House of Cards

Netflix has paid $100 million for two seasons of the new series, “House of Cards.” This series is a political drama that stars Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Netflix has announced that “House of Cards” is their most streamed show. The show was released on February 1^st, where Netflix made the 13-episode show available for streaming. Most viewers of the show ended up watching more than one episode. Chief content officer Ted Sarandos spoke at the Dive Into Media conference, he said “We’re thrilled, Netflix got more bang fro its buck out of “House of Cards” than it would have using the same amount of money to license more traditional TV content.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that he sees the business as a long-term business opportunity. People who subscribe to Netflix don’t sign up for their original content or for specific TV shows, they sign up for the overall experience. “House of Cards” is just the beginning of Netflix’s original content. Reed Hastings said, “You want to think of “House of Cards” as a down payment on the potential to build real franchises.”

I believe that this is a great new way for Netflix to increase their content on their website. Creating and producing their own television series is ambitious and thinking outside of the box. I have not seen “House of Cards” as of yet, but I intend to watch the pilot episode and see for myself how it stands up to other drama series. I have had a subscription to Netflix for nearly three years now where I stream movies and television shows all the time. Netflix offers a large variety of content for a very reasonable price. They are much cheaper than having some sort of cable or satellite subscription. Releasing new, quality content on a regular basis is important in keeping their customers happy. 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-ceo-calls-house-cards-424326

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/house-cards-is-netflixs-streamed-421142

http://movies.netflix.com

"Life of Pi" and Rhythm & Hues

I recently went to the movie theater and saw the “Life of Pi.” This movie is about a boy named Pi, who starts a journey with his family to the other side of the world. His father owns a large variety of wild animals and brings them along on their trip to Canada. During their long sea voyage, they encounter a storm that disables the ship and sinks it. Pi is fortunate enough to get aboard a small wooden lifeboat before the ship sinks. Pi’s family and everyone else go down with the ship. Pi has to become resourceful enough to survive on the open ocean for a long time with a wild tiger that shares the same boat.

The “Life of Pi” is made up of a large quantity of CG, including the ocean and the animals. Without these effects, the movie would be made up of a boy on a boat in front of a blue screen. Rhythm & Hues is the visual effects company that is responsible for creating the tiger in this movie. Unfortunately, Rhythm & Hues has recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. There are more and more visual effects companies who are competing for work in feature films. This is causing the price of these services to go down and make it very difficult for these companies to maintain a decent profit margin.

The director of the “Life of Pi,” Ang Lee, commented on Rhythm & Hues’ bankruptcy. Lee said, “I would like it to be cheaper and not a tough business fro VFX vendors. It’s easy for me to say, but it’s very tough. It’s very hard for them to make money. The research and development is so expensive; that is a big burden for every house. They all have good times and hard times, and in the tough times, some may not survive.” It is sad to see a company like Rhythm & Hues, that can produce such beautiful and stunning work, struggle like this and have to file bankruptcy. 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/life-pi-director-ang-lee-422270

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454876/?ref_=sr_1

 http://www.rhythm.com/home/

Copyright Infringement: It’s Everywhere

Copyright infringement can happen in all forms of media, including film. The movie, The Hangover Part II has been subject to claims of copyright infringement. In this movie, Ed Helms plays a character who has a tribal tattoo around his left eye. This tattoo is the exact same design as the one on the boxing champion, Mike Tyson. Tyson’s tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill had obtained a copyright for the “artwork on 3-D”. Whitmill filled a lawsuit against Warner Bros Entertainment just weeks before the movie was released in theaters. He said that Warner Bros had committed copyright infringement by using his design in their movie and in advertisements without his consent. Before there was any sort of ruling on this matter, both parties came to an agreement out of court that resolved this problem.

Images are not the only things that can be protected by copyright law. In 1985, Lucasfilm filed a lawsuit against High Frontier and the Committee for a Strong, Peaceful America. In the middle of the 1980’s politicians nicknamed the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defensive Initiative, the “Star Wars” program. George Lucas didn’t want his film to be, in any way, associated with this government program. This program wanted to put anti-missile weapons in space. Lucasfilm had a trademark for “Star Wars” but they were not successful in winning the court’s decision. The court decided that these interest groups could use the term as long as they didn’t use it to sell any product or service.

Adidas has been using the three-stripe marking on their shoes and other products since 1952. Adidas filed a lawsuit against Payless Shoesource, claiming that they had broken the law by trademark infringement. Payless was selling shoes with similar logos of two and four stripes that looked like the Adidas logo. Adidas got a jury trial that took seven years to reach a verdict. During this time, 268 of Payless shoes were reviewed because of similar, Adidas style logos. Adidas won the case and was awarded $305,000,000. Its fairly easy to see that copyright infringement  can be very costly and never a good idea to try and steal someone else’s intellectual property. 

Sources

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Ten-Famous-Intellectual-Property-Disputes.html

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/mike-tyson-tattoo-artist-sues-183716

http://dc.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19851126_0000273.DDC.htm/qx

http://www.casesofinterest.com/tiki/Adidas+America+v.+Payless+Shoesource

OMCOPTER

Over the past six months or so, I have been in pre-production for the short film Operation: Just Cause. We have finished the script, shot the trailer and are now working on the list of gear that we will need to shoot this film. One of the scenes of this film takes place at an airfield in Panama. During this scene, a team of Navy SEALs infiltrates the airfield in order to render it inoperable. During this mission, the SEAL team gets caught in a bloody firefight with the Panamanian Defense Force. I have been working on how to shoot this engagement and what type of gear we will need to accomplish it. I would like to be able to get some coverage from the air during this scene. I have looked into some options for renting a helicopter for the day and the other equipment that would be needed to secure the camera for these shots. It is very expensive to rent a helicopter and pay for the insurance as well.

Lately I have been considering other options and have found a few of them. I was recently introduced to the Omcopter. This product is remote-controlled helicopter, which is capable of carrying a Red Epic camera on a stedicam platform. The Omcopter is small, agile and is capable of outdoor and indoor flight. It can maneuver through tight places that other aircraft cannot. There are other remote-controlled helicopters that are capable of similar maneuverability, but I have not seen one that is capable of carrying a camera that is as heavy as the Red Epic. The Omcopter has been used in big films such as, “Prometheus”, “The Hobbit” and “Avatar 2”. If I can raise enough money to fit this product into the budget I would like to rent it for a day and use it in Operation: Just Cause. 

http://www.omstudios.de/OMCOPTER-Flying-Epic

 http://vimeo.com/51753189

Gunshots with Adobe After Effects

During the past couple of months I have been working on pre-production for a short film that will be shot in April of 2013. The film is about a team of Navy SEALs who were deployed in Panama in 1989 during Operation: Just Cause. With the help of a small crew and cast, we have filmed a short trailer for the film. The short production went well and we have enough footage to make a decent trailer. We were able to get a couple guys with recording arts backgrounds to make a song for the trailer. The biggest problem that we are facing right now is the lack of an editor. I have some experience editing with Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer and Adobe After Effects. This trailer has a lot of action shots where the SEALs are firing their weapons. These shots require a good deal of visual effects editing such as, muzzle flashes, shell ejections, dust, and color correction.

I have been using Video Copilot as a resource to learn how to make these gunshots look real. Video Copilot is a website that has tutorials on how to use After Effect to build a variety of different visual effects. I had to learn how to create muzzle flashes from scratch with Adobe After Effects.  In one of their tutorials, they take you step by step and show you how to make it look like a real weapon is being fired. I found pictures of different muzzle flashes with black backgrounds online. I learned how to key out, (meaning remove) the background and manipulate the remaining images in order to create a believable muzzle flash. I have also been looking at tutorials on how to create shell ejections. I used one of Freddiew2’s Channel videos called Gun Sound FX and Bullet Shells, to learn how to animate the shell ejections. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCfzZizt8M0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsViAvVYoMQ 

http://www.videocopilot.net/

 

 

Negotiation Interview

Negotiation is a very important part of being successful in business and in the entertainment industry. Foster Lovelace is an independent video editor who lives in Sacramento, California. He primarily edits music videos for local bands and independent artists. Foster is not limited to editing music videos, but has also worked on wedding videos, commercials and documentary films. Each of Foster’s projects are unique and require different amounts of time and effort to complete. Each time Foster meets with a new client, he must negotiate with them and settle on a price for the completion of that particular project.

I asked Foster about the preparations that he takes before negotiating with a client. The first thing that he does is to do some research on the client’s company or band, in order to have a better understanding of their video needs. Foster usually deals with smaller businesses and bands, which normally have a small budget that they can spend on his services. Understanding your client’s financial situation is very important when negotiating over the price of any given service. Foster also said that he does research on other editors in his area and tries to stay within their price range.

During the interview, I asked Foster if he had ever experienced any problems when negotiating with clients. He said that there have been a couple occasions where clients have tried to use tricky tactics in order to get a better deal on his services. On one of these occasions, the client stated that they could only pay a set amount and they couldn’t go any higher. The price that they offered was a good deal lower than the price that Foster would normally ask for on a project like that one. He told the prospective client how long it would take for him to take complete their project and that their offer was too low and not worth his time. The prospective client would not change their offer and threatened to back out of the deal and find another editor. Foster knew that the offer was below his bottom line and had to decline the client’s offer and pass on that project.

Video Copilot: 3-D Elements

Video Copilot is a website that showcases after effects plug-ins. After effects is great editing software program that has a wide variety of capabilities for creating visual effects. Video Copilot has a variety of products, tutorials and information about visual effects editing. New plug-ins are being created and added to this site all of the time and can be purchased at their website, videocopilot.net With each new plug-in that they add, there is at least one tutorial that takes you step by step through the process of using the new tools that are made available with the new plug-in. Most of the newer plug-ins have multiple purposes and therefore have more than one tutorial.

I find these tutorials very helpful and informational. The only downside to some of these tutorials is that sometimes they will lead you through the first half of the project and then let you know that you will need a second plug-in to complete the particular visual effect. That’s where they get you hooked. You get to see what they can create but you have to purchase more plug-ins in order to do the same. I came across this dilemma not too long ago. I was following along with a tutorial on creating the Biohazard Logo using the Element 3D plug-in, and a little over halfway through the tutorial, they require a separate plug-in to create what they have made in the demo. Now I want to get this new plug-in but getting more and more of these plug-ins add up pretty quick. 

This short video is an example of Video Copilot's new plug-in, 3-D Elements package and it shows some of the new thing that you can do to manipulate an image. This plug-in is great because you can take your basic 2-D elements and convert them into 3-D images.