Harvey Levin, TMZ's managing editor, was among those at the company who recognized that the Web and digital technology could give it an advantage over rivals.
(Credit: Craig Mathews/Warner Bros.)Alec Baldwin, Lindsay Lohan, and Kramer from Seinfeld may despise TMZ.com, but that hasn't stopped the celebrity news site from bagging more blockbuster scoops the past two years than any competitor.
TMZ's growing reputation as Hollywood's in-the-know and in-your-face news agency was built by working the phones, developing sources and basically out hustling rivals, say executives. What isn't well-known, however, is that the company may also possess a technology edge.
TMZ, which launched as a Web site in 2005 and moved into TV last September, is among the first to build a tapeless, high-definition TV newsroom from the ground up, according to managers.
Other newsrooms have migrated from videotape to digital, but TMZ, perhaps best-known for its reporting on Seinfeld star Michael Richards' racist tirade, was designed for the Digital Age. Not only does this enable TMZ cameramen to shoot using lighter, less expensive cameras, but editors don't have to rip up entire TV shows each time they make changes, says Jim Paratore, TMZ's executive producer.
For these reasons, TMZ often has stories up before rivals and operates more efficiently, executives say. As chilling as this may sound to some, TMZ could be the prototype of a 21st century news agency.
"The business has changed, and the business model of these shows has to change," Paratore said. "You have to figure out how to do these shows more efficiently...We had the opportunity to marry technology with the way we produced the show and create a model that fit the revenue available today."
Technology, in a way, gave birth to TMZ.
The founders recognized distributing news over the Web meant they could post stories, photos, and videos of drunken starlets or brawling actors almost as soon as they obtained them.
TV shows like Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood, on the other hand, had to wait until their shows aired. People magazine had to wait until the next issue hit newsstands.
TMZ sees about 10 million monthly unique visitors to its Web site.
(Credit: TMZ.com)Sure, TMZ's clips weren't as slick looking as those broadcast by some of its rivals. But managers discovered that the audience liked it better that way, Paratore said. For example, the now-famous clip of Paris Hilton and friend Brandon Davis disparaging part of Lindsay Lohan's anatomy while leaving a nightclub, isn't great photography. The footage is grainy and dark.
Yet, the clip of a catty Hilton was viewed more than 2.5 million times and marked TMZ as a player in the Hollywood-gossip industry. Producing video for the Web taught TMZ managers an important lesson: People want unfiltered information about celebrities. Pretty images and clever editing are less important.
"What has changed because of the Web is the whole expectation of what TV is," Paratore said. "People just want to see raw video. They don't want it all beautified and packaged, particularly entertainment news because they think it's all B.S."
After learning that, Paratore and Harvey Levin, TMZ's managing editor, made plans for their tapeless newsroom.
For help, they went to Warner Bros. and its emerging-technology unit. The group focused on designing a low-cost system geared for speed and simplicity.
Engineers opted for off-the-shelf hardware--such as a 32-terabyte storage area network (SAN) from Hewlett-Packard and a bunch of 8-core Mac Pros for editing--rather than spending money on expensive production tools designed for the broadcast industry, said Spencer Stephens, vice president of product technology for the Warner Bros. group.
"It's the same sort of hardware that a financial institution or anybody else using a large 32-terabyte SAN might use," Stephens said. "More traditionally, we would have gone out and chosen something specifically designed for this marketplace, but because this is a relatively small market it would have cost more to get it up and running."
Translation: TMZ had less money to spend and that forced it to be more resourceful.
Sony HVR-Z1U
(Credit: CNET Networks)Perfect. The company regularly competes against deeper-pocketed network shows, and loves to see itself as a giant killer, Paratore said. If less money meant TMZ had to squeeze more traffic and TV ratings out of fewer resources, so be it. Instead of buying the bulky $30,000 shoulder-held cameras favored by many broadcasters, TMZ settled on the $5,000 Sony Z1U, an HD handheld cam.
The Z1U is a half step from being a consumer product, but managers found that the camera fit with their guerrilla-journalism style.
We've all seen those scenes of reporters, photographers and cameramen swarming around stars outside courtrooms or nightclubs. The Z1U is much easier to handle in these situations than a larger camera.
Another benefit of a smaller camera is it allows TMZ's shooters to be less intimidating when approaching celebrities.
"You can't go around with big cameras, a sound guy, and a multiple-person crew," Paratore said. "You need a smaller footprint. It's all about being a fly on the wall."
Going digital also streamlined editing and content management, which is vital for breaking-news stories.
The system Warner Bros. came up with enables producers to see raw footage, make rough cuts from their desktop, and then assemble timelines for the show as they write their scripts. The system gives producers precious extra minutes to complete work on a story segment.
Traditionally, the segments of a TV news show were combined and assembled onto a tape, Stephens said. The show had to be completely finished by the time it started broadcasting. It wasn't possible to change anything once the show started being aired, he said.
"Now, we're editing individual stories and plugging segments into a video server," Stephens said. "It's very similar if you got an iTunes playlist. You can start the music, but you can also push new pieces into the playlist on the fly. Rather than having to have my story finished a half hour before the whole show airs, now I actually need to finish a couple of minutes before my particular segment of the show airs."
This kind of flexibility is handy when your top news subjects can get busted for a DUI day or night.
Shows from the WB Network will be featured on Veoh Networks, Dailymotion and other Web sites
(Credit: TheWB.com)As part of a comeback attempt by the WB Network, Warner Bros. Television Group has cut deals to distribute TV shows to TiVo, Veoh Networks, and other Web video sites.
The WB is the network made famous by such teen fare as Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls. The network shut down in 2006, when Warner Bros. partnered with CBS to launch the CW Television Network.
Warner Bros. said in April that it would relaunch the network as an online-only play. The company said in a statement on Thursday that in September, Dailymotion, Joost, Sling Media, TiVo, and Veoh will launch channels that will feature the network's ad-supported programming from TheWB.com or KidsWB.com.
Anybody who has ever turned a buck on TV appears to be dusting off old reels and getting them digitized in a hurry. CBS and Hulu, the video portal created by NBC Universal and News Corp., have shown that people enjoy watching vintage TV shows on the Web.
Included in the new material from The WB is at least one series created especially for the Web, called Sorority Forever.
This fall, film enthusiasts will have the opportunity to watch an American classic like they've never seen it before. The Godfather trilogy has recently been digitally remastered to look cleaner, brighter, and as as fresh as its original release in 1972.
In Friday's Daily Debrief, I chat with CNET News.com's executive editor, Jim Kerstetter, who also happens to be the office film buff. He explains the painstaking process of the digital facelift and why the preservation of such classics is important for posterity. Also, hear what kind of directives director Francis Ford Coppola gave the technicians cleaning up pivotal moments in his masterpiece.
How's this for pressure? In the care of Daphne Dentz and her colleagues was a masterpiece of American filmmaking: The Godfather.
A year ago, Dentz was sitting in an editing bay with other members of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging (MPI). Also in the room was none other than the movie's director, Francis Ford Coppola. He was there to observe as they set about digitally restoring his 35-year-old classic.
On a bank of computer monitors, The Godfather's opening scene began to play; the melancholy trumpet; the now famous line: "I believe in America...," and slowly forming out of the blackness is the face of a man seeking vengeance.
Stop everything. Coppola, a famous perfectionist, told the technicians: "I want his head to look like it's floating in purgatory."
An instruction like that from Coppola might have intimidated Dentz, MPI's vice president of digital services, if she didn't know MPI had the tools to give him what he wanted. Six years ago, Warner Bros. developed digital technologies designed to make copies of damaged or decaying film negatives and return the movies to their original viewing quality. The studio wouldn't discuss how much they spent. (You can be sure it wasn't cheap).
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A scene from Gone With The Wind before restoration.
(Credit: Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging)
The same scene but after restoration.
(Credit: Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging)For decades, film reels languished on studio lots without any attempt made to preserve them. But technology has rushed to the rescue once again. The digital age has handed Hollywood the tools to correct faded colors, blurred images, and garbled sound.
Warner Bros. wants to rescue some of America's greatest film treasures, while at the same time cash in on a valuable film library. Execs from all the studios have learned that they can release restored versions of classic films on disc and extend their economic lifespan. This is what Paramount intends to do when it re-releases the The Godfather in September, according to a story in American Cinematographer.
Another reason to give the pictures a facelift is that many of them can't stand up to the magnified scrutiny of the digital age. Imperfections are more exposed than ever on high-definition TVs, according to Ned Price, vice president of mastering for Warner Bros. technical operations.
"Consumer expectations are rising," Price said. "You now have Blu-ray and the quality level that the consumer has access to is higher than it was before. What was acceptable 10 years ago is no longer acceptable today."
To do the restoring, Warner Bros. built proprietary software, custom-designed monitors and editing tools. On the studio's lot is a storage system that can handle 600 terabytes of data. This is a lot of information.
Two terabytes can hold an academic library. The U.S. Library of Congress said a year ago that it stores less than 100 terabytes of information.
MPI always works in the same resolution as the original negative, typically 4096 x 3112 pixels or, in industry lingo, "4K." By digital camera standards, that's not much: only 8 megapixels. But by video standards, that's a whopping amount: A single frame on 4k can be 50 megabytes, said Bill Baggelaar, MPI's vice president of engineering. At a rate of 24-frames per second, the numbers add up fast.
For example, The Godfather trilogy required 160 terabytes of storage, Baggelaar said.
Of course, the real challenge isn't storing the data. The trick is moving it around. "Minimally, a 4k movie is 12 terabytes," Baggelaar said. Even at "fibre-channel speed, it still takes a while to move 12 terabytes."
MPI's system is fast, primarily because of Hewlett-Packard, Baggelaar said. HP powers the Warner Bros. storage area network, a "massive" fibre channel. Most of the SAN runs on Linux.
"One of the reasons the HP storage works so well for us is we have to be up 100 percent of the time," Baggelaar said. "We don't have downtime. We don't have the ability to lose data while we're in the middle of production and their storage is extremely reliable.
"If you're taking one version of the movie and you have 12 terabytes of data and every day you're changing some component, during a one-month project you're going to generate a couple hundred terabytes of data," he said. "That amount is just not cost effective to back up."
A restoration starts with the creation of a digital copy made from a film's negative. This is not easy. Some negatives may be physically damaged; torn and spliced together with tape and can easily come apart during the scanning if they aren't cared for properly.
Once the copy is made, the negative is sent to be preserved in specially built vaults while the digital copy is sent to MPI, which then "starts picking it apart," Price said.
One group of technicians goes to work on color correction and another on removing dirt and scratches. A third group--called data conform--makes sure the negative has all the right pieces. If it doesn't, they find them. Sometimes MPI must work with duplications of the negative and it's not uncommon to find that someone years earlier edited scenes into them. MPI removes them.
The goal is not to improve the filmmaker's work but to re-create it.
In the case of The Godfather, the negative was in rough shape. The images looked mottled. There were no details in the film's black tones. It was dirty, scratched, and torn in places.
To illustrate how the film looked when MPI started, Kathleen Largay, a colorist, showed me a clip of the restaurant scene, where Michael Corleone guns down Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo and the police captain. The color is washed out. A scratch runs along the bottom of the picture. There are few shadows visible.
Then she showed me what it looked like after the team used its computers to remove scratches, hairs, dust, and stains. Suddenly, rich earth tones are present. The gold color of the olive oil sitting on the table twinkles in the light. There's more contrast between white and black, enough for me to see all the tension in Al Pacino's face just before he opens fire.
The MPI team worked closely with Paramount executives, who knew exactly how the picture should look.
One area where the team came up short was in reproducing the same kind of blacks. The sad truth is that digital technology doesn't block out light as well as film, so it doesn't produce the blackest black. This was important for The Godfather, as the movie was one of the darkest ever made.
"With film you have light shining through a piece of acetate or some base that has some property blocking light," Baggelaar said. "The light is actually being blocked to create black. But in a digital projection scenario, there is always light being thrown out by a projector. Just like an LCD monitor, unless you turn it off it's not really black. One of the technical challenges was giving them the blackness that they wanted with the limitations of the equipment. I think we did a nice job by the end. "
It took seven months to finish the entire trilogy. How long would it have taken without digital tools? Well, it would have never been attempted, Price said.
"You would have to go through frame by frame to correct this," Price said.
There was a lot of back-patting at MPI after Coppola saw the results. According to members of the group, the auteur told them that he hadn't seen the film look that good since 1972, the year it was first screened.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Group is tired of guessing about how the studio's content will appear on the Web or handheld devices.
That's why the company has built a new media center designed to test how consumers respond to Web sites, consumer electronics, and video-on-demand services that feature the studio's movies and TV shows.
The company behind such films and TV shows as I am Legend, Michael Clayton, and ER, has outfitted the media center with Xboxes, PSPs, iPods, Macbooks, varying brands of PCs, DirectTV, and a plethora of cable subscription services.
The company will bring in everyday consumers and watch how they interact with Web sites, gadgets, or video-on-demand services that feature Warner content. With the help of eight pan-zoom cameras built into the ceiling, researchers will monitor the respondents, according to Bruce K. Rosenblum, the executive vice president in charge of the media center.
"We're not operating in a vacuum anymore because of this center," Rosenblum told CNET News.com on Thursday. "We want to get smarter and understand these technologies a bit better. Warner Bros can just assume about the deals we do. I think it's important that Warner knows the experience."
The studios know that they can't rely solely on the TV set or VHS recorder anymore. Fans are consuming films and shows on video-game consoles, music players like the iPod, and mobile phones. Rosenblum said Warner Bros. modeled its media center after one built in Las Vegas by CBS.
The differences between the two facilities are that Warner was designed specifically to test emerging technologies and is on-site.
Rosenblum decline to discuss costs of building the center. He did say that companies owned by Time Warner, the studio's parent company, are welcome to use the facility.
Toshiba may have taken a huge hit recently, but the HD DVD supporter is striking back.
Barely a week after Warner Bros. announced it would no longer put out movies on the HD DVD format, of which Toshiba is a primary supporter, the company announced it is lowering the prices on all three models of next-generation DVD players.
Toshiba will now sell its entry-level HD DVD player for $149.99.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The entry-level model, the HD-A3, now goes for $149.99, the HD-A30 for $199.99, and the HD-A35 for $299.99. That's about $150 to $200 worth of discounts on all models.
The new pricing from Toshiba is well-timed, according to Paul Erickson, director of DVD and HD market research for The NPD Group. Holiday promotional pricing is essentially over for all the major manufacturers of rival disc format Blu-ray, as well as other HD DVD makers.
"For them to drop MSRPs now couldn't come at a better time," he said. "It was a gap Blu-ray was able to close down upon during holiday sales."
In the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray, HD DVD's primary advantage from the very beginning had been cheaper prices on players. But Blu-ray has responded, lowering its prices and offering popular promotions, like Wal-Mart's giveaway of 10 Blu-ray titles with the purchase of a Sony PlayStation 3 this past holiday. But preferences over one format or the other aside, price is and probably always will be the determining factor in sales.
"The larger challenge for both camps is twofold: getting the hardware into people's homes. Toshiba did very well selling $99 and $199 players (during the holidays), but that didn't necessarily translate into a big jump in movie (sales)," said Erickson. "Unless there are serious promotions going on...people aren't going out and buying in explosive numbers on the Blu-ray side either."
"Even if we promote a single format...people are still not going to pay three to four times as much for a player, they're not going to pay double the price for movies," Erickson said, "just because they're accustomed to much cheaper pricing on standard-def DVD."
LAS VEGAS--Studios know how to make money in the traditional way--in the theater, via broadcast television. But the Internet still has them slightly flummoxed.
True, most of the major film and television studios are embracing the Web. But the exact formula for distributing their content while still making money remains somewhat up in the air.
Here at CES during a panel sponsored by Hollywood trade pub Variety, the heads of digitial distribution for Disney/ABC, Fox, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Bros. discussed what is and isn't working for them.
All present were adamant that there is no one good way to make money online yet. "We're using every model because consumers will ultimately decide how they want to consume (content)," said Tom Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment. For Paramount, that means downloads of its films via iTunes, Xbox Live, Netflix Watch it Now, and the Vudu set-top box.
The head of Fox Entertainment's digital media group, Dan Fawcett, said the best way is to give content to people the way they're used to. "People online want things for free. They can get it for free on piracy sites," he said. "They are inclined to watch it with a reasonable amount of advertising, but downloading a movie that takes a couple of hours just to own it doesn't seem to be a very compelling consumer experience."
This, of course, gave Fawcett the opportunity to plug Hulu.com, the online video partnership between Fox and NBC Universal where some of the two companies' most popular shows are viewable for free with some ads.
Paramount's Lesinski agreed that studios have to "give (content) to people anyway they want," he said.
Digital content heads of major Hollywood studios at CES.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)And so did everyone else: a constant familiar refrain from all of them was "letting consumers consume content when and how they want." But isn't the way they want it instant and free?
Other tidbits: All of them profess to like Steve Jobs. Some think Apple and its iTunes Store hold too much sway over the download business, but those on the panel didn't seem to agree. Warner Bros. called Apple "a great partner," and Paramount is really, really happy that 5- and 10-year-old film titles are selling in volumes of hundreds of thousands today on iTunes. Disney, perhaps unsurprisingly, was almost defensive of Apple. (Jobs is Disney's largest shareholder.)
"Apple wanted to legitimize the marketplace," said Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media for Disney-ABC Television. "They compete with so many other different options, including piracy. To say Apple has so much control is looking at a very narrow slice of pie."
All had plenty to say on the impact of the Web on professional content. But despite talk of successes with viral video, streaming branded sites, and partnership deals across different platforms, none had an articulate response when an audience member asked when online revenue would surpass traditional revenue sources for each.
After some amused stares with each other, finally Fox's Fawcett was able to stammer: "Nowhere in the forseeable future."
View complete CES 2008 coverage from CNET.
LAS VEGAS--"Disappointed" probably isn't a strong enough word to describe when a major focus of your business plan and the highlight of your Consumer Electronics Show pitch is derailed two days before by one of your former partners.
As the most prominent backer of the HD DVD high-definition video format, Toshiba's press conference at CES this morning drew a lot of interest among the tech press, mostly out of morbid curiosity. What could it say after Warner Bros. announced Friday it would exclusively back rival Blu-ray, after the studio had played it neutral up until now?
Toshiba didn't waste any time addressing the 800-pound gorilla in the room. President and chief executive of Toshiba America's consumer division, Akio Ozaka, took the stage to lament the studio's announcement despite strong sales of HD DVD players in the last quarter of 2007.
"Unit sales of HD DVD in Q4 were the strongest yet. Therefore we were surprised by Warner Bros. announcement that it plans to abandon HD DVD later this year," said Ozaka. "We were particularly disappointed this decision was made in spite of the momentum HD DVD has gained in this market."
Toshiba vice president of marketing for digital audio and video products Jodi Salley was even more somber.
"As you can imagine, this is a tough day for me," she said as she took the stage. "I fully expected to come here this morning to share with you the successes of the last year of HD DVD, (but) the events of the last few days have shifted the focus of my comments."
Instead of announcing a fourth-generation HD DVD player as expected prior to Warner Bros. announcement on Friday, Toshiba took the opportunity to simply reaffirm its faith in the format, and point out features like Web connectivity and the presence of Ethernet ports on every player, which Blu-ray does not have.
"It is difficult to read pundits declaring HD DVD dead...but we've been declared dead before," Sally said.
Despite that sense of optimism, she didn't offer any details on what Toshiba's next move will be.
View complete CES 2008 coverage from CNET.
Total HD, the Warner Bros. solution to the Blu-ray/HD DVD face off for high-def home video supremacy, won't be rolled out in late 2007 as promised at CES, a Warner Bros. official said Wednesday.
The first discs, which will feature Blu-ray on one side and HD DVD on the other, will not appear until early 2008, according to Dan Miron, the studio's vice president of sales and planning, who made the comments at an entertainment business conference in Los Angeles.
The studio didn't provide further details, other than to say that it wants to avoid confusing customers further by putting yet another format on retail shelves. Warner Bros. believes that waiting a few more months doesn't make the dual-format disc "any less viable," according to a studio spokesperson.
But with the way things have been going for HD DVD, will a Blu-ray/HD DVD union even be necessary by January? This proposed format marriage may end up like an engaged couple that keeps pushing the wedding date back, but never actually gets around to tying the knot. We shall see.
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