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Trouble in Tinseltown

Paul Sweeting — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 09:39:35 +0000

Turnstiles have been slowing at domestic theaters for much of the past decade, with only a brief respite in 2006 and a short-lived spike in attendance in 2009 due to the release of Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all time. Ticket-price inflation and the introduction of 3D films helped mask the effect for a while, but with the 3D premium eroding as the novelty has worn off and the weak economy and growing competition for entertainment dollars now keeping overall ticket inflation in check, the erosion of the movie audience is plain to see.

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How to create an avatar for work-related virtual worlds

Celine Roque — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:03:04 +0000

The use of virtual worlds is increasing for marketing, training and collaboration, according to a survey that Aliza recently covered. This may mean that there will be more enterprise use for Second Life, Open Simulator, and other online virtual environments. According to another survey, early adopters of virtual worlds are learning to use it for brainstorming and project coordination. This survey also suggests that those who use virtual world technology for recreation are likely to be among the first in their organization to explore the possibilities of using it for business.

As virtual worlds become as prevalent in business as they are in games and socialization, we need to learn how to present ourselves as effectively as possible in this medium. Since first impressions count in virtual teams just as much as they do in face-to-face teams, we need to take our virtual appearance more seriously. In the case of these immersive environments, appearance is based on our avatars.

How do we create avatars that are more than just placeholders? Which avatar features contribute most to the quality and richness of the conversation?

Eye gaze

While 3-D avatars can generate motion and activity, it doesn’t seem to be enough. Just because an avatar looks and moves like a person, it doesn’t mean that the quality of communication mimics face-to-face interactions. Avatars still can’t use subtle body language in the way humans do. But adding even something as mundane as head and eye motion, combined as “gaze”, can make a huge difference.

This was demonstrated in a study conducted in University College London. The research compared an avatar whose gaze was based on the conversation’s turn-taking (informed-gaze) and an avatar whose animations were unrelated to the conversation (random-gaze). They also compared these two types of avatars to other media, such as live video and audio-only conversations.

According to the study, even the inclusion of a relevant, expressive gaze created a significant improvement in the perceived quality of the conversation. When comparing to the participants’ sense of involvement, informed-gaze avatars barely had a significant difference from communicating via video.

What’s even more surprising is that the random-gaze avatar had no significant improvement over pure audio. This implies that a mere 3-D presence doesn’t automatically mean that the communication quality and richness improves. To be truly useful and engaging, avatars must exhibit behaviors that are relevant to the conversation — even if it’s something as simple as eye gaze.

Gesture and manners

Taking a step beyond eye gaze, it appears that other non-verbal manners, and our responses to them, persist in virtual worlds.

In a study from Stanford University, researchers observed how interacting avatars used interpersonal distance and eye gaze in Second Life. Based on their observations, non-verbal norms were still present, even if controlling them meant moving a mouse and keyboard rather than our own eyes and legs. The study, which focused on gender norms, showed that male-male pairs, like their face-to-face counterparts, maintained less eye contact and were further apart than female-female pairs. Also, when the “physical” distance between avatars was decreased, the avatars compensated by avoiding eye contact — just like people would in the offline world.

But it’s not just gender norms that persist in virtual environments. Cultural norms are still exhibited, even when the technology allows us interaction with people from different cultures. An experiment from Augsburg University in Germany showed that cultural speech nuances such as timing and pauses affected a viewer’s preference for an avatar. Their results showed that people preferred avatars that exhibited the nuances from their own culture. Perhaps this means that even if we are meeting other people in a virtual environment, we should still take cultural factors into account when we’re communicating.

How important are these cues? Quoting from a paper on the use of avatars in collaboration (PDF):

The ability or inability to maintain an “appropriate” interpersonal distance or the ability or inability to control one’s viewpoint so other avatars may be seen, among other things, will affect the feeling of being there together. [...] Being in an environment where people feel connected is more likely to enhance development of trust and reduction of conflict, which in turn lead to more effective collaboration.

(Source: “Avatars, Text, and Miscommunication: The Impact of Communication Richness on Global Virtual Team Collaboration”, Columbia University)

Looking back at all the research, it’s a lot to take in. Doesn’t it seem cumbersome to have avatars that allow you to control all of these tiny factors? After all, in real life we barely even think about these non-verbal cues.

The answer is simple: it should be automated in our avatars’ programming, just as it is in our own minds and bodies. The more these virtual environments have an intuitive interface, and the more these communication nuances are automated, the more natural it will be for most people to successfully use their virtual world avatars for collaboration.

How do you create and control avatars?

Photo courtesy Flickr user cloud2013

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Web Work Sci-Fi: Floating Avatars for Telecommuters

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 31 May 2011 19:02:15 +0000

Here on WebWorkerDaily we regularly cover new tech that can help you collaborate remotely from virtual phone systems to multiuser video chat apps. All of these offer incremental improvements on the tech available to web workers, but what about the distant future of remote collaboration? What radical new tech tools might remake the way we work virtually?

Scientists are hard at work on the question, allowing their big brains to run wild and come up with out-of-the-box offerings for the web worker of the future … and they’re dreaming of robots.

California company Anybots, for example, has designed an adorable robot avatar that you control from home while it rambles around the office displaying a video of your face, interacting with co-workers. You’d better hope your corporate headquarters doesn’t have any stairs though, as the Anybot is unable to handle them.

But scientists at Tokyo’s Sony Computer Science Laboratories have come up with an innovative solution to deal with this so-called “Dalek problem” of maneuvering up and down stairs – a floating robot avatar head. They report:

We developed a floating avatar system that integrates a blimp with a virtual avatar to create a unique telepresence system. Our blimp works as an avatar and contains several pieces of equipment, including a projector and a speaker as the output functions. Users can communicate with others by transmitting their facial image through the projector and voice through the speaker. A camera and microphone attached to the blimp provide the input function and support the user’s manipulation from a distance. The user’s presence is dramatically enhanced compared to using conventional virtual avatars (e.g., CG and images) because the avatar is a physical object that can move freely in the real world.

Having trouble imagining what on earth this floating avatar could look like? Check out this New Scientist video:

How does the idea of your boss’s virtual head floating around the office strike you – Creepy? Cool? A little of both?

Image courtesy of Flickr user misocrazy

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Can In-Office Avatars Help Out-of-Office Employees?

Thursday Bram — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 18:05:21 +0000

When you work with a virtual team, you may talk with them every day — but you don’t actually see them. We’re used to actually seeing people when we interact with them, so it’s easy to feel a little bit disconnected.

There are ways to counteract this feeling, of course: videoconferencing and other tools have certainly made a positive impact on how out-of-the-office employees can interact with their in-office colleagues. But there is at least one company exploring the question of whether a physical avatar in the office might help even more. Anybots offers a physical avatar for telecommuters, which displays a video at about eye-level as well as can be driven around a facility. All a remote team member needs to use the robotic avatar is a web browser.

Do In-Office Avatars Make Sense?

At a hefty $15,000 a pop, it’s going to be hard to justify the cost of one of Anybots’ devices. As the telecommuting trend grows, however, it’s likely that the cost of in-office avatars will drop, especially if they turn out to successful.

Personally, I have a hard time seeing a use for a robot as a substitute physical presence for myself in a client’s or an employer’s office. Then again, almost all of my work is done at the computer, where opening up a chat client or videoconferencing software is trivial. In a situation where physical presence matters more — like when you need to chase down a particular team member and have a face-to-face chat, or locate something in the office — a mobile avatar prove to be be far more useful. Such an approach may also promote interactions that are almost as good as those conducted face-to-face.

It’s not clear yet whether an in-office avatar will be useful for building up relationships between the members of your team who stay in the office all day and those who work from elsewhere. But it is an interesting tool to consider and, as costs come down and availability goes up, they may prove to be helpful in building the personal connections that make a team effective.

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Have Some Halloween Photo Fun with Your iPhone

Geoffrey Goetz — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:00:49 +0000

Want to add some social mobile fun to this Halloween? How about taking some of the snapshots you’re taking with your iPhone or iPod touch, and turning them into cartoon avatars for Facebook and Twitter? The process is easy, and all you need are a few apps.

Take and Enhance the Photo

Once you have your photo, perform all of the necessary cropping and color adjustments in one of the many image editors available. For this step in the process I’ve always used Photogene (iTunes link, $1.99). Photoshop Express is a good free alternative. In Photogene, I auto adjust the colors and utilize a filter to sharpen the image. This sharpening helps out when the photo is converted into a drawing.

I then crop the image, depending on what I want to use it for. If I’m creating an avatar for IM apps, I will typically use a 1:1 ration when cropping. If you just want this for a photo to post on someone’s wall, I find a 2:3 ratio works best. Be sure to save the image back to the photo library before continuing.

Make a Black and White Drawing of the Photo

The second step in the process is to create a black and white pencil drawing of the image. To do this, I use ToonPAINT (iTunes link, $1.99). This app has the ability to fine ‘toon’ the results by adjusting what it refers to as the Edges, Gray and Black of the image. I’ve found that after making these adjustments, a final tap of the Soften button produces the best result. From here, just save the image back to the photo library. Don’t bother testing out your finger painting skills, color will be added next.

Add Color with Layers

The best way to add the color back to the black and white pencil drawing created by ToonPAINT is with your favorite layer-based painting app. For this step, I recommend the New Yorker approved classic, Brushes (iTunes link, $4.99). In Brushes, create a new drawing and immediately edit the layers of the drawing. For the background layer, choose the original photo. On top of that place the black and white drawing of the photo. In Brushes, you can set the alpha of the backgrounds which will allow the layers to blend with one another. By adjusting the alpha of the top layer to 70 percent, just enough of the colors from the bottom layer will bleed through.

Share Postcards Online

Sharing your masterpiece is the final step. There’s a special Halloween version of Rogue Sheep’s Postage app (iTunes link) available for $.99. This app will allow you to frame the resulting image in a variety of available postcard styles. Select the postcard, insert the image, type a message and select email, Facebook or Twitter as the means to share the final artwork.

There are certainly several variations on this theme, as different combinations of apps can be strung together to make a different workflow. Adding Color Splash (iTunes link) just before applying the color with brushes will make certain elements in the cartoon version of the photo really pop. You could even tie together several completed images using an app like Diptic (iTunes link). Whichever workflow and whatever series of apps you choose to string together, it’s a fun way to shake up your online routine.

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Hollywood Gouges Theater-goers for Record Summer Box Office

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:48:21 +0000

Hollywood studios are riding high on record box office receipts, despite the lowest attendance in five years, according to a report from the Associated Press. Those record revenues are mostly the result of higher ticket prices for 3-D and other premium film showings, but come as theaters have raised prices for nearly all films.

According to Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian, box office receipts from the first weekend in May through Labor Day weekend have already surpassed last summer’s take. Hollywood has amassed $4.35 billion so far this summer, which is about $100 million more than summer 2009.

However, those record sales come despite the fact that fewer people went to the movies this summer than in the last five years. The actual number of tickets sold during the blockbuster season is estimated at 552 million, which is the lowest count since 2005, when theaters sold 563.2 million tickets.

The record box office, therefore, is mainly a result of higher ticket prices, driven in part by the premium which theater-goers pay for 3-D and IMAX films during the blockbuster movie season. Average ticket prices for the year have climbed to $7.88, which is up from $7.46 at this point last year. Year-to-date, Hollywood has pulled in $7.35 billion at the box office, compared to $7.05 at this point last year, but those sales have come despite a dip in attendance to 933.2 million, compared to 945.1 million a year earlier.

While higher prices have made up for a decrease in ticket volume, the decrease in attendance is troubling. Since Avatar left theaters, Hollywood has yet to have another big 3-D hit, and there don’t appear to be any on the horizon. Avatar grossed $750 million at the domestic box office, topping the all-time list for movie revenues, but in the wake of its success, Hollywood is pushing 3-D films as a way to boost overall box office sales.

The problem is that the studios may be overestimating the appeal of 3-D, especially for movies that don’t gain much from the visual effect. Despite the success of Avatar and other films, some experts — like Disney chief Bob Iger — are warning that the studios need to be careful about how they employ 3-D technology, lest consumers are hit with 3-D fatigue.

On Disney’s first-quarter earnings call, Iger said, “[W]e don’t believe every film should be in 3-D. And when applied, we think 3-D should be applied well and not done in a last-minute sort of paste-it-on kind of approach. Because we think that if, one, we make films in 3-D that don’t really benefit from them being in 3-D, that’s not necessarily good. And if 3-D is used badly either by us or the industry, that’s not good.”

The studios would do well to heed those warnings, or attendance could continue to drop below the point where higher ticket prices will make up for the loss of bodies in the theater.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user bark.

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Avatar Tops in First-Week Blu-ray Sales

Ryan Lawler — Sat, 01 May 2010 01:00:32 +0000

After posting record box office sales in the U.S. and worldwide, James Cameron’s Avatar can add another record to its trophy case after being tops in first-week Blu-ray disc sales. According to sales data from Nielsen, the sci-fi action flick sold more Blu-ray discs in its first week than The Dark Knight, The Hangover and 2009′s Star Trek, with half of its physical media sales being in the hi-def format.

The previous leader for DVD sales, 2008′s The Dark Knight, sold just 62 percent of the number of Blu-ray discs shipped for Avatar. Other runners up, like The Hangover (40 percent) and Star Trek (34 percent) sold significantly less. Blu-ray discs made up nearly half — 49 percent — of all Avatar sales. The rest were traditional DVDs.

That compares to just 22 percent of Blu-ray disc sales for The Dark Knight and 24 percent for The Hangover. In that respect, Blu-ray sales of Avatar bode well for Hollywood, as they show that consumers are moving to the higher-quality format in earnest.

But while the James Cameron 3-D vehicle posted pretty substantial Blu-ray sales, overall sales of Blu-ray and DVD discs underline a pretty substantial decline in consumer interest in physical media. Even though Avatar outsold all other Blu-ray releases in its first week, it’s just seventh on the list of films for first-week sales of physical media.

In fact, it sold just 60 percent of the DVD and VHS units of Finding Nemo, which was tops in overall first week sales. The Dark Knight, which trails significantly in Blu-ray sales, was second in overall first-week sales, with 82 percent fewer overall units sold than the Number 1 title.

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Avatar: The Making of the Bootleg: It’s Funny Because it’s True

Liz Shannon Miller — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:30:55 +0000

So James Cameron’s 3-D Fern Gully remake hasn’t just revolutionized film technology — as depicted by the sketch comedy troupe Free Love Forum, it’s also inspiring a whole new generation of bootleggers.

The irony, of course, is that a quick Google search confirms that torrents for Avatar bootlegs are out in full force — and not just versions captured by sneaky theatergoers with handheld cameras, but what appear to be high-quality DVD rips. Even so, Avatar has been doing just fine at the box office — because as one bootlegger from the short puts it, you do want to watch it “on a reasonably-sized screen.”

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Vid-Biz: Avatar, Apple, YouTube

Chris Albrecht — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:30:20 +0000

James Cameron Talks Avatar on Facebook Webcast Today; director is joined by the film’s stars and will appear on the social network in conjunction with MTV. (Facebook)

Apple Sued Over HTTP Streaming; Israeli company Emblaze doing the suing, but hasn’t disclosed what technology is being infringed upon. (StreamingMedia.com)

YouTube Gets Shows from Five; UK broadcaster will provide the video site with more than 3,000 hours of free full shows and clips. (paidContent

Comcast Considered Buying Facebook; internal review about acquisition options included the social network before the cable co settled on NBC. (The New York Times)

MovieClips.com Launched with 12,000 Clips; snippets from Hollwyood films are free to view and share with friends. (MediaWeek)

Submit Your Questions for the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen; enter your question via YouTube, view others and vote on them for inclusion in a televised town hall on CNN. (YouTube Blog) Be sure to follow our sister site, Earth2Tech’s coverage from the conference.

Vuclip Expands with New European Carriers; mobile video distributor gets their on-deck mobile portals with Three in the U.K., Yoigo in Spain, Optimus in Portugal, and Avea in Turkey. (emailed release)

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New Avatar Trailer Is Interactive, Spoiler-Active

Chris Albrecht — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:00:18 +0000

I’m still not sure how excited I am about the upcoming James Cameron 3-D opus, Avatar. I want to be excited for it, but — eh, whatever. In an effort to ramp up interest in the pic, 20th Century Fox today released a an interactive version of the trailer for the film (hat tip to TheWrap), which provides a whole ~~new insight into the movie~~ bunch of spoilers.

The new trailer requires Adobe AIR, and is an actual application that sits on your PC. It presents the regular trailer, but adds “hot spots” to it so you can discover additional information about cast members, or learn about the art design that went into the move. With the trailer living on the PC, the studio says it will be sending updates and new media libraries.

The trailer app also shows you social media feeds from Flickr, YouTube and Twitter, so you can see what other people are saying about the movie — and there is an option to purchase tickets.

The problem, aside from requiring an update for an app that you’ll have to manually remove from your computer, is that some of the behind-the-scenes stuff flat-out ruins parts of the movie. Granted, given what’s been shown in the trailer, you can pretty much surmise what’s going to happen. But in this interactive version of the trailer, you can access Michelle Rodriguez spelling out the exact moment her character does something that seems pretty pivotal to the movie. The art and design stuff is cool, but not that great.

Overall, for what is supposed to be a movie that will advance cinema into its next era, the “high-tech” trailer its come up with feels outdated.

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