Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/323069907?client_source=feed&format=rss
Hurricane Isaac Sam Claflin Tony Farmer West Nile virus symptoms snooki Prince Harry Vegas pictures Avril Lavigne
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Obamacare panel approves free cancer screenings for heavy ...
By Reuters
Tuesday, July 30, 2013 9:50 EDT
?
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) ? After decades of debate, an influential U.S. panel has endorsed the use of low-dose CT scans to detect lung cancer in high-risk individuals, paving the way for insurance coverage of the test for as many as 10 million smokers and former smokers.
The draft guidelines issued on Monday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force call for annual CT screening of current and former smokers aged 55 to 80 with a history of smoking the equivalent of a pack a day for 30 years, or two packs a day for 15 years. The recommendation applies to those who have quit smoking within the past 15 years.
The panel gave the screening a ?B? recommendation, meaning they are at least moderately certain that the benefits of testing outweigh the harms. Under the Affordable Care Act, insurers are required to cover preventive services with a grade of ?B? or higher.
The recommendations, posted on the task force website, are intended to help prevent some of the 160,000 annual lung cancer deaths in the United States, which exceed the total number of deaths from breast, prostate and colon cancer combined. Smoking is the biggest risk factor for developing lung cancer, resulting in about 85 percent of lung cancers in the United States.
Dr. Michael LeFevre of the University of Missouri in Columbia, who served on the task force, said ?getting screened for lung cancer is not an alternative to quitting smoking,? but he said screening high-risk smokers can prevent as many as 20,000 deaths a year.
Laurie Fenton Ambrose of the Lung Cancer Alliance, a group that has long advocated for lung cancer screening, said if approved in final form, the guidelines would represent a ?profound? and ?monumental moment.?
The guidelines largely fall in line with recommendations from most major groups of cancer experts, including the American Cancer Society and the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
But some doctors worry the rating might lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment of cancers, in much the same way that widespread screening programs for breast and prostate cancers have done.
PROPOSED GUIDELINES
The proposed guidelines are based on a review of research studies published since 2004, the time of the group?s last review. The evidence review was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Some of the strongest evidence came from the National Lung Screening Test, the largest-ever lung cancer screening study that in 2011 found CT screening cuts deaths from lung cancer.
The federally funded trial, which studied 53,000 current or former heavy smokers, found that CT scanning cut lung cancer deaths in high-risk smokers by 20 percent compared to no screening or to chest X-rays, which often miss early-stage cancers.
Dr. Clifford Hudis, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said the draft recommendations reflect the positions of several cancer groups.
?I think they are catching up to the science,? said Hudis, adding, ?We agree with them.?
Of course, using a highly sensitive test like a CT scan to look for early signs of lung cancer will undoubtedly result in high rates of false positives. The NLST found that 320 high-risk smokers had to be screened to prevent one lung cancer death.
Because of that, and the potential risk from annual exposure to radiation from the CT scans, LeFevre stressed that the screening should only be used in the high-risk groups specified by the guidelines.
?We believe the benefits do outweigh the harms in the group we have targeted for screening. We are not sure of that for those of lower risk, either by age or smoking history,? he said.
OVERDIAGNOSIS
The National Lung Screening Trial showed that for every five to six lives saved by screening, one person died as a result of post-screening procedures, such as a needle biopsy that collapsed their lung.
Dr. Peter Bach, director of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center?s Center for Health Policy and Outcomes, who has studied the impact of lung cancer screening said with the new guidelines, ?overdiagnosis is guaranteed.?
Bach said he hopes doctors will view the ?B? rating as an indication that the recommendation was weak. ?They are not telling people you have to do it,? he said.
LeFevre said it is very important that doctors follow up tests with imaging first, rather than invasive procedures.
?Most of the abnormalities found on CT scan are not cancer, but they do lead to further testing. That is why it is important to limit this to the high-risk group,? he said.
Dr. Kenneth Lin, an associate professor of family medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine and formerly on the staff of the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force, said there is still not enough good data on the issue of overdiagnosis, which will make it difficult to counsel patients on whether to have the test or not.
?If a patient came to me asking for screening and if he/she didn?t meet the criteria, I?d simply say ?no?,? Lin said in emailed comments.
If patients did meet the criteria, Lin said he would press for more details on the patients potential risk for lung cancer and if the patient is still smoking, offer counseling about the need to stop.
?Then I?d explain the uncertainty regarding the harms and only order the test if they expressed a clear preference for it after all that,? he said.
What worries LeFevre and others is that some doctors and hospitals will try to profit from screening, which costs a few hundred dollars a test.
?We hope that physicians will not use this recommendation to exaggerate the benefits of screening,? he said.
The task force is expected to decide whether to make the recommendation final sometime after August 26 when the public comment period ends.
(This story has been corrected to make it clear that the guidelines were posted on task force website)
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen)
["Stock Photo: Old Woman Smoking And Applying Make Up" on Shutterstock]
?
?
?
?
?
lindzi cox bachelor finale courtney robertson ben flajnik hunger games premiere red meat bachelor ben
Snowden deals blow to ?global electronic prison camp? ? Russian Orthodox Church
Published time: July 30, 2013 11:16 
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin has praised Russian authorities for not caving in to pressure from abroad, saying granting asylum to US whistleblower Edward Snowden would help prevent the establishment of a ?global electronic prison camp?.
?It is encouraging news that Russia is demonstrating its independence in this case as it has in many others, despite the pressure? said the head of the Holy Synod?s Department for Relations between the Church and Society.
Vsevolod Chaplin added that the Snowden saga has been broadly discussed both on the domestic and international level, with Russia?s position potentially bolstering its image as a country upholding ?the true freedom of ideals.?
The Russian cleric further argued that Snowden?s revelations confirmed the existence of a pernicious problem discussed by Orthodox Christians for many years ? ?the prospective of a global electronic-totalitarian prison camp?.
?First they get people addicted to convenient means of communication with the authorities, businesses and among each other. In a while people become rigidly connected to these services and as a result the economic and political owners of these services get tremendous and terrifying power. They cannot help feeling the temptation to use this power to control the personality and such control might eventually be much stricter that all known totalitarian systems of the twentieth century,? Interfax news agency quoted Chaplin as saying.
The church official added that in his view true democracy remained an unreachable ideal.
?Any political system fixes the domination of a few over many. In the twentieth century the harshest forms of such political power used brute force, but now they are using soft power, through total data collecting and through soft persuasion of people, first through slogans but then through legal acts,? Chaplin explained. He noted that currently the soft power system was promoting such topics as declaring the western political system as the only viable option, making religion a marginal trend, and sidelining both criticism of market fundamentalism and leftist political platforms.
Chaplin urged Russian authorities to defend ?real freedom, the freedom from the global ideological dictate and from the electronic prison camp.?
The cleric also offered a possible solution ? the development of its own electronic communications system that would be independent from foreign-based mediums. ?The nation has the brains for this and I hope we will also have a will,? Chaplin declared.
Russia is currently considering Edward Snowden?s request for temporary asylum and the former NSA contractor still remains in the transit zone of the Moscow?s Sheremetyevo airport.
The Russian Justice Ministry on Tuesday sent a formal response to a letter from US Attorney General, who assured Moscow that Snowden would not face the prospect of death or torture if handed over to the United States.
The Russian ministry did not provide the details of its reply to the press.
Source: http://rt.com/politics/russian-orthodox-church-snowden-787/
kenny powers carl hagelin triple play james neal virginia tech emancipation proclamation april 16
Is This Film Festival A Scam? Sometimes, It's Not So Obvious ...
The Quad Cinema, one of the venues used by the Manhattan Film Festival.
There are thousands of film festivals in North America. Of those, a majority have significant track records -- that is, their films find distribution, the filmmakers raise their profiles, or, at a minimum, the festival has a solid reputation that enhances the filmmakers' stature by proxy.?
But a slim margin exist because most filmmakers don?t make the cut. Inexperienced with the festival circuit, they scramble to find somewhere, anywhere, to screen. The looser acceptance protocols can give filmmakers a false sense of success that allows them to display multiple laurels on their websites and posters -- which are largely meaningless to anyone but the filmmakers.?
Still -- a screen is a screen, right??
IT'S A GOOD MOVIE, BUT CAN THEY PLAY IT?
"It was a fucking nightmare." That's how Mira Gibson described the premiere of her film "Warfield" at the Manhattan Film Festival last year. Certain it wouldn't be accepted at the New York Film Festival or Tribeca, the Brooklynite wanted to screen in the city and thought MFF would be a good fit. (Editor's note: Manhattan Film Festival should not be confused with the Manhattan Short Film Festival, a completely separate organization.)?
She submitted her film and entry fee through online service Withoutabox; when the film was accepted, Gibson hustled to put the final touches in post. About 10 weeks before the 2012 MFF, she sent "Warfield" in the form of a thumb drive, along with specs.
When her big night arrived, Gibson was anxious?and not because she was about to unveil a film that she'd been hyping for months to her agent, manager, family, friends, cast and crew. The venue wasn't readymade for a movie premiere: That year, the festival was screening films at The Producer's Club, a Times Square space more suited for theater work.
It proved to be an omen of things to come.
As the lights went down and the picture came up, Gibson was horrified. "It's the wrong one!" she yelled out. Her first audience was watching the version she?d submitted for acceptance?a work-in-progress with no color or audio correction, no credits or the score.
After her pleas with the projectionist failed to stop the film, Gibson learned only then that her thumb drive version, which represented thousands of dollars in final edits, was unplayable by MFF: The thumb drive was Mac-formatted and their equipment was Windows. Gibson was speechless.
While her experience would be a nightmare for any filmmaker, not every accusation of a festival?s illegitimacy is cut and dry. The Manhattan Film Festival, which wrapped its 7th edition in June, is such a case.?
READ MORE: Indiewire Investigation: The Dark Underbelly of the Film Festival Circuit, Part 1
Filmmakers Philip J. Nelson and Jose Ruiz founded the event in 2006 after struggling to find an audience for their film, ?Promise of a New Day.? MovieMaker magazine selected MFF in 2012 as one of the "25 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee," largely due to its revenue sharing agreement: The festival and filmmakers split ticket sales 50/50, with the site Screen Booker taking 99-cent service fee on every ticket sold. (Filmmakers interviewed for this story say they received amounts ranging from $300-$400.)
On the surface, the festival sounds like a hidden gem among the thousands. However, after seven years, its profile remains very low (although for its first four years, its name was Independent Features Film Festival). And all the filmmakers interviewed for this story -- whether they enjoyed the festival or not?commented on its rampant disorganization, lack of communication and screening ineptitude.
CONFIRM THE LOCATION
L.A.-based filmmaker Timothy L. Anderson screened his debut feature, the Coolio-starring dark comedy "Two Hundred Thousand Dirty," at the 2013 MFF. Only available to fly to town on the day of his screening, Anderson was having lunch with a friend in midtown and prepared to do a final social media blast about the premiere when he got a call from his AD that the location on their Screen Booker page suddenly changed from the East Village?s Quad Cinema to Hunter College on the Upper East Side."I was never emailed or called at all," said Anderson about the change.?
Panic ensued: Unable to get in touch with his festival contact over the phone, Anderson rushed to the Quad for answers and found only volunteers and staff who had none. Anderson then spent two hours waiting in the lobby until Nelson showed up, who only explained that there were booking problems.
"We did postcards saying it was at the Quad and they were right next to him as we were talking,? said Anderson. ?So no one at the festival saw these and saw they were wrong? My lead actor was at the opening night party, no one said anything to him about it. I told [Nelson], ?If you walk to the Quad and find out the film is now uptown, you?re just going to go to a bar.?? With only three hours before his screening, Anderson suggested a shuttle service.
"There were such repeated instances of clusterfuck."
In a panic, Nelson found a limo company to take the people who showed up at the Quad over to Hunter College, where things weren?t much better: the film began only after the projectionist scrambled to find a working Blu-ray player. There was no festival representative there to introduce the film or moderate a Q&A afterwards.
Jon Lindstrom, also L.A.-based (you may remember him as Dr. Kevin Collins on "General Hospital"), had a similar experience when screening his debut feature, summer-getaway-gone-wrong thriller "How We Got Away With It." However, he only learned about his location change when he ran into Nelson at the Quad, where he was told his film would now play at Hunter.
"I was checking my Screen Booker page every day," said Lindstrom. "They must have changed it that day." Like Anderson, the festival shuttled audience members up to Hunter. Lindstrom?s film also started late and had technical issues.
"There were such repeated instances of clusterfuck," Lindstrom said. "There should have been backup plans, contingencies. They should have learned over so many years. I'm still rather stunned."
Location changes for screenings are a frequent occurrence at festivals (though usually filmmakers are notified directly before it has happened). Most filmmakers that Indiewire interviewed who attended MFF either last year or this year just made the most out of a lousy situation.
Solvan Naim took a slightly different tack: After spending an estimated $3,500 on promotions for the MFF screening of his debut darmedy/hip-hop musical, ?Full Circle,? at the Quad, the Brooklyn native learned from ticket buyers that the location was now Hunter College. Naim wasn't satisfied with Nelson's shuttle suggestion; when conversations stalled with Nelson and unable to get assistance from Quad owner Elliott Kanbar, Naim contacted his lawyer, Habib Bentaleb. According to Bentaleb, the festival refused to reply to his numerous emails. And then Naim received an email from Nelson stating that they were pulling his film -- a move that may violate Withoutabox?s Festival Participation Agreement. (Nelson said he was unaware of the clause. In a statement provided to Indiewire, Withoutabox said, "If we determine that a festival has violated our Terms of Service, we will take action, which may include terminating a festival's access to Withoutabox services." The company declined to comment specifically about MFF.)
Naim responded by gathering friends, actors and film crew to protest at the Quad. Naim met other filmmakers with similar MFF woes; the police even showed up and tried to get Naim and Nelson to reconcile.
Two days later, Naim rented a New York University theater and showed his film.
Next: The festival's founder responds.
Source: http://www.indiewire.com/article/is-this-film-festival-a-scam-sometimes-its-not-so-obvious
Savannah Guthrie Daft Punk Joyce Brothers atari breakout Amys Baking Company oj simpson chicago bulls
Texas A&M football player dies in car accident
kvue.com
Posted on July 30, 2013 at 10:23 AM
Updated today at 12:52 PM
Texas A&M University redshirt defensive lineman Polo Manukainiu, 19, died Monday night in a car accident in New Mexico during a trip home from Utah.
According Texas A&M, he was killed in a one-vehicle rollover accident on U.S. Highway 550 in Sandoval County in New Mexico.
Among those who also died in the single-vehicle crash were 14-year-old Andrew "Lolo" Uhatafe and 18-year-old Gaius Vaenuku. Salesi Uhatafe was injured in the crash.
One of Manukainiu's last tweets may shed some light on what happened. "22 hour drive back to Texas on no sleep. Oh my," he tweeted.
A statement released by Texas A&M reports Manukainiu "was a passenger in a 2002 Toyota Sequoia traveling south on U.S. 550 and the vehicle drifted off of the roadway and the driver over corrected and the vehicle rolled several times. Manukainiu and another passenger, Andrew Uhatafe, were ejected from the vehicle and deceased at the scene. Gaius Vaenuku, an incoming member of the Utah football team, was transported from the scene of the accident but was pronounced deceased in the ambulance. The driver and a fifth passenger were transported to San Juan Regional Hospital after sustaining minor injuries. Alcohol was not involved and it appears the driver was the only one wearing a seat belt."
Manukainiu was from Euless, Texas. According to KVUE's sister station WFAA, he graduated from Trinity High School in 2012.
The high school released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
As we mourn the loss of three members of our Trinity family, we invite you to use this page as a place to share thoughts about Gaius Vaenuku (THS Class of 2013), Polo Manukainiu (THS Class of 2012), and Lolo Uhatafe (Euless Junior High student), along with support for Salesi Uhatafe (THS Class of 2013).
Aggies, sports fans, and even teammates are now sharing their sadness over Manukainiu's death.
?We lost a terrific young man,? Texas A&M head football coach Kevin Sumlin said. ?Polo was loved by his teammates and coaches. Anyone who came in contact with him was struck by his sense of humor and smile. My heart aches for his mom and family members.?
Teammate and Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel tweeted Tuesday morning, "Heart hurts waking up to news about Polo..I think I speak for everyone on our team when I say we love you brother you will be missed."
The Texas A&M football staff sent this message out on their Twitter feed, "Very saddened this morning by the passing of @manukainiupolo. What a great kid! Praying for his family. #RIPPolo."
Texas A&M says Manukainiu was a recreation, parks and tourism science major. He is survived by his mother, Lima Uhatafe of Euless.
Source: http://www.kvue.com/news/Texas-AM-football-player-dies-in-car-accident-217596751.html
food network star British Open 2012 bane Aurora Colorado Rajesh Khanna friday the 13th toy story 4
US home prices rise 12.2 percent, best in 6 years
In this Tuesday, June 11, 2013, photo, a single house is offered for sale in Santa Monica, Calif. Sandard & Poor's/Case-Shiller reports on home prices in May on Tuesday, July 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
In this Tuesday, June 11, 2013, photo, a single house is offered for sale in Santa Monica, Calif. Sandard & Poor's/Case-Shiller reports on home prices in May on Tuesday, July 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? U.S. home prices jumped 12.2 percent in May compared with a year ago, the biggest annual gain since March 2006. The increase shows the housing recovery is strengthening.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index released Tuesday also surged 2.4 percent in May from April. The month-over-month gain nearly matched the 2.6 percent increase in April from March ? the highest on record.
The price increases were widespread. All 20 cities showed gains in May from April and compared with a year ago.
Prices in Dallas and Denver reached the highest level on records dating back to 2000. That marks the first time since the housing bust that any city has reached an all-time high.
Home values are rising as more people are bidding on a scarce supply of houses for sale. Steady price increases, along with stable job gains and historically low mortgage rates, have in turn encouraged more Americans to buy homes.
Higher home prices help the economy in several ways. They encourage more sellers to put their homes on the market, boosting supply and sustaining the housing recovery. And they make homeowners feel wealthier, encouraging consumers to spend more.
The index covers roughly half of U.S. homes. It measures prices compared with those in January 2000 and creates a three-month moving average. The May figures are the latest available. They are not adjusted for seasonal variations, so the monthly gains reflect more buying activity over the summer.
Mortgage rates have surged since early May, though the increase would have had little impact on the current report. The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage has jumped a full percentage point since early May and reached a two-year high of 4.51 percent in late June.
Rates jumped after Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Federal Reserve could slow its bond-buying program later this year if the economy continues to improve. The Fed's bond purchases have kept long-term interest rates low, encouraging more borrowing and spending.
In recent weeks, Bernanke and other Fed members have stressed that any change in the bond-buying program will depend on the economy's health, not a set calendar date.
Since those comments, interest rates have declined. The average on the 30-year mortgage was 4.31 percent last week.
Associated PressBob Ross Hurricane Categories Hurricane Sandy new jersey atlantic city ocean city maryland KDKA
Confirmed kills: A solemn secret for military snipers is becoming a pop-culture hit
Gary Payne / Getty Images for NBC News
Former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb poses with his Yak 52 airplane in a hangar in El Cajon, Calif.
By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor
Inside one of America?s most select clubs, the tally known as "confirmed kills" is revered yet rarely discussed ? meant to be carried silently, worn proudly and certainly never hyped.
?It?s an intimate kill,? said Brandon Webb, an ex-sniper and former Navy SEAL who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. ?I?ve dropped plenty of bombs on people in Afghanistan. I don?t count that as a confirmed kill. It?s a very personal thing to pull a trigger and take someone?s life."
But to a growing audience of civilian consumers, the stat is pure mystique, darkly enticing, packed with alpha swagger. And to publisher?HarperCollins, director?Steven Spielberg, and an Iraq veteran-turned-author who bills himself as ?one of the deadliest?American soldiers of all time,? the grisly total also equates to money.
The late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle shared the concept with nearly 1 million readers of his 2012 autobiography ?American Sniper.?
The book description by HarperCollins notes: ?The Pentagon has officially confirmed more than 150 of Kyle?s kills.?
On Feb. 2, Kyle was?shot and killed at a Texas gun range ??former Marine Eddie Ray Routh was accused in the shooting, and was indicted on July 24. A film about Kyle, also titled ?American Sniper,? directed by Spielberg and starring Bradley Cooper, is slated to debut in 2015.
?People are fascinated with precision kills and sniping in a way they never were with machine-gunners or artillery strikes,? said one of Kyle?s co-authors, Jim DeFelice. ?There?s a preconceived notion of the lone sniper out in the jungle, stalking his target, and finally taking a shot. While they train to do that and it happens on occasion, that?s not where the bulk of any of these guys? kills come from."
?But the number ? well, you have to know Chris. He would kind of shrug (it off),? DeFelice added. ?If it was up to him, he wouldn?t have put the number in.?
Still, publicists for ?American Sniper? listed Kyle?s tally in a matter-of-fact tone akin to how Major League Baseball sums up home runs ? a stat that leads the all-time list of other U.S. military marksmen, eclipsing the ?previous American record? of 109. That's the count amassed by Army Staff Sgt. Adelbert F. Waldron III, who served in Vietnam, according to the Military Channel.
Then came the June release of ?Carnivore? ? another HarperCollins autobiography, co-authored by Iraq veteran and former Army Sgt. 1st?Class Dillard ?C.J.? Johnson.
It hit shelves with high dose of testosterone-pumped?publicity: ?... his crew are recognized by Pentagon reports to have accounted for astonishing enemy KIA totals while battling inside and out of the ?Carnivore,? the Bradley Fighting Vehicle Johnson commanded,? reads the publisher?s website. The book jacket lists his enemy kills at more than 2,600, including 121 ?confirmed sniper kills.?
Some in the military community quickly slammed the book?s bluster as well as its accuracy, launching a ?Carnivore Fraud? Facebook page?and poking holes in Johnson?s accounts on websites popular with veterans.
Johnson was unavailable for an interview because he is being treated for cancer. In a July 7 article in Military Times, however, Johnson acknowledged the figures in the book are ?incorrect,? but said his edits weren't incorporated. He also complained about how the book had been marketed.
HarperCollins emailed several references for the figures in ?Carnivore,? including ?On Point,? the Army?s official history of the Iraq invasion. The publisher noted that the book was submitted to and cleared for publication by the Department of Defense.
Speaking generally about the notion of confirmed kills, Johnson?s editor, Peter Hubbard, acknowledged the value of such statistics, saying (via an email through a HarperCollins publicist): ?The public has had a fascination with battlefield exploits from Homer?s Iliad to?Sergeant York to Chris Kyle.?
But how are a sniper's kills confirmed and catalogued with any precision?
For the record, the U.S. Army "does not keep any official, or unofficial for that matter, record of confirmed kills," said?Wayne V. Hall, a spokesman for the Army. ?Similarly, U.S. Special Operations Command treats that tally as "unofficial," said Ken McGraw, a spokesman for the command.
"If anything, we shy away from reporting numbers like that. It?s so difficult to prove. And what does it mean?" McGraw said.?
But Kyle's co-author, DeFelice, said the sniper routinely reported his kills to immediate commanders "because they had to know what was going on," and he "personally kept track."?
"First of all, if he shot someone and let?s say the person crawled away, that wouldn?t be a kill. They had certain criteria. They basically had to see the person fall and be clearly dead," DeFelice said. "Generally, because of where he was operating, it generally meant the body was recovered. Because they were in an urban environment where those kills took place ... where other (U.S.) troops were present. They would recover a body so they had that evidence."
"It's?one of those things that's more on the honor system," added Webb, who?operates a website called SOFREP that describes itself as a "special operations forces situation report." He won't reveal his own count. ?
"I?ve had plenty of people ask inappropriate questions. I tell them it?s none of their business. It?s a personal thing," Webb said. "It's one of those things where none of my civilian friends would understand, so why they hell would I talk to them about it?"
Related:
bobby rush supreme court justices 19 kids and counting danny o brien alicia silverstone park slope food coop anchorman sequel
Hey, Peter Jackson, Freddie Wong is bringing high-frame rate online - and viewers are flocking to it
By Lucas Shaw
NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - When Peter Jackson opted to shoot and release "The Hobbit" at 48 frames per second, he predicted the higher frame rate would become the new standard for all of Hollywood's biggest films.
Instead, it sparked a major dispute. Less than a year after the film's release, the jury is still out, but that didn't deter Freddie Wong, the most effects-savvy filmmaker on YouTube, from shooting the action scenes of the second season of his hit show "Video Game School" at 48 frames per second.
Wong, his partners and his managers/producers at the Collective Digital Studio made history over the weekend by releasing the second season of that show at a mixed frame rate on their own website, RocketJump.com. It is the first web show ever shot and released at a mixed frame rate, and so far the numbers look very strong.
The second season debuted on Friday, and garnered 1.3 million views in its first three days - on pace with the first season, which drew more than 55 million views. About a quarter of those views came from RocketJump.
On the eve of VidCon, a massive fan event for the online video industry, TheWrap spoke with Wong about shooting at 48 frames per second, the new season of his show and his plans for his own site.
You debuted new episodes of the last season on your own website (RocketJump) one week before on they appeared YouTube. This one debuted at the same time on YouTube. Why?
It was part of our deal for using the YouTube space. Because we shot there for free, they requested that we don't window stuff.
We also decided if we get everything out there at once people will have a good reason to come to our site. We have a high-frame rate version and a high-frame rate player on our site. Only a few people could see "The Hobbit" in 3D at a high frame rate and there's nowhere else you can go to watch high frame rate anything.
Jackson got a lot of negative feedback for that.
It's the technology that Peter Jackson and James Cameron are saying is the future of cinema. People will watch things everywhere and if people like a place for watching (like YouTube), they need to have a good reason to watch things somewhere else. We accomplished that by being the only thing on the internet in mixed and high frame rate.
How was it shooting with high-frame rate?
There were more hard drives. The Red Epic has the ability to select that 48 frames per second. We shot action scenes in that and the rest in standard 24. On the edit, our final video file that comes out is a 48-frame video file so all the 24 sequences are just doubling the frames.
How did you decide you wanted to do that?
Matt and I were talking about the idea of split frame rates almost when we started talking about the show. If you're a gamer, you know 60 frames per second is the gold standard of gaming. It's important for reaction times and smoothness.
We knew how cool it would be if in the show games were 60 FPS and the rest were 24 FPS. But that particular combo is not possible.
How do you gauge that fan response?
Through various social channels. It's probably how most people gauge fan response when it comes to their movies too, but the director isn't out there talking to everybody.
I can talk to a lot of people and get a statistically significant sampling of people through comments, social media and all the tool sets available to us.
Do you have a sense of how many of your fans on YouTube are willing to cross over to RocketJump? The early numbers showed about one quarter of your views coming from your own site.
We're in the infancy of it. We're just starting out having ancillary content and podcasts.
Realistically I know there are people who love that stuff and want to get into it and will hop over anywhere. Then there are people who have YouTube on their phones and have decided that's how they watch things. Those people will be harder to transfer, but the only thing we can do is keep putting out interesting things on our site.
What are you plans for building out the site?
We're exploring other kinds of content that aren't video - podcasts and blog posts. It also lets us have more of a handle on the community and the experience so we'll offer rewards and achievements and games. We also want our site to be a more interesting and engaging experience than YouTube. Engagement and rewards and gamification is something we can build out.
Also, the player. We offer selectable audio-commentary tricks, a high frame rate player and subtitles to whatever.
Last season was more like a movie chopped up into short bits. This time around you decided to make TV-length episodes. How have viewers responded?
The response has been very good, which echoes the sentiment we saw at the end of the first season. The last episode was 22 minutes long and everyone said 'why couldn't the whole season have had episodes this long?'
TV length lets us expand the universe a lot better than in the movie. In a movie you have your plot and plow through it. In this we can explore side characters and there's more diversity in terms of plots and themes.
As far as I can tell from other web series, most people think no one will sit around for a show this length. But most people are more than willing to.
What else separates this season from the previous one?=
There's a jump up in quality in pretty much every aspect you can measure - production value, cinematography, acting.
Would you want to bring in more professional actors?
We have story lines we wanna tell and we love our actors. This season we have the inclusion of new character played by Cynthia Watros; she's been on "Lost" and "Titus" and "House."
The opportunity to work with some heavyweights would be awesome - if it fits into the "Video Game High School" universe.
So what's next for you? "VGHS 3"?
We're working on an anthology kind of show with sci-fi/actions projects. The plan for "VGHS" is to go three seasons and then think about it. I don't want to get into a position where we're just doing one web series over and over again. We want more series and more diversity.
We have some ideas for an animated version of "VGHS." When we were shooting we thought, "Wouldn't this be easier if we could draw all this?"
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hey-peter-jackson-freddie-wong-bringing-high-frame-233553507.html
Anna Kendrick Allan Simonsen paula deen Super moon Super Moon June 2013 world war z discovery channel
Asia News Headlines - Yahoo! News
Source: http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/asia
ny times Boston Marathon Results pangolin Ball Bearings Macklemore irs forms oklahoma city bombing
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)