It's not just that they're wildly popular and can be addictive. It's because nature documentaries have at least as much artifice as any studio-produced adult video and maybe more. ("Are these seabirds supposed to be majestic or comical as they enact their mating dance? The music tells us. Whom are we to root for in this interaction of predator...
In fact, reporter Angela Watercutter compares the 15-second-video service old Surrealist game Exquisite Corpse: "The platform, thanks to its duetting and stitching functions, automates a lot of what the Surrealists were doing. It' not exactly an exquisite corpse, since TikTok records the entire genealogy of any given work, and there is a want for continuity with what others have...
"Virtual entertainment is the new cultural center of gravity," Authentic Artists founder and CEO Chris McGarry told Protocol. Authentic Artists has developed a dozen such virtual DJs thus far, and is powering their performances with a custom-built AI music engine that uses a catalog of 130,000 MIDI files to generate performances in real time. The resulting music is being...
Museum docent Howard Hatch started making short videos of him working an old printing press. Soon the museum had more than a million followers on TikTok - WESH (Sacramento)
As a matter of fact, there were so many complaints about the bump in programming for special coverage of the Duke of Edinburgh's death that the BBC had to set up an whole new temporary complaint page. And it wasn't just the main channel. "BBC Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live also aired special programming charting Prince Philip's life,...
In 1992, television wasn't all about the latest competition or race or humiliation reported to the camera. So when The Real World started, it was a shock. Perhaps not as much of a shock - but a choice that has echoed for nearly three decades - is the way the show framed Black cast members. "The show often sacrificed...
The 1991 project was believed to be lost. "But after Tolkien fan clubs urged the broadcaster to scour the archives of its Soviet predecessor, Leningrad Television, workers for Channel Five managed to find the footage last year" - and to put it online for all of us to enjoy in late March. - The New York Times
Chloé Zhao won another directing award for Nomadland, which also won best film on the second night of the mostly online awards. Anthony Hopkins was a surprising win for The Father; at 83, he's the oldest male actor to win a BAFTA. Promising Young Woman and Emerald Fennell also came in for surprising wins, and Youn Yuh-jung's win for...
Zhao, director of Nomadland, is the first woman of color and only the second woman ever to win the DGA award. Though director David Fincher didn't win for Mank, he had a great line: "Directing ... is a bit like trying to paint a watercolor from four blocks away through a telescope, over a walkie-talkie, and 85 people are...
To keep actors safe - and, of course, to cover their own liability - some productions are now employing intimacy coordinators. But contracts can go farther, and the #TimesUp group has suggested that "a so-called 'nudity rider' or 'simulated sex waiver' should be in place before filming begins." - BBC
The easiest part of being an extra, ahem, a background artist, is that you just have to be there. "Being an extra requires no experience, no acting talent and no talking." - Los Angeles Times
The rush of documentaries - they are cheaper to make, and especially if they're true crime, there's a willing and eager audience - has some aesthetic issues. "Cornball fuzzy re-creations lack credibility. ... It doesn’t have to be like this. Plenty of recent shows and movies have made compelling artistic choices that enliven the storytelling." - The New York...
In 2016, 25 queer women characters on TV died on scripted TV and streaming shows. But Wynonna Earp promised to be different. With the choices the writers' room and showrunner made, viewers saw "an acknowledgement of — and a direct rebuke to — a hurtful trope." They rewarded the producer with trust and increased interest. - Los Angeles Times
Ma Rainey, Mank, and others win on the first night of the British Academy Film and Television Arts awards, when mostly the crafts are recognized. - Variety
"After seeing yet another situation where a longstanding Yahoo-owned website is shutting down, I'm left to wonder if the problem is that the motivations for maintaining sites built around user-generated content simply do not favor preservation, and never will without outside influence. How can we change that motivation? Today's Tedium, in a follow-up to the post we wrote...
