Duanju, the Chinese term for micro dramas known for wild plots and vertical, bite-sized videos, made headlines in China in 2024 as the industry surpassed the country’s box-office revenue for the first time. The short-format videos, which typically consist of episodes ranging from 90 seconds to two minutes long, initially gained popularity in China after capitalizing on the short-form video trend from other short-video apps in the country. And it now has its sights set on the U.S. entertainment industry.
How An Aussie Billionaire Went From The Housing Projects To Making Blackmagic Movie Cameras | Forbes
All of 2020 and half of 2021, I was working until 2 a.m. every day because I was writing the code that runs the company,” says Grant Petty, CEO and founder of Blackmagic Design. The 53-year-old billionaire isn’t kidding. He despises outsourcing, so he literally writes all the SQL programs that run internal processes at his 1,500-employee, $576 million (revenue) Melbourne, Australia-based company. He’s also known for starring in hour-long instructional videos for Blackmagic products like the Ursa Mini Pro 12K digital cinema camera. When the pandemic struck, Blackmagic (which manufactures all 209 of its products itself, unheard-of in the hardware business unless your name is Samsung or Sony) needed to share parts among its three factories in Australia, Singapore and Indonesia. Rather than hire someone, or even delegate the task internally, Petty rewrote the workflow software connecting inventory databases. If clubbiness, opaque accounting and exorbitant costs epitomize companies in Hollywood’s ecosystem, then Petty and his defiant, do-it-yourself approach make Blackmagic Design a tear-down-the-walls revolutionary. His 21-year-old business is best known for making low-cost professional cinema cameras, electronic switchers and other specialized gear used in television and film production. It also makes free software known as DaVinci Resolve, used for color grading, special effects and to edit video and audio. Blackmagic’s products are behind some big-budget, Oscar-nominated flicks such as Don’t Look Up and Spider-Man: No Way Home, but its primary customers are YouTubers and budget-conscious independent filmmakers. Over the past couple years, that market exploded as lockdowns caused a surge in demand for professional-quality home equipment.
Blockchain and Next Generation Media
The International News Media Association (INMA) hosted a webinar this past week (Oct 17, 2018) titled, “Blockchain: Enabling Next Generation Media Services.”
The webinar was presented by Stefan Farestam, Co-Founder, Carechain, Sweden.
INMA editor, Shelley Seale, provided an article about the webinar.
Farestam notes, “What the internet enabled was for information to be shared with other parties. But what blockchain enables is distribution of transactions among multiple parties without a central intermediary.”
Blockchain has the potential to disrupt all parts of the media value chain through:
- Disaggregation
- Digital Rights Management
- Royalty Tracking.
Blockchain-enabled identity solutions could benefit the following:
- Battle fake news
- Re-establish trust in the authenticity of comment fields
- Create entirely new business areas for media actors
There are several reasons to keep data on a blockchain, Farestam shared:
- Timestamped: provable timing for all content.
- No super-user: no priveleged access mode.
- User in control: user controls all access.
- Immutable: content cannot be changed.
- Distributed: no single point of failure.
- Smart contracts: programmable functionality.
Blockchain, Trust and Journalism
Daniel Sieberg speaks about blockchain, cryptocurrency, trust and more specifically, what blockchain is good for when it comes to journalism.
In this talk he highlights three points:
- Governance: Putting value, such as a vote, or a token, in the hands of individuals, as opposed to centralized entities.
- Storage: Once a story is published on blockchain, it’s permanently available and distributed on many computers in the world. Trying to change or hide that story would be like trying to recall all of the issues of a newspaper after it has been distributed. In other words, it’s immutable and transparent.
- Licensing: Blockchain is like fingerprinted digital assets. It helps content creators get paid for their own work into the future since the source of the creator is indisputably known.
Civil’s First Token Sale: No Go. Will Try Again.
Civil’s goal for their first token sale: Sell 34 million CVL tokens for between $8 million and $24 million.
The sale began on September 18 and concluded Monday night, October 16.
1,012 buyers purchased $1,435,491 worth of CVL tokens. Since they didn’t meet their goal, refunds will be issued to all buyers.
Civil is going to try again. The company says “a new, much simpler token sale is in the works.” Details to be shared soon.
Here’s the post from Civil: What’s Next For Civil.
Civil: A New Journalism Paradigm on Blockchain
Civil.co describes itself as “The Decentralized Marketplace for Sustainable Journalism.”
Its mission is “to help power sustainable journalism throughout the world.”
“We believe in a new approach that takes advertisers and other third-party interests out of the equation, enabling journalists and readers to connect directly and focus on telling impactful stories.”
An initial takeaway is that Civil is not a publisher; it’s a platform for publishers. More specifically, it’s a platform for independent “newsrooms” that agree to adhere to its constitution. “The Civil Constitution outlines what does — and does not — constitute ethical journalism on Civil.”
There is a series of checks and balances in place designed to foster ethical journalism.
In regards to blockchain and cryptocurrency, “Civil’s cryptoeconomic model seeks to enable a more direct, transparent relationship between journalists and citizens, while using blockchain to also strengthen protections for journalists against censorship and intellectual property violations.”
What’s particularly unique is that people can vote on whether any of its newsrooms violate Civil’s journalism standards as established by it constitution.
There’s also a “Civil Council” for appeals to controversies over veracity that may be driven by, among other factors, herd mentality.
Or, in other words, just because information is unpopular does not mean it can be relegated to irrelevance or obscurity.
All this sounds promising, as the world of journalism is in a tailspin in terms of economic viability and public respect.
At a minimum, new ideas are needed and Civil is certainly that.