NAB Show Preview: Streaming's next phase and the push to operate smarter

NCS | NewscastStudio: Streaming is no longer a growth story in the way it was five years ago. The race to launch platforms and accumulate subscribers has given way to a more measured set of questions: how to run streaming operations efficiently, how to generate sustainable revenue across a fragmented audience and how to deliver reliably at scale.

Pure entertainment now streaming in Women’s Storytelling Festival

DC Theater Arts: Storytelling has been around for thousands of years. The art form can serve many purposes — conveying history, teaching a lesson, entertaining — and is thought to have co-evolved with language, likely as the driving force to satisfy the human need for interaction and connection. So it comes as no surprise that storytelling exists today in expansive forms of varied media and formats. But the simple form of a single person crafting a tale for a group of people, using only their words and bodies to convey their message, is beautifully intimate.

Rosamund Pike in ‘Inter Alia’ and More Theater to Stream

The New York Times: Two British soldiers go for a pint. In 1979, at the height of the Troubles, Bobby and Dave, deployed to Northern Ireland, are off duty when they attract two women from across the pub. Crackling banter, a slow dance. Everyone is enjoying themselves. But these are no amateur flirts, the two beauties work for the Irish Republican Army. Their little bait and switch leads to Bobby’s murder, haunting Dave for decades.

Netflix shares updated renderings of its New Jersey campus

www.archpaper.com: Plans for a 292-acre, $1.2 billion Netflix campus were approved by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority Board last December. Construction on Netflix’s new flagship production location on the East Coast started in May and is now humming in Oceanport, New Jersey, which borders Eatontown.

Does Your Church Need IMAG? A Guide to Image Magnification for Worship

Church Production Magazine: Most churches are streaming now, which means they likely have two cameras that capture sermons. If that’s your church, I’d guess someone has asked you about IMAG. If not, and you’re wondering what that is, it’s pronounced EYE-mag, short for Image Magnification, and it’s what you see in large auditoriums, usually on two projectors above and to each side of front-of-house, where the speaker or emcee is magnified with a medium shot. It’s often paired with a wider head-to-toe shot and the director switches back and forth at will.

David Fincher Lashes Out Over Chinese Censorship of ‘Fight Club’

www.thewrap.com: Though the original ending of “Fight Club” has been restored on Chinese streamer Tencent Video, director David Fincher is still baffled as to why it was ever changed in the first place.

Europe Focuses on Local Production

Variety: As global consumers turn towards series produced in their own countries and other non-US content, developing authentic stories for local markets might be the key to global success, pointed out participants of the Berlinale Series Market opening on Monday.

Amazon Studios Rolling Out Diversity Playbook in Europe and Globally

Variety: The Amazon Studios Inclusion Policy and Playbook released last June in the U.S. is reverberating in the streaming giant’s productions around the world.

Live Nation is wiring more than 60 venues for livestreaming

www.fastcompany.com: Live Nation has had enough of the pandemic roller coster. After more than a year of empty arenas, the entertainment giant is taking matters into own hands and wiring over 60 venues for livestreaming, the company announced today.

Hello Las Vegas! How livestreaming is transforming the stage

Stage | The Guardian: As Christmas season dawned at the end of last year, two American critics had a crash course in that most British of theatre traditions, pantomime, dropping in remotely to eight shows for the New York Times. “I felt like an ethnographer studying a foreign culture’s strange ceremonies,” wrote one, while the other enjoyed the peppering of Covid-related jokes, including the insertion of “fiiiiiive toilet rolls” into The 12 Days of Christmas.

Blackmagic Design Announces New Blackmagic Web Presenter HD

Creative COW: Blackmagic Design today announced the new Blackmagic Web Presenter HD, a self contained streaming solution that includes a broadcast quality H.264 processor for direct streaming to platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more. The new Web Presenter HD is a compact design that includes a 12G-SDI input with down converter, so customers can connect to HD or Ultra HD equipment and stream in full 1080p video.

Guidelines for Using Aggregate Streaming Platforms for Performing Arts Content

AMT Lab @ CMU: For arts organizations looking to reach audiences through online content, there are numerous approaches, including posting subscriber-only content to their websites and posting free videos on platforms like YouTube. In the broader entertainment landscape, streaming via services that aggregate content has become a popular way to watch film and television. This article examines the viability of sharing performing arts content on third-party streaming platforms that aggregate content as opposed to single-entity streaming channels.

Disney+ Original Flora & Ulysses Crew Interview

What's On Disney Plus: Flora & Ulysses is the story of a young girl named Flora who rescues a superhero squirrel that she names Ulysses. Squirrels are pretty hard to train so one of the costars of this film is pretty much all CGI. This means that the VFX team had a lot of work on their hands. In fact, the movie itself wrapped about a year and a half ago, but it took over a year to add in the squirrel and make him perfect.

Lighting in a Streaming and VOD World

Church Production Magazine: At the start of 2020 most churches considered live streaming to be a useful but secondary aspect of ministry. With the advent of COVID-19 restrictions, however, streaming and VOD quickly became the safest way for church leaders to maintain connection with the larger congregation. Moving into the coming weeks and months, live streaming will continue to serve as a primary avenue for corporate worship, teaching, community, and vision casting.

Is It Theater? Chekhov's 'The Seagull' Adaptation For The Sims 4 To Stream On Twitch

NPR: Playwright Celine Song is transforming Anton Chekhov's The Seagull into something avant-garde — by adapting a version that will be presented in The Sims 4 video game and streamed on Twitch.

Live Streaming Comparison Guide

Sound & Video Contractor: Many organizations are now using live streaming to market, sell, support, evangelize, and in some cases, deliver their products or services. In this buyer’s guide, I’ll review the features offered by live streaming service providers in different categories, and factors to consider when choosing a service.

8 Tips for How to Live Stream Theatre

Playbill: As a theatre artist or teacher, the prospect of moving theatre online can be daunting. But any theatre artist knows that ingenuity and creative problem solving is the name of the game, a concept made only more vital in this extraordinary time.

We talked to theatrical video guru Jim Glaub about the wild new world of online theatre to answer some of the most common questions and learn some best practices for producing theatre online.

Sleight of Screen

Chicago magazine | August 2020: A group of puppeteers huddles around an array of vintage overhead projectors. A meticulous cutout of a London skyline moves up across the light box, the projected image suggesting a camera panning down. Cut to another projector, where the silhouette of a quill touches the silhouette of an inkwell; elsewhere on stage, a foley artist creates the tapping sound of the quill on the jar. On the other side of the stage, an actor’s shadow casts against another screen.

Travis Scott’s first Fortnite concert was surreal and spectacular

The Verge: If there’s one thing you can say about Fortnite’s live events, it’s that they keep getting more ambitious. From the original rocket launch to the mech vs. kaiju battle to the black hole that wiped out an entire island, each new event is more elaborate than the last. Now we can say the same is true of the concerts. Last year’s Marshmello show was an exciting, dynamic example of what a virtual concert could look like. This week’s Travis Scott performance blew it out of the water.

All your home's a stage

Performing Arts Feature | Chicago Reader: I'm compiling this list of online theater options on World Theatre Day, which feels more than a little ironic. Theaters all over the world are now shut down for the foreseeable future in light of the COVID-19 disaster.