It’s almost time for the Automattic Grand Meetup. This year we’re all gathering in Orlando, and it looks like we’ll have an opportunity to visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter™.
In preparation for this, and the gifts my family will be expecting, my wife has suggested that we all be sorted into our respective houses so I can return with appropriate souvenirs.
I went through the sorting process on the Pottermore site, and it turns out my house is … Gryffindor!
Now we just need to sort the kids, and we’re all set!
Today is our kids’ first day of their (very) long school Summer vacation. Neither of our kids are going to the summer program we booked them into today, so we finished watching Batman Ninja before I started working this morning. This DC Comics movie is filmed in a Japanese Anime style (or several styles), and it’s really good.
If you’re interested in an authentic experience of the movie, you can watch it in the original Japanese too! We opted for the English. 😁
I love Comic Con season. It’s that time of the year when you tend to see loads of awesome new trailers. I woke up to some awesome new trailers for Thor: Ragnarok, Justice League and Star Trek: Discovery.
I seem to be one of the few people who enjoyed Batman vs Superman (more the extended version). I’m excited about this first live action Justice League movie.
I wasn’t sure about the new series when it was first announced but after seeing a couple teasers and, now, the full trailer, I think this is going to be impressive.
My brother pointed this one out to me. It looks visually amazing. Still, when I watch this trailer I can’t help but think that my concern that my kids are spending way too much time in front of screens doesn’t even come close to this dystopian future world.
I decided to change my lock screen wallpaper today and went looking for a Star Trek wallpaper. I’m a bit of a fan and we’ve been watching the Star Trek Voyager series for the last couple months (we’ve already watched TNG and DS9 again).
When it comes to phone wallpapers, I prefer darker backgrounds. One reason is so my phone doesn’t become a second Sun when I am sitting in the dark with our kids, putting them to sleep. Another reason is that I want to minimise clashes with app icons and on-screen text so I can see what I’m doing.
I did a couple Google searches and came up with this great wallpaper that I love. I searched for it on my desktop and found a version on the Mobile Abyss site. It looks terrific on my phone.
Another option is this version on the same site. It has a bigger badge but a very different look. I haven’t tried it yet but it could look great on your device.
I just watched Inside Out with our daughter. It’s a fun movie and I hadn’t seen it before today. If you haven’t seen it, it is very much one of those layered animated movies that kids can enjoy and that also contain a remarkable depth.
The idea of the movie is to represent a young girl’s emotions as she and her family relocate from the American Mid-West to San Francisco as five characters with their distinct personalities.
I knew what the movie was about before we watched it. What I really enjoyed about it was how the movie represented how our emotions interact and challenged common assumptions about which emotions have value and which don’t.
I’m not sure how much of the message our daughter took away from the movie but this is the sort of movie that you can watch again and again. I suspect that each time you watch it, you will take away a little more and, in the process, come to understand yourself a little better, inside out.
Kevin Spacey is one of my favourite actors and has been since The Usual Suspects. He spoke to the audience at the Edinburgh Television Festival about the overwhelming importance of creative professionals in the entertainment industry and about giving TV audiences what they want.
Give audiences what they want, how they want it
He highlighted a theme that has seemed so sensible to me for years and that seems to escape entertainment industry executives. This theme applies equally to music as it does to TV and movies:
The warp-speed of technological advancement – the Internet, streaming, multi-platforming – happens to have coincided with the recognition of TV as an art form. So you have this incredible confluence of a medium coming into its own JUST AS the technology for that medium is drastically shifting. Studios and networks who ignore either shift – whether the increasing sophistication of story telling, or the constantly shifting sands of technological advancement – will be left behind. And if they fail to hear these warnings, audiences will evolve faster than they will. They will seek the stories and content-providers who give them what they demand – complex, smart stories available whenever they want, on whatever device they want, wherever they want. Netflix and other similar services have succeeded because they have married good content with a forward-thinking approach to viewing habits and appetites.
While we are accustomed to distinctions between movies, TV and online video, these distinctions are largely irrelevant to younger generations. Our kids certainly don’t see much of a distinction between TV series they watch on Netflix and the channels they watch on YouTube.
Movies are distinctive primarily because watching big ticket items involves a trip to the local movie theatre and having that big screen experience. At the same time, we have a pretty decent HD TV and surround sound at home and we routinely watch movies on weekend afternoons with our kids there too.
The distinctions between formats and devices are blurring all the time:
If you are watching a film on your television, is it no longer a film because you’re not watching it in the theater? If you watch a TV show on your iPad is it no longer a TV show? The device and length are irrelevant. The labels are useless – except perhaps to agents and managers and lawyers who use these labels to conduct business deals. For kids growing up now there’s no difference watching Avatar on an iPad or watching YouTube on a TV and watching Game of Thrones on their computer. It’s all CONTENT. It’s all STORY.
While I understand that regional broadcasters have deals with studios and publishers that probably block global distribution of movies and TV series, this approach to distribution doesn’t serve audiences. It only benefits the broadcasters who lack the will and imagination they need to take advantage of new opportunities.
The sooner entertainment industry executives come to terms with the fact that audiences want those stories on their terms, the sooner the market as a whole will benefit. Again, as Spacey pointed out:
And the audience has spoken: they want stories. They’re dying for them. They are rooting for us to give them the right thing. And they will talk about it, binge on it, carry it with them on the bus and to the hairdresser, force it on their friends, tweet, blog, Facebook, make fan pages, silly Jifs (sic) and god knows what else about it, engage with it with a passion and an intimacy that a blockbuster movie could only dream of. All we have to do is give it to them. The prize fruit is right there. Shinier and juicier than it has ever been before. So it will be all the more shame on each and every one of us if we don’t reach out and seize it.
Netflix wants to take on movie distributors and theaters
Netflix’s Reed Hastings recently spoke at recode’s 2017 Code Conference.
One of the tidbits that emerged from his interview is the possibility that Netflix is doing to do for movies what it did for TV. What could well happen if Netflix’s approach gains traction is that those trips to a movie theatre to watch a new movie may become less prevalent.
There is still a lot to be said for the big screen experience, for sure. At the same time, that may be a generational thing and our home theatre experiences may be happy substitutes.
Losing battle
Whether it is TV, movies or music, industry executives are fighting losing battles. Audiences want this content on their terms and if the industry doesn’t come to the party, people will find ways around their limitations.
This may mean people downloading the stuff they want instead of paying for it or simply opting out of more mainstream content.
The industry isn’t going to shrivel up and die anytime soon but imagine what the industry could achieve if it thought differently?
You know how you seem to channel your parents when you become a parent? I managed to channel Yoda with our kids last night and I’m not sure what that says about me as a parent.
It was getting late, we were all tired from a busy weekend and it was time for the kids to brush their teeth and get ready for bed. As usual, they weren’t listening to me. They were playing on the couch instead so I reminded them to do as I asked (well, instructed) them to do.
Our daughter told me, rather indignantly, that she was “trying” to stop playing with her brother and go brush her teeth. Before I realised it, I found myself replying to her with something along these lines:
There is no trying. Do or do not. Go brush your teeth!
It didn’t help that my wife, who was in the room, immediately picked up on what I said and started laughing. Our poor daughter thought we were laughing at her. We were laughing so hard that we couldn’t explain the joke to her for a few minutes.
Kids misbehaving. Paul tells them to stop it. Kid says 'I'm trying.' P responds with 'There's no trying! There's do or do not!' Too funny.
I don’t have much interest in the Super Bowl itself but I love watching Super Bowl ads. Here are some of my favourites. I’ll add more as I come across them:
This next Wolverine movie looks like it is going to be a huge departure from the X-Men movies we are accustomed to. I doubt this will be kid-friendly but I am pretty sure it will be really good.
The Pirates of the Caribbean movies are real Big Screen spectacles and this next movie will be no exception. The effects already look incredible. I can’t wait to see it.
Heinz took a different approach this year. Rather than run a super expensive Super Bowl ad, it launched a campaign to make the Monday after Super Bowl Sunday a national holiday with this YouTube ad. They’re calling it #Smunday. Love the idea (thanks to my lovely wife for pointing it out to me).
If you want to watch other ads that I don’t include in this post, check out the YouTube Ad Blitz channel:
The annual Super Bowl is a big deal in the advertising industry. I thought I'd share some of my favourite Super Bowl ads as I come across them. There are so many to watch.
I decided to change my lock screen wallpaper today and went looking for a Star Trek wallpaper. I’m a bit of a fan and we’ve been watching the 
