How will the new generation of tablets affect film distribution?
Posted by Edward J Delaney on January 25, 2010 · 5 Comments
In the Spring of 2009, writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab, I made a visit to E-ink, the Cambridge, Mass., firm that has spent a decade trying to develop so-called “electronic paper,” a display technology which at first glance seemed a step backwards from the high-def displays on laptops. But as the CEO, Russ Wilcox, showed me around, he noted that tablets such as the Sony Reader and the Kindle were not computers, they were something wholly different. The e-paper was not backlit, it was reflective, because of that it consumed low power and could last many days on a single charge. It did not flicker, as a computer screen does. Wilcox and his peers hoped the electronic reader would play a role in saving the printed word. You read outdoors, not be tethered to a power outlet and save strain on your eyes.
Apple being Apple, it saw a market niche that it could dominate; word began to circulate in 2009 of an Apple tablet that would compete with these devices, improve upon them, and take away their market.
Writing on Saturday, The Independent’s media editor, Ian Burrell, said,
Nowhere is next week’s launch by Apple of its new tablet device more breathlessly awaited than in the executive offices of traditional publishing houses. For the tablet – or the iSlate or the iPad as it may become known – is regarded as a possible saviour for newspapers, magazines and textbooks.
One of the many speculative mock-ups of the new Apple Tablet, which will be unveiled Wednesday. Let's see how close the real design is to this rendering.
But this week the Apple Corp. will introduce something very unlike the e-paper readers. Its tablet, which early reports say will be called the “iPad,” is, in essence, a really big iPod. It appears by all accounts to be a backlit, power-sucking device that will also deliver high-quality images. That won’t just be text, it will be games, music, apps and, of course, films.
The iPad is only one of a multitude of tablets hitting the market. CES 2010 had tablets being introduced by Dell, Lenoso and Qualcomm, but the iPad is seen as the game changer.
Writing for the Evening Standard in London, tech editor Mark Prigg says,
The iPad — it’s also been nicknamed the iSlate or iTablet, as enthusiasts wait for the company to give it an official name — should also boost Apple’s fortunes in selling films and TV shows, acting as a second TV screen in the home, and opening up the world of true interactive TV. It could, in short, be the ultimate armchair gadget.
So what does that mean to filmmakers? It means potentially repurposing work for the newest phenomenon in viewing.
How many of us are watching movies on iPods? A lot of us, but only occasionally. I watched a movie recently on the train to New York; I watched another during a long wait in a doctor’s office. While talking head docs (I say that lovingly; the film I watched most recently was Gary Hustwit’s “Objectified,” which I thought first-rate) are easy to watch, feature films were not… the screen was too small for truly panoramic cinema.
That means the iPad could make large-scale movies more watchable; it may also mean that docs will gain some advantage on iPods, which will still be the pocket device of choice for people traveling light.
The problems of the iPad involve, primarily, resolution, file size, power consumption and price. My iPod charge lasts far longer than my MacBook, and I’d suspect the iPad will fall somewhere in the middle. That may mean one feature-length film per charge, give or take. Don’t be surprised if Apple has some new battery technology to go with the device, but the gripe on Apple has always been those built-in batteries that aren’t easy to replace, or allow for extras.
The codec for the iPad will need to go to roughly 720p to get optimum visual clarity. That means that file sizes for a film move toward the 2-3 gigabyte range, meaning the IPad will need to have a massive hard drive for anyone to take it seriously as a movie-viewing resource.
That leads to price. A device with big screen, big hard drive, serious battery power and durability won’t be cheap. At CNET, Matt Asay notes,
Apple is a mass-market luxury company. Its tablet is going to fly off the shelves as price-insensitive early adopters buy into its hype. But the mainstream market, which values design but must also pinch pennies, is simply not going to buy into a $1,000 luxury item. It can’t.
The other area the iPad could go would be to completely disrupt the traditional-television grid, in which we wait by our big screens for the shows to be doled out. The iPad could make a significant shift there.
The Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley writes,
Televisions are increasingly linked to home networks and the Web, but remote controls haven’t caught up. Instead of choosing from a short list of shows on a grid, people with connected TVs are searching and perusing vast online libraries of content.
That means YouTube, iTunes and potentially Netflix, if/when it gets a Mac platform.
So what does this mean for documentary filmmakers?
Potentially a device for greater self-distribution potential. The advantage of docs has been that people search for them more by content/topic than by name recognition. That means that like YouTube, searches are topic-based. Shorter docs could match up well to a device that’s as big as a book and much lighter than a laptop; there’s a market of e-reader owners who now feel comfortable reading at bedtime with their Kindles. Maybe the new model will be bedtime viewing.
Match with that something documentary filmmaking has benefited from of late – the DIY/indy vibe that has been beneficial to people such as Hustwit, who has simply taken his work to the people. The iPad/iSlate may help bring a whole new way of looking at how we screen our work, and since it’s Apple in the mix, that shouldn’t be underestimated.
I think the mistake is to think of the tablet as either a scaled up iphone or a scaled down laptop. I don’t think apple would ship something that was primarily either of those – they haven’t so far even though the technology is there and has been for a while. An iphone is great because it fits easily in your pocket – a larger one would just be cumbersome to carry. A laptop without a keyboard is of limited use to most laptop users so unless it was significantly cheaper it wouldn’t sell well (as existing tablet computers show). I think the killer app for a tablet is not content consumption but rather content creation. Check out http://iphonepaintings.com/ to see the kind of artwork people are doing on the iphone now – a larger tablet would be great for this kind of thing. If they release a multitouch-enabled version of iLife the tablet could become a much more intuitive/natural way of managing, editing and creating photos, videos, music, etc. Positioned that way the tablet is no longer primarily a competitor or replacement for a laptop or desktop but rather a companion to your other digital creation tools (cameras, etc). In fact, if they can make it work as a desktop accessory as well it could compete with the high end LCD wacom tablets. They could basically define a new market niche where no current products really sit. I’m sure it’ll be a nice option for media consumption as well – but I don’t think that’s how they’re going to market it.
Well, looks like I was wrong about the way they’re marketing the device… to a point. I was expecting it to be called ‘canvas’ or something similiar with the emphasis on content creation. However, they did spend a good part of the intro on apps like brushes & iwork which go beyond simple media consumption. Now that we know what it really is though I realized I was thinking too narrowly…
Tablet computers have been around for a long time but haven’t been successful – as mainstream computer replacements. Where they have been very successful is in vertical markets, where customers are actually buying the application and the tablet hardware is essentially just a platform to enable that application. With the iPad I think we’re looking at the same model, except that we’re talking about thousands of potential ‘vertical markets’.
As a generel computer user there’s not much about the iPad that interests me – I’ve got two laptops, two desktops and an iPhone which more than cover all the current general uses of the iPad. However, as soon as someone develops a control surface app on the iPad for Color it becomes the least expensive control surface option on the market. Except that it won’t just be specific to color – it can potentially be a mixing interface for your sound app, playback and mixing control for your NLE, graphics tablet for photoshop, etc, all at the same time. It could even potentially be a control device for your camera. I’m sure there’ll be a version of the Cinemek storyboarding app for the iPad, which would be far more convenient both for creating storyboards on the go and for referencing them on site during production – it’s ergonomics make it great for passing around to the crew while you’re shooting. Naturally, it’s also a great way to show your work to others…
Now those are just a few potential ‘vertical apps’ that come to mind – I’m sure there’s plenty more out there. At $500 any one of these apps might be enough for a filmmaker to justify buying the iPad as part of their toolkit. Of course once you have it you can add any of the other apps to it for only the incremental cost of the software, so if one app alone isn’t enough to justify the purchase the combination of 2 or more may be – potentially making it a must have tool for filmmaking. So I still think that the impact of the tablet will be less on the distribution side of things and more on the content production side.
Evan,
All very good points. What we wonder is how many consumers will see this as a great device for watching films of all kinds. Will people sneak away to a coffee shop to sit with this iPad in their laps watching a fairly good-sized, but portable, device?
Ted
Well, two days ago I was working at a trade show. When things got slow we watched videos online – on YouTube, Vimeo and Exposure Room that I can remember. On the flight home yesterday I watched a couple tv shows and a movie on my iPhone – tv shows from the iTunes store, movie ripped from one of my DVDs. I also watched some YouTube videos, thanks to in-flight wifi. This morning I watched a documentary streamed from Netflix through my PS3. Right now I’m catching up on TV shows recorded on my DVR while I was gone. Tonight I’m planning to go see a movie in a theater.
To me, that’s the future of media consumption. Absolutely, people will watch films of all kinds on their iPad – but it’s going to be just one more piece in an ever growing puzzle. As content creators we have to assume that our films will be watched on many different devices in many different places and ways. I believe that means we have to think beyond just how we deliver and what we deliver to – we need to actively think about what we deliver in the context of a fragmented and increasingly diverse viewing landscape. We’ll need to get away from approaching filmmaking as a task with a single finished product and move towards shaping stories so that they can be told in many ways as appropriate for the viewer’s current ‘window’ into them. I don’t think the iPad, any more than another new viewing device, will change that significantly.