Wired reports that hackers “launched a targeted phishing attack against employees of numerous companies in Europe, New Zealand and Japan, which appeared to come from the German Emissions Trading Authority. The workers were told that their companies needed to re-register their accounts with the Authority, where carbon credits and transactions are recorded.”
Don’t you wonder if that scam e-mail was written with childlike grammar and ridiculously bad spelling?
My concern with this heinous crime is the fact that Hollywood will likely become the scapegoat. The popularity of greenwashing villains in hit movies such as Quantum of Solace makes stupid criminals think that all business owners hate the environment (and the government regulations designed to protect it) so much that they’d contrive a complex and expensive method/plot device to keep doing business as usual. Riddle me this, Batman:
- You’re a hacker that tricked a legitimate company into giving you $1 million in carbon credits… how are you going to sell those stolen credits to a greenwashing villain?
- You’re a greenwashing villian that wants to buy some stolen carbon credits… how are you going to “cash in” those credits without getting caught by the various government-backed oversight organizations?
Essentially, criminals believe everyone is as stupid as they are — and believe that the crazy stuff that happens in movies could happen in real life — which means Hollywood will once again become the target of blame and litigation when the hackers’ lawyer will sue Sony Pictures for leading hackers to believe their moronic scheme could actually work.
Lawyers should take a little blame here too as they would have a better case suing over the fact that Quantum of Solace had the same McGuffin as Chinatown.
Tags: Carbon Credits, Carbon Offsets, Chinatown, Goverment, Greenwashing, Hackers, Quantum of Solace
Like Michigan’s tax incentive program for movies needs any more bad press.
If you know anyone at Mind in Motion Productions, you should put pressure on them to do the right thing in this situation.
Tags: Detoit, Michigan, Tax Incentives
Business Week’s latest article on Hollywood’s continued pushback against mail-order DVD rental powerhouse Netflix is a compelling (but frustrating) read for anyone that wants a more ecologically-friendly supply chain for the movie business. Bloomberg reporters Adam Satariano, Ari Levy, and Ronald Grover hint at the dirty secret that many industry watchers already know but don’t like to reveal: Hollywood is a frighteningly closed-minded, monolithic, and paranoid place with an ancient business model… It’s the newspaper business with prettier people or music business with nicer weather.
The news and music businesses’ shrinkage was due to their inability to adapt to the new paradigm in content delivery technologies–the Internet. Rather than buy a technology like Napster, the music industry sued them. When a news outlet like Time Warner bought AOL, they created a walled garden. Consumers either rebelled against or ignored these models and those industries are devastated because of it.
Apparently now it’s Hollywood’s turn to do the same stupid thing. Netflix, the company that’s created the best overall online delivery network to consumers, gets nothing but pushback from Hollywood who still wants consumers to buy movies on environmentally-disastrous plastic discs. Hollywood likes DVDs because they’re cheap to manufacture and they keep 80% of the profits from every disc sold. Even though every Hollywood exec has a computer on their office desks, in their laps on their private jet, and in their hands (by way of iPhone or Blackberry) in the limo everyday, these same execs are completely blind to the fact that those devices are ubiquitous, high-quality, and overall green ways of selling the content they produce.
Netflix Inc. Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos encapsulates this idea perfectly:
“We have to fight against their fear that we’ll destroy the ecosystem. We’re not destroying anything. We’re creating a new opportunity.”
Hollywood on average, is ignoring both the opportunity and the overall reduction of environmental damage that opportunity brings to the table. Shameful.
Tags: AOL, Blockbuster, Bloomberg, Business Week, Content Delivery, Content Producers, Music, Netflix, Newspaper, Ted Sarandos, Time Warner
Seriously, guys… For a cutting edge multi-billion dollar media company that’s pledged to be carbon neutral by 2010 (next year as of this writing), your FOX Green Guide website reeks. The list of Best Practices for filmmakers are categorized by the various disciplines required to make a movie, but click on any three of them to see they’re a repetitive cut-and-paste of infantile “turn off the lights when leaving a room” advice rather than actionable sustainability production measures.
A searchable green “Vendor List” would be useful to green filmmakers if it actually worked. For example, if I’m searching the database for a caterer that is certified green in the Los Angeles area, I shouldn’t get results that include a coffee importer in Vermont and a water cooler hardware maker in Michigan.
What this website needs to give filmmakers, FOX, is links to the tools that make every production more environmentally sustainable. And when filmmakers chose the links they need, your website needs to generate a coherent plan that integrate those tools into the production so that filmmakers don’t have to wade through pages of repetitive “best practices” text.
Hey, I’d pay for that content if FOX offered it… well, until Google indexed it and “stole it” 
Tags: 24, Best Practices, Carbon Neutral, Fox, FOX Green guide
Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) has posted a job listing for a Digital Media Workflow Architect:
This position will provide management for the research and development efforts related to the Digital Backbone effort.
Longtime readers of this blog will recognize SPE’s Digital Backbone project was discussed by SPE Veep for Environmental Sustainability Jon Corcoran mentioned in our interview with him last year. It’s a company-wide project that will gather, index, and store all of Sony’s digital media assets to increase their overall production efficiencies.
It’s not marked as a “green” job per se, but it’s definitely a position that helps overall environmental sustainability efforts. If you’re a movie nerd that also happens to live/eat/sleep digital media workflows this is your dream gig.
After Roland Emmerich wrapped The Day After Tomorrow, he said to himself: “From now on my movies should have a green footprint” (anyone that’s read this blog knows it’s more likely that Sony Pictures told him that first) which meant that his latest introspective little arthouse fave 2012 would recycle sets and props more aggressively than its script would recycle situations, characters, and dialogue from Earthquake, all three Airport movies, those volcano movies in the 1990s, and anything that Irwin Allen ever produced.
Yet somehow, all that recycling didn’t reduce the cost of the movie:
[Emmerich's] producing partner Michael Wimer explained exactly what was done: “We bought carbon offsets, we used biofuel for all of our generators, we recycled our sets, and what we couldn’t recycle we donated to Habitat for Humanity. It was important to us,” said Wimer, figuring these things may have saved half a percent of the cost of the movie, but that wasn’t the point — they wanted to prove that carbon neutrality was possible and not contribute to the destruction of the planet…
…Said the guy whose past couple of big summer movies are all about destroying the planet.
Basically this carbon neutral (and according to San Francisco ChronicleScience Editor David Perlman, completely science free) production has nullified one of the main arguments for getting more studios to adopt green cinema practices: reduced cost. Studios are struggling financially right now and cost is a huge driver for if a movie gets made or not.
What does the studio’s accounting office call the million bucks you project you’ll save by recycling the plywood on your sets and using digital cameras on a movie that costs $200 million? A rounding error.
Environmental sustainability is about using less resources; it’s hard to believe that a $200 million movie used less of anything. Let’s open this one up for discussion:
- Why do you think that 2012 cost so much?
- How would you have used the resources more wisely if you had made 2012?
Tags: 2012, Airport, Biofuel, Carbon Neutral, Carbon Offsets, Disaster, Disney, Earthquake, Habitat for Humanity, Irwin Allen, MGM, Roland Emmerich, Sony, Volcano
The vote was (according to the California Energy Commission’s press release) historic and unanimous, but the language of the new law allows too many existing users of electricity-addicted plasma and LCD TVs to remain a burden on California’s energy grid:
The regulations will not affect existing televisions that consumers already own or the TVs currently on retail store shelves. Stores will not be prohibited from selling existing stock of older televisions after the standards go into effect.
California’s Energy Commission is saying that the millions of inefficient TVs currently on the power grid are allowed to burden the system indefinitely. So when grandma in Tustin keeps her twenty year-old 30″ RCA tube TV tuned to the home shopping channel starting from when she wakes up in the morning at 5 AM and only briefly clicks over to a Matlock rerun just before her 6 PM bedtime, that’s okay with the California Energy Commission… but for the home cinema aficionado wanting to buy a 50″ plasma TV at Costco in 2011? Instant jail-able offense.
Whatever. This is a non-issue anyway since the California Energy Commission points out in their news release that:
More than 1,000 TV models on the market today already meet the 2011 standards and cost no more than less-efficient sets.
So the home theater aficionado already has plenty of choices when it comes to building a green home cinema. This law does not address the real problem: existing inefficient TVs. Nothing is solved by banning the sale of new TV sets; especially since over 1,000 current models from manufacturers already meet or exceed the energy-efficiency standards that California want to enact two years from now.
Obviously California can’t pay grandma to upgrade her old TV right now since their state budget shortfalls are legendary, but they have to do something other than hoping that grandma dies before 2011.
Tags: California, government, Home Shopping Channel, Matlock, policy, Television
At a glance, the news that Sony will deliver their animated hit Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs to Internet-enabled Sony TVs and Blu-ray Disc player before it’s available on DVD is definitely a step in the right direction towards a greener, disc-less movie distribution model.
Now, dig a little deeper: The movie download is not in full HD 1080p resolution (the compression for Internet delivery drops the resolution down to 720p which is respectable but not fantastic), costs around $25, and is a rental–meaning you won’t have perpetual rights to view the movie you paid $25. How many of us that committed to environmental sustainability are willing to pay $25 to rent one movie?
Deeper still: This is a Sony Pictures movie that’s only available on select new models of Sony Bravia TVs and new Sony Blu-ray Disc players. If you have a Sony Bravia TV that’s a few months to a year old, then you’re forced to spend over $1,000 to buy a new Sony TV. Even the best case scenario requires spending over $200 on a new Blu-ray Disc player + $25 for the rental of one movie… during a global recession?
Let’s play a game: Imagine Microsoft bought Viacom a month ago and announced that every new Internet-connected PC with Windows 7, Xbox 360, Zune HD, and new phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 would have exclusive access to rent the Star Trek rebootfor only $25 before it was available on DVD. How loud would the screaming be about the monopolistic business practices of a money-hungry corporation? Wouldn’t we all complain about the high cost of the rental (even though virtually unlimited digital copies should cost less than manufacturing and shipping hundreds of millions of discs worldwide), the limitation of consumer choice, and that the usually brilliant Simon Pegg’s performance as “Scotty” was only marginally more substantive/less annoying than Gilbert Gottfried’s parrot sidekick in Aladdin?
This isn’t much of a pilot program to see if people are going to pay for Internet delivery of movies if you make the barrier of entry too high for consumers to climb over. You don’t need a pilot program to know that Apple and Google have already determined that Internet delivery of video (both paid and ad supported) works. Now it’s time to ditch the disc, movie studios. Either go all out or go home.
Tags: Apple, Blu-Ray Disc, Content Delivery, DVD, Google, HD, Microsoft, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Viacom
Game-changing announcement from big box retailer Best Buy today, claiming that every Web enabled TV set, portable media player, PC, Blu-ray Disc player, set-top box, and mobile phone sold at their stores will be pre-loaded with Sonic Solutions’ software. This software allows any of these devices to stream digital copies of movies (often on the day and date of the DVD release) through CinemaNow. What separates this service from Netflix’s partnership with Microsoft to stream movies on Xbox 360 is the fact that the Sonic Solutions/CinemaNow creates a broad ecosystem of both fixed and portable devices to watch the movie you paid for on any device you own without the need to buy multiple licenses.
Currently, if I have a Netflix subscription I can stream watch a decent library of movies on the Internet to my laptop by installing a Netflix application on my Macbook or PC. If I want to watch that same online library on my Xbox 360, I have to pay the $9 monthly Netflix subscription plus the $8 monthly “Gold” subscription to Xbox Live. The Best Buy deal is a pay as you go $3-$5 per movie rental scheme that works on not only the Xbox 360, but on just about any new laptop/desktop PC, Blu-ray player, most new LCD TVs 40″ and over, smartphone, and any portable media player other than the iPod. Pay your $3 rental fee and you can watch the movie on any one of those devices at any time during the rental period.
From a sustainability standpoint, there are two sides to this idea:
- If the CinemaNow service becomes really popular (which is not hard to imagine since Best Buy has committed to a big marketing campaign for this service), then it will effectively kill off DVDs in the USA. Movie fans will have a 100% digital media distribution system that eliminates the need to expend energy/water on manufacturing and shipping millions of plastic discs. Yay!
- If the CinemaNow service becomes really popular, then the major broadband service providers in the USA (who, unlike relatively small-scale South Korean or Danish broadband providers, must provide services to over 300 million customers spread out over 9 million sq km of land area) will throttle Internet bandwidth on their streaming media users in order to protect their profitable TV businesses. Prices will go up, consumers will revolt, pirates will be emboldened, the movie studios will complain, and the CinemaNow service will be a failure. Boo!
Think about it this way: Imagine that Steve Jobs rode in on his magic unicorn at MacWorld and said: “Oh, one more thing… We’re going to allow iTunes users to rent or buy HD movies and for the price you pay you will able to watch them on every iMac, every iPhone, every iPod, and on every one of our competitors’ devices you own.” Everyone would love it so much that it would cripple AT&T’s wireless network, choke cable Internet traffic in every major city, and be a big nightmare that would eventually cause some kind of government intervention that would screw things up even worse.
Best Buy is in for a rough ride on this one.
Tags: Apple, AT&T, Best Buy, Blu-Ray Disc, broadband, Carbon Footprint, CinemaNow, DVD, environmental sustainability, Internet, iPhone, iPod, LCD TV, Xbox 360
What do you want to hear first?
I’ll give you the bad: Sony Pictures is releasing the ghoulish Michael Jackson docu-concert-rehearsal worldwide today. Avoiding the obvious joke about MJ’s movie being “bad,” the actual bad news comes in the form of universally negative comments directed at Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton’s advertorial piece in the UK’s Times Online newspaper explaining that the worldwide release is a response to increasing movie piracy.
If you don’t want to read the article or the dozens of negative responses around the Web about it, let me sum up:
- SONY: Even though we own Michael Jackson’s music catalogue, we had to pay a lot of money to AEG to get the rights to his tour’s dress rehearsal video. Cutting that footage together, packaging it up so fans will get excited about seeing a once-beloved entertainer way past his prime sleepwalk through a show, and distributing it around the world to cinemas costs a lot of money. To see a return on our investment, we really need you pirates to stop uploading our copyrighted expensive content to bitTorrent for free. Thanks.
- INTERNET COMMENTERS: U R teh rich douchebag, Sony CEO. Cuz tix 4 teh movies R like $100 an ur movies all sux so I wudnt pirate ur movies if they wer good so F U and all ur bad movies!!1!
…or something to that effect.
Obviously this isn’t just a Sony problem; there’s been a disconnect between all studios and the audiences for about ten years now. Ticket prices are comparatively high and an argument can be made that there is an overall lack of quality content. Audiences blame that on the studios but refuse to acknowledge their unwillingness to denounce and shun piracy is a direct corollary to higher prices.
Basic economics anyone?
There’s no magic bullet to kill this beast, but a large part of this problem can be solved with green filmmaking practices and digital distribution. A green supply chain where you have green filmmaking practices in pre-to-post production along with digital distribution encourages a production to be more efficient. This kind of efficiency means lower production costs for the studios and lower ticket prices for the audience. Everyone wins.
Now for the good news: In line with that whole digital distribution aspect of the supply chain, Engadget HD reports that Sony is installing 167 of their top of the line 4K digital cinema projectors in Hollywood Theater cineplexes. Evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but hey… it’s a good start!
Tags: 4K, Digital Cinema, Michael Jackson, Post-production, Pre-production, Sony
