UPDATED 21:00 EDT / APRIL 24 2017

BIG DATA

Hollywood handlers: Evolving film data in the digital age

As the viability of artificial intelligence, the functionality of metadata and the power of distributed computing all advance, their united application is causing big changes in the way that digital distribution of media is being approached and executed.

“We want to see companies create differentiated solutions for consumers without having to worry about how the sausage gets made,” said Andy Shenkler (pictured), chief solutions and technology officer at Sony DADC Corp.

Shenkler spoke with Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. Their discussion touched on topics of consumer rights in the digital age, operability across international territories and the role of data-handling in the entertainment industry, among other things. (*Disclosure below.)

For his part, as a regular attendee of the NAB Shows, Shenkler felt that there had been a distinct shift in focus over the years away from hardware and production tech to more software-focused discussions. Behind the scenes of the entertainment industry these days, the challenges of rights issues, portability, downloads and territorial access to products are all hot topics, stirring up both excitement and frustration for those who have to devise the answers.

At the same time, technological advances were making things much easier on some fronts, as with the handling of asset identification and assignment, such as picking out which characters are present in a film at a given time. “Looking at permutations of data is not a good fit for people; it’s a good fit for a computer,” Shenkler said.

However, while that’s benefiting the relatively slow content creation speed of film studios, television is finding it harder to adapt, according to Shenkler. Broadcasting as it used to be is no more, as even an official broadcaster now has video on demand services and other means of making themselves available to consumers, so staying on the edge of those developments is essential to their success, or simply to retain steady viewer numbers.

Days of flexibility

As suppliers of content, Sony DADC has had to adapt along with the times, with part of that change found in the way they’re handling distribution and transparency, Shenkler explained.

“A supply chain should not be the level of differentiation. … It should be leveraged by many, many companies. … We have the same perspective on digital distribution,” he said. “We give everybody visibility; we believe that data transparency is pretty important.”

That openness stretches to the consumer perspective. “As a consumer, you really don’t want to have to be loyal to a particular brand,” Shenkler said, acknowledging that in these days, consumers were sharply aware of the broad range of media consumption options open to them.

Still, that range of options has shown itself to be of benefit to the big media companies, not just because of the opportunities for development, but because of the boost to profits that competition provides. “It becomes very difficult to amortize costs if there’s one, and only one, solution in the market,” Shenkler concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of the NAB Show. (*Disclosure: Western Digital is sponsoring theCUBE’s coverage at the show. Neither Western Digital nor other sponsors have editorial influence on content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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