While much of the coverage of President Donald Trump’s proposed 100% tariffs on imported films has focused on the theatrical industry, the levies on imported movies would also have a negative, though indirect, impact on TV production.

“While Trump has not commented on the television production business, tariffs on overseas production would have an equally chilling impact on TV production,” Lightshed Partners partner and media and technology analyst Richard Greenfield wrote in a research note.

Concerns over how the proposed tariffs might affect the Hollywood studios, streamers like Netflix and other media companies sent the share prices of Netflix, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery down in early trading on Monday. Following the negative reaction from financial markets and some Hollywood studio executives, the White House seemed to walk back from the proposal.

“Although no final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made,” a White House spokesman told The Hollywood Reporter, the “administration is exploring all options to deliver on President Trump’s directive to safeguard our country’s national and economic security while Making Hollywood Great Again.”

While Trump did not mention TV or streaming services in his Sunday social media post proposing the tariffs, the potential impact of such a move is worth considering. That’s because television is so important to the Hollywood studios.

Even if the proposal is not expanded to TV programming, it would likely cause foreign governments to implement tariffs on U.S. content exports, threatening the multibillion-dollar market for U.S. movies and TV.

In 2023, the U.S. movies racked up $22.6 billion in export revenue, creating a trade surplus of $15.3 billion. U.S. television exports are harder to track, but U.S. shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,“ “NCIS,” “Law & Order,” “The Simpsons“ and many others produce significant international revenue.

A 2013 study by the U.K. group Digital TV Research estimated that U.S. studios generated some $5.4 billion a year in selling drama series to European television, according to THR.

Because the Hollywood studios typically package their TV shows with their blockbuster films, any tariffs imposed on U.S. film exports by foreign governments might hurt revenue for TV shows, which in turn could decrease production.

If the administration expanded the movie tariffs to TV, which employs many more people in production, the levies would have a direct, major impact on the production of bigger-budget, high-profile dramas.

Like movies, a growing number of these big-budget series are at least partly produced outside the U.S. in the U.K., Canada and other locales. Amazon Prime’s “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” was, for example, produced in New Zealand in its first season and then moved production to the U.K.

Beyond that, high-profile TV productions have for decades relied on international sales. For example, by the early 2000s, first-season U.S. broadcast shows were covering around half of their budgets from international markets in pre-sales and output deals, a practice that has made international programming confabs like MIPCOM extremely important for U.S. studios and producers.

More recently, Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video and other major streamers have been able to leverage their international footprint of subscribers to fund dramas like "Rings of Power", which reportedly had a record breaking $1 billion budget. That international presence has given these streaming companies a major competitive advantage over domestic U.S. broadcasters.

Even if the tariffs were not applied to TV production, any retaliatory tariffs by foreign countries could include TV programs.

Europe, for example, already has content quotes for European content that limit the amount of U.S. programming that can air on broadcasters in European countries. The retaliatory tariffs could harm sales, hurt co-production agreements with international broadcasters and disrupt the globalized production used on many high-profile dramas that now heavily rely on cloud-based editing and postproduction.

Such problems prompted Lightshed’s Greenfield to write: “Last night’s Truth Social post from President Trump has everyone in Hollywood scratching their heads. Movie production has been migrating overseas for decades, attracted by lower cost labor markets, sound stage availability and most importantly substantial foreign tax credits. If movie production was forced back into the US, the net result would be a dramatic reduction in the number of films made to absorb higher production costs. While Trump has not commented on the television production business, tariffs on overseas production would have an equally chilling impact on TV production.”

The note to investors also stressed that “it’s unclear how a movie tariff system would even work. Movies are often shot in multiple locations, with post-production in a different location. Given the substantial amount of digital enhancement to a film in 2025, if post-production occurs in the U.S., is it a U.S. film or does it only matter if some or all of the film was shot overseas? Would the tariff on movies be applied based on minutes of overseas footage that make it into the final film? Or would a tariff be based on raw minutes filmed, regardless of whether they made it into the ending film? Would studios have to submit their final production cost to the government for tariffs? … [W]ould streaming films be subject to the tariff as well? Would the tariff impact future windows of movie exploitation or only the first window?”

Greenfield concluded, “Nobody knows what the President’s Truth Social post means and we fear, neither does he.”

HOLLYWOOD—The California Film Commission (CFC) has announced $152 million in tax credits for 12 television projects as a part of its Film and Television Tax Credit Program. The recipients include one relocating series, three recurring television series, and eight new television series. 

CFC projections indicate that these 12 projects will spend an estimated $1.1 billion in California during their upcoming season, supporting in-state local businesses and employing 2,300 crew, 2,200 cast, and 50,000 background performers – the latter measured in days worked. 

One of the tax credit recipients is Amazon MGM Studios’ “Fallout,” which is relocating from New York. Season 2 of “Fallout” is projected to contribute approximately $153 million in qualified expenditures and employ approximately 170 cast and crew, making it one of the relocating projects with the largest total qualified expenditures in the Film and Television Tax Credit Program’s history. 

With the addition of “Fallout,” the Film and Television Tax Credit Program has now attracted a total of 33 relocating series from other states and nations since the program was launched in 2009.

The roster of new television series includes a wide range of projects from an iconic series franchise to captivating original content. Amazon MGM Studios’ “Untitled Task Force Series” will follow a secret task force of undercover agents, while 20th Television presents two highly anticipated projects by executive producer Ryan Murphy – “Dr. Odyssey” starring Joshua Jackson and “Grotesquerie” starring Niecy Nash. 

Adding to the lineup is “NCIS: Origins” from CBS Studios, offering viewers a compelling look at the early career of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, with narration by franchise favorite Mark Harmon. 

“We’ve had the immense privilege to create stories with the talented crews and individuals in California for years,” said ‘NCIS: Origins’ executive producers Mark Harmon, Sean Harmon, Gina Lucita Monreal, and David J. North. “With the support of the California Film Commission, we are thrilled to film ‘NCIS: Origins’ in Los Angeles, utilizing all of the fantastic resources, locations and most importantly, the talented people in this city we love and call home.”

Other new television series include two new projects by Warner Bros. Discovery – “Latitude” and “The Pitt” – and two new projects from Faith Media Distribution – “Blood Ties” and “Runaway Girl.” 

In addition to the influx of new projects, the Tax Credit Program continues to support three recurring series, which are estimated to spend a combined $178 million in qualified expenditures and employ a total of 1,500 cast and crew. 

A full list of ongoing television productions that are a part of the Tax Credit Program is available here.  

LOS ANGELES—The production and distribution company Electric Entertainment has announced that they are currently filming the third season of “Leverage: Redemption” with the all new V-Raptor X camera from RED Digital Cinema.

This marks the second time that Electric has been the first to shoot a TV series with a recently released RED camera. In 2008, the first season of “Leverage” was shot on the RED One Camera. All four seasons of the series continued with the RED One Camera and Season five was shot using the RED Epic.

The V-Raptor X is the world’s first large format global shutter camera containing a new flagship DSMC3 system with RED Global Vision, a global shutter sensor and suite of tools for unprecedented flexibility and dynamic range.

“As one of the pioneers of digital cinematography, RED has empowered us to film and edit our content in-house with unparalleled quality,” explained Mark Franco, head of production at Electric Entertainment. “The new V-Raptor X is light, easy to use, and allows us to move effortlessly throughout our shoot. We are truly honored to be the first production company to use these latest technological advancements from RED on a TV series.”

After Electric’s initial collaboration with RED in 2008, they have since used the Company’s cameras for many of their TV series, including “Almost Paradise,” “The Librarians” and the entire “Leverage” series, which amounts to over 100 hours of content shot on RED.

“Dean, Mark and the entire Electric Entertainment team have been friends of the RED family since the RED ONE was revealed nearly two decades ago,” said RED Digital Cinema president Jarred Land. “Personally, Leverage is one of my favorite shows to watch. The history and all these connections make it even more exciting for everyone at RED that they are the first series to shoot on V-Raptor X."

Electric Entertainment’s “Leverage: Redemption” follows a Robin Hood-esque team of criminals as they stage elaborate cons against corrupt and powerful individuals on behalf of clients who have been wronged. Season 3 will premiere on Prime Video later this year and sees the return of starring characters played by Gina Bellman, Christian Kane, Beth Riesgraf, Aldis Hodge, Noah Wyle and Aleyse Shannon.

Dean Devlin, Marc Roskin, and Rachel Olschan-Wilson of Electric Entertainment are executive producers of “Leverage: Redemption.” John Rogers joins Season 3 as showrunner and executive producer. Chris Downey also serves as executive producer. Kate Rorick is a consulting producer.

Depending on how long the WGA strike lasts and how much the work stoppage will affect TV and film production, one researcher says the signs of a slowdown in TV commissioning has already impacted the availability of new programming.

According to Ampere Analysis, the rate of TV commissioning in the U.S. dropped significantly in the second half of last year, and continues to remain low in 2023. The downturn is most profound for scripted content, with scripted TV commissions in the last three quarters down by 24% year-on-year— with overall volumes even lower than during the Covid pandemic, Ampere says. However, the researcher also believes that the resulting content deficit has created opportunities for those in a position to invest. 

To-date, the time lag between commission and release times means that although commissions have been lower, audiences have yet to see the full effect on TV schedules. But low commissioning now will create a future content deficit, with the slowdown likely to start to bite in Q3 2023 and beyond.

Ampere outlines two possible scenarios: In the first, if commissioning rates recover soon, audiences will see between 5% and 7% fewer scripted releases each quarter between now and Q2 2024, when the effects will ease.

In the second scenario, if commissioning continues at current levels, audiences will start to feel a much greater impact towards the end of this year, with 16% fewer releases expected in Q4 2023, and 20% fewer from Q2 2024 onwards.

One streamer—Amazon—has bucked this trend, according to Fred Black, Research Manager at Ampere Analysis.

“Scripted commissions at flagship subscription video on demand (SVoD) services are definitely feeling the impact of budget cuts—and the studios aren’t only cutting back at their streaming platforms, with pay TV networks like TBS, FX, OWN, Freeform, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET and AMC all reducing scripted commissions by over 50% when comparing the past nine months with the previous period. 

“There’s one big exception however—Amazon—which is capitalizing on cutbacks made by rivals by increasing commissions of comedy and sci-fi and fantasy shows,” Black added. “Investing in scripted commissions now can pay off doubly for those willing to gamble, as the extra commissions will hit the market just as the output of original content from rivals drops to its lowest levels early next year.”

Although the decline of unscripted commissions was severe across SVoD and pay TV, SVoD services have been the biggest loser, with commissions down 33% over the last nine months versus the same period in the previous year, with 151 fewer titles commissioned. 

Conversely, advertising supported video on demand (AVoD) and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) commissioners have provided a bright spot in the gloom with 83 Unscripted commissions over the period, 6% of all Unscripted activity in the US in that time.

The biggest decline in unscripted commissioning has been at Warner Bros. Discovery, according to Ampere. The WBD merger has created an “unscripted behemoth”—but one that the company is looking to slim down. 

The drop in unscripted commissions overall can be largely attributed to WBD. Between July 2022 and March 23, there were 241 fewer unscripted TV commissions in the U.S.: WBD unscripted commissions accounted for 172 of them, a 32% drop for the company’s unscripted commissions overall, with cuts occurring at both its pay TV and particularly SVoD platforms. The drop across the market outside WBD is only 6%. Unscripted content was trimmed at Paramount and Comcast too by 16% and 13% respectively, while at Disney unscripted output actually increased, primarily via Hulu.

“While the commissioning cutbacks in Unscripted content at the dominant pay TV and SVoD platforms have been severe, there is a sense of balance being restored after a significant pandemic peak,” Black said. COVID-19 saw unscripted commissions soar out of necessity due to production complications, and then continue at a high level due to a surprisingly enthusiastic audience. What we’re seeing now is a course correction. Unscripted commissions in the US were down 16% over the last three quarters compared to the previous year, but compare it to the same period in 2019 and early 2020, and the drop is only 1%. There’s also optimism in the growing number of commissions from AVoD and FAST platforms, showing that while some SVoD services may have over-leveraged on Unscripted content, there are plenty of nascent players still investing.”

LOS ANGELES—FilmLA, which is the film office for the City and County of Los Angeles and other local jurisdictions, has issued a new report on L.A.-based TV and film productions that showed local on-location film, TV and commercial production declined sharply in the fourth quarter of 2022, finishing down 19.5% behind its record-breaking equivalent logged just one year ago. 

The 8,674 Shoot Days (SD) recorded from October through December brought the year to a lackluster finish, with 36,792 Shoot Days recorded across all categories by the end of 2022, the study found. This represents a 2.4% decline over 2021 (with 37,709 SD) and a very slight, 0.7% increase over pre-pandemic year 2019 (with 36,540 SD).

The most recent results raise questions about longer-term declines in the area’s film production as more states are offering hefty tax credits and incentives to producers. Overall, regional film production levels peaked at 39,627 SD in 2016, FilmLA reported. 

They also come at a time when TV networks and streaming companies have been cutting back original productions amid increasing financial pressures. That has prompted some analysts to predict lower production levels in the future. 

“The return of pre-pandemic filming levels places us roughly where we were in 2019, which was itself a year of significant production decline. Can we hold here, or will the pre-COVID downtrend resume? That is the question everyone is asking,” noted FilmLA President Paul Audley.

Trends in historical production levels vary by industry segment. 

Among the major production categories tracked by FilmLA, Commercials was hit hardest in 2022, finishing -24.5% below its five-year annual average. The category posted a -33.75 decline in the fourth quarter alone with 828 SD. Commercials finished the year  -22.6% below 2021 (with 4,119 SD vs. 5,319 SD), the report said. 

The Television category, representing the largest component of the Greater Los Angeles film economy, has generally performed well over time. Television production levels in 2022 rest 7.3% above their five-year annual average. Activity in 2022 did slow as compared with the prior year, including a -24.2% drop in the fourth quarter to 3,735 SD. Compared to 2021, Television finished the year down -9.6% (with 16,778 SD vs. 18,560 SD), FilmLA reported. 

Breaking down the individual categories of television, TV Dramas posted a fourth quarter decline of -10.7%, with a total of 1,155 SD. The category saw a -17.5% change year over year (with 4,627 SD vs. 5,610 SD). TV Dramas that shot last quarter included 9-1-1 (Fox), Bel-Air (Peacock), Bosch Legacy (Freevee), Fatal Attraction (Paramount+), Good Trouble (Freeform), Snowfall (FX), S.W.A.T. (CBS), The Rookie (ABC) and Winning Time (HBO).

A total of 338 SD – that is, 29.3% of all TV Drama production in the fourth quarter – were generated by projects receiving the California Film & Television Tax Credit, which is overseen by the California Film Commission.

TV Comedies posted 353 SD in the fourth quarter, for a -33.9% drop over the year prior. The category ended the year with 1,273 SD, or -2.2% below 2021 (with 1,302 SD). A total of 19 SD, or 5.4% of the category total, were generated by CA tax credit recipients. Comedies that shot locally last quarter included Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO), Home Economics (ABC), Grand Crew (NBC), Killing It (Peacock) and Minx (HBO Max), the report said. 

The TV Reality category also fell in the fourth quarter, dropping -2.2% to 2,014 SD. It ended 2022 with 10,049 SD—a 5.2% increase from 2021 (with 9,551 SD). The category rests 50.8% above its five-year average for the fourth quarter and 91.9% over its annual five-year average. Notable reality shows that shot locally included Celebrity IOU (TLC), Let’s Make a Deal (CBS), 90 Day: The Single Life (Discovery+), Selling Sunset (Netflix) and Vanderpump Rules (Bravo!).

Feature film production continues to trend away from past highs. By the end of 2022, the Feature category stood -24.0% shy of its five-year annual average. It ended the year’s fourth quarter with 760 SD, a -16.2% decline from the same period in 2021. For the entire year, Feature production saw a smaller loss of -9.6% (with 3,080 SD vs. 3,406 SD), FilmLA reported. 

A total of 339 SD—that is, 44.6% of all Feature production in the fourth quarter—were generated by projects receiving the California Film & Television Tax Credit. Feature films that shot in Greater Los Angeles last quarter included Netflix’s Atlas and Beverly Hills Cop 4, in addition to independent films like Guns and Moses and Billy Knight.

FilmLA’s Other category—which collectively consists of still photography, student films, short films, documentaries, music and industrial videos—declined -9.4% in the fourth quarter to 3,352 SD. The category ended the year with a 22.9% increase over 2021 (with 12,815 SD vs. 10,424 SD). Looking at five-year averages, the annual total represented a -1.6% decline in filming of miscellaneous projects.

ATLANTA—Gray Television has announced that it has inked a long-term agreement with NBCUniversal Media for NBCU to lease and operate new state-of-the-art studio facilities at Gray’s Assembly Atlanta development. 

The studios in metropolitan Atlanta are scheduled to be completed in the second half of 2023. 

“Gray Television is thrilled to expand our already strong relationship with NBCU,” said Gray’s executive chairman and CEO Hilton H. Howell, Jr. “The new venture announced today places Gray’s own studio projects inside a large, first-class television and film production facility that will draw upon and will surely increase the large pool of skilled industry professionals who also make their homes here in the Atlanta metroplex.”

Assembly Atlanta is a 135-acre mixed-use real estate complex centered around the studio industry at the former site of the General Motors Assembly Plant, which is located in the City of Doraville, Georgia. The property borders the Interstate 285 Perimeter and is near the Atlanta neighborhood of Buckhead. 

In 2021, Gray assembled the real estate that today comprises Assembly Atlanta. Last year, Gray retained Atlanta-based The Gipson Company as the developer and construction manager and JLL as the strategic advisor for Assembly Atlanta.

A central component of the Assembly Atlanta development is the 43-acre Assembly Studios complex featuring soundstages, production offices, warehouse and mill buildings, studio bungalows, event space, and a parking deck. 

NBCU’s lease with Gray will include a full suite of facilities needed to support television and film production. The new facilities will include multiple soundstages, production office space, warehouses and mill space, as well as parking and other necessary amenities. Adjacent to the Assembly Studios complex is Third Rail Studios, a movie and television production facility spanning seven acres that opened in 2016 and that Gray acquired in September 2021.

NBCU will manage all studio and production facilities on-site within the Assembly Studios complex, including Gray’s own studio facilities and Gray’s Third Rail Studios. This arrangement is expected to leverage NBCU’s extensive experience and expertise in managing studio lots, ensure consistency across all of the studio operations and leasing opportunities for third parties, and permit Gray to retain its focus on its own video production business.

Construction began on roadways and infrastructure throughout the Assembly Studios complex last summer, and construction began on studio buildings for Gray’s Swirl Films late last year. Construction on NBCU’s facilities is expected to begin this summer. At that time, Gray expects over 1,200 individuals will be employed in construction jobs on-site. 

The Assembly Studios complex is slated to be completed in the second half of 2023, which will allow Gray’s Swirl Films, NBCU and any third-party tenants to begin film and television productions in the new facilities before the end of next year. 

When fully operational, over 4,000 people will be expected to work within Assembly Studios and Third Rail Studios, and the productions filmed there will support thousands of additional new jobs in the community, Gray announced. 

Outside of the Assembly Studios complex, current plans for Assembly Atlanta include mixed use and commercial buildings around a town center concept when completed in the next five to seven years. 

The long-term development plans include a boutique hotel, townhouses and apartments, entertainment venues including e-gaming facilities, a conference center, and office buildings. 

The properties, including the landscaped streets, parks, and green space, will be designed to enable location shooting throughout Assembly Atlanta for productions filming within the soundstages of Assembly Studios. 

SEOUL—Maeil Broadcasting Network (MBN), a South Korean cable TV broadcaster, this month completed an upgrade of its new broadcast production facility with Lawo mc256 consoles A_UHD Core audio engine and multiple A__line AoIP stageboxes, the second large project its completed leveraging the company’s technology.

“Maeil Broadcasting Network regards IP as the broadcast technology of the future, and our goal is to be a fully [SMPTE] ST 2110-capable broadcast network within the next few years,” said Byonghee Gwak, technical director at MBN. 

“This is why we wanted to integrate our broadcast production facility with our new studios and control rooms using an IP infrastructure right from the start. Another big plus is that, with our new flexible audio network, we can apply our workflows and change them at any time, easily modifying the whole setup via software configuration.”

MBN’s first installed Lawo radio mixing consoles for DMB radio and mc² audio production desks for MBN MONEY and the MBN News Center several years ago. Experience with Lawo’s technology led MBN to choose the company again to perform a technical upgrade of MBN control rooms A and B in the new production center, Lawo said.

The upgrade of the production studio includes two mc²56 MkIII audio production consoles with shared A__UHD core, external servers for MCX and Lawo’s HOME management platform for IP-based media infrastructures, as well as A__stage 80, A__MADI6 and A__digital 64 AoIP nodes, and an A__stage48 as studio stagebox, it said.

“Together with MBN, we developed a plan to upgrade the new production center to an IP facility and discussed the workflows our customer wanted to put in place,” said Choi Won, project manager at LG U+, which installed all of the equipment.

“After thorough consideration of various manufacturers, Lawo, with their IP-native, ST 2110-compatible audio production consoles, won by a clear margin. The powerful, super-compact A__UHD core provides DSP pooling and full redundancy so that a dynamic and flawless production process is guaranteed.” 

MBN’s new technology is managed by Lawo’s HOME platform, which manages IP devices and makes adding new IP-connected audio I/O devices easy. The consoles automatically detect new devices and make them available at the touch of a button. HOME manages IP addresses, multicast ranges and VLANs and includes security features like access control and quarantining of unknown devices to protect a facility’s network, it said.

“We have already experienced the Lawo radio and mc² series mixing consoles over the years. We admire the innovative character, quality, reliability and stability of Lawo products and solutions, and the creative resource handling and efficiency that provides us with new and better ways of TV production,” said Gwak.

Lawo partner DYD (Dongyang Digital) handled delivery while the SI team of mobile network operator LG Uplus (LG U+) was responsible for planning, installation and commissioning. The project was completed in March 2022.

More information is available on the company’s website.

FREEMONT, Calif.—More than 60 of this fall’s TV shows and streaming series are being created using Blackmagic Design solutions, ranging from digital film cameras and DaVinci Resolve Studio editing, grading and VFX to audio post production software, the company is reporting.

This season’s new and returning hit shows include “Ghosts,” which used URSA Mini Pro 12K and Pocket Cinema Camera 4Ks in the pilot; “Station 19,” which powered its virtual production workflow with Blackmagic Design; and series such as “Succession,” “The Simpsons” and “Billions®,” which were graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio. 

With many productions navigating remote production, ATEM Mini Pro live production switchers helped filmmakers, such as the VFX team for “Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.,” connect remotely.

“Every year, the bar continues to rise for the cinematic quality and creativity that viewers want from their favorite series. This year’s shows were challenged to meet those mounting expectations, while also dealing with unprecedented new challenges of creating these shows safely,” said VFX supervisor and co-founder of Muse VFX Fred Pienkos.

“Now more than ever, having reliable tools that allow us to be flexible and stay focused on the creative is paramount, which is why we continue to turn to Blackmagic Design,” he said.

Some of the fall 2021 series that used Blackmagic Design cameras include “Blue Bloods,” which relied on Blackmagic Production Camera 4Ks for VFX; “The Equalizer,” which used Pocket Cinema Camera 4K for insert shots; and “Ghosts,” which relied on URSA Mini Pro 12K and Pocket Cinema Camera 4K for select shots on the pilot episode, Blackmagic Design said.

Some of the fall 2021 series that used Blackmagic Design for VFX and virtual production included “9-1-1,” “American Rust,” “Blue Bloods” and Doogie Kamealoha M.D.” which used DaVinci Resolve Studio in the VFX pipeline. “Blue Bloods” also used Intensity Shuttle for playback, and “Doogie Kamealoha M.D.” used an ATEM Mini Pro to collaborate remotely, the company said.

Among the series using DaVinci Resolve Studio for post-production were: “All American,” “Batwoman,” “American Horror Story: Double Feature,” “Truth Be Told,” “B Positive” “Bob Hearts Abishola” and “Queens.”

Series using Blackmagic Design for production include “Bull,” which relied on Smart Videohub 20x20 router, UltraStudio HD Mini capture and playback device, DaVinci Resolve and Mini Converters SDI Distribution; and “Dopesick,” which used the SmartScope Duo monitor, Smart Videohub, DaVinci Resolve, UltraStudio Mini Monitor, a variety of DeckLink capture and playback cards and Mini Converters.

More information is available on the Blackmagic Design website.

LOS ANGELES—With talks seemingly stalled on new contracts covering 60,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada, the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees has said it will hold a strike authorization vote that could shut down film and TV production. 

The IATSE and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have been negotiating for months on the Producer-IATSE Basic Agreement and the Theatrical and Television Motion Picture Area Standard Agreement, which cover about 60,000 IATSE members. Key sticking points have included pay for workers on streaming productions, long working hours, difficult working conditions that have been exacerbated  by COVID-19 and pay.  

In a statement issued on September 20, the IATSE said, “Today, the AMPTP informed the IATSE that they do not intend to respond to our comprehensive package proposal presented to them over a week ago. This failure to continue negotiating can only be interpreted one way. They simply will not address the core issues we have repeatedly advocated for from the beginning. As a result, we will now proceed with a nationwide strike authorization vote to demonstrate our commitment to achieving the change that is long overdue in this industry.”

In a subsequent press release, the IATSE said key sticking points include “excessively unsafe and harmful working hours;” unlivable wages for the lowest paid crafts; consistent failure to provide reasonable rest during meal breaks, between workdays, and on weekends; and the fact that “workers on certain `new media' streaming projects get paid less, even on productions with budgets that rival or exceed those of traditionally released blockbusters.”

In announcing its intention to call a strike authorization vote, the IATSE also noted that “the explosion of streaming combined with the pandemic has elevated and aggravated working conditions, bringing 60,000 behind-the-scenes workers covered by these contracts to a breaking point. We risked our health and safety all year, working through the Pandemic to ensure that our business emerged intact. Now, we cannot and will not accept a deal that leaves us with an unsustainable outcome.”

If a strike does occur it could potentially be the most devastating since the writers strike in 2014. 

The AMPTP has not publicly commented on the negotiations. 

FREMONT, Calif.—“Station 19,” the ABC Signature/Shondaland production that follows a group of firefighters from the Seattle Fire Department, relied on a Blackmagic Design Ursa Mini Pro 12K camera to capture a dramatic overhead angle for an episode called “Comfortably Numb.”

In the episode, the character Ben faces surgery. While on the operating table, the audience is brought into the experience with an Ursa Mini Pro 12K suspended over the actor to capture his fear and anxiety.

“We had three camera crews with our regular cameras on the ‘Station 19’ set,” said cinematographer Christian Sebaldt, ASC, “but I felt it was crucial to get an additional top angle for the editor, since visual effects were going to affect the scene quite heavily.” 

The overhead angle covered the main character's face as he laid on his back. “I didn't want to take one of the three other cameras shooting the multiple actors in the scene and lose coverage on them, but I felt the single on Ben was critical to the story.”

Sebaldt began using the original Blackmagic Design Cinema cameras in 2016 on the CBS TV series “Rush Hour.” Since then, he’s used various models, carrying many in his personal gear kit.

“With a huge amount of action in every episode, having two extra angles in addition to the three main cameras was absolutely crucial to deliver exciting sequences,” he added.

For “Comfortably Numb,” Sebaldt rigged the Ursa Mini Pro 12K above Ben’s face but framed the shot with ample room around him

“With such high-resolution imagery, I knew that we could push in on the shot in editorial and reframe if needed due to the high quality of the 12K image. A lock off with a moving actor was no worry for me,” he said.

While Sebaldt said he appreciates the quality of the 12K imagery, he also values its “clean image” and wide dynamic range with a lot of “natural detail and no artifacts.” 

“All Blackmagic cameras I have used over the years have rendered beautiful skin tones and deep detail for easy matching or manipulation in final color sessions,” he said.

More information is available on the Blackmagic Design website. 

LEICESTER, U.K.—In capturing “Kevin Can F**k Himself,” which began airing this week on AMC, cinematographer Adrian Peng Correia relied on Cooke Optics S7/i Full Frame prime lenses.

The series is the story about a woman playing a perfect housewife in a sitcom that moves back and forth from her own point of view to the surreal world of the 4-camera sitcom world as she decides she is going to kill her husband. 

“This story is from the perspective of the wife, Annie [Murphy’s] character, and how she sees the world,” said Correia. “She sees her world in two ways — and from a visual standpoint, they are very specific: her reality and in the world of a multicam sitcom.”

Season one’s 8-episodes feature cutaways from reality, but viewers never truly leave the multicam sitcom world, with cutaways that range from 40 to 60 percent of each episode. “With viewers jumping in and out of reality, we needed reality to have a very specific look, that’s why I went with the Cooke S7/i lenses,” said Correia. “It was an opportunity as a cinematographer to really take off and have a voice,”.

That voice started during pre-production, with Steven Porter, supervising colorist at MTI Film who worked with Correia to create LUTs for both worlds. Reality would be desaturated in the camera and further tweaked in post. The sitcom world would be bright and colorful, much as it is portraited in most sitcoms.

“I was brought in as a replacement DP, primarily due to Covid having shut everything down and the original DP no longer being available,” said Correia. “Some work had been done for the sitcom look pre-COVID, but we ended up redesigning most of the lighting layout.   I really like to know as much as I can about the look before starting photography, because in our new world, you never know what can happen. That’s why having those LUTs was imperative. Plus, I had never done a multicam sitcom look before.”

To help get as knowledgeable as possible about lighting and shooting a sitcom, Correia reached out to friend and former `Will & Grace’ DP cinematographer Gary Baum, ASC and ‘Bob Hearts Abishola’ DP Patti Lee, ASC. “I got as many pointers and ideas as I could to arm myself,” said Correia.

For the single camera reality world, Correia came into the project with specific looks already determined during pre-production. “They wanted to do a more grounded, gritty look, but I was able to add my style of elevated naturalism, with more expressiveness in the lighting,” he explained. “The original plan for the single cam — actually two cameras for coverage — was to use the ARRI ALEXA Mini, but to use four Sony F55s for the sitcom. I wanted a similar imager to the sitcom cameras, so we went with Sony Venice cameras, with everything shot in 16x9.”

When it came to the lenses for the reality world, Correia knew exactly what he wanted and why. “I needed dimensionality to offset the photographically flat multicam sitcom world, especially for faces,” he said. “I absolutely love how the S7/i lenses render faces, especially having used them on “The Flight Attendant.” Those full frame lenses make performances pop, regardless of the performer. As an example, Kaley Cuoco’s character in “The Flight Attendant” has an outward and comedic personality, while Annie Murphy’s character here in “Kevin Can F**k Himself” goes on a psychologically fracturing journey that is more muted and insular, peppered with outbursts of absurdity and drama. The dimensionality of the S7/i lens peers into those nuances in her face.”

Correia’s Cooke S7/i kit consisted of the 18mm, 21mm, 25mm, 32mm, 40mm, 50mm, 65mm, 75mm, 100mm, and 135mm lenses. 

While the 21mm became Correia’s go to lens for wides, his close-up work used mainly the 25mm, 32mm and 40mm. He also favored the 65mm for very dramatic moments.

“One of the nicest things about Cooke lenses is the information that you can get from them, both on-set and having it be recorded for VFX and CGI work,” said Correia, referring to Cooke’s /i Technology lens metadata. “Today, you want more from a lens and that’s where Cooke delivers. Just by looking at the monitors, I know where my stops are instead of having to radio my assistants. You have more control where everything lands and a more streamlined workflow. All data is useful, even just the option is powerful to me, even if I don’t use everything—I can do my job better. Knowing a 2.8 is a 2.8 and understanding what my lenses are doing is invaluable.”

Cameras and lenses were provided by rental company PRG Gear. Both the reality and multicam sitcom worlds were shot south of Boston at Stalwart Productions, in an unassuming warehouse-looking studio in Randolph, MA.

JOHNSTON, Iowa—It is not news to anyone, anywhere that Covid-19 and the associated pandemic and global shutdown has forced changes on everyone. Even now as we start to see some lessening of restrictions and resumption of a less restrictive return to work, we are beginning to evaluate what are the impacts of the last year and half in the near and long term. How many of the changes we were forced to implement will continue after the pandemic has ended? Even more interesting to me is what will motivate keeping or eliminating the changes when we can go back to a relatively speaking "more normal" way of life?

When it became obvious in the early days of March 2020 that Iowa PBS would have to look at implementing a remote work policy, we had to pivot, which isn’t easy for my organization since we are an agency of the State of Iowa and governmental policies and procedures tend to make flexibility and nimbleness a challenge.

HYBRID OPERATION

We were challenged on a couple of fronts. First being that much of the staff is hourly and as a result are expected to work from their desks within the facility for set shifts. Enabling even clerical and traditional office workers to work from home meant not only supplying them with laptops and VPN access but also with meaningful work that demonstrated they were actually working their shifts.

The other challenge was for those involved in content creation where they would need to interface from a remote location into a facility that was purposely built to not connect to the outside world. Providing VPN access to Avid edit suites and broadcast operations required a bit more thought and planning. The Iowa PBS IT team did an amazing job ramping up remote access capabilities and configuring remote work stations.

What we ended up with was a hybrid operation where the majority of the staff could work remotely, and a limited number of essential workers still went into the office. We implemented a sanitization routine that was highly successful when you consider that when the crisis began, we were tasked to be the pool feed for our Governor’s press conferences, which started out at three a week from a remote secured location and have settled into weekly from our studio facility.

In addition, we continued studio production of "Iowa Press," our weekly news program and “Market to Market,” our weekly syndicated agriculture program. While there were a couple of individual cases of Covid reported, no wide outbreaks thanks in no small part to our thoughtful staff and thorough sanitization.

FAIR GAME

One of the most impressive accomplishments was in August when in normal years we would have had an all-out commitment to blanket-covering events at the Iowa State Fair. Now I know for many, a state fair may seem to be pretty trivial but Iowa PBS has been covering the Iowa State Fair for 50 years and creating a nightly show that often generates higher ratings than the commercial network affiliates.

While we aren’t motivated by ratings, this is a pretty good indicator that the audience likes the content. When the State Fair had to cancel, we decided to produce a myriad of retrospective pieces going back through our archive of past State Fair coverage. These pieces were produced primarily by editors working on laptops from their homes connected to Avid machines at the broadcast facility. They not only continued our long-term commitment to highlighting the Iowa State Fair but they also kept the people of Iowa and around the country connected to what is an immensely popular annual event.

Looking forward, I find myself less concerned about the technology needed to enable a change to a "work from anywhere" mindset. I personally have had that capability for as long as I have been at Iowa PBS. It is one of the key factors that has enabled my participation in leadership at the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, the NAB Show, ATSC and the IBC. My primary computer has been a laptop and I have done my Iowa PBS work from all over the world.

The commoditization of bandwidth, the virtualization of software-based systems and the power of computing have all worked toward an environment where even the most visually intensive production can be done by disparate people working from multiple locations. I have encouraged many of my colleagues and friends to review the Movie Labs 2030 Vision Initiative white paper as a way of expanding their thinking. While I do not see myself involved in the production of cinema releases, I am definitely inspired by the global creative community that this vision enables. And who knows, with the challenges faced and lessons learned by the major film producers, their world and ours may be aligning much faster than we ever thought. 

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

My concern as I see the light at the end of this tunnel is the potential for overreacting or underreacting to the changed environment. The pandemic has forced many employers to accept that their employees can work from anywhere and not just in their cubicle in the office complex or the edit suite at the station. This can require that we value people’s worth within an organization not solely or primarily on the number of hours they spend in the edifice that has the company logo at the roof line but on what they contribute to the mission and goals of the organization.

The same pandemic has allowed many people to more seamlessly blend their home life and work life together. We have all been in a virtual meeting where one of our colleagues has had to explain a toddler asking a question or a cat walking across the keyboard. We as employees have to remember to keep some separation between the two and we as employers have to remember to tolerate the occasional collision of the two.

Finally, while necessity—the mother of invention—has proven that we can work virtually, there is still a valid need for going to the office and interacting with our colleagues and coworkers. We must remember that we are a social species and just like social networking is no substitute for real networking, a virtual presence is only an augmentation to reality, it is not a substitute for reality.

Bill Hayes is the director of engineering and technology at Iowa Public Television and a recipient of Future's 2021 Tech Leadership Award.

LOS ANGELES—Reports have shared that Hollywood’s major production companies and unions have agreed to extend the COVID-19 safety protocols for TV and film production through June 30. Variety was among the first to provide details.

The safety protocols were agreed to last September by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), SAG-AFTRA, the DGA, IATSE and others. The protocols include things like testing regimens, use of a zone-based system for crews and the wearing of PPE. Variety says that the agreement does not require people working on set to be fully vaccinated.

The announcement comes as Los Angeles County is expected to move into its yellow tier of social distancing mandates soon. This will allow for indoor gatherings at 75% capacity.

For more information, read the full story on Variety. 

LOS ANGELES—Los Angeles is seeing TV productions return to the city in large numbers as the COVID-19 pandemic starts to ebb. A new report from FilmLA details that March was one of the busiest months of productions in the Los Angeles region since on-location work restarted last June.

Since June 2020, 6,585 permit applications have been submitted to FilmLA, covering 4,421 projects. March alone had 1,125 applications, an increase of 45% from the 777 that were submitted in February.

In total, from January to March of 2021, there have been 7,011 shooting days in the region, down just 3.3% from the same period last year. Television, though, is a driving force for this resurgence, as TV productions accounted for a total of 3,766 shooting days, a 50.1% increase year-over-year for the first quarter.

Reality TV saw the biggest growth, with productions increasing 96.4% for a total of 1,514 shooting days so far in 2021. TV dramas also came back strong, with 1,459 shooting days, a 64.1% increase year-over-year. A quarter (24.7%) of these TV dramas qualified for the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program. TV comedies were the only television genre to see a decrease in shooting days year-over-year, down about 5% from 2020 for 239 shooting days throughout Q1 2021.

Among some of the shows that returned to production across Los Angeles were “9-1-1: Lone Star,” “Mayans MC,” NCIS: LA” and “Shameless.”

Feature films and commercials both saw less shooting days in Q1 2021 than in 2020, with films down 13.5% and commercials down 18.2%

For more details on the report, visit FilmLA’s website. 

FRANKFURT, Germany—German technical services provider Media Broadcast has joined forces with LiveU to successfully test a complete TV production chain at its 5G campus.

As part of the use case, a HD camera was connected to a LU800 transmitter unit via HD-SDI, which can accommodate up to four 4K cameras.

The unit then transmitted the signal to Media Broadcast’s campus in Nauen, near Berlin, where it was received using a LiveU video server, checked and made available for further processing via HD-SDI.

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“Together with LiveU, with this use case we are offering the industry a tangible example of where the journey with 5G in the news and events area could lead: easy-to-implement, flexible TV productions of the best quality and maximum security,” said Daniel Wolbers, head of 5G product development at Media Broadcast.

“It is our goal to incorporate this experience into our solution portfolio as soon as possible and thus to be able to make it available to our customers.”

Last March, the Los Angeles area, one of the sparkling gems of the Hollywood entertainment empire, joined the rest of the world when the pandemic forced everyone in the region to stay-at-home. The stay-at-home order and subsequent industry shutdown sent the entire production world into a tailspin, with the Los Angeles area estimated to have lost nearly one million jobs. Film crews were sent home, and many independent cinematographers faced an uncertain future.  

We caught up with international award-winning cinematographer Joshua Ausley, who splits his time between Los Angeles and Atlanta, to get his thoughts on the last year. Ausley has worked on feature films and projects for Marvel, HBO and Netflix, among others. He takes a look back at the year, his thoughts on the future and shares his experience using Cartoni tripods.  

TANYA LYON: Film and video production is finally ramping back up following COVID and staying at home orders, but you have been pretty busy. Can you tell me about some of the projects you have been working on? 

JOSH AUSLEY: I shot a commercial for XFINITY, followed by a documentary feature that involved a lot of time on the road. Virtually everything has been remote-to-client, meaning the agency and producers stay at home in L.A. or the U.K. (or wherever they are) and view or direct the shoot via streaming services. 

Diversification has been the key to keep the work flowing. When the usual commercial jobs dried up, we were able to quickly pivot and start doing remote shoots, such as TV documentaries, to help us get by until things ramped back up.

TL: One of your early pandemic shoots was the Budweiser Memorial Day “Take Two-Minutes” commercial. What was it like working on that commercial at the height of the pandemic?

JA: We were approached by the agency, DAVID, to be part of a multi-city campaign honoring both veterans and frontline healthcare workers for a Memorial Day spot by Budweiser. The various locations would have needed different crews since travel was restricted. However, as the course of the creative changed, we had the opportunity to produce the whole spot ourselves. I brought on an experienced producer, Liz Stovall of Fenton Pictures, to help me make the commercial so I could focus on directing the photography. The spot tells the story of a military service member and a medical worker, juxtaposing them by shooting parallel scenes that were then shown in a split-screen fashion.

We had less than a week to put it together, which included sourcing talent and locations. Keeping everything small due to COVID at the agency’s request, we assembled a lean team of less than 10 and shot everything in one day. The spot was on the air less than a week later.

TL: Can you explain how this experience was different than a typical production? 

This shoot was right as the pandemic was ramping up here in the U.S. At the time, there were a lot of unknowns and no widely accepted protocol, so we had to do everything we could [to stay safe]. All crew members wore PPE and stayed 6 feet apart at all times. Temperature checks were done in the morning.  Lunch was taken outside and separated with individually-boxed items.

This was slightly before real-time Zoom feedback became the norm. As a result, we sent photos and screenshots back to the client to get their feedback and approval. And we still had to work fast.

TL: Can you talk about the gear you used for the shoot?

JA: We shot on my ARRI Alexa Mini, paired with Zeiss mk3 Super Speeds. For support, we used my Focus 22 Cartoni tripod and an EasyRig for handheld shots. I had to pull my focus since I didn’t have a first AC for the shoot.

Because the crew was minimal, we used a lean lighting package consisting mainly of an 800-watt Joker HMI, a Litepanels Gemini panel and a pair of Kino Flo Select 30 LEDs.

TL: With a smaller crew, how important was it to have a small, lightweight, reliable fluid head like your Cartoni?

JA: Smaller crews mean fewer hands to help move gear. People are wearing multiple hats now, and the heavier the gear, the slower you can move. Having a lightweight tripod head helped me tremendously as I didn’t have an AC for the shoot. I was able to pick up the sticks and the camera all at once to move between setups and make small adjustments to the camera position as needed.

TL: Have you worked on any other shoots during the pandemic (you were in Mexico recently for a shoot, too, right)?

JA: I just got back from Cancun filming for several all-inclusive resorts to showcase their COVID-safety procedures and convince people to come back. The travel industry is probably the hardest hit of all during this pandemic, as my wife knows especially well since she is a travel professional. But there are still some places that Americans can go to. 

For this shoot, I brought my Sony FX9 with Focus HD Cartoni tripod system, an even lighter package that enabled me to be super mobile. The Focus HD is the perfect size, and weight to use with the FX9 and makes lean shooting a whole lot easier.

TL: How do you think the pandemic will change production?

JA: In the short-term, it’s clear that we will be wearing PPE, getting temperature checks and regular testing on longer shows. Some productions are putting crews into quarantine before starting, especially in other countries. Remote productions are huge right now, with clients logging into the shoot from their homes or offices.

I think we’ll see some long-term changes from this, even after the pandemic has passed. Like many businesses now have a more favorable view on working from home, I think clients will realize more and more that they don’t have to fly in a lot of people for productions. Remote shoots will probably stay popular, to save productions on time, personnel and travel costs. The downside of this is that it takes longer to get client feedback and approval, so that effect will have to be weighed. 

We definitely need to be adaptable moving forward in 2021.

TL: How long have you been using Cartoni?

JA: I bought my first Cartoni tripod in 2016 through a trade-up program switching from another manufacturer. I immediately noticed it was a big upgrade for me. I had tried many different systems out, but the Cartoni package hit all the points without compromising anything. A strong, durable system that can put up with a beating and a fluid head capable of adapting to the weight of many different cameras. I’ve shot four features with it and traveled with it extensively. It holds up very well.

TL: Which fluid head do you own?

JA: I own the Focus 22 head as well as the Focus HD. It’s great to have both a very lightweight package and one that can handle serious loads. Those two can handle whatever gets thrown at them.

Tanya Lyon is a spokesperson for Cartoni.

LOS ANGELES—Los Angeles is making progress in its battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, and as such has eased some of the restrictions that it had put in place for TV and film productions, specifically related to indoor audiences and craft services. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health says the new guidelines are now in effect.

In indoor settings, live audiences must now not exceed 50 people and need to be made up of people hired by or on behalf of the production company or a third party vendor. Live audience members must not be from the general public. The hired audience are required to adhere to all employee safety requirements and should be the same group of people throughout as much of the production as possible.

In addition, hired audience members need to be seated at least 6 feet apart and always wear a face mask. If hired audience members are from the same household they may sit together.

The Department of Health still recommends hired audiences be seated outside rather than inside.

Dining options for crews have also been updated. As Los Angeles moves to its Orange Tier, indoor dining can now take place at 50% maximum capacity or 200 individuals, whichever is fewer. Again, outdoor dining remains the recommended practice.

The complete guidelines from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is available online. 

Play along with me for one moment. The pandemic is over. Lockdowns, social distancing, hand-sanitizing stations and masks are in the rearview mirror.

The question facing TV management now is whether to continue their remote workflows or to return to what was normal prior to the outbreak. Should reporters, news producers and editors once more huddle around each other in the newsroom and collaborate on stories? Or, should they continue to work remotely? Ditto for master control and traffic, the engineering department and the business office.

Working in favor of the lasting-effect side of the argument is the ongoing rethink of long-held beliefs at stations prompted by the disease. For example, news management now takes the cloud and virtualized workflows seriously whereas in the past these were considered “out-there-on-the-horizon” and largely mentally tabled for future consideration.

It’s conceivable that NRCS systems and all of their features can and will be virtualized and run in the cloud giving reporters and others working at home or in the field access to the same tools they have on their station workstations. It’s also possible to imagine production control room functions transitioning as virtual equivalents in the cloud. The same can be said for the weather forecasting and graphics tools station meteorologists rely upon.

All of these alternatives to in-person workflows have the potential to benefit stations in one way or another—whether it’s greater efficiency, lower costs and in the case of news, higher story counts.

On the other side of the argument, it’s not hard to see why people will want to return to the in-person normal they’ve experienced their whole working lives—except for the past year. That’s especially true in news where collaborating closely with colleagues on stories was once a given. Much the same could be said for most other station departments.

It’s hard to predict which way things will break when COVID-19 is finally a memory. Perhaps what’s most likely is a mix—one in which managers look to blend the best aspects of both.

LOS ANGELES—Hollywood is starting to ramp up production again as Los Angeles continues to deal with a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter.

A majority of productions froze over the holidays, and then in early January Los Angeles health officials and industry unions recommended that production continue to be halted as a result of the record-setting spread of COVID-19 in the area.

The Hollywood Reporter cites sources that a number of projects are returning to production this week, including “All Rise,” “Bob Hearts Abishola,” “Shameless,” “You,” “The Goldbergs,” Atypical,” “NCIS,” “NCIS: Los Angeles,” “Why Women Kill,” “SEAL Team” and “Diary of a Future President.” Other productions are expected to resume production in the next week.

As of Jan. 12, Los Angeles County reported nearly 12,000 new COVID-19 cases, almost 300 deaths and about 8,000 hospitalizations.

Read the full story on The Hollywood Reporter.  

LOS ANGELES—Television production in Los Angeles has almost entirely been put on pause because of a recent surge in COVID-19 cases throughout California, a move that is supported by unions representing actors, producers and commercials

In a joint statement from SAG-AFTRA, the Joint Policy Committee and the Producers Guild of America, the groups recommend the temporary hold on in-person production of TV, film and commercials in Southern California as Los Angeles, and California in total, have seen record number of COVID-19 cases in recent days.

“Southern California hospitals are facing a crisis the likes of which we have never seen before,” said SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris. “Patients are dying in ambulances waiting for treatment because hospital emergency rooms are overwhelmed. This is not a safe environment for in-person production right now.”

In a separate message to its members, the PGA offered the following statement:

“We take the health and safety of our members, cast, crew and community very seriously. As a result of the COVID surge and lack of hospital capacity, we encourage everyone currently shooting in Southern CA to delay production until the county health officials indicate it's safe to resume. While we realize these are tough times and this is a tough decision, producers must and do serve as leaders both on our productions and in the community at large. Hopefully, we will be back to work soon.”

According to SAG-AFTRA, and reports from Variety, major studios and streamers were already on production hiatus in Southern California until at least mid-January. In addition, TV talk shows based in Los Angeles, including “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and CBS’ “The Late Late Show” have reverted to at-home production after previously being back in their studio spaces, according to Deadline.

CNBC reports that on Sunday, Jan. 3, more than 45,000 new cases were reported in California, with about 12,400 of them coming from Los Angeles County.

At the moment, the hope is that productions will only be shut down for one or two weeks, but no definitive return date has been set.

WASHINGTON—As television and film production begins to open up after four months of being shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, producers and crews have learned a simple lesson that has applied to how so many other enterprises have encountered when trying to resume operations. 

No one size fits all. 

That was one of the many takeaways from webcasts held last week from the two most prominent industry associations for the film and TV industries. The bicoastal webcasts were sponsored by Hollywood Professional Association—which presented the view from Hollywood—and the SMPTE NY chapter, which discussed the challenges of restarting production in the Big Apple.

PROTECTING THE PEOPLE

The HPA has created an Industry Recovery Task Force headed up by industry veteran Leon Silverman who spoke about how production has changed since March. 

“Before the pandemic our industry was exploding with production and post-production fueled by the amazing creative talent for tools and the services you provide,” he said. “As we focus on getting production back and post-production back we absolutely know that we're at the beginning and what we're getting back to will necessarily be different in the work that we had been doing before.”

TV and film production is not just limited to the coasts, though. And as we’ve learned over the past several months, certain areas of the country have been dealing with the effects of the lockdown in different ways and at different times, according to Dr. Daniel Z. Uslan, co-chief infection prevention officer for UCLA Health.

“If you had asked me three months ago that New York would be relatively safe to shoot in and Atlanta would not, people would look at you like you're crazy,” Uslan said. “It's completely changed since then, where New York is safe now and Atlanta and Georgia in general is experiencing a surge.”

Industry associations, including SAG/AFTRA, Director’s Guild of America, IATSE and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, have developed guidelines that address the unique issues to on-set production, taking into account the challenges of social distancing among performers and crew members. 

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“The recommended guidelines state that there's regular testing for everyone who's going to be on set, the actors and crew,” Uslan said. “But there's also been a lot of attention on availability of testing.”

STAYING IN ZONE

The importance of testing cannot be overstated. Among the guidelines is the recommendation of setting up “zones” that would define the amount and risk of contact to avoid spreading the virus and establish the amount of testing involved. Crew members, including hair stylists, makeup artists, audio techs and actors, would comprise members of “Zone A.” Because of the close interpersonal interaction, these people would need to be tested most often. 

“Zone A is not just a physical space but a state of being,” said Joseph Reidy, with the DGA, during the SMPTE presentation.

Those in Zone B include other crew members on the set that are more able to practice social distancing, such as camera and lighting employees for example, who could be tested less often. Zone C comprises the “rest of the world” and represents perhaps the biggest risk of all.

“Zone C is the outside world that's your own home or the hotel where you might be staying at or the restaurant you stop at on the way,” said Reidy. “It's anywhere other than the environment of the production, a set and its footprint. It’s important to know because you are going to be mingling in Zone C every day and that's where you will end up getting infected.”

“Keeping people in zones ensures that if in the unlikely event that there is a case of COVID-19, you've limited the number of people in contact with that case and so it makes contact tracing easier and it makes decisions about who needs to quarantine easier as well,” Uslan said.

Another recommendation is to designate a COVID Safety Officer on-set who would be responsible for ensuring safety guidelines are being followed. 

“It could be somebody from the medical field, who has advanced training in Infection Control and Prevention,” said Uslan. “Most importantly, you want someone who is well trained and understands some of the challenges and be responsible for overseeing everything from testing to enhanced cleaning and disinfection, physical distancing, the use of personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves and how to use those safely.”

ADVANCING THE TECHNOLOGY

With much of post-production already having been moved to cloud-based workflows over the past decade, the “new normal” of social distancing has only validated this technology move even further.

According to a recent survey taken American Cinema Editors, 95% of editors are working from home now, according to association president Steve Rivkin.  

“I think editors are in a unique position to continue working from home,” Rivkin said, “I think some of the big challenges are working out the logistics, technically, obviously perfecting the way we work from home.”

Rivkin added that security concerns surrounding working on high-impact projects have been lessened in recent years. 

“In our instance, editors are remotely logging into assets that are housed securely at our studio and media as well so there is no media stored at home,” he said. “Which is I think a great relief to the studios and producers.”

Improvements in communicating among production crews has also improved as more people get used to Zooming instead of meeting in person. 

“Communication among other crew members has improved already in the sense that you don't have to go take a meeting with someone to be able to talk to them,” said Rivkin. “We use programs like Slack, Microsoft Teams, we use Evercast to review sequences together and recently we started actually remoting into each other’s projects.”

There are still some elements that are harder to do via remote, including HDR, but progress is even being made in that area as well, according to Katie Fellion, head of Business Development and Workflow Strategy, Light Iron.

“For HDR, we're right on the cusp in terms of being able to do live HDR outside of a facility setting,” she said. “And a lot of that relates to both bandwidth in a client's home, as well as the devices that they're using. I think in the next couple of weeks we'll probably see some manufacturers coming out with different options.” 

The general consensus among all of the panelists on both coasts was that the changes imposed by the pandemic over the past four months have permanently altered the production landscape forever. 

“In our industry, change happens slowly, unless it is forced upon us,” Rivkin said. “And I think one of the silver linings of this horrible dark cloud, was that technology that was kind of on the sidelines—and perhaps may have taken years to adopt—all of a sudden we're finding that it's incredibly essential in this ‘work from home’ environment.”

Michael Cioni, global senior vice president of innovation at Frame.io, said he has received numerous texts from directors and producers saying, in essence, that “we’re never going back.”

“COVID allowed them to discover an entirely new process of working,” Cioni said. “A former head of Paramount Studio told me ‘How did we not have this before? Why were we missing this, this is how we're going to do it forever.’” 

NEW YORK—TV and film production crews are returning to Steiner Studios at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, as New York City enters phase four of its COVID-19 recovery, according to reports.

Shut down since March, Monday, July 20, is the first day back on set for what is described as the largest studio outside of Hollywood. With work starting again, the studio has instituted screening protocols as well as social distancing on set and procedures for anyone that does test positive.

“The lot will not be as dense because of spacing, but otherwise, I think business gets back to normal,” said Doug Steiner, Steiner Studios’ CEO.

However, Steiner says that most productions are not yet ready to shoot, as sets need to be built or finished and logistics for how to safely shoot to protect the actors are also still being considered.

“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is one show that films at Steiner Studios.

The full story is available from Spectrum News NY 1.

LONDON—A group of U.K.-based broadcasters have issued a new set of guidelines for how the TV industry can return to production while attempting to minimize the risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky, STV and ITN—along with the Association for Commercial Broadcasters and On-Demand Services, and producers’ body Pact—have released a five-page document that is meant to build on industry guidelines, highlighted by the establishment of what are being called “close contact cohorts.”

When on set, there are often unavoidable interactions that cannot meet social distance requirements. Taking a page from the British Film Commission’s “Working Safely During COVID-19 in Film and High-End TV Drama Production” guide, closed contact cohorts would be pairs and/or small groups that would be permitted to interact in much closer contact. It can include cast and crew, and would include a screening plan—weekly testing alongside other daily screening checks—that the group believes will minimize the likelihood that someone with the virus will be within the cohort.

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“This approach offers a reasonable and sensible level of risk mitigation but it cannot eliminate risk,” the guideline says.

However, the group does say that this approach should only be considered when all other mitigation options are not feasible, and should be used in addition to, not as a replacement of, wider risk mitigation and hygiene measures previously established.

Some Additional elements of the close contact cohorts (CCC) include restricting close contact periods to the shortest time possible; each CCC must be kept to the minimum number of people possible and only interact with their group; CCC members should be easily identifiable (i.e. color groups); CCC members must adhere to all other social distancing guidelines when not with group; and more.

In the event that there is a positive test with a member of the CCC, all members would be required to self-isolate for 14 days and be symptom free before resuming activity on production.

The CCC process currently applies to England and Northern Ireland, and will go into effect in Scotland as of July 30. However, the group does say that local restrictions from government and/or public health institutes already in place must also be considered.

The full CCC guideline is available for review online.  

LOS ANGELES—FilmLA, the partner film office for the City and County of Los Angeles and other local jurisdictions, reported this week that overall on-location production declined 97.8% during the April-June quarter, compared to a year ago. The county’s lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic resulted in just 194 “Shoot Days” during the quarter, marking the lowest filming levels on record. By State and County order, production remained shut down from March 20 to June 15.

Although State and County officials gave film production the green light to resume in late June, the return to work to-date has been gradual and cautious, FilmLA said. The COVID-19 pandemic affected all industry sectors in the second quarter, including the region’s primary production sector, television (down 98.2% to 52 SD) and secondary production sector, commercials (down 95.5% to 58 SD). Feature film production, the third-largest industry segment also took a hit (down 99.7% to 3 SD).

“The first shutdowns we saw in March were voluntary, and it was hoped they could be temporary,” FilmLA said. “Looking back, it was hard to imagine the impact the pandemic would have on entertainment projects in progress, and the economic security of local cast, crew, and production vendors.

“The good news is that production is starting to responsibly return, with advertising shoots, commercials and limited television production now coming online. All permitted filming must comply with Health Orders as issued by County authorities. The measure of compliance we’re seeing is a real help in keeping the industry on the road to recovery.”

LOS ANGELES—TV and film production will get the greenlight to return on Friday, June 12, in Los Angeles, according to a report by Variety.

Los Angeles County is expected to release its guidelines for production on June 11, following an announcement last week from the California Department of Public Health that productions could return as of June 12, subject to approval from local authorities.

However, despite the go-ahead, production is not expected to begin ramping up again until July and August. This is because entertainment production unions must agree to job-by-job protocols. 

An industry white paper was released last week that introduced general guidelines for resuming production, including social distancing, regular COVID-19 testing, temperature screenings, symptom monitoring and the use of masks and other protective equipment.

Most TV productions have been either shut down or limited to remote production since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

More information is available on Variety. 

LONDON—U.K. broadcasters have published a document outlining industry guidelines for TV production to resume following the coronavirus shutdown.

ITV, BBC, Sky, Channel 4, Channel 5, STV, ITN, the Association for Commercial Broadcasters and On-Demand Services (COBA) and Pact have joined forces on the document.

It covers all aspects of TV, and is complementary to the forthcoming British Film Commission guidance on managing the risks associated with film and high-end TV drama production.

The broadcasters state the number one priority remains the safety and well-being of production teams and those who work with them. It has taken into account the current government guidelines on the safe return to work, but is expected to evolve over the coming months as the lockdown is eased.

In summary, the guidance details six areas that producers, in conjunction with the commissioning broadcaster, must consider when planning to produce during COVID-19. They are:

• Specifically consider people at higher risk of harm
• Heighten precautions for everyone at work
• Reduce the number of people involved
• Consider editorial "on camera" requirements
• Consider mental health and well-being
• Feedback loop

It also sets out suggested controls for producers to consider, including the physical capacity of the space given the requirements of social distancing along with the provision of key hygiene facilities; good hygiene and managing potential issues with work equipment touchpoints should be addressed; and the use of PPE equipment should only be used as “a last resort.”

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said: “Great British television is keeping us company throughout the crisis, and I’m keen to get cameras rolling as soon as it is safe. Our creative industries are Britain’s global calling card and this is a significant step forward in getting our favorite shows back into production.”

The full document can be downloaded here.

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication TVBEurope.

NEW YORK—TV production companies that had insurance prior to Jan. 24, 2020, are likely to have most of the financial losses experienced because of the coronavirus pandemic covered by insurance companies, according to a report from Pillsbury Law.

According to Pillsbury’s report, the TV industry has already lost nearly $10 billion in TV ad revenue because of the pandemic. In addition, TV production is down by more than 20% in Los Angeles. The overall financial impact, according to Pillsbury, is “staggering.”

However, production companies will be able to soften the blow if they had insurance policies issued prior to Jan. 24. Because the breadth of the pandemic was not known during this time, insurance policies do not include exceptions for COVID-19 as what can be classified as a “business interruption,” which would be eligible for coverage.

This could likely change moving forward, with Pillsbury estimating that future insurance policies could increase their rates (some speculating as high as 25%), as well as beginning to include specific exceptions for COVID-19.

As for getting production started again, Pillsbury highlighted a number of efforts that production companies are putting in place to combat the spread of COVID-19. These include sequestering cast and crew in hotels, taking temperatures of those on set daily, maintaining social distance whenever possible, wearing gloves and mask indoors, staggering lunch and call times, replacing buffet-style lunches with boxed lunches and even replacing the iconic canvas “director’s” chairs with plastic ones, which are easier to clean.

“The bottom line for studios and production companies that purchased insurance coverage before the coronavirus became headline news in January 2020 is that those policies could cover most if not all of the economic damages flowing from the government shutdown of the entertainment industry because of COVID-19,” Pillsbury surmised. “As a result, studios and production companies facing losses because of the industry shutdown, should consult with an experienced insurance recovery attorney to review their policies so they can help coordinate with insurance brokers and carriers and assist with properly crafting of a claim submission in order to optimize coverage under the specific policy or policies at issue.”

For more information, visit Pillsbury Law’s website. 

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has brought about great disruption to people’s daily lives, and the far-reaching impact has hit the broadcast industry as well. To help prevent the spread of the disease, TV productions for news, sports and general entertainment shows have made changes from removing audiences to halting production altogether. 

Here is a rundown of what productions are doing (UPDATED 4/15 @ 3:48 p.m.)

• "American Idol" has announced it will conduct live performance episodes remotely.
  
• E.W. Scripps has announced that its senior leadership is taking pay cuts to support employees impacted by the coronavirus.
  
• "Saturday Night Live" announced that it will remotely produce a new episode to air in its normal 11:30 p.m. time slot on April 11.
  
• CBS' freshman drama "All Rise" is virtually producing a new episode specifically related to the current coronavirus pandemic.
  
• Many late-night talk shows— "The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon," "Late Night With Stephen Colbert," "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," "The Daily Show," "Conan" "Full Frontal With Samantha Bee" among them—have begun producing episodes virtually, per Variety.
  
• All major sports leagues (NBA, NHL, MLS, MLB and others) have suspended play for the time being; the NCAA has cancelled all of its winter and spring sports, which includes the popular NCAA March Madness tournament that was expected to start on March 17. MoffettNathanson Research has estimated that in the event that the NBA does not resume play this season it could lead to a loss in revenue of $306 million for Disney (which owns ESPN) and $168 million for AT&T (which owns TNT), according to TVT’s sister publication B&C.
  
  In addition, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics have been postponed and rescheduled to 2021.
  
  The Hollywood Reporter initially reported that the Masters golf tournament, which airs on CBS, has been postponed. The PGA has announced a tentative rescheduling of the U.S. Open, PGA Championship and The Masters.
  
  Tennis' Wimbledon has also been cancelled.
  
• Cobalt Iron has launched the "Make the Switch Without the Risk" program, which extends the company's Compass software-as-a-service data protection technology to assist with remote production.
  
• B&C has also announced that it has rescheduled the Wonder Women and NYC TV Week events that were originally scheduled for March 24-26. The events will now take place in June.
  
• "Saturday Night Live" has postponed its next three shows, according to a report by Variety.
  
• According to BuzzFeed, a number of TV dramas and comedies have halted production because of coronavirus. This includes “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Carnival Row,” “The Amazing Race,” “Survivor,” “The Price is Right,” “The Morning Show,” “Riverdale,”
  Many talk shows, meanwhile, have announced that they will continue to film but without a live audience. These include: “Ellen,” “America’s Got Talent,” “Jeopardy,”  “The View,” “One Day at a Time” and more.
  
• Similarly, the Los Angeles Times reports that Universal Television and a number of ViacomCBS brands have announced that production will pause for two weeks, after which the situation will be reassessed.
  
• Streaming giant Netflix is not immune to COVID-19's impact, as The Hollywood Reporter reported that all scripted TV and film physical production and prep has been shut down for two weeks in the U.S. and Canada.
  
• Yahoo has reported that the CW's "The Flash" and the show "Lucifer" have also suspended production. Later, Batman-News.com reported that Warner Bros. Television Group, which the two aforementioned programs fall under, has shut down all of its productions for the time being.
  
• Disney Television Studios have postponed production on all of its broadcast pilots by at least three weeks, according to TheWrap. Production has also been shelved on Dinsey-owned National Geographic's "Genius: Aretha" about Aretha Franklin.
  
• TVLine reports that "American Idol" has suspended its production, effective immediately, though episodes will continue to air until the scheduled beginning of live shows, which were set for mid-April.
  
• In New York, CBS News HQ had two employees test positive for COVID-19, and as a result evacuated its offices and instructed its employees to work from home until a unspecified future date.
  
• Many networks have also announced that they are canceling their upfront presentations. NBCUniversal announced, per B&C, that it will instead stream its presentation about NBC’s 2020-2021 season. Disney has done the same.
   
• However, there always seem to be some who try to take advantage of a bad situation. NPR has reported that televangelist Jim Bakker is being sued by the state of Missouri over the advertising and selling of Silver Solution, which was promoted on the show as a potential treatment for COVID-19. 
  
• Veritone has announced that it is giving users—which includes TV, sports and radio operators—that is extending free access to its core applications like Veritone Essentials, Attribute and Digital Media Hub for 60 days. 

TVT will update this article as more information becomes available. 

OTTAWA—Trend alert: Artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) is becoming an integral part of the total TV production/playout process.

“AI/ML is shifting to provide tremendous value to broadcasters and content producers,” said Amro Shihadah, IdenTV’s Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer for IdenTV, a McLean, Va.-based real time video analysis market researcher. “AI/ML is achieving this by transforming big data from a cost center and opaque set of structured/unstructured datasets into real-time actionable analytics and tools for big data search and recall, creating a better user experience, and generating revenue from new content distribution channels.”

Broadcast consultant Gary Olson, who has just released the second version of his book, “Planning and Designing the IP Broadcast Facility—A New Puzzle To Solve,’’ says the technology is already showing up in elements of the production chain and is expected to expand its footprint.

“I see AI/ML appearing in editing, graphics and media management products in 2020,” Olson said. As the year progresses, “it will be interesting to see which vendors will claim their products have AI or ML.”

CONTENT DISCOVERY

Many major broadcasters and TV studios have vast libraries ripe for direct-to-consumer online sales. The challenge lies in determining which of these programs will appeal to modern consumers and for what reasons, without using employees to watch all of them in real-time.

Prime Focus Technologies’ CLEAR Vision Cloud has a cloud-based AI engine that can do this work across a number of search variables, and in “record time,” according to the company.

“There could be one AI engine that looks at identifying faces in the video,” said Muralidhar Sridhar, vice president of AI and Machine Learning for PFT. “Another one may look at signature sounds of, ‘let’s say, a person splashing through water,’ while a third searches for distinct objects. Best yet, what would take humans hours to achieve looking at a piece of content can be done by our AI in real time.”

Primestream’s Xchange platform uses AI/ML to power its content discovery tools, providing a wide range of search options in the process, according to Alan Dabul, director of product development for Primestream.

“You can narrow the search down not just to President Trump, but to those specific clips where he is talking about taxes,” he said. “You can then narrow the search further to those times when he is speaking about taxes in an office setting, and then see who is with the president in the shot at that time.”

SPORTS AND LIVE EVENTS

Sports and other live events are among the most labor-intensive productions for broadcasters, given how much content has to be created on the fly. Tedial’s SMARTLIVE metadata engine uses AI/ML to automate media management tasks associated with these productions; including metadata tagging, automatic clip creation and distribution during live events to digital platforms and social media. SMARTLIVE can also manage multivenue feeds and support multiple, instantaneous content searches to integrate archival footage into live broadcasts.

“SMARTLIVE allows the production team to create more content leading to increased fan  engagement and additional revenue, using the same budget and with the same team,” said Jerome Wauthoz, vice president of products for Tedial. “SMARTLIVE also connects directly to existing production environments so our customers can use their current infrastructure to ingest, edit and deliver content; no additional investment is necessary.”

CAPTIONING AND TRANSLATIONS

Another labor-intensive area where AI/ML is gaining traction is multilingual captioning. Using speech-to-test AI systems, vendors can automatically generate text captions from the content’s audio, and provision them in a range of languages within the same data stream.

“The algorithms are trained to learn from data in real-time, absorbing local terms and dialects for the optimal captioning experience,” said Brandon Sullivan, senior offering manager for IBM Watson Media. “As AI and machine learning training capabilities improve, local dialects, places and specific names, as well as the voices of individual speakers, will all be accurately captured. Down the road, this will not only transform closed captioning but also automated translation, video indexing, and more.”

Captioning and lip sync are two of the AI/ML technologies featured as part of Interra Systems’ BATON, a video QC platform. “With AI/ML, you can improve the accuracy and speed of captioning, which is a resource-intensive, time-consuming process,” said Anupama Anantharaman, vice president of product management for the Silicon Valley-based provider of video QC and monitoring technology. “It is also particularly effective at detecting ‘lip sync’; the alignment between the movement of lips onscreen and what is being said.”

Telestream’s Telestream Cloud includes captioning as its many cloud-based AI/ML-enabled offerings; the others being video transcoding for multiple delivery platforms and quality/compliance checks, according to Remi Fourreau, cloud product manager for the company.

“We use the speech-to-text capabilities of many cloud-based providers to generate accurate captions and subtitles in many languages,” Fourreau said. “This is an area where AI/ML really shines in doing the task accurately and efficiently.”

ENCO’s enCaption4 platform provides automated closed captioning for live and pre-recorded TV content in real-time, and combines AI-driven machine learning with a neural-network speech-to-text engine. In addition to newsroom rundown imports that teach unique words via AI, enCaption4 can be taught special words such as host and cast names, and local and regional terms. Other AI-driven enhancements improve the captioning of punctuation and capitalization.

“enCaption can accurately spell unusual words learned from ingested lists and scripts, and without creating speech pattern profiles for every speaker, said Ken Frommert, president of ENCO. “This is an important benefit for news operations automating and captioning speech from various anchors, reporters, meteorologists, and studio guests.”

COMPRESSION

Video compression has always been a balance between data rate reduction and video quality. Through AI- and ML-based cloud solutions such as its VOS360 Live Streaming Platform, Harmonic aims to strike this balance more effectively. 

“Our PURE Compression Engine uses AI/ML to improve the algorithms that manage video compression,” said Jean-Louis Diascorn, senior product marketing manager, who leads Harmonic’s AI/ML for video compression advances. “These improvements are achieved far quicker using AI/ML compared with using human engineers. We continue to make progress on the work that we presented at last year’s NAB BEITC and are now aiming to address the density aspect.” 

RECOMMENDATION ENGINES

Streaming services such as Amazon, Netflix and YouTube use AI/ML-enabled recommendation engines to mine their viewers’ current content choices, and use what they find to recommend similar programs that might be of interest. Vionlabs’ AI/ML-enabled Content Discovery Platform is designed to help broadcasters assess their own content libraries, to focus and enhance their Direct-to-Consumer sales online.

“High-quality data can help broadcasters understand so much more about their content and make better informed decisions throughout the content cycle,” said Marcus Bergström, CEO of the Swedish-based provider of video discovery technology. “One example of this is in content recommendations and providing broadcasters with a deeper understanding of how successful shows appeal to viewers. It could also help them automatically comply with regulations for post-watershed content.”

Last month, the company launched “Emotional Fingerprint API” to help media companies make better decisions based on AI-generated video data and insights. Emotional Fingerprint API uses computer vision and machine learning to generate sentiment-data, creating a unique personal viewer experience based on Vionlabs’ recommendation, according to the company.

Emotional Fingerprint API has been developed to measure thousands of factors during the screening of a video, including colors, pace, audio and object recognition, in order to produce an AI-derived fingerprint, frame by frame, that represents the emotional structure of content.

THERE ARE LIMITS

AI/ML-enabled systems are now fulfilling many roles in the TV production/playout stream. But they can’t do everything; at least not yet.

“For machine learning tools to work effectively, you need to continuously fine tune models and need large amounts of well-prepared data,” said Anantharaman. “There will be challenging situations where human intervention will be needed. Yet, for the majority of content, AI/ML can provide an extremely high level of accuracy.”

The winds of change in broadcasting began to be felt as we moved into the new millennium; now, 20 years later, they’re blowing at gale force, signaling totally new technologies, new solutions for old problems, and, newer and better ways for creating television content and delivering it to the viewer.

These changes are reflected in just about every area of broadcasting, including the content production and distribution arenas. Tools and technologies for the switching of video, editing, storage, graphics generation and even test and measurement that were just science fiction a few years ago are now part of the television production and transmission ecosystem.

OUT WITH THE OLD AND IN WITH THE NEW

This quantum shift from old to new ways of doing things was characterized by Dave Villano, CTO, Adtech at Imagine Communications.

“The customers and prospects we speak with are pivoting away from legacy infrastructures to cloud-based delivery systems with managed services, but they’re all at different stages of the transition,” said Villano. “The industry is embracing products that focus on value-added integrations and open architectures which provide greater flexibility and unlock new monetization opportunities—including optimization, automation and data enriched targeting.

“Industry feedback has indicated that fragmentation of audiences in the digital era has become a huge obstacle for selling across inventory supply channels with efficiency and scale. They’re seeking highly flexible, highly efficient, cloud-based platforms that will help them to deploy timely solutions to reaggregate splintered audiences and optimize monetization.”

Jon Finegold, chief marketing officer for Signiant, also sees the cloud as essential to content producers.

“What we see across the global media supply chain is far more collaboration and far more globalization at a time when security concerns are at an all-time high,” said Finegold. “As a result, companies are looking to the cloud to offer more agility and flexibility.

“Where Signiant is unique is in our use of the cloud to enable secure, cross-company collaboration, providing authorized access to assets no matter where or how they are stored,” Finegold continued. ”At the NAB Show, Signiant will be enhancing this with a new, unique cloud handshake mechanism that makes it easy for any size company to easily and securely set-up intercompany content exchange.”

Neil Maycock, senior vice president of strategic marketing and playout for Grass Valley, underscored the movement to newer technologies and how these changes are impacting the industry.

“Broadcasters and content producers are facing several challenges: meeting consumers’ insatiable appetite for more content, rich viewing experiences, stunning images and access across all screens while driving up efficiency and finding ways to work smarter,” he said. “On an operational level, a vast amount of content is now being produced, ingested and managed. Traditional broadcast architectures can’t scale at the necessary volume or adapt as quickly as they now need to and broadcasters are only going to need to be more agile in the future to deliver services that remain ahead of the curve.

“As the industry continues to take steps towards a virtualized software-based approach, we are going to see native cloud-based solutions leveraging elastic computing to bring even greater flexibility and efficiency to media production and processing applications,” Maycock continued. ‘This will be one of the hot topics at NAB Show 2020, where Grass Valley will highlight how it leads the way in helping customers transition to software-defined processes and cloud-based applications.”

ALL IN ONE

Scott Murray, senior vice president of marketing at Telestream, commented on one of the ways his company is harnessing the power of the cloud for their customers via Telestream’s Vantage Cloud Port.

“Vantage, of course, does everything,” said Murray. “It’s a complete workflow automation system that processes media and moves it where it needs to be. Most importantly, [it] now allows people to do this workflow automation and processing in the cloud environment of their choice.

“It’s intelligent enough to know where to process it based on where the media is or where it’s going,” he added. ”The cloud is not always the correct choice from a cost perspective. You have to follow the media in order to maximize efficiency. It does this automatically.”

Phil Myers, chief technology officer for Lawo, says production is quickly moving away from conventional coax and shielded twisted-pair connectivity in the television plant.

“We see the ongoing industry shift to IP infrastructure being an important topic ... with a real focus on solutions that address customer concerns around workflow and resource efficiencies, network and device management, and of course, system-wide monitoring and security—covering both on premise installs today while providing a clear vision for public cloud deployment in the near future,” he said.

PREPARING FOR THE NEXT WAVE

Artificial intelligence, virtualization of hardware and conventional hardware-based workflows, totally IP-interconnected facilities, storage and playout from the cloud—it would appear that such technologies have arrived just in the nick of time to help the industry come up to speed for their next challenge, NextGen TV (aka ATSC 3.0).

Once the dust from the repack has settled, broadcasters are going to be faced with the creation and airing of UHD, HDR, WCG, and perhaps even high-frame rate video and immersive audio for the NextGen TV sets reaching consumers later this year.

Broadcast equipment manufacturers are also gearing up to help their customers meet these challenges, not only by tapping the power of the cloud, AI, and the like, but also with monitoring and processing tools to ensure that this enormously diverse and specialized content reaches its audiences in pristine shape.

Triveni Digital, well-known for its monitoring technology, is taking the lead on test and measurement for Next-Gen TV.

“The transition to ATSC 3.0 is complex, and we’re helping usher in a new era in broadcast television with operationally efficient, cost-effective solutions for channel sharing, the repack, and dual-standards [ATSC 1.0 and 3.0] broadcasting,” said Ralph Bachofen, Triveni’s vice president of sales and marketing. “By empowering our customers to deliver innovative service guides, addressable content delivery, interactive program enhancements, and data broadcast applications, Triveni Digital is leading the charge to better TV. By offering simultaneous delivery of ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 services from a unified infrastructure, along with innovations like ATSC 3.0 streaming from the cloud, we are making this transition as simple and efficient as possible.”

Bachofen noted a key trend in the industry is the move to cloud and SaaS technologies, due to the flexibility, cost savings, and efficiency they provide.

“Our new solution for streaming ATSC 3.0 from the cloud is available as a SaaS business model, lowering the cost to market for new channels and services by eliminating capex costs,” he said. ‘The solution includes support for the Secure Reliable Transport [SRT] protocol to ensure a secure broadcast communications path in the cloud.”

EDUCATION AS WELL AS EQUIPMENT DEMONSTRATIONS

So, where will your facility be heading as we enter the new decade? IP-connectivity is now firmly established, with most production equipment manufacturers having lots to offer. Cloud storage/playout and virtualization of studio and control room gear are now realities also, NextGen TV is on the air in several cities, with more to come by year’s end.

It’s time to start preparing for the next wave of television production and broadcasting.

Audiences are gobbling up TV shows at staggering speeds. That’s thanks to the ever-multiplying number of screens in their homes, the explosive growth of OTT video services and the proliferation of devices that allow on-demand access to streaming content. These viewers—so hungry for content that they’ve earned the moniker “binge-watchers”—aren’t letting up in their desire for fresh shows. As a result, the pressure is heavy on TV production houses to churn out blockbuster-caliber series.

The pace of original content is already light-years ahead of where it was even a decade ago. In 2018, FX networks put the number of original, scripted series across the industry at nearly 500. That number has climbed every year for nearly a decade, and will likely continue to balloon with the entrance of Disney, Apple and WarnerMedia into the streaming game.

If this growth stalls or plateaus, it’s not because budgets are shrinking. In 2018, Netflix alone spent $12 billion on new content, according to Variety, and is projected to spend $15 billion this year. If there is a limiting factor in scaling original content output to match audiences’ appetites, it’s the outdated technology and processes used by production houses. Complex and costly on-premise servers, bottlenecks in the editing workflow and global distribution challenges strain budgets and create long gaps between seasons. These challenges will inevitably ratchet up the pressure from both audiences and networks.

However, a solution exists—if production houses are willing to re-think the way they define studios and the processes that drive them. The future of production is a “studio in the cloud,” where many of the traditional post-production activities exist in a decentralized, streamlined environment. Resource-heavy tasks like editing, color grading, sound sweetening and mixing can all begin immediately, and in some cases concurrently, with cloud-based studios that allow for immediate uploading of footage. Further, cloud-based platforms can speed up the packaging of final products for distribution, streamlining processes like region-specific versioning and adding subtitles. The ultimate result is a significant reduction in server costs, improved download/upload speeds and a greatly reduced timeline to global distribution.

THE ADVANTAGES OF A CLOUD-BASED STUDIO

Today’s TV blockbusters have taken on a life of their own. Take "Game of Thrones." No matter how divided opinions may have been on the final season, there’s no denying the series’ pursuit of technical perfection (except for that rogue coffee cup). However, the labor of love from the show’s creators and crew often riled die-hard fans—there was a span of 18 months between seasons 7 and 8. The production was so ambitious that it warranted a behind-the-scenes documentary created with more than 950 hours of on-set footage. Much of this inside look revealed the pain points faced by modern production houses, as well as opportunities for cloud-based studios to help bring "Game of Thrones"-size epics to the screen more efficiently.

● Streamlined workflows

Cloud-based studios are the “breaker of chains” for any professional who works in an editing bay. Cloud platforms can serve up footage from the set to post-production teams around the world, allowing tasks to be completed simultaneously and eliminating the need for many complicated and expensive on-premise servers. Systems like these can also make the handoff of content between teams much more seamless, giving everyone involved peace of mind that they are working on the most current versions of the footage.

● Reduction in cost

Storing and sharing the massive amount of footage needed to produce modern TV series isn’t just a pain point in the workflow process—it also creates a strain on budget. Migrating footage and workflows to the cloud can significantly reduce technical costs in post-production. Because the cloud allows work to be done anywhere in the world, travel and logistics costs for editing shrink, while the talent pool grows—globally accessible footage means top professionals from every continent can become part of the team without having to be on set.

HOW CLOUD-NATIVE TECHNOLOGIES ARE REDUCING PRODUCTION COSTS

While a completely cloud-based production operation is still being realized, technology solutions are already reducing the time between a director declaring a wrap and a viewer tapping “play” on a new episode.

Component-based workflows through innovative packaging formats like the Interoperable Master Format (IMF) are helping accelerate distribution timelines. IMF helps speed up global distribution by reducing the number of files needed to compile region-specific releases, prepare existing content for a larger release and optimize releases for multiple channel partners.

IMF also eliminates the need for an individual media file for each channel or geographic location—it allows for a single master file package to be adapted to a variety of needs. Within this package exists the audio, subtitles, packaging data and more—combined as a composition playlist (CPL) that allows content distributors to make changes to individual components without altering the master file. This means fewer errors and more flexible versioning at a lower cost.

More players in the streaming space means the never-ending hunger for original content will give a competitive advantage to the production houses who can capitalize on quick, quality turnaround of original content. Production houses that rethink their concept of the studio, and invest in technology to make this vision a reality, will reduce costs and speed the time of their content to release. A “studio in the cloud” unlocks a future where post-production is less focused on logistics and IT and more time pursuing perfection in the creative elements of work.

Dan Goman is the CEO of Ownzones.

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication B&C.

PORT ROYAL, Va.—High school and college TV production teachers now have access to a new resource that will give students professionally designed, real-world comparable experience in the classroom. Tom Riti Studios has launched its new website, www.tomritistudios.com, that features 12, “ready-to-teach” newscasts scripts for hands-on experience.

Each script, which are designed to be performed in the classroom, comes with pre-recorded edited news packages, SOTs, B-roll videos, complete show rundowns for each script and student handouts that explain newscast production methods and terminology. Other production aspects that will be covered during these exercises includes lighting techniques, editing, on-camera composure, script writing and multicamera techniques.

Tom Riti, a retired high school TV production teacher and former over-the-air TV news producer, developed this program based off how he taught his students.

“If the objective is to create a classroom environment that encourages learning and increases retention of the material, you need to write many progressively challenging newscast scripts each with its own set of B-roll videos, SOTs and packages,” said Riti, something that he hopes this resource will do.

Riti plans to add other educational resources for TV production classrooms, including a “History of TV” exercise that will feature performable narrative biographies of early TV entrepreneurs and inventors; “Science of TV” exercises that simplify different TV production concepts; and a “Talking Heads” series of exercises focusing on productions with two on-camera hosts.

A sample script is available for download at www.tomritistudios.com.

NEW YORK—Why are media and technology companies like Netflix able to compete with the Hollywood studio establishment? One of their core competitive advantages is artificial intelligence (AI)—and it’s only going to get bigger. This is one of the questions that is core to what Accenture Interactive is examining as innovation partner at the Studio-LAB at Walt Disney Studios, where we explore new entertainment experiences and production capabilities using innovative technologies.

AI is becoming more mainstream across the entire TV and film ecosystem. From the front stage (such as recommendation engines) through the creative process, scripting, shooting, post-production, and all the way to the back stage (such as meta-tagging and distribution), AI is enabling industry newcomers to leverage new business opportunities.

TV and film executives should take heed. AI can be used to eliminate current business inefficiencies, releasing trapped value which can be redeployed to pursue new areas of growth. Many highly repetitive manual tasks could be replaced by AI. Processes and technologies need to be fundamentally reengineered or developed to catch up with digital natives who don’t have the burden of legacy systems, business models and technology debt.

AI IN CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

For example, AI can serve as an extra pair of eyes to provide script coverage, offer talent suggestions and as an extra pair of hands to generate visuals of the scene and sketches of characters to storyboard the situation. AI could even scout the next big trend. These tools are at too early a stage for studio executives to fully embrace yet, but there are some quick efficiency wins AI can already deliver during the creative process.

Simply by uploading the PDF of a script, Scriptbook.io can provide a detailed analysis on characters, detecting the protagonists and antagonists etc., within minutes. This can serve as a validation tool and as an additional voice at the table when creative executives are making decisions to green-light a TV series or film.

Beyond creative assistance, AI can also be used to scan a script for IP clearance and infringements, pull in image references for development or ensure brand compliance. IP flagging is particularly valuable as it would not only aid swift legal clearances upfront but could also preemptively avoid costly legal risks in later stages of development.

AI IN PRODUCTION

During principal photography for live action films, computer vision can come in handy to ensure continuity and quality control in the framing of shots through object recognition; e.g., spotting a boom mic in the frame, while NLP-driven capabilities could potentially help in dialog training and table reads.

AI IN POST

Post-production is where AI can deliver immediate impact at scale by taking out much of the drudgery, reducing the cycle times and the multiple handoffs.

Using computer vision instead of manual checks means that hours spent by humans in quality control—perhaps to spot dead pixels or fix the aspect ratio in videos—can be reduced to a few minutes. AI solutions can also be applied in color correction, touch-ups, etc., in much more cost-effective ways.

AI tools have already been embraced by the world of VFX, a critical stage in post-production which can become a bottleneck, causing cost overrun. For live action films that rely heavily on VFX, advanced AI solutions such as Arraiy are already in the works to manipulate and extract images at the capture stage without the need to use green screens during the shoot. This delivers savings in time and cost during the manual and lengthy rotoscopy stage.

Advanced machine learning algorithms enable life-like creation and simulation of characters and scenes, reducing the hours of manual tasks. For scenes that require a massive crowd, VFX companies such as Mackevision can create and orchestrate the crowd just using AI-driven VFX work technologies.

For mastering, there are a plethora of AI solutions to choose from to generate metadata, subtitles and localization. These enhance data sets and discovery around media content. In the age of personalization, meta data becomes critical to understanding the genome of each content and match it to viewers’ interests.

For distribution services, based on the outlet the content is delivered to—such as hotels or airlines—AI tools can assist in ensuring contextual compliance, such as scanning for gore or nudity, and localization, using advanced machine learning techniques.

One day AI will be able to assist in editing the scene based on the dialogue and scene breakdown in a script.

AI IN MARKETING

Decision support is a critical area in marketing where AI can deliver the most value. When A-B testing, AI solutions such as Affectiva could help in intention reading and empathy understanding, using facial recognition and gesture reading techniques. Some are already augmenting cameras with ML capabilities to understand human body language.

For campaigns and promotions, AI-enabled programmatic buys can give studios better control in responding in real-time to social media scans. AI can complement targeted placements and marketing assets such as synopsis or one sheet, by appealing to the targeted user’s intentions.

It’s even claimed that AI now has the capability to create artwork and trailers by just watching the movie. IBM Watson created the first-ever AI-made movie trailer for Morgan.

AI IN DISTRIBUTION

There are many AI-centered solutions—like Pilot—that predict performance, such as box office numbers or TV ratings, for specific distribution windows. In addition to using historical industry data as a basis for analysis, these AI solutions take into account several external factors, like seasonality or socio-political-economic climate, to finesse their performance prediction algorithms.

In the future, AI-driven agents could become the intermediaries between the studio and the viewer, ultimately determining what content should be delivered to the user based on the viewer’s moods, emotions or activities. Studios must recognize this upcoming issue of becoming beholden to the algorithms and prepare to gain control over their distribution end point.

AI AS A CORE PART OF BUSINESS

It’s time for traditional TV and film companies to consider AI as a linchpin in their evolution and transformation to the future. AI-driven initiatives are not to be treated as outsourced services, but instead should be understood, owned and operated as a core part of their day to day business.

Remember, during the early stages of digital video, many Hollywood studios decided to take a vendor-based approach for video services instead of taking ownership and investing in the infrastructure.

While the scope and promise of AI can be overwhelming, as a first step, entertainment companies should ease their way into AI by educating and evangelizing their key stakeholders about the art of the possible. They should embrace AI by going after opportunities that are clearly laborious—the “low-hanging fruit” in delivering savings.

In a cash-driven business such as content production and distribution, delivering clear savings is where the proof of the pudding lies. This will excite the rest of the organization to fully leverage AI to drive smarter decisions and launch new initiatives.

The sooner companies start embracing AI, the sooner they’ll be future-proofing themselves against the oncoming storm of competition.

Siva Natajaran is director of business design and strategy at Fjord, Accenture Interactive’s design and innovation consultancy. Jeff Bauer is group director of client innovation at Fjord.