47 GENIUS INTERVIEW RICHARD BERGER
FEED What led you to taking the helm at MovieLabs last year? RICHARD BERGER I had been at Sony for some time, starting in the mid 90s in the music company, focusing on new technology. We were working on enhanced CDs, trying to add value with a multi-media experience – this was just before Napster and the Internet happened. I left Sony briefly to join a start-up and also worked with Accenture in the UK on interactive services and EPGs for Cable & Wireless Worldwide. But then I returned to Sony corporate in New York and focused on interactive services and technologies to secure content. Eventually, I moved out to Sony Pictures in L.A. I was instrumental in the launch of Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) and the UltraViolet digital rights system. I had already worked closely with MovieLabs while at Sony Pictures, so it was a natural evolution. And a lot of the initiatives I was focusing on at Sony were worked on across all the studios. FEED Can you explain what MovieLabs’ role is in the industry? RB You can think of MovieLabs as a technology innovation arm, jointly funded by the big six major movie studios. MovieLabs started in 2006. Historically it’s focused on content protection technology – anti-camcording tech, content recognition for user-generated sites, gathering peer-to-peer data. In more recent years, we’ve become involved in next-gen content formats, like 4K and HDR, and new cross-platform distribution systems like UltraViolet and Movies Anywhere. FEED Are you having regular pow-wows with representatives from the studios? What kind of communications do you have? RB Being based in L.A., I’m going to one of the big studios every other day. I meet not only with the technology guys, but also with the business stakeholders to make sure we’re enabling what they’re trying to accomplish. And the team members here at MovieLabs are working closely with their studio counterparts all the time. We also work together in industry forums like the Digital Entertainment
Group and Entertainment Merchants Association, as well as various standards bodies, to move our agenda forward.
ou love to watch your favourite movie streaming
on Amazon – but what about the trailers? The behind-the-scenes documentary? The director commentary? MovieLabs, a tech innovator funded by the major movie studios, is working to get that content in front of consumers as simply as possible. Rich Berger joined MovieLabs as CEO last year after almost a decade at Sony Pictures Entertainment and is helping movie studios navigate a new world of shifting distribution platforms.
FEED What has MovieLabs been concentrating on lately?
RB We’re always working on developing cross-studio best practices around new formats such as 4K and HDR. One of our key focus areas lately has been helping the studios automate their digital supply chain. That involves working not just with the studios but with the digital retailers and service providers, and helping them connect on things like metadata, so that content can be better displayed and sold to consumers. We’ve also been working on a cross-studio extras platform. In the past, when the studios have sold digital content to consumers, it unfortunately hasn’t come with a lot of interactive features and bonus content like a DVD or Blu-ray does, because every platform is dierent and has dierent capabilities. So we’ve developed a way for the studios to publish all that content once and for the various service provider platforms to easily pull that experience into their services. That’s going to allow the studios to innovate more on the content and make sure it gets to the consumers. FEED MovieLabs has created and published specs on the distribution of extras across multiple platforms. Can you tell us how that has developed? RB It was something I had been working on at Sony Pictures, and then we brought it to MovieLabs. We wanted to share it with the whole industry to enable any kind of provider to publish an experience and have it attached to the content sold by any retailer. The resulting Cross-Platform Extras (CPE) spec is available on the MovieLabs website. There have already been some service providers that have implemented it, including ComCast. We’re also working with some retailers and with Movies Anywhere on this, too. Movies Anywhere is one of the more exciting things that has launched in the US. There are a number of things the studios will be able to do in that ecosystem. More retailers are adopting it and it’s going to give consumers more choice around how and where they access their purchased content.
WE WANTED THE PLATFORM TO ENABLE ANYTHING THE STUDIOS COULD DREAM UP
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