culture – Page 14

It’s “shakeout” time as losses of Netflix rivals top $5 billion

culture, max, netflix, paramount, paramount_, peacock, streaming, syndication / Paul Patrick / December 29, 2023

Not so great for consumers —

Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers.

Anna Nicolaou and Christopher Grimes, Financial Times – Dec 28, 2023 3: 25 pm UTC

The world’s largest traditional entertainment companies face a reckoning in 2024 after losing more than $5 billion in the past year from the streaming services they built to compete with Netflix.

Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Comcast and Paramount—US entertainment conglomerates that have been growing ever larger for decades—are facing pressure to shrink or sell legacy businesses, scale back production and slash costs following billions in losses from their digital platforms.

Shari Redstone, Paramount’s billionaire controlling shareholder, has effectively put the company on the block in recent weeks. She has held talks about selling the Hollywood studio to Skydance, the production company behind Top Gun: Maverick, people familiar with the matter say.

Paramount chief executive Bob Bakish also discussed a possible combination over lunch with Warner CEO David Zaslav in mid-December. In both cases the discussions were said to be at an early stage and people familiar with the talks cautioned that a deal might not materialize.

Beyond their streaming losses, the traditional media groups are facing a weak advertising market, declining television revenues and higher production costs following the Hollywood strikes.

Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed Partners, said Paramount’s deal discussions were a reflection of the “complete and utter panic” in the industry.

“TV advertising is falling far short, cord-cutting is continuing to accelerate, sports costs are going up and the movie business is not performing,” he said. “Everything is going wrong that can go wrong. The only thing [the companies] know how to do to survive is try to merge and cut costs.”

But as the traditional media owners struggle, Netflix, the tech group that pioneered the streaming model over a decade ago, has emerged as the winner of the battle to reshape video distribution.

“For much of the past four years, the entertainment industry spent money like drunken sailors to fight the first salvos of the streaming wars,” analyst Michael Nathanson wrote in November. “Now, we are finally starting to feel the hangover and the weight of the unpaid bar bill.”

For companies that have been trying to compete with Netflix, Nathanson added, “the shakeout has begun.”

After a bumpy 2022, Netflix has set itself apart from rivals—most notably by being profitable. Earnings for its most recent quarter soared past Wall Street’s expectations as it added 9 million new subscribers—the strongest rise since early 2020, when Covid-19 lockdowns led to a jump.

“Netflix has pulled away,” says John Martin, co-founder of Pugilist Capital and former chief executive of Turner Broadcasting. For its rivals, he said, the question is “how do you create a viable streaming service with a viable business model? Because they’re not working.”

The leading streaming services aggressively raised prices in 2023. Now, analysts, investors and executives predict that consolidation could be ahead next year as some of the smaller services combine or bow out of the streaming wars.

Warner, home to HBO and the Warner Bros movie studio, has made a small profit at its US streaming services this year, in part by raising prices, aggressively culling some series and licensing others to Netflix. However, this has come at a price: Warner lost more than 2 million streaming subscribers in its two most recent quarters.

The company, which merged with rival Discovery last year, has long been rumored as a potential takeover candidate, with Comcast seen as the most likely buyer. But Zaslav in November hinted that his group wanted to be an acquirer instead of a target.

“There are a lot of . . . excess players in the market. So, this will give us a chance not only to fight to grow in the next year, but to have the kind of balance sheet and the kind of stability . . . that we could be really opportunistic over the next 12 to 24 months,” he said on an earnings call.

The terms of the Warner-Discovery merger barred the group from dealmaking for two years. That period expires on April 8.

Disney, the largest traditional media company, is in the midst of a gutting restructuring that has featured 7,000 job cuts and attacks from activist investors. It lost more than $1.6 billion from its streaming businesses in the first nine months of 2023, during which its Disney+ service gained 8 million subscribers. The company says it will turn a profit in streaming in late 2024.

Bob Iger, Disney chief executive, this year openly pondered whether some of its assets still fit within the company, prompting speculation that he was considering disposals. But no deals emerged, leading some investors to conclude there is little appetite among private equity or tech companies for acquiring legacy businesses.

Paramount’s shares have risen almost 40 percent since early November as sale speculation mounted. The stock rose sharply after the Skydance talks were reported, but both Paramount and Warner shares fell after news of their discussions came to light.

Analysts said the two companies’ high debt levels were an immediate concern for investors. “We suspect investors will focus on pro forma leverage above all else,” Citi analysts wrote in a note last week. They estimated that an all-stock combination of Warner and Paramount could yield at least $1 billion of synergies.

But Greenfield said merging two companies with lossmaking streaming services and large portfolios of declining television assets was not the answer to their problems.

“The right answer should be, let’s stop trying to be in the streaming business,” he said. “The answer is, let’s get smaller and focused and stop trying to be a huge company. Let’s dramatically shrink.”

It’s “shakeout” time as losses of Netflix rivals top $5 billion Read More »

You’ll be paying extra for ad-free Prime Video come January

Amazon Prime, business, culture, prime video, streaming services / Paul Patrick / December 28, 2023

might want to level up —

Subscribers will have to opt-in to a pricier ad-free plan.

Jennifer Ouellette – Dec 27, 2023 4: 26 pm UTC

Amazon Prime Video

Amazon confirmed today in an email to Prime members that it will begin showing ads alongside its streaming Prime Video content starting January 29, 2024. The price will remain the same, but subscribers who don’t wish to see any ads will have to pay an additional $2.99 per month on top of their monthly or yearly Amazon Prime subscription. The change was first reported back in September.

“Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements,” Amazon wrote in an email sent to Amazon Prime subscribers. “This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership.”

Subscribers who want to avoid ads can sign up for the extra monthly fee at the Prime Video website.

Prime Video isn’t the only streaming platform looking to increase revenues via ad-supported tiers and price hikes in a challenging economic environment: both Disney+ and Netflix, among others, have hiked their prices in recent months. HBO Max, Peacock, and Paramount+ all introduced lower-priced ad-supported options, and Netflix launched an ad-supported tier last year for $6.99 per month.

Netflix did recently grant subscribers an ad-free episode for every three episodes watched, as well as downloadable content. However, this was apparently designed to help advertisers “[tap] into the viewing behavior of watching multiple episodes in a row,” per the November Netflix announcement.

Disney+ and the Disney-controlled Hulu increased prices starting in October. The ad-free tier of Disney+ rose from $11 to $14 a month, while ad-free Hulu increased from $14 to $18 a month. Both services are also offered together for $20 a month, and the ad-supported tiers maintained their current pricing; both strategies seem intended to drive viewers to either sign up for multiple services or drop down to an ad-supported tier. This is the second price hike for both services in the last calendar year.

Apple TV+ announced monthly price hikes for several online services in October, including its catchall Apple One subscription service in October. Apple TV+ jumped from $6.99 to $9.99 per month, while Apple Arcade went from $4.99 to $6.99 monthly. Apple News+ used to cost $9.99 per month, but now it’s $12.99. “Raising these prices helps Apple stay attractive to shareholders even amidst the tricky economic context—or at least it will if consumers agree to keep paying,” Ars Senior Editor Sam Axon wrote at the time. “Raising prices too much could drive customers away; Apple seems to be betting that that will not be the case this time.”

You’ll be paying extra for ad-free Prime Video come January Read More »

Film Technica: Our favorite movies of 2023

best of 2023, culture, end of year content, Entertainment, Features, films / Paul Patrick / December 26, 2023

Warning: Although we’ve done our best to avoid spoiling anything too major, please note this list does include a few specific references to several of the listed films that some might consider spoiler-y.

It’s been an odd couple of years for film as the industry struggles to regain its footing in the wake of a devastating global pandemic, but there are reasons to be optimistic about its future, both from a box office and variety standpoint. This was the year that the blockbuster superhero franchises that have dominated for more than a decade finally showed signs of faltering; the Marvel and DC Universe releases this year were mostly fine, but only one (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) made our 2023 year-end list. There were just so many of them, one after the other, adding up to serious superhero fatigue.

We still love our blockbusters, of course. This was also the summer of “Barbenheimer,” as audiences flocked to theaters for the unlikely pairing of Barbie and Oppenheimer, breaking a few box office records in the process. It was also a good year for smaller niche fare—including two re-imaginings of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—as well as a new film from the legendary Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon).

As always, we’re opting for an unranked list, with the exception of our “year’s best” vote at the very end, so you might look over the variety of genres and options and possibly add surprises to your eventual watchlist. We invite you to head to the comments and add your favorite films released in 2023.

D&D: Honor Among Thieves.” height=”426″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/dungeons1-640×426.jpg” width=”640″>

Enlarge / Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez star as Elgin (a bard) and Holga (a barbarian) in D&D: Honor Among Thieves.

Paramount Pictures

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Over two decades later, I am still a bit bitter about paying good money to see the 2000 Dungeons and Dragons movie with a group of friends on opening night. To this day, we’ll still parody Empress Savina dramatically proclaiming something along the lines of “I declare all people equal!” at the end of the movie (spoilers for a decades-old bad movie, I guess). Honor Among Thieves didn’t have a high bar to clear to wash the taste of that horrible adaptation out of my mouth. So it was nice to find that this new take on the D&D world leapt miles over that bar with a madcap, character-driven adventure that would be the envy of many a dungeon master.

While Honor Among Thieves drops in a few references to familiar D&D items and creatures (hi, owlbears!), the movie wisely realizes that it can’t lean on those references to make an interesting movie. Instead, it uses D&D’s class system as the basis for some broad, trope-y characters to get thrown into an unlikely partnership. Chris Pine’s winning take on a bard is the driving force here, but Michelle Rodriguez’s barbarian and (an underutilized) Regé-Jean Page’s paladin steal plenty of scenes by really hewing true to their characters’ alignment chart.

The plot won’t win any awards for originality or surprise, but that character work and some well-paced action set pieces make this a thrilling family adventure, even for those who’ve never touched a D&D character sheet.

—Kyle Orland

Film Technica: Our favorite movies of 2023 Read More »

PAX Unplugged 2023: How indie devs build and sell new board games

ars cardboard, culture, Features, gaming, PAX, pax unplugged, Role-Playing Games, RPG, Tabletop, tabletop games, tabletop gaming, ttrpg / Mike M. / December 24, 2023

PAX Unplugged 2023 —

Tabletop is bigger than ever. What’s it like trying to get your game out there?

Kevin Purdy – Dec 23, 2023 1: 00 pm UTC

“You don’t want Frenzy. Frenzy is a bad thing. It might seem like it’s good, but trust me, you want to have a blood supply. Frenzy leads to Consequences.”

It’s mid-afternoon in early December in downtown Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Convention Center, and I’m in the Unpub room at PAX Unplugged. Michael Schofield and Tim Broadwater of Design Thinking Games have booked one of the dozens of long card tables to show their game Corporate Vampire to anybody who wants to try it. Broadwater is running the game and explaining the big concepts while Schofield takes notes. Their hope is that after six revisions and 12 smaller iterations, their game is past the point where someone can break it. But they have to test that disheartening possibility in public.

I didn’t expect to spend so much of my first PAX Unplugged hanging around indie game makers. But with the tabletop industry expanding after some massive boom years, some Stranger Things and Critical Role infusions, and, of course, new COVID-borne habits, it felt like a field that was both more open to outsiders than before and also very crowded. I wanted to see what this thing, so big it barely fit inside a massive conference center, felt like at the smaller tables, to those still navigating their way into the industry.

Here are a few stories of parties venturing out on their own, developing their character as they go.

How much vampire influence is too much?

Corporate Vampire (or “CorpVamp”) has been in the works since summer 2022. The name came from an earlier, more Masquerade-ish idea of the game, in which you could take over a city council, build blood banks, and wield political influence. But testing at last year’s Unplugged, and the creators’ own instincts, gradually revealed a truth. “People really like eating other people,” Schofield says.

Along with input from game designer Connor Wake, the team arrived at their new direction: “More preying, more powers that make players feel like mist-morphing badasses, more Salem’s Lot, less The Vampire Lestat.”

By the end of the weekend, they’ll have taken up a playtester’s naming suggestion: Thirst. But for now, the signs all say CorpVamp, and the test game is a mixture of stock and free-use art, thick cardboard tiles, thin paper tokens, glossy card decks, generic colored wooden cubes, and a bunch of concepts for players to track—perhaps too many.

Hand-cut tokens and make-do squares for an early version of <em>Thirst</em>.” height=”960″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/IMG_3964-Large.jpeg” width=”1280″></img><figcaption>
<p>Hand-cut tokens and make-do squares for an early version of <em>Thirst</em>.</p>
<p>Kevin Purdy</p>
</figcaption></figure>
<p>The way <i>CorpVamp</i>/<i>Thirst</i> should go is that each night, a vampire wakes up, loses a little blood, then sets out to get much more back by exploring a Victorian city. In populated neighborhoods, a vampire can feast on people—but doing so generates a board-altering Consequence, such as roving security guards or citizens discovering bodies. Vampires accumulate victims and hypnotize them for Influence, depending on who the victims are (“Judge” versus “Roustabout,” for example), turn them into “Baby Vampires,” or simply keep them as blood stock. You win by accruing victory points for various misdeeds and achievements.</p>
<p>One player, who told the designers that a different game’s play-test saw him “break the game in 10 minutes,” seemed bothered by how Consequences can be triggered by a single player’s actions but affect all players. Another has a hard time keeping track of the tokens for influence, movement, and blood, and when to move them on and off the board. That’s called “mess testing,” Schofield tells me, and he’s working on it. Some things will be easier to learn and use when the pieces have better designs and materials. But the <i>CorpVamp</i> team can’t jump to that stage until the mechanics are locked down.</p>
<p>As that group finishes a test, another group sits down immediately, having stood nearby to ensure their chance. Schofield and Broadwater won’t lack for players in their three-hour slot. That tells the team there’s “evidence of a market,” that their game has “stopping power” and “shelf value,” despite its obscurity, Schofield says. But there’s lots of work still to be done in alpha. “The costs of powers are too high, the powers aren’t <i>badass enough</i> [emphasis his], and the tactile movement of placing cubes and flipping tokens isn’t quite right,” he later tells me.</p>
<p>After more iterations and some “blind” play tests (players learning, playing, and finishing the game without creator guidance), the game will be in beta, and the team will get closer to pinning down the look and feel of the game with illustrators and designers. Since their schedules only afford them roughly three hours of dedicated collaboration time every week, they lean on what they’ve learned from their product-oriented day jobs. “Frequent iterations and small feedback loops will iron things out,” Schofield says. “Process wins.”</p>
<p>Then they can “enjoy the problems of production and distribution logistics.” After that, “We’ll sell copies of <i>Thirst</i> at the next PAX Unplugged.”</p>
<figure><img decoding= — Kevin Purdy

“Don’t do miniatures for your first version”

I played a few different games at PAX Unplugged that were at various stages before publication. One called WhoKnew? was on its second year at the conference. The first year was simply designer Nicholas Eife tagging along at a friend’s booth, bringing only a piece of paper and asking people who wandered by if they thought a trivia game based on the origins of idioms would work. This year, there was an actual table and a vinyl sign, with an early-stage board and trivia cards laid out.

I drew the phrase “The whole nine yards” and I chose “British Artillery” as its origin. Eife congratulated me (The length of a Vickers machine gun’s ammo belt as the origin of the phrase is far from a solved matter, but I will not concede my point.) I asked the designer what state the game will be in next year. “I guess we’ll have to see,” he said, displaying the slight grin of a person working entirely within their own timeline on a purely passion-driven project. It was almost uncomfortable, this calm, patient demeanor amidst the murmuring chaos of the show floor.

An Indie Game Alliance member demonstrates “Outrun the Bear” at the IGA booth at PAX Unplugged 2023

Indie Game Alliance

Perhaps looking for a less idyllic counterpoint, I asked Matt Holden, executive director of the Indie Game Alliance, what it’s typically like for new game makers. For a monthly fee, the Alliance provides game makers with tools typically reserved for big publisher deals. That includes international teams for demonstrating your game, co-op-style discounts on production and other costs, connections to freelancers and other designers, and, crucially, consulting and support on crowdfunding and game design.

Holden and his wife Victoria have been running the Alliance for more than 10 years, almost entirely by themselves. At any given time, the Alliance’s 1,800-plus current and former members have 30-40 Kickstarters or other crowdfunding campaigns going. Crowdfunding is all but essential for most indie game makers, providing them working capital, feedback, and word-of-mouth marketing at the same time. Holden can offer a lot of advice on any given campaign but has only one universal rule.

“Don’t make miniatures for your first version of your game, no matter how big your campaign is getting. Just don’t do it,” Holden said, then paused for a moment. “Unless you worked for a company that made miniatures, and you’re an expert on them, then go ahead. But,” he emphasized, “miniatures are where everyone gets stuck.”

Has the burgeoning interest in tabletop and role-playing changed how indie games get made, pitched, and sold? Holden thinks not. The victories and mistakes he sees from game makers are still the same. Games with unique and quirky angles might have more of a chance now, he said, but finding an audience is still a combination of hard work, networking, product design, and, of course, some luck.

An IGA member demonstrates <em>Last Command</em> at PAX Unplugged 2023″ height=”1928″ src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/iga2-scaled.jpg” width=”2560″></img><figcaption>
<p>An IGA member demonstrates <em>Last Command</em> at PAX Unplugged 2023</p>
</figcaption></figure>
<p>“I can’t tell somebody what’s going to guarantee their [crowfunding] campaign works. Nobody can,” Holden said. “But you do enough of them, and you see the things that the campaigns that work, and those that don’t, have in common.”</p>
<p>Patience would seem to be one of them. As I sat talking to Holden at the Alliance’s booth, game demo volunteers gently interrupted to ask for advice or the whereabouts of some item for their table. Putting in the time at conventions, game stores, and friends’ tables, testing and demonstrating, is critical, Holden said, and it’s a big part of what the Alliance helps newcomers coordinate.</p>
<p>I later traded emails with Eife of <i>WhoKnew</i> (a title that also seems to be in flux). He was eager to tell me that, after two weeks of conventions, including PAX Unplugged, the feedback and enthusiasm “gave us that boost of confidence and the desire to push.” So he and his team “put our nose to the grindstone and immediately started making corrections and changes.”</p>
<p>I realized, at some point over that weekend, that I’d been holding onto an idea about board game success that was dated, if not outright simplistic. I’d held out the story of <a href= — Cassi Mothwin, working the +1EXP booth at PAX Unplugged 2023

Cassi Mothwin

Cassi Mothwin, working the +1EXP booth at PAX Unplugged 2023

Cassi Mothwin

PAX Unplugged 2023: How indie devs build and sell new board games Read More »

Debt-laden Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount consider merger

culture, max, movies, paramount, paramount plus, streaming, Tech, TV, warner bros. discovery / Rejus Almole / December 21, 2023

Game of Thrones — Enlarge / Media firms are looking for allies to help them take the coveted media throne.

The CEOs of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Paramount Global discussed a potential merger on Tuesday, according to a report from Axios citing “multiple” anonymous sources. No formal talks are underway yet, according to The Wall Street Journal. But the discussions look like the start of consolidation discussions for the media industry during a tumultuous time of forced evolution.

On Wednesday, Axios reported that WBD head David Zaslav and Paramount head Bob Bakish met in Paramount’s New York City headquarters for “several hours.”

Zaslav and Shari Redstone, owner of Paramount’s parent company National Amusements Inc (NAI), have also spoken, Axios claimed.

One of the publication’s sources said a WBD acquisition of NAI, rather than only Paramount Global, is possible.

Talks to unite the likes of Paramount’s film studio, Paramount+ streaming service, and TV networks (including CBS, BET, Nickelodeon, and Showtime) with WBD’s Max streaming service, CNN, Cinemax, and DC Comics properties are reportedly just talks, but Axios said WBD “hired bankers to explore the deal.”

It’s worth noting that WBD will suffer a big tax hit if it engages in merger and acquisition activity before April 8 due to a tax formality related to Discovery’s merger with WarnerMedia (which formed Warner Bros. Discovery) in 2022.

A union of debts

Besides the reported talks being in very early stages, there are reasons to be skeptical about a WBD and Paramount merger. The biggest one? Debt.

The New York Times notes that WBD has $40 billion in debt and $5 billion in free cash flow. Paramount, meanwhile, has $15 billion in debt and a negative cash flow. Zaslav has grown infamous for slashing titles and even enacting layoffs to save costs. But WBD is eyeing greener pastures and declared Max as “getting slightly profitable” in October. Adding more debt to WBD’s plate could be viewed as a step backward.

Additionally, Paramount is even more connected to old, flailing forms of media than WBD, as noted by The Information, which pointed to two-thirds of Paramount’s revenue coming from traditional TV networks.

Antitrust concerns could also impact such a deal.

WBD stocks closed down 5.7 percent, and Paramount’s closed down 2 percent after Axios’ report broke.

Of course, these details about a potential merger may have been reported because WBD and/or Paramount want us to know about it so that they can gauge market reaction and/or entice other media companies to discuss potential deals.

Debt-laden Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount consider merger Read More »

Restored 478-key, 31-tone Moog synthesizer from 1968 sounds beautifully bizarre

Cornell, cornell university, culture, david rothenberg, electronic music, experimental music, moog, moog synthesizers, robert moog, synthesizers, Tech / Rejus Almole / December 19, 2023

You know that new sound you’re looking for? —

Cornell staff finish the job with new technology but keep Moog’s work in place.

Kevin Purdy – Dec 19, 2023 6: 24 pm UTC

Shadowed photo of the Moog-Rothenberg keyboard — Ryan Young/Cornell University

Mathematician and early AI theorist David Rothenberg was fascinated by pattern-recognition algorithms. By 1968, he’d already done lots of work in missile trajectories (as one did back then), speech, and accounting, but he had another esoteric area he wanted to explore: the harmonic scale, as heard by humans. With enough circuits and keys, you could carve up the traditional music octave from 12 tones into 31 and make all kinds of between-tone tunes.

Happily, he had money from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and he also knew just the person to build this theoretical keyboard: Robert Moog, a recent graduate from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who was just starting to work toward a fully realized Moog Music.

The plans called for a 478-key keyboard, an analog synthesizer, a bank of oscillators, and an impossibly intricate series of circuits between them. Moog “took his time on this,” according to Travis Johns, instructional technologist at Cornell. He eventually delivers a one-octave prototype made from “1960s-era, World-War-II-surplus technology.” Rothenberg held onto the keyboard piece, hoping to one day finish it, until his death in 2018. His widow, Suhasini Sankaran, donated the kit to Cornell in 2022.

Because of that noble garage-cleaning, there now exists a finished device, one that has had work composed and performed upon it: the Moog-Rothenberg Keyboard.

Cornell’s telling of the Moog-Rothenberg keyboard, restored by university staff and students.

The project didn’t start until February 2023, partly because of the intimidating nature of working on a one-of-a-kind early synth prototype. “I would hate to unsolder something that was soldered 50 years ago by Robert Moog,” Johns says in the video.

Johns and his students and staff at Cornell sought to honor the original intent and schematics of the device but not ignore the benefits of modern tech. Programmable micro-controllers were used to divide up an 8 MHz clock signal, creating circuits with several octaves of the same note. Those controllers were then wired, laboriously, to the appropriate keys.

Original designs for the Moog-Rothenberg keyboard.

Ryan Young/Cornell University
Travis Johns works on some of the newer pieces of the restored (or replicated) Moog-Rothenberg keyboard.

Ryan Young/Cornell University
Switches and microcontrollers for the fully realized keyboard.

Ryan Young/Cornell University
A bit closer up with some of the original wiring for the one-octave prototype Moog prepared in the late 1960s.

Ryan Young/Cornell University
Even closer to those circuits and keypads.

Ryan Young/Cornell University

As Johns notes, it’s hard to categorize the synthesizer now as the original object, a re-creation, or a “playable facsimile” of a planned device. It’s also a particularly strange instrument. His team followed every mathematical and electrical detail of the original plans but found that the keyboard took on “a life of its own,” creating unusual timbres, resonances, and even volumes as soundwaves synchronized and fell away. This is, of course, the kind of thing Rothenberg originally hired Moog to make possible.

By October, the 31-tone synth was ready to play some music. Cornell professors Xak Bjerken and Elizabeth Ogonek performed and composed for it, respectively, and they were joined by members of Cornell’s EZRA quartet, themselves no stranger to strange instruments and new styles. Bjerken described his set as “bluegrass meets experimental improvisation.”

You can certainly hear the experimental come through in bits of the performance captured by Cornell. Ogonek manually controlled the instrument’s filters during the concert to create sustained tones. It requires more than two hands to control the output of 478 keys. The synthesizer now resides in Cornell’s Lincoln Hall for the Department of Music.

Restored 478-key, 31-tone Moog synthesizer from 1968 sounds beautifully bizarre Read More »

The future of Arrakis is at stake in latest trailer for Dune: Part Two

culture, denis villeneuve, Dune: part 2, Entertainment, film trailers, Frank Herbert, Timothée Chalamet, Trailers, Warner Bros. / Paul Patrick / December 12, 2023

“You are not prepared for what is to come” —

“This is a form of power that our world has not yet seen.”

Jennifer Ouellette – Dec 12, 2023 10: 19 pm UTC

Dune: Part Two is the next chapter in director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s celebrated novel.

We didn’t get to see Dune: Part Two—the second film in director Denis Villeneuve’s stunning adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic—last month as originally planned since the film’s November release was delayed until next March due to the Hollywood strikes. But Warner Bros. doesn’t want us to completely forget about Dune in the meantime, so it dropped another trailer for the holiday season.

(Spoilers for Dune: Part One below.)

As reported previously (also here and here), Herbert’s novel Dune is set in the distant future and follows the fortunes of various noble houses in what amounts to a feudal interstellar society. Much of the action takes place on the planet Arrakis, where the economy is driven largely by a rare, life-extending drug called melange (“the spice”). Melange also conveys a kind of prescience and makes faster-than-light travel practical. There’s betrayal, a prophecy concerning a messianic figure, giant sandworms, and battle upon battle as protagonist Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) contends with rival House Harkonnen and strives to defeat the forces of Shaddam IV, Emperor of the Known Universe.

Part One‘s finale left Paul and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), presumed dead in the harsh desert of Arrakis, having fled their home when Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) betrayed the Atreides family and killed Paul’s father, Leto (Oscar Isaac). They were taken in by the Fremen, the planet’s native inhabitants, who include Chani (Zendaya), a girl appearing in Paul’s dreams/visions.

All the surviving principles from Part 1 reprise their roles in Part 2: Chalamet, Zendaya, Ferguson, Skarsgård, Javier Bardem as Stilgar, Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck, Dave Bautista as Glossu Rabban Harkonnen, Charlotte Rampling as the Reverend Mother Mohiam, and Stephen McKinley Henderson as Thufir Hawat. New cast members include Christopher Walken as Shaddam IV, emperor of House Corrine; Florence Pugh as his daughter, Princess Irulan; Austin Butler as Harkonnen’s younger nephew, Feyd-Rautha, the presumed heir on Arrakis; Lea Seydoux as Lady Margot, a Bene Gesserit who is close with the Emperor; and Souheila Yacoub as a Fremen warrior named Shishakli.

Love blooms between Paul and Chani in the midst of pending war.

YouTube/Warner Bros.
Paul is having recurrent nightmares.

YouTube/Warner Bros.
Christopher Walken plays Shaddam IV, Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe and head of House Corrino.

YouTube/Warner Bros.
Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen does love his knives.

YouTube/Warner Bros.
Florence Pugh plays the Emperor’s daughter, Princess Irulan.

YouTube/Warner Bros.
Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), Paul’s mother.

YouTube/Warner Bros.
“Silence!” Paul is starting to come into his power.

YouTube/Warner Bros.
Beware of sandworms!

YouTube/Warner Bros.

The first trailer dropped in May after being unveiled in an exclusive sneak peek during CinemaCon in Las Vegas. The highlight was a sequence showing Paul’s first ride on a sandworm. It’s a major rite of passage in Fremen culture, and the scene demonstrates that, in Part 2, Paul is well on his way to becoming Muad’Dib, prophet of the Fremen. A second trailer arrived in June, showing Paul offering to fight with the Fremen against their common enemy, though not everyone welcomes his inclusion. We also saw a reunion with Halleck; Shaddam IV learning that Paul is still alive; Feyd-Rautha’s lethal knife-fighting skills; and love blooming between Paul and Chani.

That love story is a major focus of this latest trailer after two that mostly highlighted the war for the future of Arrakis. The trailer opens with Paul having one of his recurring nightmares and Chani comforting him. He can only remember fragments but later tells Chani that he sees “possible futures all at once. And in so many futures, our enemies prevail.” He said, “There is a narrow way through.” Meanwhile, the Emperor orders assassins to “deal with this prophet.” One person who might get the job done is Feyd-Rautha, described as psychotic as we see him staring someone down while licking a sharp curved blade and brutally stabbing an opponent in an arena while a crowd cheers wildly.

There’s a fantastic battle scene involving Fremen warriors riding sandworms, and we catch a glimpse of the darker side of Paul when he screams “Silence!” after Mother Mohian asks him to carefully consider his planned course of action. Despite the war, he vows to love Chani “as long as I breathe.” She claims he will never lose her “as long as you stay who you are.” But fans of the books know that the romance has its complications, and given one new cast member in particular, we can expect to see the beginnings of those complications.

Dune: Part Two hits theaters on March 1, 2024.

Listing image by YouTube/Warner Bros.

The future of Arrakis is at stake in latest trailer for Dune: Part Two Read More »

Exploring the World of Live XR Theater

art, Art & Culture, culture, extended reality, featured, theater, virtual reality / Rejus Almole / August 9, 2023

The last three years may feel as though they’ve gone by pretty quickly. A few short years ago, we were seeing an explosion of interest and production in XR theater and live virtual entertainment. The pandemic meant that a lot of theaters were empty, creating a strong need for audiences and entertainers alike.

Now it’s 2023. Theaters are open again. But, that doesn’t mean that XR theater has gone anywhere. Far from being a temporary fix to string us through an isolated event, live VR entertainment is stronger than ever. It remains a way to explore new avenues of storytelling and even bring new audiences into traditional entertainment venues.

Understanding Immersive Theater

Before we dive in, a quick clarifying note may be required. While some readers will hopefully come from a theater background, most readers are likely more familiar with XR terminology so one particular term might be confusing.

When ARPost describes an experience as “immersive,” we’re usually talking about a 3D virtual environment that is spatially explored either by physical movement in augmented or mixed reality, or through spatial navigation in virtual reality. However, XR does not have a monopoly on the word.

“Immersive theater” is a term from the live entertainment world that far predates XR and XR theater. In this form of immersive theater, participants converse with actors, manipulate props, and physically move through sets that might take up an entire building. While the pandemic played a part in the growth of XR theater, its roots are in immersive theater.

“Due to our familiarity with the genre of immersive theatre, and some of our team members had prior experience performing in and being audience members in VR theatre shows, the transition from in real life (IRL) to VR was very natural,” Ferryman Collective founding member Stephen Butchko told ARPost.

Ferryman Collective, one of the premiere production companies in XR theater, was founded during the pandemic but its founding members had already been performing immersive theater in live venues for years. In fact, one of Ferryman Collective’s first major productions, Severance Theory: Welcome to Respite, began life as an in-person immersive theater production.

From Gaming to XR Theater

The Under Presents, released in 2019, might be the first major piece of XR theater. Tender Claws, the development studio behind the production, had been exploring innovative digital productions and engagements for four years already, but The Under Presents is where our story begins.

The experience, built as a game that sometimes featured live actors, introduced countless viewers to live XR theater. It also inspired other artists at a time when the theater community was in dire need of something new and different.

“Born out of the Pandemic”

“Ferryman Collective was born out of the pandemic and brought together by the magic of The Under Presents, or ‘TUP’, as we affectionately call it,” Ferryman Collective founding member Deirdre Lyons told ARPost. “The pandemic shut everything down in 2020 except for TUP, as people performed and participated in it from home.”

In 2019, Lyons was one of the Tender Claw’s VR actors – a job that she still holds while also producing, directing, and acting in productions by Ferryman Collective. A number of members of Ferryman Collective met while working on TUP.

The live show was only supposed to run for three months but extended the run due to its high popularity. The live component of the app and game was eventually closed, leaving actors free to work on other projects, with Tender Claws’ second major XR theater production, Tempest, coming out the following year.

Ferryman Collective’s first production, PARA, a horror story about a dubious AI startup, came out in the autumn of 2020. The show was written by Braden Roy, and was directed by Roy and Brian Tull, who had also met working on TUP. Roy also wrote Ferryman Collective’s second production, Krampusnacht, directed by Roy, Tull, and Lyons in the winter of 2020-2021.

XR Theater Meets Immersive Theater

Ferryman Collective learned a lot from PARA and Krampusnacht. The latter got the collective their first award nomination, with a run that was extended four times to keep up with interest. However, the collective’s breakout production was The Severance Theory: Welcome to Respite – an XR adaptation of a pre-pandemic live immersive theater production.

“Having experienced quiet moments of contemplation with other audience members within my experience as an actor on TUP, I knew that this medium had the potential for a profound connection,” said Lyons. “Having done some voiceover work on The Severance Theory: Welcome to Respite […] I felt this piece could be that kind of powerful experience in VR.”

Lyons reached out to the play’s creator, Lyndsie Scoggin, who had also been sidelined by the pandemic. Scoggin went from not owning a headset to writing and directing the XR theater adaptation, which took on a life of its own.

“The IRL version of [Welcome to Respite] was performed for one audience member who plays a seven-year-old kid named Alex,” Butchko told ARPost. “In the VR version, we are able to include up to nine additional audience members who are put into invisible avatars and play the alternate aspects of Alex’s personality, the Alter Egos.”

Bringing in Participants

Ferryman Collective’s approach to Welcome to Respite brings in more participants per show, but it also allows the participants to control the story as a group as each one gets a vote to determine Alex’s actions taken by the singular Alex over the course of the play.

Expanding the scale of XR theater audiences is one of the pioneering pursuits of “scrappy storyteller” Brandan Bradley. Bradley has been exploring XR since 2017 but really dove into it during the pandemic. During this time he has launched his own projects and XR theater productions and has also acted in productions by Ferryman Collective.

“The pandemic brought about this collision of my two loves: interactive media and fine arts,” Bradley told ARPost in a 2020 interview.

NON-PLAYER CHARACTER - a VR Musical - Brandan Bradley

Bradley’s current production, NPC, brings in a group decision dynamic similar to Welcome to Respite. Bradley plays a side character in a video game that sees the main character die and turns to the audience for guidance. The audience is four “on-stage” participants that interact with him directly, and a larger “seated audience” that watches the action unfold.

Expanding the audience

Splitting the audience like this does a number of things for Bradley. Traditional immersive theater experiences might only have the participating audience – and most XR theater still works that way. From a strictly box office perspective, bringing in the “seated audience” allows Bradley to sell significantly more tickets per performance.

There’s also an audience accommodation aspect. While the “seated audience” might be interested in seeing a story that is shaped by the audience, shaping the story themselves might not be their cup of tea. Further, the “seated audience” can join on more widely affordable and available devices – including a web browser.

“There is a large contingency of the audience that enjoys a more passive role – like a Twitch chat come to life,” Bradley told me over coffee at AWE. “My mom, who will never put on goggles, is willing to join on the keyboard.”

Bradley’s OnBoardXR – a sort of workshop and venue for XR entertainers to begin developing and testing live performances – uses a similar ticketing model. In a lobby, audience members choose different avatars to signal to the actors the degree to which they feel comfortable participating.

NPC and OnBoardXR, take place on-browser and can be joined in headset, on a desktop, or even on a mobile phone. Ferryman Collective performs in VRChat for similar options. This is a departure from Tender Claws’ VR-only productions.

“All of us would love to be The Under Presents […] but the price point is outrageous and the timetable is untenable for someone who just wants to keep producing […] we’re kind of ‘Off Broadway,’” said Bradley. “This is the balance that we’re all doing. There are things we would all love to do with more robust tools […] right now it’s more important to have more participants.”

Exploring Affordances

Anytime that anything is brought into virtual reality, there are benefits and barriers. Live theater is no different. Set and prop design, construction, and storage can be a lot easier. This to the point that no XR production ever need be permanently ended. A show can be revived at any time because everything exists as files as opposed to physical objects that must be stored.

However, physicality and expression can be a trade-off. A character may be fantastically designed for VR, but controlling it and expressing through it isn’t always easy – even with special avatars with controller-activated expressions.

“Emotions within the scene must be conveyed through the actor’s voice and sometimes stylized gestures[…],” said Butchko. “Things that we cannot do easily or convincingly are eat, drink, and lay down. Those were all found in the IRL production of [Welcome to Respite], but could not be used in the VR version due to technical limitations.”

Further, if you’re still comparing XR theater with a typical play instead of immersive theater, there are a few more details that you might have missed. Some in-person immersive theater involves physical contact between actors and participants, or at least involves participants physically interacting with sets and props.

“Not all immersive shows have physical actor-audience contact but there’s still the physicality of the structure and props that can’t be replicated without building a physical space,” Tull told ARPost. “Smell and taste are noticed less, though the potpourri of an old mansion or a gin and tonic at a seedy speakeasy go a long way in completing the illusion.”

Tull further commented that, even when “physical actor-audience contact” is involved, “the visual immersion of virtual reality can almost replicate the intimacy of actual touch.” I certainly found this to be the case.

Exploring Emotion

As a participant in Ferryman Collective’s Gumball Dreams, an actor reached out and virtually put his hand on my chest. If an actor had physically done this in an IRL production, I dare say that this would have made me immensely uncomfortable in the worst way. But, in VR, this came across as intended – a moving intimate gesture between characters in a story.

Gumball Dreams has an amusing name and a brightly colored and stylized virtual world. However, the actual story is an incredibly moving exploration of mortality and consciousness. Similar themes exist in NPC, while Welcome to Respite explores the experience of psychological disorders. What makes XR theater so conducive to these heavy topics?

“At a media level, when you’re inviting the kind of immersion that VR affords, you want to do more than just comedy,” said Bradley. “There is an emotional intimacy that we experience in VR that we haven’t experienced anywhere else and don’t have words for and that’s the next degree of the storytelling experience.”

In this year’s AWE panel discussion on “XR Entertainment: The Next Generation of Movie Makers and Performers”, Ferryman Collective performer and producer Whitton Frank gave a description of XR theater that also explains the draw that it has to audiences as well as entertainers.

“You are given a character and you are a part of the play […] you’re having emotional experiences with another human being which is why, I think, people get excited about this,” said Frank. “That is the way forward – to show people the world in a way that they haven’t seen it before.”

Find an XR Theater Experience

So, how do you know when and which XR theater experiences are available? It’s still a pretty niche field, but it’s close-knit. Start out by following groups like Tender Claws, OnBoardXR, and Ferryman Collective. Then (before or after the show), talk to the other audience members. Some will likely be new to it themselves, but others will be able to point you in the right direction.

Exploring the World of Live XR Theater Read More »