True Detective S2 vs S1 - an inventor perspective

True Detective, Season 2 turned out to be a bit of a disappointment and I wanted to understand why. Reading TV critics and blogs didn't give me much insight beyond the typical "oh, the story was not good" or "oh, the director was not good" or "oh, the pace of the action was too slow", etc. Therefore, I decided to put my inventor hat on and compare the two Seasons as Systems. I applied to both TV series the same system analysis techniques I always use in my invention workshops.

I started the analysis by laying out each story as a system of perspectives. That is, each layer of narration in the series represents a Source of information for the viewers (Scalable Innovation, Section 1). Each Source covers the reality of events on the ground. Paradoxically, it turned out that despite Season 2 has more main characters than Season 1, it also has fewer unique Sources of representation.

In Season 1 we had four key perspectives (2 "real" and 2 "virtual"):
1. Detective Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey);
2. Detective Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson);
3. The Official Investigation - a narrative presented by the official police investigation;
4. The Narrator - a director narrative presented by the chronology of events described in an "objective" manner by the video camera and background characters.

The nature of perspectives was also different. All of them were extremely smart but with different flavors. Rust Cohle could be characterized as "weird smart". Marty Hart - "down-to-earth smart". The Investigation - "bureaucracy smart". The Narrator - "visual and story smart". Furthermore, we had variations of each perspective shifted in time and space. In addition to the mystery of the crime, we, as viewers, had to reconcile and process the mysteries of all these Sources that gave us complimentary and conflicting information. The structure of the system provided us with a intricate, intriguing pattern.

Importantly, the system of different perspectives felt natural due to the fact that detectives Cohle and Hart managed to solve their case _because_ they had different perspectives. They also had conflicts _because_ they had different perspectives. Since they broke multiple official rules — and The Narrator shows us how and why — the official investigation perspective provided us with an explanation why a standard bureaucratic police approach to detective work would not solve the mystery. As a result, we had a system of contrasting and explaining Sources that formed a complex but consistent, natural whole.

Finally, the perspectives were not just narrated from a character's point of view. They were SHOWN from that point of view. In short, Season 1 did an excellent job executing the rule "Show, don't tell".

Season 2 had more main characters, but fewer perspectives. Essentially, there was just one perspective - the Narrator, who guided us and the camera through the story. Basically, we had one Source which kept switching microphones and cameras for every character to tell his or her line.
Although the story itself was, arguably, more complicated and somewhat more mysterious, the system of perspectives was no different than in a regular criminal TV piece. As a system, Season 1 turned out to be flat.

Overall, the actors in both Seasons played great, stories were interesting, suspension was adequate for a crime drama, and camera work excellent, especially, the LA aerial shots in Season 2. Unfortunately for Season 2, the script didn't provide a system structure that could support a real thriller of the Season 1 caliber.

tags: system, source, control, entertainment, method

The Problem Creation Problem: A Game of Thrones.

In "A Storm of Swords" (one of the fantasy novels that serve as a literary foundation for the popular HBO TV Show A Game of Thrones) the author creates a lot of problems for his characters to solve and for readers to enjoy. The more intractable the problem, the more entertainment value it provides because it requires ingenious solutions and plenty of opportunities for dangerous mistakes.
Personal intrigues about love, lust, and power aside, the novel poses interesting technical problems as well. For example, we find Jon Snow and less than a hundred of his fellow guards in charge of defending The Wall against more than a hundred thousand of Wildlings. The Wall itself is impregnable to the low tech assailants, but it has a narrow passage that allows people to get beyond the Wall. Jon Snow's biggest challenge is to prevent the Wildlings from getting through the passage.

In the book, both sides show great creativity in attacking and defending the passage. There's a king of giants who rips out its iron gate; there's a brave dozen of guards who kill him in the process, etc. The fight goes on for pages and its a lot of fun to read.

But when I put my inventor hat on, I wonder why have the passage at all. On the internal side of the Wall, the guards use an equivalent of a large elevator to get on and off the Wall. Since the guards on the Wall are in full control of the elevator, no enemy can get over the Wall. In short, the elevator is the safest method to get people "through" the Wall. You would think that the builders of the Wall should be smart enough to use the elevator on both sides; especially, on the dangerous side because the Wildlings would have no chance to penetrate the Wall when the guards lift or temporarily disable the elevator. Furthermore, according to the book, the passage is so narrow that its throughput capacity is no greater than that of the elevator. Then, why do we have the passage at all if it introduces a major design flaw?

Well, from a fun creation perspective, the passage is a "planted" intractable problem that allows the author to keep the struggle for the Wall going for pages and pages and pages. Not having the passage would be a great technology solution, but its entertainment value would be almost non-existent. As we discuss in the Prologue of Scalable Innovation, we humans prefer the entertainment value. That's why our discussions and practices of creativity are skewed toward fun and games, including games of thrones.

--
my earlier post on the Problem Creation Problem.

tags: problem, solution, entertainment, separation, bundle

Lunch Talk: (@TED) Music and emotion.

In this epic overview, Michael Tilson Thomas traces the development of classical music through the development of written notation, the record, and the re-mix.

tags: entertainment, history, psychology, emotion, lunchtalk

Amazon joins the UV cloud.

Storing content in the Internet cloud makes a lot of sense both for consumers and service providers because it allows for access to content from any connected device. Of course, the problem is that there's no cloud. That is, there's no ubiquitous content storage available to consumers independently from service providers. Therefore, cloud content is tied to your content provider; switching the provider means losing the content.
UV, a new video and digital rights format proposed by a consortium of IT, CE, movie studios, and service providers, promises to solve the problem. Amazon seems to be joining the group:

January 10, 2012. CNET -- ... today, Bill Carr, Amazon's executive vice president of digital, said during a panel discussion at CES, that the merchant had signed a deal with one of the major film studios to support UV rights.

Why this transition is potentially important?

Video streaming - winner-takes-all market.

Online video streaming is another high-tech winner-takes-all market, with YouTube totally dominating the field.  I'm surprise Facebook is essentially non-existing in this space.

 

Data courtesy Nielsen via VBeat. 

VBeat has a nice infographic (under the cut). They call it Digital Living Room, though online video use has nothing to do with the living room.

Invention of the Day: Electronic Music.

In 1920, a Russian inventor, Professor Léon Theremin created an electric device that could be played without touching. In 1928, he received a patent for his invention and licensed it to RCA. The device started a technology revolution that eventually brought about electric guitars, organs, and even violins.

I claim:

1. A tone generating system controlled by the hand and comprising an electrical circuit embodying an oscillation generator, 'means in said circuit including a conductor having a field which when influenced by a hand moving therein will vary the resonant frequency of said circuit according to the movement of said hand only, and a sound reproducer connected with said circuit for emitting tones according to the electrical variations occurring in the circuit.

 The video below shows how you can play the device (simply amazing!)

tags: invention, entertainment

Biz models: technology as entertainment.

In the entertainment industry there's a concept of a movie release window. First, the movie is released in  theaters, then on DVD/Bluray, later on TV, after that on pay-per-view or online. Each  release captures a certain slice of audience, depending on people's willingness to wait out the rush to see the latest and greatest. In economics terms, it is an instance of price discrimination.

Steve Jobs, the late CEO of Pixar and Apple, learned from the entertainment industry how to create a media event out of a high-tech product launch. The introduction of iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad were deliberately staged to create a rush to Apple stores, theaters of Apple consumer experience. Now it appears, Apple is  borrowing the release window business strategy as well.

Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc.’s iPhone 3GS model is more than two years old and shunned by gadget snobs, and yet it’s turning into one of the company’s bigger weapons against devices running Google Inc.’s Android software this holiday season.

The move pits Apple’s iPhone against bargain Android phones, without much damage to the company’s profit. That’s because Apple gets cost savings from using older, cheaper parts. And though the device lacks some of the whiz-bang features of the 4S, such as the voice-activated assistant Siri, it’s still better than rivals of the same price, said Roger Entner, founder of market research firm Recon Analytics LLC.

“Apple can shovel them out by the millions,” he said. “What free phone or even $50 phone is going to be more appealing to consumers than an iPhone 3GS?”

On the subject of business models, we can also see how the world of entertainment is taking cues from high-tech as well. Compared to movies, sitcoms are becoming more like technology release versions - 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, and etc. Studios leverage  fan "installed base," just like software companies do with their products.
As I noted two years ago, sequels make the most money for Hollywood. With an increased role of video streaming over the Internet, sitcoms are an improvement version of this business model.

tags: media, niche construction, business, model, 10X, control, entertainment, information

Lunch Talk: Peter Hirshberg on TV and the web (2007 talk).

Lunch Talk. Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life and New Worlds.

"Jeremy Bailenson [of Stanford University] shares his research on virtual reality, avatars, transformed social interaction, and related communication and psychological theories, as well as implications for citizens living in the digital age."

tags: information, entertainment, virtual, environment

Invention of the Day: Commercial Spaceflight.

Virgin Galactic is planning to have first commercial (sub-)space flights in 2013-14. Now, you can sign up for $200K a seat, but I believe in ten years space tourism will be a relatively affordable adventure, similar to an exotic African safari today.

The vehicle is made of composite materials. It is powered by two hybrid engines, and can carry six passengers and two pilots.

 

 

Burt Rutan is the key engineer/inventor behind the spaceship technology. He retired from the industry earlier this year, after building an all-electric toy flying car - BIPOD.

tags: transportation, entertainment, 10X, invention, innovation

Steve Jobs: a 10X change for an infinite market.

It's hard to write about Steve Jobs' approach to innovation just one day after his death. Let him speak for himself. In this video, he introduces first iPod. Remember, this is years before Apple became a household name in consumer electronic devices. At the time of the speech, the company is a minor player in the IT industry dominated by PC. But Steve Jobs sees an infinite opportunity and he brings an order of magnitude change to take advantage of it:

Just to emphasize several points:

1. A major technology transition under way. [from CD to MP3]
2. A market with an infinite potential. [Everybody loves music]
3. No winning solution. [No competition in a potentially infinite market]
4. At least one order of magnitude improvement over current solutions. [ a) thousands of songs instead of hundreds; b) fast transfer of the whole library].
5. Cool design.

It's a tough set of criteria to satisfy. Out of today's devices only Amazon's Kindle/Fire fits it.

tags: 10x, apple, information, entertainment, market, 4q diagram,

A trillion dollar question.

I wonder what happened in China at around 2000. Was it the decision of the Olympics committee to award Beijing with the 2008 Summer games?

The chart is from The US Energy Information Administration.


tags: s-curve, synthesis, energy, entertainment

3D content and equipment for you

CNet reports on Nvidia's 3D website:

A quick glance at the site reveals some imagery that one might expect to appeal to the stereotypical gaming nerd who pays for premium graphics technology--photos of scantily clad women and stills from various video games. There also are plenty of landscape and other subjects with potentially broader appeal.

Also of interest:

Samsung and 3D specialist RealD announced a plan today to jointly develop a technology called RDZ that they say will mean brighter 3D TVs that work with 3D glasses used in RealD-equipped movie theaters.

Darn! I just threw away a pair of 3D glasses I got at the theater.

tags: content, information, entertainment, video, movie, source, tool, games

Invention of the Day: basketball

Social gaming, 19th century style:

In the winter of 1891 after moving to Springfield, Dr Naismith was faced with a challenging class of "incorrigibles". This antagonistic group had to be kept fit indoors through a harsh New England winter.

After failing to occupy the men with popular indoor sports of the day, he turned to "duck on the rock" for inspiration.

Instead of a rock, the players would throw a soccer ball at two peach baskets nailed high up at each end of the gymnasium. The janitor later punched holes in the bottom of the baskets after he became tired of climbing up to retrieve balls.

tags: entertainment, business, education, scalability, problem, solution

RIP: Blockbuster, Inc. (1985-2010)

CNET reports:

Blockbuster reportedly plans to file something called a "pre-planned bankruptcy" and will continue to pay the studios and other most other major creditors. This development shouldn't surprise anyone. For years, Blockbuster has closed stores, laid off thousands, and generally been tumbling towards extinction. Driving to a video store to rent a movie is rapidly becoming as unnecessary as hiring a travel agent, developing film, or listening to music on compact discs.

In a new content distribution environment, a recipe for success turned into a recipe for disaster. Now, even Google wants to be a video-on-demand provider. I wonder, how long this business model will last and what will come to replace it?


tags: entertainment, payload, distribution, control, information, business, model, destruction

10 thousand monkeys with 10 thousand VCRs

A good example for explaining the 4Q diagram: a new technology was created to address a totally new market. Even people who had no clue how devices worked bought and used VCRs.

In the early 1980s, an apocryphal story made the rounds among video storeowners concerning a hapless customer who brought his VCR back to the store where he’d purchased it a year earlier, complaining that it had stopped working. The storeowner looked it over, wondering if there had been some mechanical failure, but found none. Upon ejecting the videocassette currently in the deck, the storeowner found that it had been played and recorded over so many times that the magnetic tape had worn to the point of snapping. Handing the customer the tape, the storeowner asked if all of his tapes were this worn, to which the customer responded, “I didn’t even know that piece came out!”

Greenberg, Joshua. From Betamax to Blockbuster : Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2008. p 41.

Another story from the same book shows the deep roots of IP TV:

hi-tech + haute couture = ♡

I wrote earlier that Apple sells its devices as fashion items. Now, the fashion industry is waking up to high-tech opportunities. With the proliferation of iPad and its clones, as well as emergence of 3D consumer devices, fashion shopping is going to be a very important application for high-end customers.

VentureBeat: Historically the fashion industry has been slow to adopt technology, so most venture investors have stayed away from investments in the sector. But that has begun to change. Entrepreneurs are focusing on fashion-related online services, and more customers are willing to buy fashion items over the Internet, and investors are following.

Japanese market is also a good indicator of a possible marriage between high-tech and haute couture:

One of the iPad’s eager customers is Novarese Inc., a firm that offers wedding services and wedding dress rentals, with spokeswoman Kazuka Nohara saying the iPad is a more effective communication gadget between the firm and its customers, especially the grooms.

”Whereas grooms before used to be less participative, we were surprised at how grooms became more active in speaking with our coordinators and choosing wedding dresses since our coordinators have been giving the iPads to customers to look at them freely,” Nohara said.

tags: commerce, information, interaction, business, apple, entertainment, trend

Recessions are great for entertainment companies because people have a lot of free time on their hands. Moreover, playing social games is much cheaper than even going to the movies, so we can expect a strong new industry emerge from this economic downturn.

TechCrunch: Google has quietly (secretly, one might say) invested somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in social gaming behemoth Zynga, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. The company has raised somewhere around half a billion dollars in venture capital in the last year alone.
...
Zynga’s revenues for the first half of 2010 will be a stunning $350 million, half of which is operating profit. Zynga is projecting at least $1.0 billion in revenue in 2011.

Another quiet milestone along a similar path was reported by Bloomberg about a week ago:

Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox Live online video-game service probably broke the $1 billion revenue mark for the first time in the year that just ended, helped by sales of movies, avatar accessories and extra game levels.

tags: games, internet, business, industry, entertainment, economy, microsoft

The future of video conferencing

Here's how creators of the Avatar technology solved the problem of producing realistic facial expressions:

Weta’s specialty is motion capture, which relies on sophisticated software and hardware to transfer an actor’s body movements and facial expressions to an animated character. The actor wears a black suit with light-colored dots; to detect his movement, optical systems track those dots.

More 3D news

The market for 3D content continues to grow. Bloomberg reports that a US factory making 3D cinema equipment is working around the clock.

The three largest U.S. chains are outfitting 14,000 screens for digital projection after raising $660 million.

There are about 2,000 digital screens in China, including 800 that are equipped to show movies in 3-D, Li said in an interview. Even small cities in China are installing 3-D equipment, he said.

In addition to that, in September 2010 Sharp will introduce small 3D displays that don't require special glasses. The company bets that eventually all portable devices will be 3D-capable.

As a result of this expansion, demand for 3D content will increase dramatically, which in turn will put pressure on storage and bandwidth. From a system analysis point of view, we are witnessing a change in payload packaging (from 2D/analog to 3D/digital) - a clear sign that the whole system, including production (source), control, and distribution infrastructure, will have to change.

tags: tool, system, content, source, payload, system, information, entertainment, games