M+E Daily

How best to advance the production and distribution of entertainment content in 2012? As a MESA panel of major-studio technology executives advised at the International CES earlier this week: keep it simple.

MESA’s Burbank Think panel was part of the Variety Entertainment Summit, which co-located with the International CES in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

Whether it’s UltraViolet or second-screen apps, with “any of these services we look to launch, the consumer is first — they have to be first,” said Darcy Antonellis, president of Warner Bros. technical operations. “They don’t want to know how it works, they want it to be transparent. We love that challenge.”

Chris Cookson, president of technologies at Sony Pictures, told MESA executive director Guy Finley (who moderated the panel) that studios must work to make technology transparent to consumers — particularly when it comes to marketing the cloud-based UltraViolet concept. From a consumer’s standpoint, said Cookson, “I shouldn’t have to think about what’s the shelf life of the technology I might buy in order to determine whether or not that channel is the one I want to get to put the movie in my library. The question is, ‘How do I engage the content I’m interested in and have the technology serve me, not the other way around?'”

Transparency can instill consumer confidence, noted fellow panelist Arnaud Robert, senior vice president of technologies for the Walt Disney Co. But Robert cautioned entertainment content distributors against overpromising in their value propositions. “If we say seamless access,” noted Robert, “consumers will do the leap of faith and think it’s really any device and really anywhere: ‘And right now, I’m traveling to Africa with this non-smartphone, how come I can’t see my content in HD?’ That’s an expectation we need to manage, I think.”

On the cloud, Ed Leonard, CTO of DreamWorks Animation, commented that cloud infrastructure has enabled greater fluidity and efficiency in the studio’s global production process. Leonard also emphasized the importance of studios keeping storytelling at the forefront of their business; technology, he said, should be seen as an enabler of studios’ core business of producing engaging entertainment content.

MESA is planning to hold its next Burbank Think Tank at NAB in April.

More on the Burbank Think Tank CES panel at Variety.