PRODUCTION : You ain't seen Nuthin' Yet

We cannot talk about production in NZ without covering off the elephant in the room. Namely, video over the internet. IP television.

You need only look at the almost totally destroyed selling-recorded-music-on-bits-of-plastic business to see what happens when the real-world behaviours of real-world

And now it's happening to film. I went to the movies in Queensgate Mall Wellington recently. It was a Friday night at 7pm but I could have fired a shotgun and not hit anybody.

If we're not doing it ourselves, we have friends who are doing it - watching entire seasons of Entourage, Lost and The Sopranos before they ever got near being broadcast on either pay or free-to-air TV here.

BitTorrenting and LimeWire are the most well established file sharing systems, and like Napster did to the music business, can anyone think of a single reason why they won't destroy TV as we know it?

How? Most likely by cutting off its air supply. Almost since its inception, television around the world has been funded by advertising. But if you download Entourage or Battlestar Galactica via BitTorrent, the only advertising you'll see is the transparent channel ID in the corner of the screen of the US network the show was ripped from.

Thus the advertising revenue model that has breathed life into TV since I Love Lucy is gone. But we've got a few years, right? Five maybe? Well ... probably not.

"It's here," says Oktobor's Patrick McAteer, talking about a household of young guys he knows who don't even own a TV aerial or satellite dish. "They have a hard-drive and a kick-arse HD monitor in the corner. They've watched all of Lost and Entourage and every movie they want through BitTorrenting.

They get it fast, overnight, before it's even come near the network. It's not like "what will happen when it gets really popular?" It's here now. Ah yes,

a household of young guys. So we can take comfort in the thought that mums and dads in soap powder TVC-land aren't BitTorrenting right?

Don't believe it for a moment. This writer hosts a show on NewstalkZB (Tech Tuesdays, 3:30 pm Tuesdays with Danny Watson) and whenever the topic turns to downloading, I'm always amazed by the middle-aged voices that call in to tell me how annoyed they are about Telecom's data-speeds because it took them the whole night to download the latest episode of Dexter.

And it's always guys. Why? Because aside from sport, free-to-air TV pretty much gave up on guys years ago (straight ones anyway). Ugly Betty, Sex In The City, Desperate Housewives, Bionic Woman, McDreamy or McSteamy? Women see themselves mirrored in these shows - hot, sexy, empowered, and free to buy Tim Tams and take out a mortgage whenever they want!

Shows for guys (like Rescue Me, The Shield and the aforementioned Battlestar) are never

promoted and play after 11pm, when most working blokes are already in bed.

So what does this have to do with film production and advertising? Simply this. Technological innovation (new playback devices & real broadband) is fast turning our media landscape into one of total consumer choice.

The advent of the channel remote and the fast forward button meant advertisers started losing control over viewers 20 years ago, but now, with people downloading shows from anywhere, anytime, the whole concept of 14.5 minutes of advertising per hour is fast going out the window.

The upshot is tomorrow's viewer will have to choose to watch your TVC. Because they like it. Because it entertains them.

Which brings us to awards. Do awards matter? Are you kidding? Of course they do. But in the TV world of tomorrow they will matter even more, because ads that win Lions are not usually the same ads that win Effies.

Ads that win Lions are often quirky, funny, confrontational or moving. In short, they make a strong emotional connection. And viewers will often choose to watch them. McAteer again: "People don't say they love My Sky because they can take out the ads," he says. "They say they love it because they can download television.

"And if the first ad off the break is a new Tip-Top commercial or Buy Kiwi Made and it's entertaining, people will watch it."

Think Sony Bravia with the great Jose Gonzlez soundtrack and 250,000 rubber balls bouncing down a San Francisco street. I never changed the channel when that ad was on. But more than that, it has been watched millions of times on YouTube. Consider that for a moment.

People sought out a commercial online and chose to watch it. That, friends, is your future, right there. Would a million people choose to watch a National Bank horse ad? Someone should upload one to YouTube and find out.

At The Sweet Shop, Paul Prince points to his company's recent work for Schweppes in Europe as a perfect illustration of the new reality. To cut a long story short, Coca-Cola Europe briefed its agency Publicis to come up with a campaign to launch Schweppes in Eastern Europe. The problem was Schweppes is targeted at adult drinkers, but Schweppes could not include adult content in its TVCs.

The brief was dispatched to Publicis companies worldwide with Publicis Mojo in NZ coming up with the idea of teaser TVCs driving people to a website (www.schhh.eu/shortfilms) where they could watch four adult-themed short films. The movies all featured a "Schweppes moment", but product placement was not gratuitous. The Sweet Shop and Mojo worked up the scripts together and three of the four films (although set in Europe) were shot in NZ (one, Consequence, was shot by The Sweet Shop in Columbia).

"It was a good result for Schweppes," says Prince. "Getting the audience to participate with the brand and they had over two million minutes of people downloading the films."

So if the game is changing, what about the players? After a few years of tough restructuring, the NZ film production industry looks stable - even buoyant - with a strange correlation between the era a company launched, and the coolness factor of its name.

Going back to the beginning there's the old school players like Motion Pictures and Silverscreen (some no longer around, obviously), good solid names. Then, at the turn of the millennium, start-ups like Curious & The Sweet Shop, cool names no doubt, but not really dangerous.

And now, in the last couple of years, the new breed - Robber's Dog, Jealous Lovers, Thick as Thieves and so on. Names you'd expect emblazoned on a gang jacket or etched into the bow of a pirate ship.

It's seven years since I last wrote a film feature for AdMedia, and heading out for my interviews I was half expecting to be talking to a bunch of recently graduated film students - big on tattoos, scooters and attitude, but light on experience.

Instead, what I found was the same faces I was talking to 10 years ago. People I'd first met at Film Construction and the rest - with the dominant characteristic being decades (if not generations) of experience.

So why leave a big company for the unexplored territory of a start-up? At Jealous Lovers, director Dennis Hitchcock and producer Scott Donaldson say there's something to be said for freedom - financial and creative.

After explaining the shared overheads rationale behind joining up with another producer/director team (Edwina Monaghan & Barry Fawcett) to operate under the Jealous Lovers brand, Hitchcock gets down to the core of it. "Underlying all that though (why have two fax machines when you can share one?), both teams left looking for financial independence and that's the basis of it, really.

"You want to enjoy the money that you earn. I thought initially that a big company environment would be well worth it, in that giving up some profit would be compensated for by getting more, bigger and better work - because you've got someone out there sourcing it for you. The reality is though, that we're all web-based, we're all international and there are agents around the world who will take a very small fee to push your work into any market you want to be in."

At The Film Brewery (also formed in 2007), producer Treza Gallogly's reasoning for launching her own company (with Sione's Wedding director Chris Graham) is similar to Hitchcock's. "Chris and I talked about the merits of joining up with another company," she says, "but decided it was just as advantageous to do it on our own.

"Mainly because I've been running a line production company (the NZ Film Connection) for five years. I'd also worked as an agency producer here for 12 years so I know a lot of the people anyway."

Yes indeed, knowing people. This is a people business after all. But beyond just having a very full contacts directory and the prerequisite taking people to lunch (more on that later) Donaldson makes an interesting observation about people.

After 25 years in the business he says he's still learning every day. New equipment and film technique he mentions, but also people. More specifically, the ability to recognise people's skills. Who's the best at shooting dialogue, comedy or panoramic vistas? And can he and Hitchcock connect with clients and really 'get' the idea - a skill that is infinitely more important now that the great 'idea' commercials are the ones most likely to be watched.

"You will always hear creatives talking about the idea," he says. "So why would they hire us? Because they want a director to help them turn that idea into a product they can put on the screen. So being able to visualise the components they've created and helping their idea take its next step."

Hitchcock concurs. "A big issue with directors is that they can over train on visuals and craft and the idea gets buried. Nobody actually gets it. First and foremost we have to understand what the creatives are trying to do. That's our job."

And what about the lunches? According to Hitchcock, there may well be less of those in store. "I think we're heading to the US model," he says. "Where the director doesn't have the relationships - instead we're marketed by reps who have the relationships. They sell you on your showreel and the director doesn't even talk to the agency."

His latest job was exactly this scenario. "I just did a shoot in New York and all they knew of me was a voice at the end of a conference call. They didn't even know I was in NZ, they thought I was in LA. I just turned up in NY, they liked my treatment and I got the gig."

So what kind of year are the production companies looking forward to? Interestingly, the evolution and revolution that continues to alter their landscape has them all as excited about being in this business as I've ever seen them.

So has the TVC got a future? "I think it has," says Prince. "It's just that the publishing channels are different."

Media is so fragmented now. The Herald online has video and in reality is probably competing with One News. But if these sites can grow an identifiable audience they become valuable media channels. The corporations will communicate through those media channels in a more and more sophisticated way. It will end up being emotive communication and there's nothing more powerful than a moving image."

Oh, and finally, the other elephant in the room? Telecom will start selling TV - you didn't think they were laying all that fibre just so you could BitTorrent faster did you?

What's in the box?

Hard disk recording devices like Apple TV (pictured) allow viewers to record hundreds of hours of television. Although they are often locked into certain channels, there is nothing to stop tech-savvy consumers from downloading shows to their PC hard drives via BitTorrent or LimeWire. Once there they can either watch them on their computers, burn them to DVD to watch on normal televisions, or even beam them wirelessly to their sets via a home wireless network.

What do they like?

Fair Go's Ad Awards are probably as good a barometer as you'll get for what type of ads Kiwis might not skip:

Year Best Worst

2007 Yamaha Grizzly Yellow Pages Hands

2006 Hyundai Sante Fe Symbicort

2005 Toyota Bulls Tower 'Worries'

2004 TVOne 10 Fingers Tower 'Worries'

Move 'em 'on, Head 'em 'up

Aldedo's Maile Daugherty on the Cornetto stampede

Who, Why, What, Where?

Albedo VFX produced the visual effects for Film Construction's Perry Bradley and Jozsef Fityus for the Streets Cornetto brand. The premise of the ad was that Cornetto, with its nuts and icecream, is completely irresistible to a heap of squirrels and baby cows. With the shortage of trained calves here, and the fact that MAF isn't allowing squirrels into the country, cute, furry CG animals was clearly the way to go. Our brief was two-fold, to design and animate a flock of each animal and integrate them into the footage, and to supervise and create the VFX to complement the commercial. This included replacing all the skies after a rainy shoot and recreating the Cornetto cones in 3D so they could be cleanly split apart.

What equipment (technology and software) was used in the production?

On this job match-moving was done using SynthEyes, 3D modelling and animation in 3DS Max and the compositing in Fusion, but it was our artists, led by VFX supervisor Peter McCully, who really made the project work. It's not what equipment you've got, but how well you know how to use it.

Step us through the production process?

Before filming we engaged in an intense process of character development with Perry and the agency creatives where the animals were designed and decisions around the level of realism were made. Once the cut was approved the ungraded shots were digitised and brought into our system, where they were tracked and keyed. The animals were animated with attention being given to the quirky random movements that skittish animals like squirrels and cows make. Matte paintings were crafted for the skies and background hills and new shadows created. Once composited it was delivered to the post house for final grading.

What challenges?

It was really interesting to start the process designing characters for print, but with the intention of having them eventually be fully animated creatures. The challenge with this comedic style of commercial is always the balance between creating real and believable animals and taking liberties to make them more likable and, for lack of a better term, humanised. You just have to try and try again until you get a balance that everyone is happy with. From print through to the TVC delivery we worked on and off on the project for around four months.