Category: media

“Academy Award nominee director Ava DuVernay, founder of the African American Film Releasing Movement (AFFRM), organized a massive ‘Rebel-a-Thon.’ The online event included the voices of 43+ black filmmakers—some well known, like Debbie Allen and Malcolm D. Lee.”

“The studios owning rights to those shows are rushing to release complete collections, especially of long-running series, while consumers are still in the habit of buying them.”

“Until now, the public has been giving away millions of dollars to startup companies on sites like Kickstarter, and some of these startup companies have gone on to sell for billions, with no reward to the initial public funders. It had been difficult for the startup companies to issue equity in exchange for this funding because of the restraints of securities laws, and the fact that the public was funding these companies with nothing in return made a mockery of those laws, since it is hard to make a worse investment than just giving money away for free (or even for a Veronica Mars T-shirt).”

“Reviewing a popular movie in this way involves a double-edged discernment—a virtual look behind the curtain at the kinds of decisions that brought the movie into being, and a look into the virtual soul of the abstract viewer whose enthusiasm the movie sparks. At its best, the result is a Nietzschean artistic psychology that acknowledges and understands the ways of power. At its worst, the commentary is a blend of armchair sociology and political ruefulness.”

The No. 1 subscription-video service accounted for 36.5% of all downstream Internet bandwidth during peak periods in North America for March, according to a new report.

“For instance, 1 minute and 10 seconds of music from Titanic was allegedly used in This Means War; 47 seconds of music from Die Hard and 30 seconds of music from The Bourne Identity was allegedly used in episodes of The Office; 18 seconds of music from Jaws was allegedly used in Little Fockers; 33 seconds of music from Cast Away was used in Bridesmaids; 35 seconds of music from Battle for the Planet of the Apes was used in Argo … and so forth.”

“Shooting a movie or TV show is incredibly tough under the best of circumstances. [With VR], the basic things you learned from your experience no longer apply from a technical perspective, and there’s not a body of work you can point to saying, ‘We want it to be like that or like that.’”

“Traditionally, documentaries have targeted niche audiences, defiantly unconcerned with commercial success. They don’t attract nearly as many viewers on the big or small screen as their commercial-minded Hollywood counterparts. Netflix thinks it can change that dynamic, drawing big audiences to nonfiction fare using the same algorithms and data it’s relied on to engineer hits like House of Cards.”

“Behind closed doors — where leaders of the 6,000-member film Academy do most of their deliberating — paid staff, elected governors and committee members have been looking to shore up the annual awards show, which saw a drop in TV viewers of almost 15 percent to 36.6 million in the last year. As that happens, they are dealing with other challenges, expected and otherwise.”