by 2009 all of its movies will be released in 3-D. James Cameron is working on big-budget 3-D sci-fi flick called Avatar, and George Lucas is working on remastering all the Star Wars movies in 3-D.

For studios, the financial allure of 3-D is twofold: The technology can't easily be replicated in home theaters (yet); and moviegoers are still willing to pay a premium for 3-D films. The big question is whether the technology is a game changer or just a short-lived gimmick to drive ticket sales, like Smell-O-Vision -- or, for that matter, the 3-D technology of the 1950s.

"This is a serious visualization technology that's just begun to be used for entertainment," says Elizabeth Brooks, chief marketing officer of 3-D system maker RealD, which has about 97 percent of the 3-D market. "It's been used by NASA and by scientists who need to render things perfectly. It's my job to sing the company's praises, but if the technology weren't good, [filmmakers] wouldn't be planning to make as many 3-D films as they're making."

Unlike 3-D films of the 1950s, the new wave of 3-D pictures don't blur and they don't cause headaches. In basic terms, a 3-D film is shot in two frames -- one for the right eye and once for the left eye. The projector buffers the left and right streams and projects them in alternation at 144 frames per second, using a "triple flash" technique that shows each frame three times in order to smooth out the picture. The RealD 3-D system also requires theaters to install a special silver screen to maintain the polarization of the image.

So the main trick for Film Studios in making 3D masterpieces is that 3-D is poised to improve theater attendance and box-office grosses. The average ticket price for "Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds," a 74-minute 3-D concert flick, was reportedly $15. By contrast, the average 2-D movie ticket price is about $7, according to the National Association of Theater Owners. Hannah Montana grossed about $65 million domestically, and on its opening weekend, it grossed about $31 million, handily out-selling the 2-D Jessica Alba vehicle, The Eye, which sold about $12 million worth of tickets.

In order to install a 3-D system, theaters must have digital projectors. And at the moment, there are only 4,600 digital projectors in the United States, according to the National Association of Theater Owners. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade to digital projectors, and $20,000 to $50,000 more to install a 3-D system. It's a rich investment, and theater owners may not see much of a return on it: Studios, on average, make 55 percent of ticket sales, leaving just 45 percent for the theater owner.

Though there are always ways to negotiate...As an example, under a recent agreement, third-party upgrader Access Integrated Technologies signed deals with four studios -- Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Universal -- to convert up to 10,000 screens, for an estimated cost of $700 million.

Once studios get theaters to make the switch to digital, the shift to 3-D will be easier -- but it may not immediately improve the economics for studios. While the box-office gross and attendance is higher for 3-D movies, it costs more to make 3-D movies.

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The bottom line is, 3D that is considered to be a catchy gimmick for now, will soon turn into a standard offer which will bring all the efforts back to the zero point...on a new level though, but still a zero point with a potential for new gimmicks...

Probably we will have 3D movies merging with gaming options, providing users with that incredible, outstanding generated experience... and of course this change will solve so many Ad-distribution related challenges and build that desired unified platform for Ad-agencies and Content Providers.

But for now it's just a fairytale in a head of a Master who puts word by word on a paper, so the story would come true one day...

Most Powerful Women by Forbes

Forbes Magazine has published the 2008 list of "100 Most Powerful Women in the World."

According to the Forbes article, the women on this prestigious list do not have to be rich, but they do have to wield influence. In total, the women ranked on this list control $26 trillion worldwide.

The Influence is measured by Forbes as a composite of public profile — calculated using press mentions — and financial heft. The economic component of the ranking considers job title and past career accomplishments, as well as the amount of money a woman controls. Basing on these factors, German Chancellor Angela Merkel topped the list for the third year in a row.


World's Most Powerful women video

The full list of 100 Most Powerful Women can be seen at www.forbes.com/women.

Though, what of the most interest is the list of 15 Most Powerful Women in Media Industry.

15 Most Powerful Media Women Forbes 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

I will be telling about most of them and share what makes/have made them so Powerful in my next posts. Please, stay tuned.

New Media and Enterntainment: 2008

Every market has its own rules... After studying multiple reports, anylizing press-releases and different business articles on the burning issues of Media Industry, I would state that the Creative Economy today is build on 4 main pillars:

1. Mobility, convenience, and personalization
2. Getting Faster. Higher. Stronger.
3. The Money Question
4. and The security of the New Digital Life.

For more details on each 'Media pillar', please see below:

The rapid growth of Media market causes a high level of competition and a need for an OUTSTANDING creativity as well as highly creative talents to drive the industry and each of the Creative Clusters in particular. There is a huge need for more Walt Disneys, who are not afraid to live their Dreams and make this world a much better and more creative place...

Do you think that you could be the New Him?!

Creative Economy?!

The so called "Creative economy" is an evolving concept based on the potential of "creative assets" to generate socio-economic growth and development, in a globalized world increasingly dominated by images, sounds, texts and symbols.

At the heart of the creative economy lie the creative industries. Loosely defined, the creative industries are at the crossroads of arts, culture, business and technology and use intellectual capital as their primary input. Today´s creative industries range from folk art, festivals, music, books, newspapers, paintings, sculptures and performing arts to more technology-intensive subsectors such as the film industry, TV and radio broadcasting, digital animation and video games, and more service-oriented fields such as architectural and advertising services.

The phrase creative industries (or sometimes creative economy) refers [according to Wikipedia] to a set of interlocking industry sectors, and are often cited as being a growing part of the global economy. The creative industries are often defined as those that focus on creating and exploiting intellectual property products; such as music, books, film, and games, or providing business-to-business creative services such as advertising, public relations and direct marketing.

The UK Government Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has produced a widely-quoted definition of the creative industries as:

“those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property.” (DCMS 2001, p. 04) - (for a definition see also Cultural Institutions Studies).

The current DCMS definition recognises eleven creative sectors:

*Advertising
*Architecture
*Arts and antique markets (see also Restoration)
*Crafts
*Design (see also communication design)
*Designer Fashion
*Film, video and photography
*Software, computer games and electronic publishing
*Music and the visual and performing arts
*Publishing
*Television and radio

According to Creative Clusters Ltd., the Value of Creative Products consists of two aspects. Physically, they are usually simple: a reel of film, a CD, a computer disk, a sheet of printed paper. But their value lies in their content, in their meaning, or what they represent. The content could be a film, a story, a photograph, a game or a pop song, and it might be entertaining or persuasive or informative or attractive. It is this information that has value, not the physical object that carries it. Even with a designer T-shirt or a piece of jewellery, it’s the style, the design that counts, not the cloth or the metal.

Raw information, data, is plentiful in the information economy. What is valuable, and what it takes great skill to make, is knowledge: meaning, content, style, ideas, plans, stories, concepts, designs, fashions - chunks of meaning that people can understand, use, value or love. These 'chunks of meaning' are what the creative industries make. In a very literal sense, the creative industries, and the artist-entrepreneurs at the heart of them, are the manufacturers of the information economy.

To find out more about the Creative Economy, please refer to The Creative Economy Report 2008.

The Creative Economy Report 2008 - The challenge of assessing the creative economy towards informed policy-making is the first comprehensive study to present the United Nations perspective on this emerging topic. This policy-oriented analysis is intended to facilitate a better understanding of the key issues underlying the emerging creative economy at national and international levels. It brings together contributions from five United Nations organizations, namely UNCTAD, UNDP UNESCO, WIPO and the International Trade Centre (ITC), in a joint endeavour to enhance policy coherence and international action in this area.

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Taking into consideration all the excitement due to a growing number of opportunities in the sphere of Creative Economy, the aim of this blog is to provide a summary of the current trends, achievements and challenges, as well as present the driving force (projects, ideas, people) of the industry.

If you would like to comment or share your perspective, please do. I am looking forward to have interactive discussions that broaden the horizon and build a better understanding of the Industry and its value.

Creatively yours,

E.