Culture

The films have not been released, and the cultural critiques have already begun

The Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry is complex, and many factors can impact content's ability to find an audience. Writing and producing an engaging story are only two elements of a profitable title release. Here are four more factors that affect the worldwide success of a title. 1. Competition and fragmentation: With more OTT video services entering the market and competing for subscribers, consumers have more choices and opportunities for confusion. Streaming services offer original content exclusively on their platforms or license it to competitors to increase market share. Sometimes they do both, leading to content fragmentation and consumer confusion. This is evident in the current dispute between Warner Brothers Discovery and Paramount Global over licensing the animated series "South Park," which is available on both HBOMax and Paramount+. Not only can fragmentation negatively impact platform revenues, but it also risks reducing consumer satisfaction and increasing churn rates. 2. Regulation and compliance: Video content crossing borders is subject to different legal and cultural norms. Providers must comply with various regulations regarding data privacy, content licensing, taxation, censorship, and consumer protection. For example, the implementation of new privacy laws in several states, such as Virginia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, and Utah, grants consumers more rights and control over their data and requires video content providers to comply with strict rules on data collection, processing, sharing, and security. The enforcement of existing online platform regulations, such as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects them from liability for user-generated content, encounters challenges and criticisms from lawmakers and advocates who want to hold platforms more accountable for harmful or illegal content. Emerging technologies and trends likely pose additional regulatory challenges or opportunities. Creators can protect their rights and interests by observing how these regulations are discussed or implemented. 3. Quality and cost: As consumer expectations for video quality increase, so do the challenges of delivering high-caliber content via different networks and devices. Who hasn’t switched channels because the title they’re watching isn't sharp and clear? Resolution matters. Video content providers should invest in technology and infrastructure supporting 4K, HDR, VR, and other formats while managing bandwidth costs and latency issues. Balancing the cost and quality of producing video content that works on any device, such as special effects, animation, or live-action, can be a challenge, especially for productions with limited budgets. Faced with trade-offs between additional spending to create high-quality content or reducing production costs, creators may be required to make changes or edits to obtain approval for releasing their content internationally. 4. Innovation and engagement: As video content evolves with new technologies such as AI, AR/VR, blockchain, interactivity, and filters, providers must keep pace with changing consumer preferences and behaviors. Consumers have demonstrated a willingness to try new ways of engaging with content, and it will become crucial for creators and platforms to innovate or risk falling behind. The challenge is offering technologies ready for mass consumption yet not posing a risk to the content or the brand. For example, some streaming services allow viewers to interact directly with content and influence storylines. For several years, Netflix has provided interactive shows with mixed market results, but development continues. TikTok recently announced an AI-powered "beauty filter" called "Bold Glamour," which changes people's appearance in real-time, raising ethical and social concerns, even among the creative community . This filter is not unlike the services offered by Flawless , which uses facial recognition to create AI-generated, lip-synced visual dubs in videos. Flawless also raises similar security concerns . Good stories are the heart of media and entertainment, and they rightfully deserve much care, attention, and professionalism. But other factors that can and do contribute to market success are often overlooked or downplayed. The coming months and years will tell which methods and tools help introduce stories to more extensive and diverse markets. Many strategies attract viewers, but care must be taken to ensure that the benefits outweigh the risks. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

Spherex's patented Spherex greenlight ™ AI/ML content analysis technology provides frame-level cultural feedback to content creators, distributors, and platforms so that titles can be adequately prepared for distribution to any country worldwide without regulatory or brand risk. Creators can use this technology at any stage of production to be alerted to events within the title that audiences or regulators may find objectionable. They can then decide how to address those issues before public release. Spherex greenlight ™ is simple to use, its output easy to understand, and the technology behind it is truly extraordinary. This post describes what Spherex greenlight ™ looks for in video content (we call them events) and how it interprets events that could result in cultural, political, or regulatory issues. Culture matters. Analyzing scenes through a cultural lens is critical to determining content audience suitability for local markets. For film and television, the type, portrayal, and intensity of cultural events determine the familiarity and acceptance of foreign content. How a title is perceived by government regulators and the public directly impacts distribution opportunities, market reach, audience size, public relations, and revenue. Events are the foundation. Events are components of a scene that include dialogue, music, lighting, acts of violence, sexuality, and drug use, among others, that tell the story. Think of events as subjects plus action, surrounded by context. A gunfight is an event. A love scene is an event. An argument containing profanity is an event. As interpreted by each country's culture and rules, the frequency, intensity, and impact of events determine the respective age ratings for a title. Take drug use, for example. Images of someone using a drug prescribed by a doctor (like an antibiotic) versus one used recreationally (like nicotine or marijuana) or in an abusive manner (like methamphetamine) all uniquely contribute to the intensity or impact of an event. Illicit drug use that is implied, shown as occurring in the shadows, or results in negative consequences may be suitable for all age groups in some countries but only for teenagers and above in other countries. The magic is knowing how each event is interpreted culturally and then applying each country's respective laws and rules to determine the appropriate age rating. Multiply that example across 200+ countries and territories, 7,151 known languages, and 3,800 distinct cultures, and you begin to see the value of Spherex greenlight ™. People interpret events differently based on their language, traditions, beliefs, and laws. There are hundreds of classifiable events to understand in preparing a title for international release. Context is often the final arbiter. Context is the circumstances that form the setting for a situation or event – and thoroughly explain it. Lighting, environment, era, consequences, character portrayal, colors, and more all contribute to describing the context of an event and are perceived differently by cultures worldwide. Contextual cues for age ratings may involve the environment, the character's prominence, the plot's importance, and whether an objectionable event is glamorized or encouraged. Context is critical to the arithmetic of computing an event. It will either be an aggravating or mitigating factor and, thus, raise or lower the formulated age rating. Event exceptions introduce risk. "Exceptions" are events that contain objectionable content according to a country's culture, politics, or laws. Exceptions cause regulators to restrict content to adults, require compliance edits before distribution, or entirely ban a title in some cases. Compliance edits can be bleeps or blurs that have little impact on the story. Or they could entail cutting scenes or reshoots, depending on the form and degree of objectionable content. Showing the Taiwanese flag on a jacket for a few seconds got Paramount Studio's " Top Gun: Maverick " banned in Mainland China but had no impact anywhere else. Two words in a single line of dialogue mentioning a same-sex girlfriend in Disney's " Onward " was enough to get the film banned in multiple countries. Even the cultural miscues in Netflix's "Squid Game" indicate how exceptions impact audience and media response to a title. Ideally, potential exceptions are identified during the script or production stages to mitigate compliance-related delays and costs. Knowing the concerns allows the director to address potential issues to avoid regulator scrutiny and reach the broadest audience in every market while staying true to their vision and the story. The difference in audience size of a film released in Germany rated age 12 compared to one rated age 16 is three million people. If similar ratings have similar population differences in multiple countries, making compliance edits can expand audience reach by millions. Because reach and engagement are vital determinants of success, knowing where to make edits to reach broader audiences is invaluable information, especially before issues arise.  Making global distribution more successful. Few issues are more crucial to content creators than maintaining creative control and distributing their work. As global demand for content increases, those creating it will come face-to-face with the realities of international distribution. The first roadblock they will encounter is content regulators. Only Spherex greenlight ™ provides the insights necessary to ensure story integrity and cultural compliance and does so in a way that makes global distribution more successful. Contact Spherex today to schedule a live demonstration.

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We generally don't write about specific shows unless something really goes wrong on the culture and localization side of things and highlights problems content creators may face when preparing for international release. Netflix's latest global hit, the South Korean title “Squid Game,” falls squarely into this category for three reasons. First, it demonstrates the impact social media has on the public perception of a title. Second, it highlights how translations can tell a very different story in subs and dubs than in the native language. Finally, it points out how complex the localization process is and the sacrifices that are sometimes made to get a title released. No one is shocked these days when social media “influencers” light the internet on fire with criticism. What surprises people is how soon it comes and from which direction. "Squid Game" was released on Sept. 17 2021, and within days people fluent in native Korean started posting about translation and cultural issues . One of the first to gain significant attention was a TikTok post by Youngmi Mayer , in which she describes the problems she found in the film's English closed captions in episode 6, “Gganbu.” So far, Mayer's video has been watched 2.9 million times. Mayer's concerns have been challenged as unfair because she watched the English Closed Captions instead of the English subtitles, which tend to be closer to the script. Closed captions are based upon the audio dub, which can be reduced or altered to match the character's lip movements. Here are two examples using Mayer's original post as the source. Mayer Korean dialogue (:30): “What are you looking at?” English Closed Caption translation: “Go Away!” English subtitle: “What are you looking at?” English audio dub: “Go away!” Here’s another example: Mayer Korean dialogue (6:00): “I’m very smart, I just never got the chance to study.” English Closed Caption translation: “I’m not a genius, but I still got it work out. Huh?” English subtitle: “I never bothered to study, but I’m insanely savvy.” English audio dub: “I’m not a genius, but I’ve still got it where it counts!” There are both consistencies and inconsistencies across translations, and it’s easy to see how a non-native speaker could experience a storyline that has deviated from the original depending upon whether they use subtitles, closed captions, dubbed audio, or a combination of any two. The differences in the second example could be due to carelessness or mishearing what is being said. “Work out” sort of sounds like “where it counts” if you say it fast enough. But if someone doesn’t have the English audio dub playing while they watch the film, how would they know the difference? The reality is they wouldn’t know, which could lead to the kind of confusion or misinterpretation Mayer and others discuss. The extent to which this happens varies across titles. In the case of "Squid Game," some people believe it has impacted the story significantly; and from these two examples, we can see why. But the general public won’t understand the process for creating subs and dubs and how they can contribute to inconsistencies or the appearance thereof. The woman who voiced the character Han Mi-Nyeo, Stephanie Komure, responded on Twitter , stating, “I’m the dub actress for Mi-Neyo, so I was in the studio when this changed. She was tough to dub because her expressions/mouth movements are so huge & up close, & things had to change to fit flaps. It’s a balancing act.” Ms. Komure indirectly refers to the linguistic, cultural, and visual issues encountered during localization. Linguistic in that some words and phrases are conveyed with fewer words than in other languages. Cultural in that is making sure the context is represented in words spoken and visual because the objective is to have the spoken words match as close as possible, as Komure mentions, to the movement of the actor’s mouth. It is a “balancing act,” and there are bound to be misunderstandings. The immense number of TikTok views alone has raised public awareness of the importance and significance of localization. This likely means there will be a race with future foreign-language titles to identify similar problems, throw shade on the platform, and earn millions of views. Content companies should expect this to happen from now on. Awareness of a problem is the best way to begin working on ways to solve it. Quality control for subs and dubs has always depended on the company and the budget. If anything forces content companies to eliminate these differences, it will be to insist upon better coordination and consistency between actual dialogue, subs, dubs and closed captions. No content company wants these types of problems to occur. They want all localizations to be consistent with the dialogue; but as "Squid Game" shows, it’s easier said than done.