It was just last year when China surpassed India and became the third largest film market in the world with $2B in annual box office revenue.
This year, it's moving pass Japan. After nine months in 2012, China has already made nearly $2B at the box office. It's expected to reach $2.5B by the end of the year and overtake Japan as the second largest film market in the world. That wasn't supposed to happen for another couple of years.
The third quarter figure for 2012 is a 27% improvement over 2011’s, which is impressive because the year-to-year growth is about the same as that of the previous year. It still has a ways to go to catch up to the U.S. though, which has done over $10B in each of the last three years.
[Philip Lelyveld comment: WB has been flying people around the globe to make sure every theatre that does use HFR projection meets their quality-experience standards.]
Warners has decided to offer Hobbit in what is being called HFR 3D as a platform release, using 400 screens domestically, that will include 90 screens from Regal and 92 from AMC along with another 500 in international markets. The majority of theaters will show the movie at the traditional frame rate of 24 fps.
The next two Hobbit films—The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: There And Back Again—will both have an HFR release. James Cameron has been a vocal champion and plans to make his Avatar sequels with HFRs. Douglas Trumbull has also said he intends to make movies at HFRs.
Most digital cinematography cameras and a growing number of technologies for the postproduction community already support HFRs. Paul Chapman, senior vp of technology at Burbank-based postproduction facility Fotokem, acknowledged his company is already working on a HFR project.
The team at Miso has just launched a brand new social TV app for the iPhone called Quips. In a way, it’s a little like Pinterest for TV shows, but instead of sharing your favorite things, you’re sharing images of your favorite television moments — in an app. “Quips lets you find a great scene from a TV show, caption it with your thoughts, and share it instantly with friends on Facebook, Twitter, or on your Quips feed!” explains Miso’s Prakash Venkataramanin in a blog post. “(It) incorporates the social activity you love with incredibly beautiful images from the very shows you watch.”
So what does all this mean for Miso’s core app? In a story posted earlier today, TechCrunch called it a “pivot” for the startup. But not so — at least not yet. “We have no plans to take down Miso’s current product (SideShows) as we are still learning a great deal from it,” Venkataramanin told Lost Remote. “We not only have loyal fans on our SideShows product, but SideShows has been a great learning platform for us in creating Quips.”
[Philip Lelyveld comment: The recognition that DigitalSmiths, WatchWith, and others are getting regarding metadata indexing and personalized search is the importance of this post.]
Digitalsmiths, the leader in personalized video discovery technology, last week received its fourth Streaming Media Readers Choice Award after Streaming Media readers voted Digitalsmiths Seamless Discovery® the best Search and Discovery Platform. The win comes on the heels of other recent industry honors for the company including being named to the Streaming Media 100, the OnHollywood 25 Companies to Watch, and the Inc. 5000.
Japan Display, the entity that pools resources from Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi that I wrote about last week, has showed off another neat display at FPD International 2012, and again the Japanese-savvy Diginfo has the scoop (and video). The display is a paper-like LCD that can show video. On top of that, the display is low-power, relatively speaking. The results could be of great use to device makers who want to simulate a paper-like experience while adding the capabilities of color video.
Just a day after Dolby announced growing support for its Atmos format (Daily Variety, Oct. 31), DreamWorks Animation announced it has struck a strategic alliance with Barco and will release its next 15 pics in Barco's Auro-3D sound format.
Auro-3D, which has up to 12 channels, adds a second set of surround speakers higher on the walls and more speakers directly above the audience to create a greater sense of depth in the audio mix.
First pic to be released in the format will be DWA's "Rise of the Guardians" on Nov. 21. Only about 50 screens worldwide will be ready for the Auro format at the release of "Guardians," but DWA will promote the format to the public on this and future pics.
[Philip Lelyveld comment; While I find the quote by Samil Ismail, Singularity Institute's founding Exec Dir, that "Technology is the only driver of human progress,” disturbing - since in scifi that outlook usually leads to a distopia - it is remarkable that so many of these gatherings are taking place worldwide.]
Their offspring is Pioneers Festival. In just one year since it started, it’s grown from under 1,500 attendees to more than 2,500 international guests. Pioneers managed to draw in a bevy of international thought leaders in health, science, disruptive tech, investors, hackers, journalists and serial entrepreneurs. And, much like the Dublin Web Summitheld two weeks ago in Dublin, Ireland, they created a heady mix of people from all over Europe, Eastern Europe and the US.
For awhile, I’ve been wondering why no gaming studio in the Middle East that I knew of was building a high-end video game on the level of, say, Call of Duty. ...
Then I met Beladcom, a young team of obsessed game developers and graphic designers- both men and women- in Amman who are working studiously to build a lush, high-end 3D Arabic title called Planet Toulan,
Toulan is an ancient Arabic name meaning “extremely magical,” explains co-founder Mohammed Hujeij. Inside the game, players navigate a detailed world built upon the myth of 1001 Nights (Alf Leila wa Leila), he explains, where the protagonist interacts with jinns and battles mystical species in a quest to control Nawa, the lifeforce of the planet. (To explain the story and introduce the myth, the team released online comic books, viewable on the Planet Toulan website).
In 2010, they were able to secure a partnership with MindArk, a Swedish software company that built Entropia Universe, a 3D internet virtual universe that comes complete with an integrated economic system where players can buy “Project Entropia Dollars.”
“The deal took a lot of negotiating,” Hujeij confesses. “But ultimately they realized that they can access the Middle East market through Beladcom.”
It was just last year when China surpassed India and became the third largest film market in the world with $2B in annual box office revenue.
Warners has decided to offer Hobbit in what is being called HFR 3D as a platform release, using 400 screens domestically, that will include 90 screens from Regal and 92 from AMC along with another 500 in international markets. The majority of theaters will show the movie at the traditional frame rate of 24 fps.
“I wanted to give people a means to express their thoughts and ideas, using my voice.