Lifeboat Foundation

Actors and Actresses will never have to worry about reading through pages of scripts to decide whether or not the role is worth their time; AI will do the work for you.

A version of this story first appeared in the Feb. 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

During his 12 years in UTA’s story department, Scott Foster estimates he read about 5,500 screenplays. “Even if it was the worst script ever, I had to read it cover to cover,” he says. So when Foster left the agency in 2013, he teamed with Portland, Ore.-based techie Brian Austin to create ScriptHop, an artificial intelligence system that manages the volume of screenplays that every agency and studio houses. “When I took over [at UTA], we were managing hundreds of thousands of scripts on a Word document,” says Foster, who also worked at Endeavor and Handprint before UTA. “The program began to eat itself and become corrupt because there was too much information to handle.” ScriptHop can read a script and do a complete character breakdown in four seconds, versus the roughly four man hours required of a reader. The tool, which launches Feb. 16 is free, and is a sample of the overall platform coming later in 2016 that will recommend screenplays as well as store and manage a company’s library for a subscription fee of $29.99 a month per user.

Continue reading “This New Artificial Intelligence Script-Reading Program Could Find Your Next Oscar Role (Exclusive)” »

Imagine a world where you could download every episode of Game of Thrones before you’d even lifted your finger off the ‘Buy’ button?

Well researchers at University College London have brought us one crucial step closer to this utopian world by creating a record-breaking data transfer speed of 1.125 terabits per second.

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Paramount has announced the dates of the next Transformers trilogy, with movies number 5, 6, and 7 set to hit theaters in 2017, 2018, and 2019 respectively. That’s right, after this year, 2020 will be the next time you won’t be able to see a new Transformers movie at the cinema. Unless, of course, that’s when number eight is coming out. According to The Wrap, Transformers 5 will be released on June 23rd, 2017; Transformers 6 on June 8th, 2018; and Transformers 7 on June 28th, 2019.

The last move in the franchise — Transformers: Age of Extinction — was derided by critics when it was released in 2014, but that didn’t stop it racking up more than $1 billion at the global box office. That makes it the 15th highest-grossing film of all time, and the second-highest grossing title in the Transformers franchise. For movie studios, an average rating of 18 percent on Rotten Tomatoes just isn’t as important.

The next Transformers trilogy will have a lot to prove though. Although Michael Bay is directing again, and actor Mark Wahlberg is also contracted for at least a few more films in the franchise, Transformers 5 will be the product of a writers’ room, rather than an individual or a pair of script-writers. It’s hoped that this new approach (nabbed from the TV industry), will keep the franchise fresh and exciting. We’ll find out whether it succeeds or not in 2017. And 2018. And 2019.

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A team of researchers has achieved the fastest ever transmission rate for digital information between a single transmitter and receiver, sending data optically at a frankly ridiculous 1.125 terabits per second.

The result, achieved by scientists at University College London, uses a series of signal processing techniques to achieve the speed. But first, the lead researcher, Dr Robert Maher, puts the rate into context in a press release:

For comparison this is almost 50,000 times greater than the average speed of a UK broadband connection of 24 megabits per second… To give an example, the data rate we have achieved would allow the entire HD Game of Thrones series to be downloaded within one second.

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Great story; I hope it helps many talented game developers realize what you mean to kids; and especially those children who fight cancer.

A lot of people are coming together right now to help a teenager who is fighting cancer in a local hospital. It’s not just his family or doctors and nurses either. Complete strangers are giving their all to help him accomplish his high-tech dream.

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During a panel talk about the ins-and-outs of filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival, director Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World), who will be directing Star Wars: Episode IX, teased an idea he’s working on for his Star Wars movie: shooting in space.

“I asked the question, ‘Is it possible for us to shoot IMAX film plates in actual space for Star Wars, and I haven’t gotten an answer yet,” said Trevorrow during the panel.

Trevorrow made the comments while on a panel that included Christopher Nolan and cinematographer Rachel Morrison (Fruitvale Station).

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=evbPZlUoNXA

A new thriller starring Ben Kingsley and Ryan Reynolds explores the idea of transferring consciousness from one body to another. Unlike Freaky Friday, or the myriad of other family movies and comedies that have explored the idea, this one actually explores the science of the process.

In the movie Self/less, a rich business man (Kingsley) is dying of cancer. However, he is able to prolong his “self” by transferring his consciousness from one body to another using a medical procedure called “shedding.”

Continue reading “Neuroscientist Discusses the Idea of Consciousness Transfer From the New Movie Self/less” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQtQGoMRXaI

AltspaceVR lets you share experiences with people in virtual reality. Hang out, attend events, play games, and more.

Join the community (no headset required): https://account.altvr.com/users/sign_up

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Rupert Sanders’ live-action ‘Ghost in the Shell’ movie has added Michael Pitt as the villain, but it’s not the antagonist you might have expected.

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