Category: Tech

How this Russian director’s Screenlife films went from gimmick to gold in Hollywood

Posted onAuthoradmin

When Kazakh-Russian director Timur Bekmambetov was producing the 2014 horror film Unfriended , a movie told entirely on Skype screens in which a group of high school kids are haunted by a friend who’d been bullied and—they thought—committed suicide, he was constantly asked the same question: Why didn’t any of the characters, who, one by one, are freakishly tortured by the former friend, shut down their computers and go into each other’s homes?   Back then, of course, the question was a natural one. Now, Bekmambetov says, “No one asks that.”   Thanks to COVID-19, leaving your house and going to visit someone else, even to save their life, is a potentially fatal risk. Indeed, today no one would ever wonder why characters in a film never physically interact with one another. After all, that’s essentially what life has looked like for almost a year now. But while the pandemic has been devastating to Hollywood—shutting down productions and causing major studios to shift many of their tentpole releases to digital distribution or punt them into the future—it has been a boon for Bekmambetov and his production company, Bazelevs Studio. The company, whose primary hubs are in Moscow and Los Angeles, pioneered and specializes in so-called Screenlife films that take place exclusively on computer and mobile screens and are shot using GoPros and other nontraditional cameras, often with actors and filmmakers in separate locations Read More …

Silicon Valley companies took $380 million in COVID-19 bailout money

Posted onAuthoradmin

Silicon Valley tech companies took many millions in government bailout money this year via a program intended to allow employers to retain their employees during the pandemic. According to newly released Small Business Administration data, 885 Silicon Valley tech companies borrowed a total of $381.3 million via the Paycheck Protection Program . That figure excludes telecommunications companies and does not account for businesses based in San Francisco. Read More …

This new Apple Watch camera lets you shoot from the wrist

Posted onAuthoradmin

The Apple Watch has never had a camera. Apple may never add one. But one company is giving the Watch the power of sight via a watchband accessory called the Wristcam . As watchbands go, the Wristcam is a bit of a beast; it looks thick and rigid on the wrist. But there’s a lot of technology inside. The band packs two cameras—an 8-megapixel world-facing camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing selfie camera. Both use Sony sensors (like the iPhone), and both capture high-definition photos and 1080p video. A large button on the band activates one or the other of the cameras (you double-press to switch between the cameras, single-press for photos, and long-press for video) Read More …

Remote court is now in session. But will defendants get a fair trial?

Posted onAuthoradmin

For a long time, Judge Michael Christofeno just didn’t see a place for online hearings in his courtroom. “I needed to see people in person in my courtroom or I wasn’t going to be able to have the capability to get a sense of how they’re testifying, their demeanor, whether they’re telling the truth or not, whether they’re being candid with the court,” says Christofeno, a circuit court judge in Elkhart County, Indiana. He was also concerned about operating and maintaining control of hearings in an unfamiliar medium. But the judge’s opinion changed when the county looked to reopen courts that had been largely shut down by the coronavirus pandemic. It’s been a problem across the country. The New York Times recently reported  that criminally accused people have been languishing in New York jails, in some cases contracting the virus, while only a handful of trials have taken place during the pandemic. Even participants in civil cases had been left anxiously awaiting their days in court, Christofeno says Read More …

How WarnerMedia just killed the Hollywood way of doing business

Posted onAuthoradmin

“It’s holy shit time.”   So proclaimed one Hollywood manager just minutes after WarnerMedia announced on December 3 that it will be releasing its entire 2021 slate of movies on HBO Max, the company’s fledgling streaming platform. The lineup of films, which includes major tentpole releases such as Suicide Squad 2 , Godzilla vs. Kong , Dune, and The Matrix 4 , will simultaneously be released in theaters.   The move marks the most significant milestone yet in the streaming-versus-theatrical debate that has been roiling for years now, growing more agitated and desperate in recent months due to COVID-19, which has all but decimated the theatrical moviegoing business. Yet even as COVID-19 has shuttered movie theaters around the world and caused movie studios to make historically unheard-of decisions—for instance, moving would-be theatrical films such as Hamilton and Mulan over to their streaming services (both of those were released on Disney Plus) or selling off otherwise worthy films to Netflix or another tech giant (such as Enola Holmes and Greyhound, which bowed on Netflix and Apple TV Plus respectively)—studios have nonetheless clung mightily to the belief that when it comes to big-budget films, there is simply no upside in releasing them on streaming. The reason? The box-office revenue for those films is simply too vast to justify a streaming release. This explains why, up until now, studios have been feverishly punting their most valuable gems into 2021 and beyond, praying that by the time their movies are set to debut in theaters, we’ll all be vaccinated and chomping on popcorn in close proximity to other humans again. (With Mulan , which cost a reported $200 million to make, Disney tried to insulate itself by charging subscribers $30 to see the movie during its first month in release.) But WarnerMedia’s move throws down the gauntlet on what has largely been an almost academic debate. One year from now, there will be actual data showing just how much money the company made or lost on its audacious bet. It won’t be a matter of hypotheticals; there will be actual numbers showing how movies like The Matrix 4 fared on streaming, at least in terms of how many new subscribers it attracted to HBO Max in the quarter it was released, if not actual viewing metrics. Nor is this a toe-dipping experiment, as the company has teed up for this Christmas with Wonder Woman 1984 , the first tentpole to be sacrificed to a combined HBO Max and theatrical release, a move prompted by the most recent surge in COVID-19 cases. This is a company going all in. Granted, WarnerMedia is being very clear that this is a one-year thing, driven wholly by the pandemic and (not that its executives are saying this) what was learned from the disastrous rollout of Tenet in theaters back on Labor Day weekend. But putting all of its planned 2021 movies on HBO Max at the same time as debuting them theatrically remains the biggest, most declarative statement yet in terms of the future of streaming.   As for the logistics of how this will work, the movies that WarnerMedia is releasing on HBO Max will be made available to subscribers for 31 days Read More …