Happy February Hollywood tech nerds!

In this week’s post:

🏈 The Technical Feats of Super Bowl LVIII

📀 Blu-Ray Boutique Labels Are Saving Film History

🍿 Kernels: 3 links worth making popcorn for

The Technical Feats of Super Bowl LVIII

This isn’t a sports newsletter, and I’m not much of a Sports Guy (I am also not a “Sportsball Guy” - you know, the annoying dude at your Super Bowl party who derisively says “sportsball.” What is that guy’s problem? Why is he here? Who invited him?), but this past weekend’s Super Bowl had a ton of interesting tech news around it, and I wanted to dive in.

The Broadcast Bridge has a terrific rundown (written before the game) of the camera and broadcast technology utilized at SBLVIII, the kind of setup that makes a tech nerd like me salivate. Just a few highlights from the article:

• 48 Sony HDC cameras with super slow-motion capability, including 24 4K “zoom extraction” cameras (a record number for a Super Bowl) showcasing replay angles inside Allegiant Stadium, including from the ceiling, along the goal lines and embedded inside the end zone pylons

• 6 4K cameras at each end capturing field goals and extra points as they happen

• 3 sky cams, 2 fly cams (including a “trolley cam”) and 3 drones utilized between the stadium and areas of the Strip, including the Las Vegas Sphere. 24 live robotic cameras mounted inside the stadium as well as throughout the city—which was once the purview of the famous Goodyear Blimp

• Two dozen augmented reality cameras, including 11 on the CBS broadcast, 8 on Nickelodeon and 4 at the set on the Strip.

• A Vizrt graphics package design using Unreal Engine, a real-time 3D animation graphic tool. The package includes a modified version of the Las Vegas Strip

That’s a small taste of the broadcast tech used for the big game, an unimaginable collection of moving parts to coordinate. When I was in film school I could barely handle a simple 3 camera studio setup!

Extreme Reach gathered some fascinating data about this year’s Super Bowl ads. One that stood out to me:

The article goes on to note there are roughly 11 million deaf or hard of hearing people living in the US; a huge market that routinely goes ignored!

Speaking of commercials, it’s no surprise that AI-related ads were big this year, as CNET reports. Is this the sign of a big future for AI or will it go the way of crypto? My guess is: neither! Once the grifters have moved on to the next big thing to collect venture capital cash, we’ll see where AI’s use cases can be implemented.

In other AI-related news, prior to the Super Bowl, Google and Microsoft’s chatbots were hallucinating Super Bowl stats before the game even took place, although Google’s Gemini did accurately predict that the Chiefs would win! I asked Gemini for its prediction about me:

Wow, I don’t even get a hallucinatory prediction! You know what this means: Steve the Hollywood Tech Nerd is doing a Super Bowl ad in 2025!

Blu-Ray Boutique Labels Are Saving Film History

Last week I noted an upswing in movie piracy, in part fueled by the broken business model of online streaming. It’s a big problem! However, as IndieWire reports in an excellent article, it has also had the positive benefit of helping to grow a number of boutique Blu-Ray labels to “fill in the gaps of film history.”

I myself purchased Arrow Video’s release of Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, which contains not only the film itself but also the Cannes Film Festival cut, a substantially different version! It warms my often-cynical heart that these labels are out there picking up streaming’s slack.

Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)

Here’s a round-up of cool links about Hollywood and technology:

How the film industry is letting piracy win. (link)

Behind the scenes of TikTok’s feud with Universal. (link)

Ed Zitron got his hands on a Vision Pro and has some thoughts. (link)