6 TVBEurope News & Analysis
Predicting success or failure Away from the production process, one of the more intriguing interactions between creativity and technology came from Epagogix. CEO Nick Meaney introduced the company as an ‘antichrist to the creatives’ that uses expert process and artificial intelligence to predict the success of scripts at the box office and permit evidence- based decision-making. Targeting the bean counters
of the big money, big risk Hollywood business, Epagogix transferred the TV analysis process to film, codifying, breaking down and scoring scripts before feeding the result into a neural network that forecasts success or failure of the script before big money has been poured into it. “It’s a collaborative thing,” said Meany. “The creative vision is needed and we help them make the best of it.”
IPTV museum To round off the event, the ultimate happy marriage between art and technology took the stage in the form of Ikono TV. This specialty TV station delivers art to the living room. The station, which has not
yet been monetised, can be live streamed and has been available for three years through IPTV boxes in Germany and France and in the Arab world through satellite. Markevitch says it took time to acclimatise the art world to the concepts of rights management and streaming. “Most museums think they are super-modern because they have a website. I knew nothing about broadcasting but I wanted to make art as popular as music, which had radio as a medium.”
File delivery made... simple?
George Jarrett attended the DPP Forum “File Delivery Made Simple” and discovered that striving for simplicity can be very complex
current story of file creation and delivery, and they all typified the wonderful support it has garnered from its national broadcaster membership.
The eyes have it Andy Tennant, technology director at ITV Studios, and DPP training collaborations head, covered technical standard and metadata issues from the standpoint of what producers must consider when they need to deliver an AS-11 file. Firstly, it will take longer to generate and deliver than a tape ever did. “In our file-based world,
metadata is absolutely mandatory. It must be delivered with the file, meaning that some of the paperwork that historically appeared after transmission needs to be brought forward,” Tennant said. Typical of what the
Harrison: “We are facing a very big moment In October — British broadcasting goes digital”
FISHERMEN HAVE their friend, and so do content producers. The Digital Production Partnership (DPP), not satiated by creating the AS-11 delivery standard, has developed an undeniable drive that is taking it into many associated areas where it can push for and set more standards, reduce others down to producer- speak bullet points, and offer people guidance in how to prosper in the file-based world. DPP’s increasingly sophisticated bi-monthly forums attract large knowledge-hungry audiences from both the production and post sectors.
At the most popular forum yet, staged at Channel 4, DPP chair Mark Harrison (currently seconded to the BBC encoding programme) said: “We are facing a very big moment in October — British broadcasting goes digital. And we only have a couple of dots to join in the form of programmes to finish and deliver. “When we created AS-11
we didn’t recognise we could be the body to make the whole change process much simpler,” he added.
The DPP attracts a mixed
ability group, so it runs sessions for the person who knows least. It put up eight people to tell the
broadcaster would provide (and expect back) is the production number. Producer provided metadata should include a brief synopsis. Checking was Tennant’s third big subject. He asked: “How can I be confident as I learn this process that what I have got in terms of my file is something that has a reasonable chance of getting to a broadcaster, and on air?” The answers are on a helpful DPP checklist that starts with editorial sign off. Tennant warned: “You cannot insert edit on file yet, so as you step through this process bear in mind that if you need to make a change, and you are in the process of completing your file, you are back into your edit and starting the process again. This makes final eyeball checks really important.”
The last chance saloon Andy Quested, head of UHD technology at the BBC, locked onto the new emphasis on eyeballing. The eyeball review is a modern notion for the file exchange era, and it starts with setting up a screening room, and cutting out the bad habits of using computers or proxies to give final nods.
“It is a chance to sit down with a specific (DPP) check list. Don’t make the assumption that someone else is going to check it; that’s not going to happen anymore,” said Quested. “The review is the last chance for the producer, directors, DOP, production manager and editor to watch a programme, with the criteria of passing it technically. “The contract says produce,
make and deliver a transmittable programme, so it has always been there. This is about handing the responsibilities back to the producer, and actually allowing much more leeway for editorial interpretation,” he added. It is not the editor’s
responsibility to approve content for transmission, but if a file is rejected it bounces right back to the NLE. “The producer has to sign the certificate to say it has been checked and reviewed,” Quested said.
“The audience will decide if a
programme is good or bad,” he added. “That is what has been happening in radio for 10 years. There is audience/producer and that’s how it should be. We are just going to reiterate what we all know anyway: this is not rocket science, it is about gut feeling.”
www.tvbeurope.com March 2014
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