INDUSTRY
Top 10 Rated Streaming Services
Top 10 Rated Streaming Services
Since its genesis in 2007, Netflix has been a pioneering force into the world of streaming services, breaking our tether to the drudgery that is cable T.V. Thus ushering in an era of being able to watch just about anything you want at any time, without the need of a physical DVD or VHS tape and their corresponding device to play it. The introduction of Netflix has opened up a whole new market for viewers and production companies alike with a symbiotic relationship that is still going strong. Where people subscribe to the platform and can watch just about anything when they want, as much as they want, and they can do it from just about any device, anytime, anywhere. Netflix even has a download option so if you expect to have no reception, like on an airplane for example, you still have access to your favorite shows and movies. This also gives Netflix the revenue and relative freedom to create their own shows and movies and to promote them exclusively on their own platform. This can be a good deal for production companies as well because they may feel they have the freedom to explore avenues in their artistic direction that they might not have otherwise, especially under the umbrella that is Netflix.
Netflix being the first streaming platform on the scene has enjoyed a largely unchallenged poll position for the most subscriptions to a streaming platform. Other gargantuan companies soon caught on to the enormity of what Netflix had established and the precedent it had set and decided to jump on the bandwagon and began to put together their own streaming services. Names like Prime Video, Hulu, and HBO Max among others set down the path that Netflix had paved. Netflix, however, had set the bar incredibly high, so for the initial inception of the other streaming services, they were overshadowed for a long time until they developed the connections they needed for their content as well as working out any kinks with their streaming format.
Parks Associates, a reputable video market tracking company, that over the last decade has been reliably keeping tabs on the statistics concerning streaming platforms and its subscribers- Up until 2021 Netflix has maintained its ranking as number one. Prime Video has steadily maintained second place for this duration and Hulu/Disney has reliably maintained 3rd with the remaining positions varying considerably. As of 2022 an upset has occurred according to Parks and Associates- Prime Video has taken the poll position from Netflix, and as it stands the ranking is as follows.
- Prime Video
- Netflix
- HULU
- Disney+
- HBO Max
- ESPN+
- Paramount+
- Apple TV+
- Peacock
- Starz
When Amazon decided to make a streaming service bundled into their membership services it was a stroke of genius. Anyone who pays for their Amazon Prime membership not only enjoys free shipping on most of their orders, but is also granted access to Amazon Prime Video for free, where they have shows and movies available to watch that are included with Prime, while also offering options not included with their membership, but that can be bought or rented. This makes a wider range of available content available, and creates a price range with which people can adhere to as they please. Like Netflix, Prime Video also offers exclusive content that they fund and make themselves. This includes such titles as The Grand Tour with the former Top Gear stars Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May reprising their roles as themselves.
Most notably, and very possibly the reason Prime Video has taken Poll position from Netflix after so many years may be due to their latest production of The Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power. This show boasts the largest T.V. series budget in history by far. The budget reached heights in excess of $715 million dollars, and that’s not to mention the $250 million they paid for the rights to the Lord of the Rings franchise bringing the grand total up to almost $1 billion dollars.
This franchise was popularized by Peter Jackson’s movies that were based entirely off of the works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien and share the same names. Those books and movies have an enormous following, and have set a precedent that to this day has arguably yet to meet its match. The movies, most notably the final installment in The Lord of the Rings movie series, The Return of the King, in 2002 earned 11 academy awards alone. So when amazon prime announced its intentions to make a T.V. series based in the same universe there was some skepticism, however their budget and production development led people to flock to Prime Video upon the release.
Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ all fall under the same umbrella that is The Walt Disney Company, however even standalone they hold the 3rd, 4th, and 6th positions on the totem pole of the top rated streaming services. Hulu has been steadily 3rd in 2019 and 2020, but lost its position as 3rd to its sister company Disney+ for the 2021 year. Possibly in part due to the introduction of the widely successful T.V. series The Mandalorian, a welcome addition to the Star Wars universe in November of 2019, to which the second season aired at the end of October 2020. This among all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not to mention their animated movies and plethora of shows, makes it a contender for the top spot at all time.
We are seeing healthy competition between streaming platforms that begets production of better and bigger movies and shows. The viewers at large remain the judges and will subscribe – or unsubscribe, as they deem fit pertaining to what they want to watch. As movies and shows become relevant or irrelevant it can now be reflected in the streaming services that represent them, and this is reflected in what those streaming services are putting out. The better the content is that the streaming service is making the more subscribers it may garner.
For example, the streaming service Peacock has made incredible strides in the past year concerning subscribers, knocking Showtime off of the leader board completely and taking the 9th position and finally breaking through the threshold in 2022. It’s likely to only rise from there, especially because it not only has movies and T.V. shows, it is largely geared towards live streaming sports. This streaming service has been slowly but steadily making its way to the top of the pole, and now with the World Cup taking place this year along with Premier League Soccer, American Football and the encroaching Super Bowl, it’s likely to increase its users with minimal drop off because of the consistency with which major sports are played and watched, and the game plan that NBCU has laid out.
It’s safe to say that with the developments that streaming services have been making, coupled with new shows, movies, and other content to watch and the healthy competition between them, the top ten list of highest rated streaming services may become more volatile. As more streaming platforms arise and more services become available we may see the rise and fall of many platforms, but only time will tell.
About Vedette Finance
Tarek Anthony Jabre, CEO and Founder of Vedette Finance, continues to syndicate with producer partners, and crew, of the highest expertise and experience in the entertainment industry. For more information, visit www.vedettefinance.com.
Making Movies is Going Virtual
Making Movies is Going Virtual
You may ask, what is virtual production? Isn’t that what we’ve had this whole time? Well, no not really. In the beginning there was film. Like actual, old school film that required a crank and spool in order to record images and where the cutting room floor was an actual place. This kind of technology was the pinnacle of movie making since its introduction in the mid 1800s, and though there were various developments in projectors and recording devices since then, the process remained largely the same and was the primary way in which movies were made. That is, until the digital camera hit the scene in the early 2000s.
At the time digital cameras didn’t exactly measure up to the quality standard that film was cranking out. Many people and experts alike even thought that digital cameras were a fad and weren’t worth the investment, but much like people thought the internet was a fad in the early 90s, they were very very wrong. The potential of going digital was unbounded and those who realized that invested in it, and would ultimately go on to blow film cameras out of the water in every category in just a few years.
With virtual production we are seeing an incredibly similar situation happening that we did when digital production took over film, but now we can recognize the signs and symptoms of the coup d’etat and prepare to embrace it in order to go forth into the unknown and release the true potential of movie making. Virtual production as of now is where the digital world and the real world meet in the middle and create a hybrid of sorts, the term itself covering a wide range of computer aided tools and methods for filmmaking all included under the same umbrella. For now, with digital production, it’s a rather linear process where the visual effects are usually inputed near the end of filming. In general this means that, hypothetically, if a director is making a movie and working with his actors and says, “O.K. I want all of you to pretend you’re in a jungle and you’re running from an enormous boulder.” The actors have to pretend and have to try to envision a giant boulder chasing them with little more to go on, and the director has to pretend along with them and hope it comes together in post production. Whereas with virtual production things are different.
During the virtual production process, virtual and computer generated aspects can be generated in real time before, during and after the actual production which allows for greater flexibility for everyone involved. Terms like motion capture are becoming a staple in the industry allowing an actors body, movements, gestures, features, and expressions to be recorded in incredible details which allow for advanced visual effects (VFX) artists and developers to adjust, animate, or even completely change on a whim. In studios that are set up for it, large format screens are set up that have cameras embedded in them, making the studio walls an interactive high resolution environment allowing for the actors to better delve into their craft with this immersive technology, and for directors to better visualize how a scene may play out and make adjustments as needed. The best part is that we are just barely scratching the surface of what virtual production is capable of. As of now virtual production is a hybrid, a combination of both the virtual and physical world, whereas where it’s heading is towards becoming a new species entirely, a purebred that will take over the whole of the entertainment industry. Relative to how DVDs were a stepping stone from VHS tapes to Netflix, virtual production as of now is only the beginning and a stepping stone to going completely virtual in the near future.
Gargantuan companies such as Disney, Paramount, and Warner Brothers beginning to adopt and even help to further develop the virtual production process is a huge tipping point. When enough studios adopt a process, there becomes a demand for supply, which in turn leads to more manufacturers creating the tech, more people who want to learn the programs and more schools who teach about how it works and how to use it. This leads to further development and at the rate things are going it’s only a matter of time before we won’t need to have physical studios anymore. Much in the same way that movies were physically made with a camera and in order to get the film from your director you had to physically walk over and get it, now media can be transferred with the touch of a button, and it won’t be long before everything is done exclusively with a computer screen.
Why have a physical brick and mortar studio when you can have one with you at all times that can fit into your pocket? Why have studio lights that break when you could have a virtual light that can be moved anywhere in a scene and adjusted to any setting conceivable? Why take so much time and effort to fabricate a physical environment or background that has to be taken apart every time a scene changes when you can make something on your computer that looks better, that can move, and change completely as needed whenever you want? The costs that add up for a physical production far outweigh the money that could be saved and used as an investment into the future of technology. Imagine never having to buy materials to put together a set that will be blown up in the next scene and never used again? Maybe not today, maybe not next month, maybe not even next year, but sometime in the very near future when enough investment in technology, the people who make it, and the people who use it has reached its pinnacle, movie making will be entirely virtual. The process has already begun, it’s only a matter of time before movie making as we know it will change forever.
About Vedette Finance
Vedette Finance, founded in 2012, by CEO and Founder, Tarek Anthony Jabre, is a film development and finance company, with a wide reaching international network of finance and talent. For more information, visit www.VedetteFinance.com
Disney using AI technology and the positive outcome
Disney using AI technology and the positive outcome
Artificial Intelligence, AI for short, is becoming the staple with which studios such as Disney have begun to utilize, launching the world into the realm of science fiction and advancing to the point where the cinematic universe may never be the same. Artificial Intelligence is in essence computers that replicate human intelligence and in most cases can learn and analyze information and learn from experience. AI takes a lot of the human error out of decisions and can be used in everything from missile defense systems, to making art and movies. According to Markus Gross, the Chief Scientist who spearheads the Disney Research Studios division, or DRS, in an effort to be as efficient as possible, AI is even beginning to be used to help streamline the distribution process for movies and other digital products. Making movies the traditional way is becoming a thing of the past due to the strides in developing AI technology, implementing it, and incorporating it into the movie making process.
Markus Gross gave a speech recently about how AI is being implemented in Disney productions. He mentions that Disney has been working towards creating digital humans for the past ten years, the goal being that they are indistinguishable from the real thing with the ability to emote a believable emotional range and depth. Since the advent of motion capture or “mo-cap”, people and technology have been working in tandem to make the unreal seem as real as possible.
One of the first and possibly most notable uses of motion capture implemented was in the second installment of The Lord of the Rings movies The Two Towers released in 2002, where a character named Gollum, a humanoid-like creature who was anthropomorphized by the acting prowess of the now infamous Andy Serkis was brought to life via a motion capture suit. The motion capture suit as the name suggests is a full body leotard with motion sensors all over it that captured Serkis’ every movement and transferred that data to a computer while allowing him to act alongside his co-stars. Serkis’ movements and facial expressions were then applied to a digital rendition of the character capturing subtle nuances in the actor’s performance, expressions, and movements that an artist trying to create the entire character from scratch might have missed, especially upon animation.
Disney and other studios have used and improved upon this technology over the past 20 years and it has been used in blockbuster movies like Avatar, and Avengers Endgame to make the impossible seem possible and even seem real. Characters like Thanos and The Hulk from the Marvel Cinematic Universe who couldn’t possibly exist in real life are brought to the big screen in the most believable way imaginable, immersing the viewers in a story for the ages with technology like the Medusa Facial Capture system developed by DRS. Also used in the newer Star Wars movies and shows, DRS has developed technology that even helps to create believable human eyes. The medusa facial capture system even allows for AI to de-age someone realistically or alternatively age people, and in the context of storytelling this can have some incredible advantages. An actor reprising a role may need to be de-aged, or in order to show the progression of a story through time, a character may need to be aged in such a way makeup may not be able to completely or believably cover. Disney however, is working towards pushing these boundaries even further.
All of this work and effort in creating believable digital humans is important to Disney because they are storytellers. Bringing to life a story that is as believable and real as possible to enthrall and enamor the imaginations of those who watch it and to nurture their creativity is what Disney is all about. The only real way to do that however is through the emotions of the protagonist where the character is relatable to the audience and that requires a depth of emotion that animation has only scratched the surface of. The face is by far the most complex and important way in which people show emotions and relate to one another, and translating that to an animated character is no small feat, however with the development of artificial intelligence we are one step away from making that a reality, and at the rate Disney is going, it won’t be very long at all.
According to Gross, deep learning and AI are being implemented by Disney in order to make an animated human or character that can be directed in real time, where an order can be given verbally to the character and how it should move or which way to walk and it will execute those orders. The implications of which are amazing. It would cut down on so much time and money spent for someone to have to man a computer during a scene and physically change the direction the character is facing and then try to make it walk in a specific direction as realistically as possible. This would take an enormous chunk out of the technical side of animation making the process much more simple and streamlined. Gross even went so far as to imply that something as common as an iPhone can be used for motion capture in conjunction with AI in an uncontrolled environment, stating that the iPhone can make a motion capture scenario with relatively high quality due to the visual data that you can record.
Deep learning, a term by which we measure the incredible progress artificial intelligence has made in just the last decade has, as Gross stated, truly transformed the way movies are produced and will have an even greater effect on digital media in the future. AI and digital media will go hand in hand into this new age of digital and technological development, and with Disney’s research studio working towards newer and more improved ways by which AI is implemented, at the rate things are going even the sky isn’t the limit.
ABOUT VEDETTE FINANCE
Tarek Anthony Jabre began his career in finance, dealing with FX currency trading, portfolio management, and private clients funds. In 2012 he founded Vedette Finance, a film development and finance company, based in Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.VedetteFinance.com