Hopefully, the Path to More, Better Entertainment

Hopefully, the Path to More, Better Entertainment

Andy Marken April 11, 2025

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Somebody please beam me out of here. - Stevie Wayne, The Fog, Revolution Studios, 2005

Okay, April 2025 didn't exactly start out as we envisioned, but there were still a lot of forced smiles and optimism at CinemaCon in Las Vegas the first of the month followed by more of the same last week at NAB.

The big question is how much fun, excitement can the film/show industry stand?

It started with Cinema United's (new name for NATO - National Association of Theater Owners) CEO Mike O'Leary drawing a weak line in the sand saying that a 45-day theatrical window was the absolute minimum they needed to ensure a film's box office success and meet consumer's demands.

Warmup Week - Cinemacon took center stage in Las Vegas the week before NAB where Cinema United's head, Mike O'Leary (l) told studios that theaters and the public needed 45-day theatrical windows and MPA's Charles Rivkin said more film production needed to be done in the US.

Sure, industry observer Steven Follows has recently noted that the traditional theatrical industry continues to shrink along with broadcast TV while streaming is just hitting its stride using cinemas primarily as a way to build buzz, qualify for awards and maximize viewer reach /revenue.

Speaking to the hometown issue, MPA (Motion Picture Association)'s Charles Rivkin encouraged studios/filmmakers to bring production back to the US despite the uncertainty of political fog.

In a recent report, Fellows noted the UK and EU film/show production industries were experiencing a record boom - up 31 percent - largely due to the US streaming firms' global project commitment which is good for local studios and creative/production teams but tough for mid-budget projects and indies.

Because of hybrid distribution, AI-driven production and industry reinvention, which Fellows emphasized is well underway, we took a closer look at these areas at NAB this past week.

As you would expect, you couldn't turn around on the show floor without bumping into some company that didn't have the definitive AI-enabled solution.

Most of the folks didn't know what flavor of AI they were using - Open AI, Microsoft, AWS, IBM, Cohere, Meta, H2O.ai, Palantir, DeepSeek or - but they had the answer.

The problem was hardware or software folks were suddenly not certain exactly when the stuff would be delivered and what the cost is going to be.

More importantly there is a sharp disagreement as to how much AI is too much.

Ask the AI peddlers and they'll say all the way appealing to studios saying we can do it all, better, quicker and less expensively.

Talk to the reputable hardware/software firms who support the 10s of thousands of creatives around the world and they'll say just enough to get rid of the tedious, boring stuff.

We spent our time with the latter because we think only people can deliver emotion-packed creativity.

Of course, NAB was supposed to be a time you could see the stuff, ask when it will be delivered and how much?

Cost suddenly became a soft subject.

After all, someone got the dumb idea that tariffs are a beautiful thing, and no one talked about cost. But the industry will get past this we always have!

AI Interest - Visitors from around the globe crowded the NAB show floor to learn more about AI in the industry and how new hardware/software was implementing the technology.

If you wanted to know what's what in AI, you followed the crowd to NVIDIA's area because they seem to be the foundation for all of the emerging AI tools and technologies folks are or will be using to streamline workflow, production and distribution.

The company has become the home for leading-edge AI technology for almost every industry, but they've become the linchpin for almost every aspect of the content/entertainment industry with their Blackwell platform, microservices and blueprint for products, tools and solutions the industry has come to rely on.

It was evident across the floor that AI isn't simply emerging but is delivering strategic advantage that still relies on human creativity to improve workflows.

We just have to constantly remember and remind folks that AI is an enabler not a replacement.

Too many folks - especially the AI wonderkids - envision the technology as automatically delivering insanely good entertainment. But without a strong creative hand, it's just

Some of the intelligent NVIDIA partners at the show included Amazon Web Services, V-Nova, Vizrt, Beamr, Dell, HP, Qvest, Telestream, Speechmatics, VAST, Twelvelabs and more.

In other words, AI permeated every aspect of content creation, distribution and consumption discussions at the show whether it is on the big screen, home set or screen in the hand because for the consumer it's all just entertainment.

We didn't try to hit all of the booths since Central Hall was closed this year and getting around was a real pain, Instead, we focused on the companies - in our opinion that are leading the way for tomorrow.

AI-Enabled - Qvest (l) rolled out two new production solutions based on NVIDIA's technology and tools and Cinnafilm introduced two new AI-enabled content creation tools.

Two of Nvidia's partners that got a lot of attention at the show were Qvest and Cinnafilm.

Qvest introduced two solutions for the industry that enable and simplify data extraction for faster, more reliable multi-camera work as well as automatically analyzing complex content production and sports coverage to minimize workflow media asset review and selection.

They're important and detail-oriented tasks that normal people dread doing. Their AI solutions do it for hours on end and no one seems to mind.

Cinnafilm's new PixelString

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