3D has become the hot topic of 2010, but it seems to me that most of the focus to date has been on the technology involved - such as how to set up stereo camera rigs, 2D to 3D converters, the different methods of delivering 3D in cinemas and the availability of 3D TV sets and glasses. As yet, there doesn’t seem to have been anything like the same level of visibility for the impact that moving to 3D will have on the people working in the creative chain. Our work with 3D so far show that this impact is going to be profound, and are going to derail some trends that have been gathering momentum for a while, particular in areas like post production. We’re going to be talking about both the technology and these impacts on workflows a lot on this blog – starting today with the impact of 3D on post production.

Historically, the job of an editor has been to help translate a creative vision into an on-screen reality using some quite complicated tools – first with film, then tape and ultimately computer files. Editors originally had to be able to translate the emotional, sometimes visceral language of storytelling into technical actions in order to represent a true creative vision in the edit, and along the way also developed advanced technical skills used to compensate for problems in the original shot material. This ability to 'fix it in post' evolved over the years to be a godsend for good production teams, and somewhat of a crutch for not-so-good ones...

Dramatic reductions in the cost of editing from Adobe, Apple, Avid and others, coupled the wider adoption of such tools in film and TV courses has over recent years diluted the 'craft' of editing – the perception has grown that essentially anyone with a decent computer can become an editor. While good editing undoubtedly remains a difficult skill to develop, intense pressure on production costs and a desire by some production organisations to move parts of the editing process such as storyboarding and shot selection to other members of the production teams, has meant that there is simply less time allowed for what we have traditionally called "post".

Having spent some time watching an industry veteran (Steve Archbold, who has worked on 3D material at BSkyB) editing 3D material, it is abundantly clear that 3D simply isn’t compatible with that model. Production in 3D is not simply adding depth and foreground to 2D material, it is a very different way of presenting material and one that our brains will take some time to become accustomed to viewing. Poor editing on 2D material will be amplified in 3D, jump cuts will jar considerably more, and standard 2D screen language on presenting key story themes will no longer work.

Many "traditional" creative techniques cannot be used, such as framing protagonists with foreground elements, as this either creates too much stereo depth for the eye to resolve, or means that foreground elements break frame whilst appearing in front of the screen plane, something our brains cannot resolve. This will not only make shooting more difficult as production teams need to learn how to set up new shots, but it will also require the creation of new methods in post-production both to fix problems that cannot be re-shot, and to move towards creating a whole new screen language for 3D. As fixing 3D material is inherently a very technical process as well as a creative one, particularly if 2D material is being corrected, the editor will now need a much greater understanding of 3D spatial details as well as the capabilities of 3D tools for finishing. Whereas in the past, the technical capability of equipment was simply a means of facilitating a creative vision, 3D really blurs the line between technical and creative work.

While this is good news for good editors, it may create a two-class system in post-production if there is widespread adoption of 3D, with only the best funded broadcasters and production companies being able to afford capable 3D-skilled editors. Because getting 3D wrong doesn’t just offend the viewers’ aesthetic sensibilities, but actually physically tires the eyes and brain, there is clearly a significant challenge to ensure that the great creative and entertainment potential of 3D isn’t spoiled because of compromises, inexperience and incorrect choices taken during production and post production. We’re going to be watching and supporting developments with keen interest.

This year should have seen the pilot launch of a new type of local/regional news service, in advance of fuller rollouts in later years. The aim of the Independently Funded News Consortia (IFNC) was in effect to provide a replacement for ITV's regional news service, after Ofcom decided to accept ITV's assertion that the benefits it received from its public service obligations were considerably lower than the associated costs. However, last Tuesday the FT reported that the Conservatives would scrap the IFNC concept, and force an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill that introduced the idea. The Tories claim that a more market based approach would provide a better solution, and we believe that this view is a welcome, refreshing and timely take on local media.

The whole IFNC circus over the past year has been a pretty unedifying spectacle for anyone not believing in public subsidy as the future of media - and it's worth remembering that with so many organisations pushing for revenue from a top sliced licence fee, the amounts of public money involved could be substantial. The plan was to create a patchwork of IFNC regions, potentially with different consortia operating in each region. This approach seems to have missed any serious critical analysis, possibly due to the sheer number of media organisations and their consultants lining up to try to get access to public money, and partly because commercial organisations are generally too busy running businesses without public subsidy.

The fundamental reason for the IFNCs is hardly compelling. Ofcom has argued that local and regional services are highly valued by viewers, which begs the question why ITV are so keen to get rid of them. The whole experience highlights the lack of any significant analysis on what the real value of local and regional services is, and indeed what the difference is between the two. There is a lot of media angst over the loss of local and regional newspapers, but no real assessment of the impact of loss of local news outlets. Perhaps Ofcom would have recommended a very different tack if, rather than doing ITV's corporate strategy work for them, it had focused on two key questions:

• What is the value of local and regional news, and is there a market failure in the provision of those services that may require some public intervention?
• If there is a market failure, then what is the best means of addressing that failure?

The real nub of the issue may be the distinction between local and regional content. One could argue that local news is of very high value in that it may be most pertinent to peoples' lives, be more useful in practical logistics such as travel and may encourage and enable more genuine community building. Good examples of "hyper-local" news are school newsletters, blogs and emails and parish newsletters. The problem of course is that the cost of traditional news gathering and distribution is comparatively high, and the willingness to pay a high, or in some cases any, price for local news is low - and possibly paradoxically, given the level of targeting that might be possible in a local context, it would appear relatively unattractive to advertisers. While I would value some good information about whether the W7 bus service is actually running during heavy snow, I am not going to regularly pay £10 a week for a hyper-local news service which covers that kind of information. There are examples of higher quality local production - Roger Parry in his insightful policy work for the Conservative Party points to examples in Canada, and recent Westminster Forum debates on the issue have highlighted the work of Universities and voluntary organisations. However, it is difficult to see how a voluntary based model is really going to scale in a consistent way that will fill the gap.

By contrast, regional news can tap into more advertising revenue due to the mass-market economics of TV and newspaper advertising but it is arguable whether it is actually of as much value and relevance as local news. Regional news sits in an area that sub-national, so the stories are not major, but well abstracted from most local issues. I frankly don't care that much about local issues in Peckham (or Chelsea or Luton) unless they have national news significance. The existence of regional news may really only be a function of the lack of any decent local news - or indeed it may be the result of the consolidation of news organisations at a regional level for reasons of cost and required efficiencies, as we have seen with Trinity Mirror in the Midlands. In other words, it is a second best solution to demand for some local news, as it is thought to be more commercially viable than pure local news.

So is the market failure that the current economics of news gathering and production are such that we do not get good local (and hyper local) information, and that regional news has emerged as an inferior substitute? If this were the case then the IFNC will be no more successful than its ITV predecessor. Although some of the early discussions have focused on exciting and innovative use of new technology, one suspects that the reality of IFNCs is that they will really be good old fashioned news telly, and as the providers quickly realise the constraints of their budgets then all of the nice but not entirely well understood social media technology will be pushed aside in a frantic attempt to keep making acceptable TV. And IFNC TV production staff will view it the same way that regional news TV staff historically saw it, namely as a stepping stone to national TV rather than a rewarding career in its own right.

So the market failure will remain unaddressed, and worse still we will be in the position where publicly funded organisations are determining what is relevant rather than commercial organisations who have a more direct and intimate relationship with consumers.

But there is an alternative to consider, and one that relies on relaxation of media ownership controls, something that Ofcom and the current government do appear to be seriously considering. Allowing cross-media ownership at a local level would allow the creation of Local Multi Media Conglomerates (LMMCs). Cross media ownership could enable economies of scale for local news and entertainment organisations - the technology is there that would allow radio stations, newspapers and web-based local information sites to share the most costly element of local news production, namely the news gathering. This could allow market driven commercial organisations to deliver local news, information and entertainment without the need for public monies. A LMMC would also be in a stronger position to offer a locally co-ordinated and cross-promoting multi platform advertising market that would be greater than the sum of the whole. Furthermore with location based targeted marketing and review technologies such as www.weezat.com, this could be enhanced through the re-invention of an old form of local marketing - the use of stamps and vouchers. The weezat.com model is a clever one, focusing on people's preferred locale and enabled highly targeted services aimed at encouraging local trade, precisely the sort of function that would be ideally backed and promoted by a LMMC.

Whether the Conservatives fully kill the idea of IFNC, or even present a viable alternative, the time is surely right for more imaginative and market based ideas on how best to deliver local content for a hungry local audience.

Why do so many media-oriented applications, particularly in the broadcast domain, have such awful user interfaces? One answer could be that whilst software engineers in the media technology space are very clever people, and have solved a lot of very hard problems inherent in manipulating, managing and storing video, none of them would ever be hired as UI designers. Many of them wouldn't actually ever be hired as systems architects either - but that's for another day and another blog post...

At times it is almost like there is a button in the design environment called "Make Crappy" that spits out a standard terrible looking Microsoft based interface, preferably in light sludge grey.  Media asset management/content management applications can be singled out particularly for attention - or lack thereof - most of the UIs on MAMs tend to look as if they were added in a couple of weeks at the end of development - when Marketing reminded Engineering that most creative professionals tend to stay away from the command line. Craft video editing applications tend to be better, but then they should be, as they have had substantial user input over the years.

Hopefully this will change.  There have been a couple of good blogs recently that touch upon this, and I would urge people to send these links to as many vendors as they know.

http://www.marketingtechnologydiary.com/2009/11/dam-20-user-experience-p...

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/the-wisdom-of-community/

There has been some progress - BT Mosaic's UI was actually designed by proper designers and it shows, but I do wonder just how good it would look on the 17inch or 19inch screens that are prevalent in most media organisations, as opposed to the glorious widescreen monitors that you see it running on at trade shows. Regardless of this, they deserve credit for realising the importance of providing tools that actually look and work as if they are intended to be used.

Longer term, this issue may naturally fade away. We are starting to see the emergence (or re-emergence) of 'middleware' tools in media technology that naturally separate the underlying engine that carries out tasks like indexing, searching, moving and conforming, and the user interface into which this functionality is exposed.  As an example, BT Mosaic itself is based on this architectural approach, where the underlying engine is a mixture of off-the-shelf components from vendors such as Oracle and Blue Order, and BT's own custom development, coupled with a rich, browser-based user interface. This emerging architectural approach opens up a lot of interesting potential, and in particular raised the question of just how much of a content/asset management system do most users need to see, and how much functionality should simply be accessed by users from within their existing applications, through mechanisms such as plugins.

Adobe is moving in this direction - several applications in the Creative Suite have, or are expected to have the ability to integrate external functionality using Adobe's Flash technology with a technique called Flex Panels. As an example, editors could search for library content, request transfers and even log data from within an Adobe CS5 or 6 UI, with the asset management system being only a back end that deals with requests from the Adobe tool.  This would allow the software engineers to focus on the hard back end stuff and leave the UI stuff to the Mac-heads. 

There are some systems and technologies coming on the market that support this approach - Alfresco is an advanced and feature rich open source content management system for rich media and documents, and is in fact used by Adobe in its LiveCycle workflow suite.  Vidispine is a new entrant offering media enabled middleware, which specifically does not have a UI, but which is designed to be integrated into other systems.  Even the larger Enterprise Content Management vendors, such as OpenText have the capability to support this approach through their adoption of more open technology standards (despite the fact that the Artesia UI was actually pretty decent).

But to be fair, this is not just about engineers.  It is about technology companies understanding their target users and why they buy products.  And one of the best, and graphical explanations of why we need a step-change in thinking and execution in this area can be seen by following this link.

http://www.scottmonty.com/2009/10/why-apple-google-win-and-your-company....

The Advertising Standards Association (ASA) recently announced that they were going to consider investigating eight complaints made against a Marks & Spencer TV ad - the issue being that the combination of (fictional character!) Gene Hunt's comments linked to the appearance of an underwear model were offensive and demeaning to women. The Daily Mash produced quite a brilliant satirical take on this in its "M&S Ad Offensive to Everyone" article.

Ofcom lists the number of audience complaints, although it does not list complaints (excluding those that refer to fairness or privacy) where there were fewer than ten complainants, on their website. The BBC has its own complaints procedures and received a whopping fifteen thousand in September, although entirely separate issues on Nick Griffin and Terry Wogan made it an unusually high month.

All of this has led me to consider the question on when should one take complaints seriously? Is there a statistically significant number that might be considered representative of a significant number of members of the public? Ten complaints hardly seems to be statistically significant (although of course they could just be the visible manifestation of a wider group), but how many hundreds or thousands of people offended should we judge to be sufficient to allow a complaint to be taken seriously? One of the issues with any number-driven complaints procedure is that anyone who is sufficiently cranky, or any public group that is sufficiently organised can have a disproportionately high impact in terms of being taken seriously.

For all the people who get offended by particular language sexual images or religious views, there are usually equal numbers of other people who have no problems with them. However, those views generally tend not to be voiced - hard though it may be to believe, there are those of us who know how to use the remote to switch away from things that offend us. There are even those of us who as parents are prepared to make our own judgements about what we allow our children to watch, rather than relying on those of the Daily Mail. Mainly we don't spend our times complaining, because we have better things to do with our lives than get in a froth about what is on TV. If we don't find anything we want to watch, either because we are offended by language, violence or sex, or because X-Factor is on, then we can always find something to watch from our LoveFilm subscription, Sky+ box, iPlayer or YouTube. And even then if we can't find anything to watch, then we could listen to the radio, read a book, write a blog or maybe even talk to our families.

So basically, we don't have the complaints unit of each broadcaster or Ofcom on speed dial to register constant complaints, because we have choices, and we know how to exercise them. I started getting annoyed with AA Gill's restaurant reviews in the Sunday Times because he seemed to spend less and less time on actually reviewing a restaurant than prattling on about some inconsequential aspect of his journey to get there, or something "The Blonde" said. So now I just skipped the review. Sadly the AA Gill syndrome has extended to other feature writers and now Clarkson seems to forget that generally speaking, a motoring review should actually include some information about the car. But I didn't phone up News International to make a complaint, I just switched to the FT Weekend.

So here is my suggestion - instead of figuring out what is the right number of complaints to take seriously, or how do to counterbalance the sane people with the chronic whingers, why not just get rid of all complaints procedures that relate to offensive material? Bin the lot of them, and let the money currently spent on complaints procedures go back into programming, "offensive" or not. I can see a continued role for dealing with genuine complaints about factually incorrect content or impartiality issues, where an objective arbitration process could be applied. If a person is not capable of changing a channel if they get offended then they should not be taken seriously full stop. For the really seriously offensive stuff, like the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross scandal, the BBC Trust were perfectly capable of responding to the public without the need for a process, and indeed the broadcasters should be trusted to manage this process themselves, because as they surely know,more offended viewers will ultimately mean fewer of them.

Media is not an industry that is known for being polite or even civil to the Tories at times, but Jeremy Hunt made a strong showing at The Media Festival in Manchester last week. This may be as much to do with the rather sensible line that he has been taking, as the lack of any substantive vision or policy from the current government - contrast the innovative, short and sharp-thinking paper on local media companies that Roger Parry produced for Mr Hunt with Lord Carter's stale, turgid and rather lengthy Digital Britain report - very much a product of Labour's over-regulatory approach.

Mr Hunt started with an observation that is highly apparent to those of us who work in technology, but not apparently by media policy makers, namely that the media industry is the technology industry. Whereas Ofcom in the past has wrangled with the issues of new technology platforms and how to extend media regulation, Mr Hunt's point is the opposite - extend the regulatory approaches in the technology industry into media, not the other way around. The implication is that media regulation should be light touch and reward innovation, which is not characteristic of the current regulator (particularly if you are BSkyB). This has got to be good news for the industry, as it means greater freedom to operate, with commercially mind people making decisions based on consumer behaviour.

Mediasmiths are sponsoring The Media Festival in Manchester this week.  The Media Festival is new, this is only its second year, and that freshness is one of the key reasons why we have chosen to support it.  The Media Festival captures two trends that we see emerging in media: the first is the greater emphasis on creative communities working outside of London, and the second is the need for a better understanding of creative production and changing technology.

There has always been a vibrant media scene outside of London, but too often it has been seen as secondary to London or acting as  feeder channel to London based media organisations.  Despite the BBC's past efforts, and maybe because of ITV's, there remains a concentration of money, talent and decision making in London.  It is questionable whether this is a good thing . Some economists may argue that such a concentration of people produces a strong "network" effect , where the proximity encourages more collaboration and the generation of better ideas.  Given the isolation in which many media professionals exist, and social networking technology enabling more virtual communication, this does not sound compelling. More likely is that the people who hold the purse strings like their flats in London, and homes in Oxford a bit too much.