NEW YORK—"Game of Thrones” fans who can’t get enough of the struggle among the families competing for control of the Seven Kingdoms will have a new way to enjoy the show’s eight seasons in 4K Utra HD with High Dynamic Range (HDR) beginning in August when HBO Max launches HDR10 and Dolby Vision streams of the series.

The only alternative fans previously had to enjoy the series in 4K HDR was via an Ultra-HD Blu-ray player and the disk set. HBO Max will also make the series available with Dolby Atmos sound.

In a press release dated July 21, WarnerMedia, the parent company of HBO Max, announced the decision to begin 4K HDR stream. The company also plans to stream its new series, “House of the Dragon,” in 4K HDR as well as make an augmented reality app, “House of the Dragon: DracARys,” available in the Apple and Google Play stores.

To watch the 4K HDR streams, viewers will require an HBO Max subscription ($14.99), an internet connection, a 4K Ultra HD display with HDR support, such as a smart TV or certain media tablets like some Apple iPads, and a streaming device that supports 4K HDR, such as an Amazon Fire Stick 4K or Google Chromecast Ultra. (HBO Max has published a detailed list of what’s needed on its website.)

The 4K UHD HDR streams of the two series join more than 25 movies in the streamer’s library available with Dolby Vision HDR, including “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Ultimate Edition,” “King Richard,” “No Sudden Move” and the four “Matrix” movies.

HBO Max 4K content is available to Hulu subscribers as an add-on subscription. Other app stores include those from Apple, Google, Roku and Samsung TV.

More information is available on the HBO Max website. 

NEW YORK & LOS ANGELES—“Game of Thrones,” “Stranger Things” and “SpongeBob Squarepants” are Guinness World Record holders, according to “The Guinness World Records 2021 Edition.”

Working with Parrot Analytics, a TV content analytics company, Guinness quantified how viewers are engaging with TV shows around the world based on video consumption, social media and media coverage.

The latest edition of Guinness’ world records covers the TV landscape from 2019, identifying the most-in demand TV series across a number of categories. The results are as follows:

• Book Adaptation: “Game of Thrones” (HBO) 
• Legal Drama: “Suits” (USA Network) 
• Teen Drama: “Riverdale” (The CW) 
• Comedy: “The Big Bang Theory” (CBS) 
• Digital Original: “Stranger Things” (Netflix) 
• Animated: “Rick and Morty” (Adult Swim) 
• TV Series: “Game of Thrones” (HBO) 
• Reality: “The Voice” (NBC) 
• Children’s Show: “SpongeBob Squarepants” (Nickelodeon) 
• Horror: “American Horror Story” (FX) 
• Medical Drama: “Grey’s Anatomy” (ABC) 
• Romantic Drama: “Outlander” (The CW) 
• Series Debut: “Chernobyl” (HBO) 
• Film Adaptation: “Westworld” (HBO) 

“Television continues to re-define itself at a blistering pace,” said Guinness World Records Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday. “Having created the industry category of ‘TV demand measurement,’ Parrot Analytics helps Guinness World Records to quantify the ways in which viewers engage with TV shows around the world in a globally standardized manner. This ensures that Guinness World Records can identify the shows that people are genuinely talking about and watching, on a global scale.”

“The Guinness World Records 2021 Edition” releases on Oct. 6. 

Portland, OR – October 3, 2019 – Red Giant has just released the fourth and final installment of its special edition tutorial series for recreating the award-winning visual effects from Game of Thrones. In episode 11 of Cheap Tricks, Hashi shows viewers how to add a dragon into their shot. Using Red Giant tools, Hashi explains how to create two terrifyingly awesome dragon VFX shots - including one featuring dragon fire and the epic destruction of the zombie horde he created in episode 10. Viewers will learn tons of techniques in 3D animation, camera tracking, object replacement, keying, compositing, color correction, and much more.

Watch Now: Add a Dragon to Your Shot - Game of Thrones VFX Part 4

From Red Giant: “Great news! While we’ve been releasing our Cheap Tricks Game of Thrones inspired VFX tutorials a few weeks apart, this week we’re going mad (like Aerys II Targaryen a.k.a. Mad King mad) and we’re giving you a second helping of sweet, sweet learning! So gear up for one last adventure in Westeros. We promise it will end better than the show.”

Don’t forget to check out parts one through three of Cheap Tricks Game of Thrones VFX:

· Part One: How To Cast Firebolt In After Effects

· Part Two: Creating A Zombified Horse

· Part Three: Creating a Zombie Horde Battle Scene

In this tutorial, Hashi uses the following tools from Red Giant:

· VFX Primatte Keyer 6: Primatte Keyer is a powerful tool for fast, automatic chroma-keying. Whether using a green screen or blue screen, Primatte Keyer's auto-compute algorithms can often pull a perfect key automatically, with a new user interface and clean up tools that make it easy to select and separate the background and foreground.

· VFX Supercomp: Supercomp is a compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. In Supercomp, light and atmospheric effects interact with all layers and elements of a scene in a far more natural way, and with far less pre-composing in After Effects than ever before.

· VFX Shadow: Shadow is a plugin for After Effects that makes it super easy to add a perspective shadow in front of or behind a layer, based on its alpha channel, brightness, and more, with options for softness, bend, length, color and many other properties.

· VFX Reflection: Reflection is a plugin for After Effects that makes it easy to add a reflection to your layers, with controls for softness, distance fade, length and more.

· VFX King Pin Tracker: King Pin Tracker makes it simple to place signs or objects into a shot, even if they aren’t simple rectangles. With powerful “To” and “From” pins, and the ability to offset and rotate in planar space, artists can pin whatever they want, wherever they want it.

· Trapcode Mir 3: Trapcode Mir is a plugin for After Effects that creates flowing surfaces, endless tunnels, terrains and 3D objects for use in your motion graphics. Design flowing surfaces and abstract shapes for motion graphics or import 3D OBJ Models.

· Magic Bullet Looks: Magic Bullet Looks is designed to give filmmakers powerful looks and color correction, with over 200 fully-customizable Look presets and over 40 tools to customize or build new Looks. Get the best, most-intuitive color correction experience in the industry.

· Magic Bullet Colorista IV: Magic Bullet Colorista IV provides professional color correction for filmmakers, turning Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects into a high-speed professional color grading environment.

· Magic Bullet Mojo II: Mojo gives footage a cinematic color grade in seconds. Accentuate and protect skin tones, cool off your backgrounds and more.

· Red Giant Universe: Red Giant’s collection of GPU-accelerated video effects and transitions plugins for motion graphics artists and editors, Universe boasts over 80 tools supported across eight host-applications.

Request a Media Review Kit or Briefing

Members of the media are invited to review any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit or private press briefing with a Red Giant executive, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant

Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 200,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni

Zazil Media Group

(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 (978) 866-7354

Portland, OR - October 1, 2019 - Red Giant, creator of filmmaking, visual effects and motion graphics tools, has just released the third installment of its Cheap Tricks special edition Game of Thrones tutorial series. In this latest episode, Action Movie Dad, Hashi, demonstrates how to recreate intense battle scenes between the living and the dead from the Emmy®-award winning television show, including how to animate the zombie horde that would make up the dreaded army of the dead. As part of today’s tutorial release, Red Giant will also be giving away free green screen footage and launching a contest to give folks a chance to win all tools from the Red Giant product family.

Watch Now: Create A Zombie Horde Battle Scene - Game of Thrones VFX Part 3

“The whole point is to show you that attacking a fully CG character doesn’t have to be a big deal, even when it’s got some cool character effects and things associated with it,” Hashi says in the tutorial.

Don’t have Red Giant VFX Suite? Download a fully functioning trial to follow along: https://www.redgiant.com/products/vfx-suite/free-trial-download/.

Get Started with Free Green Screen Footage
Red Giant is offering VFX artists 75 free green screen clips to use in their own VFX shots to get started. Featuring professional stunt artists from the UK’s Independent Drama, the shots can be downloaded now from Digital Pigeon, at http://bit.ly/RG-Warriors.

Win the Complete Red Giant Toolset
Red Giant will be giving away all the tools they make to one grand prize winner, and a single suite each to two additional winners as part of their Red Giant Green Screen Twitter contest. Here are the rules:

1. Follow Red Giant on Twitter @RedGiantNews
2. Post your video entry to Twitter with the hashtag #RGGreenScreen
3. Use Red Giant footage in your entry (does not have to be the main feature)
4. Include the link to this blog post in your entry (redgiant.com/RGgreenscreen)
5. Contest Ends 10/8/2019 at 10AM PDT

Once all the entries are in, the Red Giant team will pick their favorite for the grand prize. Two additional entries will win a single suite of their choice. Winners will be chosen entirely based on a series of complex judging algorithms, or maybe just whatever judges think is cool/funny/epic/awesome looking.

In this tutorial, Hashi uses the following tools from Red Giant:

• VFX Primatte Keyer 6: Primatte Keyer is a powerful tool for fast, automatic chroma-keying. Whether using a green screen or blue screen, Primatte Keyer's auto-compute algorithms can often pull a perfect key automatically, with a new user interface and clean up tools that make it easy to select and separate the background and foreground.
• VFX Supercomp: Supercomp is a compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. In Supercomp, light and atmospheric effects interact with all layers and elements of a scene in a far more natural way, and with far less pre-composing in After Effects than ever before.
• VFX Shadow: Shadow is a plugin for After Effects that makes it super easy to add a perspective shadow in front of or behind a layer, based on its alpha channel, brightness, and more, with options for softness, bend, length, color and many other properties.
• VFX King Pin Tracker: King Pin Tracker makes it simple to place signs or objects into a shot, even if they aren’t simple rectangles. With powerful “To” and “From” pins, and the ability to offset and rotate in planar space, artists can pin whatever they want, wherever they want it.
• Trapcode Particular: Create organic 3D particle effects, complex motion graphics elements and more After Effects. Now with Fluid Dynamics.
• Magic Bullet Looks: Magic Bullet Looks is designed to give filmmakers powerful looks and color correction, with over 200 fully-customizable Look presets and over 40 tools to customize or build new Looks. Get the best, most-intuitive color correction experience in the industry.
• Magic Bullet Colorista IV: Magic Bullet Colorista IV provides professional color correction for filmmakers, turning Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects into a high-speed professional color grading environment.
• Magic Bullet Mojo II: Mojo gives footage a cinematic color grade in seconds. Accentuate and protect skin tones, cool off your backgrounds and more.
• Red Giant Universe: Red Giant’s collection of GPU-accelerated video effects and transitions plugins for motion graphics artists and editors, Universe boasts over 80 tools supported across eight host-applications.

Request a Media Review Kit or Briefing
Members of the media are invited to review any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit or private press briefing with a Red Giant executive, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant
Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 200,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni

Zazil Media Group

(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 ‭(978) 866-7354‬

BURBANK, Calif.—Game of Thrones, Chernobyl, Stranger Things, Homecoming and more were not only some of the most popular shows over the last year, they are also all now nominees in the creative categories of the 2019 HPA Awards. Recognizing creative excellence and technical innovation, the HPA Awards honor individuals and teams that worked on television, film and commercial productions.

The 2019 HPA Awards Creative Category nominees for television are:

Outstanding Color Grading—Episodic or Non-Theatrical Feature

• The Handmaid’s Tale—“Liars”: Bill Ferwerda - Deluxe Toronto
• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel—“Vote for Kennedy, Vote for Kennedy”: Steve Bodner - Light Iron
• Game of Thrones—“Winterfell”: Joe Finley - Sim, Los Angeles
• I am the Night—“Pilot”: Stefan Sonnenfeld - Company 3
• Gotham—“Legend of the Dark Knight: The Trial of Jim Gordon”: Paul Westerbeck - Picture Shop
• The Man in the High Castle—“Jahr Null”: Roy Vasich - Technicolor

Outstanding Editing—Episodic or Non-Theatrical Feature (30 Minutes and Under)

• Russian Doll—“The Way Out”: Todd Downing
• Homecoming—“Redwood”: Roseanne Tan, ACE
• Veep—“Pledge”: Roger Nygard, ACE
• Withorwithout: Jake Shaver and Shannon Albrink - Therapy Studios
• Russian Doll—“Ariadne”: Laura Weinberg

Outstanding Editing—Episodic or Non-Theatrical Feature (Over 30 Minutes)

• Strangers Things—“Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt”: Dean Zimmerman, ACE, and Katheryn Naranjo
• Chernoybl—“Vichnaya Pamyat”: Simon Smith and Jinx Godfrey - Sister Pictures
• Game of Thrones—“The Iron Throne”: Katie Weiland, ACE
• Game of Thrones—“The Long Night”: Tim Porter, ACE
• The Bodyguard—“Episode One”: Steve Singleton

Outstanding Sound—Episodic or Non-Theatrical

• Chernobyl—“1:23:45”: Stefan Henrix; Stuart Hilliker; Joe Beal; Michael Maroussas; and Harry Barnes - Boom Post
• Deadwood: The Movie: John W. Cook II; Bill Freesh; Mandell Winter, MPSE; Daniel Colman, MPSE; Ben Cook, MPSE; and Micha Liberman - NBC Universal
• Game of Thrones—“The Bells”: Tim Kimmel, MPSE; Onnalee Blank, CAS; Matthew Waters, CAS; Paula Fairfield; and David Klotz
• The Haunting of Hill House—“Two Storms”: Trevor Gates, MPSE; Jason Dotts; Jonathan Wales; Paul Knox; and Walter Spencer - Formosa Group
• Homecoming—“Protocol”: John W. Cook II; Bill Freesh; Kevin Bucholz; Jeff A. Pitts; Ben Zales; and Polly McKinnon - NBC Universal

Outstanding Visual Effects—Episodic (Under 13 Episodes) and Non-Theatrical Feature

• Game of Thrones—“The Long Night”: Martin Hill, Nicky Muir, Mike Perry, Mark Richardson and Darren Christie - Weta Digital
• The Umbrella Academy—“The White Violin”: Everett Burrell, Misato Shinohara, Chris White, Jeff Campbell and Sebastien Bergeron
• The Man in the High Castle—“Jahr Null”: Lawson Deming, Cory Jamieson, Casi Blume, Nick Chamberlain, William Parker, Saber Jlassi and Chris Parks - Barnstorm VFX
• Chernobyl—“1:23:45”: Lindsay MacFarlane; and Max Dennison, Clare Cheetham, Steven Godfrey and Luke Letkey - DNEG
• Game of Thrones—“The Bells”: Steve Kullback, Joe Bauer and Ted Rae; Mohsen Mousavi - Scanline; and Thomas Schelesny - Image Engine

Outstanding Visual Effects—Episodic (Over 13 Episodes)

• Hawaii Five-O—“Ke iho mai nei ko luna”: Thomas Connors, Anthony Davis, Chad Schott, Gary Lopez, Adam Avitabile - Picture Shop
• 9-1-1—“7.1”: Jon Massey, Tony Pizadeh, Brigitte Bourque, Gavin Whelan and Kwon Choi - FuseFX
• Star Trek: Discovery—“Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2”: Jason Zimmerman, Ante Dekovic, Aleksandra Kochoska, Charles Collyer and Alexander Wood - CBS Television Studios
• The Flash—“King Shark vs. Gorilla Grodd”: Armen V. Kevorkian, Joshua Spivack, Andranik Taranya, Shirak Agresta and Jason Shulman - Encore VFX
• The Orville—“Identity: Part II”: Tommy Tran, Kevin Lingenfelser and Joseph Vincent Pike - FuseFX; and Brandon Fayette and Brooke Noska - Twentieth Century Fox TV

To see the nominees for film and commercial productions, click here.

The winners will be announced of the 14th Annual HPA Awards at a gala ceremony on Nov. 21 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Portland, OR - August 22, 2019 - Red Giant, creator of filmmaking, visual effects and motion graphics tools, today released the second installment of its multi-part Game of Thrones visual effects tutorial series: how to turn a live horse into a member of the Night King’s undead army. Daniel “Hashi” Hashimoto demonstrates keying and compositing techniques using tools including King Pin Tracker, Spot Clone Tracker and Supercomp from the new Red Giant VFX Suite, to add and track gory effects to a very much alive horse. Watch now and stay tuned for more Cheap Tricks Game of Thrones VFX tutorials.

Two weeks ago Hashi kicked off Red Giant’s Game of Thrones VFX series by showing fans how to recreate Game of Thrones magic fire effects, and then some. In episode nine of Cheap Tricks, he’s taking viewers further into the world of Ice and Fire. You’ll learn some great keying and compositing techniques, not to mention some great info on object removal and tracking. The VFX process is long and full of terrors - but Cheap Tricks is here to help you through it.

In this tutorial, Hashi uses the following tools from Red Giant:

• VFX King Pin Tracker: King Pin Tracker makes it simple to place signs or objects into a shot, even if they aren’t simple rectangles. With powerful “To” and “From” pins, and the ability to offset and rotate in planar space, artists can pin whatever they want, wherever they want it.
• VFX Spot Clone Tracker: Red Giant’s tool for lightning-fast, simple object removal with a built-in tracker for moving footage, Spot Clone Tracker easily fixes blemishes or remove small, unwanted items. Spot Clone Tracker is easy to use, and even matches your lighting automatically, with options for how it clones light, color and texture.
• VFX Primatte Keyer 6: Primatte Keyer is a powerful tool for fast, automatic chroma-keying. Whether using a green screen or blue screen, Primatte Keyer's auto-compute algorithms can often pull a perfect key automatically, with a new user interface and clean up tools that make it easy to select and separate the background and foreground.
• VFX Supercomp: Supercomp is a compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. In Supercomp, light and atmospheric effects interact with all layers and elements of a scene in a far more natural way, and with far less pre-composing in After Effects than ever before.
• Magic Bullet Looks: Magic Bullet Looks is designed to give filmmakers powerful looks and color correction, with over 200 fully-customizable Look presets and over 40 tools to customize or build new Looks. Get the best, most-intuitive color correction experience in the industry.
• Magic Bullet Mojo II: Mojo gives footage a cinematic color grade in seconds. Accentuate and protect skin tones, cool off your backgrounds and more.

Request a Media Review Kit or Briefing

Members of the media are invited to review any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit or private press briefing with a Red Giant executive, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant

Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 200,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni

Zazil Media Group

(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 ‭(978) 866-7354‬

###

How to Create “Game of Thrones” Worthy Fire Effects with Red Giant

Get your cup of Starbucks, mount up, and yell "Dracarys!" with reckless abandon, as we cross the Narrow Sea and explore the VFX of Game of Thrones.

Portland, OR - August 8, 2019 -Red Giant is once again taking on what is arguably one of the greatest TV series ever made with the latest edition of its popular YouTube tutorial series, Cheap Tricks, diving into the mind-blowing visual effects of Game of Thrones. In part one of the series, Action Movie Dad Dan “Hashi” Hashimoto demonstrates how to create magic fire effects like the many seen throughout HBO’s adaptation of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” particularly those created by the Red Priestess, Melisandre. Watch now and stay tuned for more Cheap Tricks Game of Thrones tutorials.

“One of the things I hope you learn from these examples was how quick and intuitive Supercomp can feel when applying to a shot using raw materials like this and outputting a final shot like that,” Hashi says in the YouTube video, as he talks viewers through the Red Giant tools used to create magical fire effects. “Honestly one of the best parts of integrating Supercomp into your workflow is that you can shop through final looks really quickly. You can browse through different presets and get some really wonderful results using super simple ingredients as it were, to go into your shot. You don't have to add a series of six adjustment layers to see what a fire and its compound blur and its distortion map would look like; they’re all applied right here, altogether in one workspace.”

While Game of Thrones has come to its fiery conclusion, the show’s VFX still stand as some of the best stuff ever created for the small screen. Subscribe to the Red Giant YouTube channel now to see it all come together, as Hashi demonstrates how to recreate many of the effects seen on the show using the Red Giant VFX Suite and a ton of great tools and techniques.

In this tutorial, Hashi uses the following tools from Red Giant suites including VFX Suite, Trapcode Suite and Magic Bullet Suite:

• VFX Supercomp: Supercomp is a compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. In Supercomp, light and atmospheric effects interact with all layers and elements of a scene in a far more natural way, and with far less pre-composing in After Effects than ever before.
• VFX Knoll Light Factory: Create camera-inspired, photo-realistic lens flares with Knoll Light Factory, designed by John Knoll, Chief Creative Officer at Industrial Light and Magic.
• VFX Reflection: Reflection is a plugin for After Effects that makes it easy to add a reflection to your layers, with controls for softness, distance fade, length and more.
• Trapcode Particular: Create organic 3D particle effects, complex motion graphics elements and more in After Effects. Now with Fluid Dynamics.
• Magic Bullet Mojo II: Mojo gives footage a cinematic color grade in seconds. Accentuate and protect skin tones, cool off your backgrounds and more.
• Magic Bullet Renoiser: Add cinematic texture and film grain with Magic Bullet Renoiser. Restore texture and noise to overly processed digital video, and protect footage from color banding and blocky compression artifacts.

Request a Media Review Kit or Briefing

Members of the media are invited to review any individual tools or product suites from Red Giant. For more information or to request a product review kit or private press briefing with a Red Giant executive, please contact Nick Govoni at nick@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Red Giant

Red Giant is a software company made up of talented artists and technologists who collaborate to create unique tools for filmmakers, editors, VFX artists, and motion designers. Our company culture is focused on finding balance between work and life – we call it “the double bottom line” – this philosophy helps us ignore complexity in favor of building simple tools that yield giant results. Over the last decade, our products (like Magic Bullet, Trapcode, Universe and PluralEyes) have become the standard in film and broadcast post-production. With over 200,000 users, it’s nearly impossible to watch 20 minutes of TV without seeing our software in use. From our experiences as artists and filmmakers, we aspire to not only provide tools for artists, but inspiration as well. Watch our films, learn from over 200 free tutorials, or try our software at www.redgiant.com.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni

Zazil Media Group

(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com

(p) +1 ‭(978) 866-7354‬

‬‬‬

###

FOSTER CITY, Calif.—The number of hours viewing streamed content among U.S. consumers increased 130% overall over the past 12 months, with connected TV seeing the biggest jump at 143% according to Conviva’s “State of the Streaming TV Industry” report.

Streaming over mobile devices increased a healthy 109% over the same period with streaming over PCs increasing 75%. This translates to 28.8 minutes of watch time per play for connected TVs, 12 for mobile and 15.1 minutes per play for PCs.

Peak times for streaming real-time content broke records four times in Q2 2019, all coinciding with the final season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones;” first on April 15, when it streamed in Asia, April 29, when it streamed in the U.K., and May 13 and May 20, when the final two episodes were streamed in the U.S. These beat the previous record by 67%, set in 2018 during the FIFA World Cup.

The top 15 U.S. markets all experienced triple digit growth in viewing hours with Dallas, Atlanta and Phoenix the top three markets. Minneapolis/St. Paul saw the largest growth of hours streamed at 170%.

Tech issues such as buffering and start failures and delays pose a significant hazard for streaming ads, according to Conviva, which noted that 47% of expected ad opportunities went unfilled because of technical problems over the past 12 months.

“Failures are amplified and particularly impactful considering the multiplier effect across subsequent ad breaks if a viewer tunes out due to a poor ad experience,” Conviva said. “In 2019, with new platforms vying for consumer dollars, focus on the entirety of the viewing experience will be an important factor in continued retention and monetization of viewers.”

As streamers gain more and more information about viewers, the quality of the ads will become more important, Conviva said, which also recommended fewer commercial breaks to avoid viewer fatigue. The researcher also advised streamers to experiment with shortening the 30-second ad so characteristic of traditional TV breaks.

“With less time and fewer ad breaks to convert a viewer into a purchaser, the quality of each ad is paramount to carry out the promise of streaming to match the perfect ad to the perfect viewer,” Conviva said.

With more connected TVs integrating streaming services into the sets themselves, this gave Roku the advantage as it notched a 43% market share among streaming services, a 173% year-over-year growth, according to Conviva. Amazon Fire TV was next with 18% share among connected TV devices. Apple TV was up 129% to account for 10% share. Xbox, with a 9% share, led the way in improved buffering while Apple TV received the highest marks in performance, including best video start time and picture quality. 

A popular line from “Game of Thrones” is “the night is dark and full of terror,” and in the most recent season, so is the look of the episodes.

The final season of HBO’s hit show has caused quite a stir among fans each week often for more than just the shocks and twists of the episodes. One of the most controversial and publicized instances from the season has been the viewing quality of the third episode, “The Long Night.”

Portraying the much-anticipated battle between the show’s main characters and the army of the dead, a number of viewers said that it was too dark for them to see what was going on at times. A number of articles were written in the days and weeks that followed expressing how and why the episode, which took place entirely at night and in a bit of a fog, appeared exceedingly dark for some, covering things like TV settings, the loss of quality when streaming on smartphones or computers and compression technology.

The director of photography for the episode, Fabian Wagner, responded by saying that the episode was shot as it was intended and echoed the idea that any problems experienced were from outside factors of how people watched it.

TV Technology asked its resident lighting expert, Julia Swain, to share her thoughts on the lighting of the episode and how both production elements and people’s TVs can impact the final result for viewers at home.

TV Technology:What do you think were some of the main factors as to why people were finding the episode too dark?

Julia Swain: People found the episode too dark because the director of photography wasn't afraid of the dark. The world fell off into darkness as it would if you were there in the battle, which made everything more dramatic.

TVT:How can the lighting be impacted when utilizing hi-res equipment on set but viewed by audiences with lower-res TVs/streaming services?

JS: Low-res TVs and streaming services can muddy up an image. Colors, highlights and shadows bleed together, so detail is even harder to see.

TVT:Do cinematographers/lighting departments consider the possibility of how an image may change from being viewed on a monitor on set to how it is displayed on TV? Does that change how a scene is lit?

JS: To some degree, but I think we all have the hope that our audiences are viewing under correct circumstances—and both theater screens and better consumer screens are calibrated to deliver a great image. Obviously, we can't make every screen happy.

TVT:What are some guidelines for shooting dark scenes so these type of problems can be avoided?

JS: I think every cinematographer and director make a creative choice as to what darkness is for each show... so, no. Expose how you want to expose and give the audience the information you want to give them for the story.

TVT:How would HDR enhance the scenes in question?

JS: HDR would allow every detail to be seen, so audiences wouldn't miss anything in the shadows … they'd have the largest range in terms of details in highlights and shadows.

TVT:In a high-end production such as “Game of Thrones,” does it make sense for them to shoot in 4K/HDR?

JS: I think higher resolution and HDR could maybe play into the VFX work, but honestly it might not be right for the story—I do appreciate the rawness “GoT” presents itself in and don't mind some darkness.

Photo credit: HBO

MUMBAI, INDIA—Prime Focus Technologies has issued a statement explaining and condemning the leak of the (at the time) unaired episode four of season seven for HBO’s “Game of Thrones” on Aug. 4. The company described the leak as “an illegal breach of obligations by current and former employees of Prime Focus Technologies,” but emphasized that the incident from the HBO hack that occurred late last month. On Monday, Aug. 14, four men were arrested in relation to the leak, with reports naming them as Abhishek Ghadiyal, Bhaskar Joshi and Alok Sharma, current PFT employees, and Mohammed Suhail, a former employee.

Here is PFT’s statement in full:

On August 4, 2017, a link to view Episode 4 of Season 7 of Game of Thrones bearing a Star India watermark appeared online three days before its airdate as an outcome of an illegal breach of obligations by current and former employees of Prime Focus Technologies (PFT).

PFT immediately initiated forensic investigations to determine the cause. Based on a multi-faceted investigation including extensive logs of our system, a complaint was filed on August 6, 2017, and supplementary information was provided on multiple occasions, culminating in a First Information Report (FIR) being filed with the DCP Cyber Cell of Mumbai Police by Shailesh Manohar, Vice President at PFT on August 9, 2017. Acting on the information and extensive evidence provided by PFT, the office of DCP Cyber Cell, Mumbai arrested 4 accused on August 14.

PFT is appreciative of the speed and rigor with which the Special IGP (Cyber), Government of Maharashtra and DCP Cyber Cell of Mumbai Police have moved on this investigation. PFT is working closely with its client and co-operating with the police to take the investigation to its logical conclusion at the earliest and to prosecute the perpetrators of this crime.

PFT has been engaged with Star India as one of its key technology partners since 2011. PFT manages 1.5 Million hours of content for some of the world’s biggest broadcasters and studios globally. As a technology partner, PFT invests in content integrity and security, makes significant investments to ensure content protection and is ISO 27001 & SOC2 Certified.

It is important to note that this was not a system hack. It was an illegal breach of obligations by the concerned persons despite of PFT’s continual internal emphasis on protocols of content security and ethical practices. We deeply regret and condemn this incident – and affirm our strong resolve to continue the fight against content related crimes in an effort to make the M&E industry’s content more secure. PFT has always been and remains committed to the highest standards in content security and integrity in managing its clients' content.

This incident should not be confused with the HBO hack being reported.

WASHINGTON—Be on the lookout for dragons flying around the Las Vegas Convention Center this year, as HBO’s hit show “Game of Thrones” will take part in the 2017 NAB Show. Part of the Creative Master Series and produced in partnership with the Motion Picture Sound Editors, “Game of Thrones: Behind the Scenes With the Filmmakers” will provide insight on the show’s shooting styles and filming methods for the massive production from its producers and creative professionals.

Making up the panel will be Bernadette Caulfield, executive producer; Greg Spence, producer; Anette Haellmigk, director of photography; and Jonathan Freeman, ASC, director of photography. David Geffner, executive editor at ICG Magazine, will moderate.

With a cast of hundreds, locations in multiple countries and nearly 1,900 visual effects shots, the group will go into detail in how they brought the lighting style to each new location, how they block and edit the show’s big turning points, how they blend practical photography with computer graphics and how postproduction handles the content that is distributed across all of HBO’s platforms. The panel will also feature footage from season six.

“Game of Thrones: Behind the Scenes With the Filmmakers” will take place on Monday, April 24 at 2:30 p.m. at booth S220.

LOS ANGELES—HBO’s “Game of Thrones” set records at the most recent Emmy Awards back in September, now it looks to continue that dominance at the Hollywood Professional Association’s HPA 2016 Awards. The annual awards recognize achievement in editing, sound, visual effects and color grading for television, commercials and feature films. And on the TV side, “GoT” led all shows with three total nominations, followed by two for both Starz’s “Outlander” and HBO’s “Vinyl.”

Below is the full list of television nominees. For the complete list, including film and commercials, click here.

Outstanding Color Grading:

• “Vinyl – E.A.B” – Steven Bonder, Deluxe/Encore NY
• “Fargo – The Myth of Sysiphus” – Mark Kueper, Technicolor
• “Outlander – Faith” – Steven Porter, MTI Film
• “Gotham – By Fire” – Paul Westerbeck, Encore Hollywood
• “Show Me a Hero – Part 1” – Sam Daley, Technicolor PostWorks NY

Outstanding Editing:

• “Body Team 12” – David Darg, RYOT Films
• “Underground – The Macon 7” – Zack Arnold, Ian Tan, Sony Pictures Television
• “Vinyl – Pilot” – David Tedeschi
• “Roots – Night One” – Martin Nicholson, ACE; Greg Babor
• “Game of Thrones – Battle of the Bastards” – Tim Porter, ACE

Outstanding Sound:

• “Outlander – Prestonpans” – Nello Tori, Alan Decker, NBCUniversal Post Sound
• “Game of Thrones - Battle of the Bastards” – Tim Kimmel, MPSE; Paula Fairfield; Mathew Waters, CAS; Onnalee Blank, CAS; Bradley C. Katona, Paul Bercovitch, Formosa Group
• “Preacher – See” – Richard Yawn, Mark Linden, Tara Paul, Sony Sound
• “Marco Polo – One Hundred Eyes” – David Paterson, Roberto Fernandez, Alexa Zimmerman, Glenfield Payne, Rachel Chancey, Harbor Picture Company
• “House of Cards – Chapter 45” – Jeremy Molod, Ren Klyce, Nathan Nance, Scott R. Lewis, Jonathan Stevens, Skywalker Sound

Outstanding Visual Effects:

• “Supergirl – Pilot” – Armen V. Kevorkian, Andranik Taranyan, Gevork Babityan, Elaina Scott, Art Sayan, Encore VFX
• “Ripper Street – The Strangers’ Home” – Ed Bruce, Nicholas Murphy, Denny Cahill, John O’Connell, Screen Scene
• “Black Sails –XXI” Erik Henry, Starz; Matt Dougan, Digital Domain; Martin Ogren, Jens Tenland, Nicklas Andersson, ILP
• “The Flash – Guerilla Warfare” – Armen V. Kevorkian, Thomas J. Conners, Andranik Taranyan, Gevork Babityan, Jason Shulman, Encore VFX
• “Game of Thrones – Battle of the Bastards” – Joe Bauer, Eric Carney, Fire & Blood Productions; Derek Spears, Rhythm & Hues Studios; Glenn Melenhorst, Iloura; Matthew Rouleau, Rodeo FX

Special awards, including the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award and Charles S. Swartz Award, have been previously announced.

HPA will announce the winners during the 11th annual HPA Awards gala on Nov. 17 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

NEW YORK and EL SEGUNDO, CALIF. – AT&T and Home Box Office announced that they have reached a multi-year, strategic agreement that will extend HBO’s content across all AT&T products.

The agreement renews HBO’s existing contract with the AT&T DirecTV and U-verse services, and will also make all HBO and Cinemax content available on DirecTV Now. AT&T expects the new streaming service to roll out by the end of the year.

AT&T and HBO are not disclosing financial and other details of the new agreement.

In addition to bringing shows like HBO’s multiple Emmy-nominated “Game of Thrones” and “Veep” to the DirecTV Now platform, HBO and Cinemax content will also be part of AT&T mobile video bundle offers. Details about those will be available at a later date.

As part of the agreement, DirecTV and U-verse customers will continue to have access to HBO and Cinemax content on linear TV, online and TV Everywhere apps.

MONTREAL—Though the fictional world of Westeros is not often kind to those who inhabit it, the visual effects team in charge of creating it is reaping some benefits. Rodeo FX, the Montreal-based visual effects studio, won a Visual Effects Society Award of its work on season five of the popular HBO show “Game of Thrones” for the creation of the city of Volantis.

Rodeo FX artists Dominic Piché, lead modeler, Christine Leclerc, lead texture artist, Patrice Poissant, CG artist, and Thomas Montminy-Brodeur, digital compositor, were awarded the VES Award for Outstanding Created Environment for their work on creating Voltanis. To create the city, the artists worked from a live plate using a Roman bridge in Córdoba, Spain, and then added buildings, market and a background matte painting with CG.

Rodeo FX also won a VES Award in the Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode category for its work on “Game of Thrones.”

According to Rodeo FX, it delivered more than 200 visual effects to “Game of Thrones.” To see an example of the studio’s work, check out the video below.

Game Of Thrones - Season 5 - VFX Breakdown from Rodeo FX on Vimeo.

LOS ANGELES—After setting the record for most Emmys in a single year, HBO’s hit show ‘Game of Thrones’ is carrying the momentum to the Hollywood Post Alliance Awards as it leads the pack of TV nominees with four nominations; its closest competitors were Starz’s ‘Black Sails’ and HBO’s ‘Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways’ with two.

The 10th annual HPA Awards honor artistic excellence and creative achievements in the post production industry, recognizing outstanding achievement in editing, sound, visual effects and color grading in TV, film and commercials.

To see the nominees in the film and commercial categories, click here. Here are the full slate of nominees for TV:

Outstanding Color Grading:

• ‘Olive Kitteridge – Incoming Tide’
  Pankaj Bajpai; Encore
• ‘Boardwalk Empire – Golden Days for Boys and Girls’
  John Crowley; Technicolor PostWorks NY
• ‘Sense8 – What’s Going On?’
  Tony Dusting; Technicolor
• ‘Game of Thrones – Hardhome’
  Joe Finley; Chainsaw, Inc.
• ‘Masters of Sex – A Parliament of Owls’
  Matt Lear; Sony Pictures Television

Outstanding Editing:

• ‘Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways – Austin’
  Scott D. Hanson; Therapy Studios
• ‘VICE on HBO – Cold War 2.0’
  Rich Lowe
• ‘Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways – Nashville’
  Kristin McCasey; Therapy Studios
• ‘House of Cards – Chapter 32’
  Cindy Mollo, ACE; Netflix
• ‘Game of Thrones – Hardhome’
  Tim Porter; Beyond the Wall Productions, Inc.

Outstanding Sound:

• ‘Halt and Catch Fire – SETI’
  Sue Cahill, Keith Rogers, Scott Weber, Jane Boegel, Mark Cleary, Kevin McCullough; NBC Universal StudioPost
• ‘Black Sails – XVIII’
  Benjamin Cook, Stefan Hendrix, Jeffrey Pitts, Sue Cahill, Onnalee Blank, Matthew Waters; Starz
• ‘Game of Thrones – Hardhome’
  Tim Kimmel, Paula Fairfield, Bradley Katona, Paul Bercovitch, Onnalee Blank, Matthew Waters; Formosa Group
• ‘Banshee – You Can’t Hide from the Dead'
  Bradley North, Joseph DeAngelis, Ken Kobett, Tiffany Griffith, David Werntz; Technicolor
• ‘Homeland – Redux’
  Nello Torri, Alan Decker; NBC Universal Studio Post
  Craig Dellinger; Sony Sound Services

Outstanding Visual Effects:

• ‘Games of Thrones – The Dance of Dragons’
  Joe Bauer, Steve Kullback, Derek Spears, Eric Carney, Jabbar Raisani; Fire and Blood Productions
• ‘Ripper Street – Whitechapel Terminus’
  Ed Bruce, Nicholas Murphy, John O’Connell, Joseph Courtis, Ronan Gantly; Screen Scene
• ‘Marvel’s Agent Carter – Now Is Not the End’
  Sheena Duggal, Richard Bluff, Jay Mehta, Chad Taylor, Cody Gramstad; Industrial Light & Magic
• ‘Black Sails – XVIII’
  Erik Henry; Starz
  Ken Jones; Digital Domain
  Nic Spier; Shade FX
  Christina Spring, Bjorn Ahlstedt; Crazy Horse Effects
• ‘The Flash – Grodd Lives’
  Armen V. Kevorkian, Andranik Taranyan, Stefan Bredereck, Jason Shulman, Gevork Babityan; Encore VFX

HPA previously announced special awards to Leon Silverman and the ESPN Digital Center 2.

The winners will be announced during the 10th Annual HPA Awards gala ceremony on Nov. 12, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.