Happy Friday and Happy Thanksgiving!
In the spirit of wishing our US readers a Happy Thanksgiving, we'd like to also say thanks to all the fabulous members of the Rerun Team for discussing and sharing their thoughts on the future of TV this year.
Thanks to Ian, Lorna, Philip, Eli, Sarah, Daragh and David.
Let's get straight to it!
Top Pick
Your next TV will pack more than just additional pixels
In celebration of their tenth birthday, Digital Trends have launched DT10: an ongoing series that examines how tech has changed every aspect of our lives, from food to film to dating, over the past ten years â and whatâs to come in the next ten.
The decade from 2006 to 2016 has, undoubtedly, been one in which the rate of development of flat screen TVs has been at a breakneck speed. Who knows where weâll be by 2026? Weâll probably be chuckling at how dated and jaded 2016âs state of the art TVs were by comparison with modern day equivalents; weâll probably look back and wonder why we resisted VR for so long; how we didnât see holographic TV coming down the tracks; why we resisted 4K with 8K already infiltrating our homes.
Future of TV
Scale-hungry Facebook video publishers are in trouble if they don't think long term
For video publishers, the big bucks still lie in TV because of the variety of revenue models available over the long term. While social platforms offer scale and massive, instant audience reach, monetisation is still relatively immature and revenue generation short lived.
And thatâs the ugly truth in the age of Facebook video: publishers that chase quick scale without an eye toward establishing a long-term video business are in for a lot of trouble.
Interactive Media
You can now add data overlays to your GoPro footage
GroPro announced this week that users of its new Hero 5 Black camera will be able to add overlays to footage. Users of the camera will be able to chose icons that detail realtime stats such as speed, altitude and G-force captured in the filming process. The overlays can be edited, moved and resized over the footage through version 2.1 of Quik for Desktop.
GroPro isn't the only camera now in the market offering overlays. However, their inclusion of the feature set highlights the growing and wide spread expectation that creators can include interactive content in their footage.
Why Facebook is winning the 360 platform war
Right now, the leading 360 platforms are Facebook and YouTube. In this article Boundless Reality argue that Facebook is 'way ahead' in terms of audience reach, discoverability, and UX.
It's hard to argue with the first two points, Facebook is the most widely adopted platform in the world. And here at Rerun we totally agree that Facebook's 360 video UX is better than YouTube's, especially on mobile where it really counts.
What's interesting is the guiding role that Facebook now has as the largest 360 video platform. As more 360 videos get shared, viewers are being 'trained' to expect it for certain types of content. Once we hit a certain saturation point any videos of that type that aren't 360 will feel 'broken' and frustrating. It's not a question of if, but when?
Storytelling
Can VR help us understand blindness?
The VR documentary 'Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness' has been receiving a lot of praise, being hailed as one of the first truly great pieces of VR storytelling. It's based on the audio diary of John Hull, who after losing his sight in 1983 began documenting his discovery of "a world beyond sight". The VR experience uses real-time 3D, binaural sound and John's actual audio logs to explore the world of blindness from a unique perspective.
âCognition is beautiful,â Hull wrote, and 'Into Darkness' succeeds because it conveys the vivid interior life of a blind man as proof of full humanity.
You can watch 'Notes on Blindness' for free on Android, iOS and the Oculus Store.
How âRed Dead Redemptionâ lead designer is using VR to change storytelling
'Red Dead Redemption' is often regarded as one of the best video games of the past decade. The immensely detailed world full of memorable characters, storylines and graphics all add up to one of the most lively and appreciated UX experiences for gamers. For game designers, VR is now the next step in narrative and experience development. Christian Cantamessa, the Lead Designer and Writer on 'Red Dead Redemption', believes the conversation for the potential of VR in storytelling is just starting. VR can challenge the flat mediums of TV and film that currently are the tradition of storytelling.
In using VR to revolutionise this tradition Cantamessa asks,
"How do we abandon the film making notion of a 'frame' and move to a notion of an open world that's beyond the frame?".
The answer? Designers must dynamically adapt the current storytelling format to incentivise the audience to look and crave a different engagement from the story being told. Rather than just looking at the same rectangular point of view.
360 video is not ready for prime time
Charlie Fink is one of those rare people in media who has seen and done it all, from production of Disney classics like The Lion King and Aladdin, to over 30 award-winning Broadway shows, festivals and documentaries. He's also been involved with VR since long before the Oculus Rift, and it remains his current obsession.
So what does he think about 360 video? In one word: "meh".
He likens it to the early days of cinema, where people would run out of the theater screaming at the lifelike portrayal of mundane objects like trains. What 360 video is waiting for is its D.W. Griffiths (the creator of cinematic language, for example editing). Someone who will take the industry by storm with a smash hit and define the storytelling language of 360 video for decades to come. In this article Charlie offers his own ideas on how to improve 360 video storytelling.
Cults, chaos, and community: How The Tension Experience rewrote the rules of storytelling
âThe future of immersive storytelling is here; and itâs bloodyâ
Many live, immersive horror theater shows and alternate reality games have come and gone like circus shows coming and leaving town, but Bryan Bishop of The Verge feels that director Darren Lynn Bousman and writer Clint Searsâ LA-based interactive theater piece The Tension Experience has raised the game significantly by making the audience as much a part of the storytelling as possible and encouraging a narrative developed by audience improvisation.
Virtual Reality
Future of the NFL: The virtual, augmented, 3D, 360-degree football experience
In the last edition of Rerun, we spoke about the declining interest of sport amongst millennials. In recent months, the NFL is one sport which has seen progressively declining viewers for its games. It may still be too early to say which or if any particular demographic is dropping out from the NFL's viewership. But the NFL is diversifying the experience of American Football through virtual, augmented, 3D and 360 videos. All things which millennials love!
Utilising VR to revolutionise the ecommerce market
There's little doubt about it: many shoppers still prefer shopping in brick and mortar stores as opposed to shopping exclusively on retail websites such as Amazon; they prefer observing the commodity firsthand and appreciate the opportunity to evaluate items by using all five senses.
With increasingly better graphics and controllability, top online retailers and ecommerce platforms are using VR as a way to make shopping outside of brick and mortar stores more three-dimensional, more immersive and more fun for customers. In May, eBay announced its first ever VR department store, released in association with Myer; in September, Shopify released its first VR app for Windows, available for HTC Vive headsets on Steam.
VR is a long way from offering a full-fledged brick-and-mortar shopping experience from one's living room, but they might just have paved the way for something bigger and better.
Disney Pixarâs Dug the talking dog in real life
At Rerun, we love a good crossover between our digital and real worlds. This short film from Disney brings Dug, the talking dog from 'UP' to life, in a real park with real people.
It's one of the 6000 pieces of content per month that Disney releases to keep a connection to its millennial audience and it's a great example of authentic, relevant and fun content that's sheer joy to watch.