If there’s an artist in your life the best gift you can give them is inspiration. Whether they’re a painter, writer, musician or anything else. Something to get their creative juices flowing will be welcome. Trust us. There are countless ways to spur creativity and aid the creative process — many of which don’t require spending any money, like meditation or simply taking a long walk. But there are tools out there that can help someone stretch beyond their comfort zone, or simply document and fine-tune their own ideas. From subscriptions, to books, to extremely bizarre instruments, here are the best gifts for the creative in your life.

You Are an Artist by Sarah Urist Green

Will Lipman Photography for Engadget / Penguin Books

It might seem counterintuitive, but sometimes just being told what to do is a great way to spur creativity. Because, truth is, rarely is the actually creative part in the original idea, but rather in the execution of it. The problem is, once someone leaves school nobody is giving them assignments any more. That’s where You Are an Artist comes in, a book compiled by Sarah Urist Green, the host of PBS’ The Art Assignment on YouTube. It’s a collection of 50 assignments crafted by a diverse set of artists to help get the creative on your list, well, creating.

Many of the assignments focus on visual arts, asking them to make endless copies of an image using a Xerox machine, or to take random photos of a location and make notes on details they might normally miss. But there are others that encourage them to hum or clap along with the sounds of traffic, or engage in word games. You Are an Artist is the sort of book they’ll probably revisit time and time again. — Terrence O'Brien, Managing Editor

Apple Pencil (second-gen)

Valentina Palladino / Engadget

The iPad has become a key tool for creatives over the years and arguably nothing has contributed to that more than the Apple Pencil. Most of the newest iPads support the second-generation Pencil and it’s admittedly much more convenient than the first purely for its magnetic charging method. But otherwise, the Apple Pencil is the best stylus I’ve ever used because it has little to no latency and that helps mimic the feeling of drawing with a traditional pen and paper.

While investing in a paper-like screen protector will blur the lines even further, you don’t have to do that to get an excellent experience from the Apple Pencil. Drawing is seamless, taking notes is a breeze (especially with iPadOS 15 if you use Apple’s Notes app) and the possibilities are endless once you get familiar with third-party programs like Procreate. Battery life is superb, too: I’ve spent hours drawing in Procreate or experimenting with different planner layouts in GoodNotes and I have yet to pause a session to recharge the Pencil. While the Apple Pencil hasn’t completely replaced traditional art forms for me, it’s certainly the most useful tool I own for when I want to be creative. — Valentina Palladino, Commerce Editor

Astrohaus Freewrite smart typewriter

Dan Cooper / Engadget

The Freewrite smart typewriter is a niche device that would nonetheless make a wonderful present for any aspiring writer. Or, come to think of it, anyone who is already committed to the art of putting words to the page. The Freewrite combines an excellent mechanical keyboard with an E Ink display, and while it can get online to sync drafts to the web, that's the only thing it can do. There's no way to browse the web, play a game, or watch YouTube on the Freewrite, which makes it a lot easier to just sit down and get into a flow state. The E Ink screen and keyboard can take a little getting used to, but both things quickly become assets when just looking to get some writing done. And thanks to the low-power display, the Freewrite lasts for a week or two of heavy writing. At $600, it's a serious investment — but gifting one to an aspiring writer should give them great motivation to write that book they're always talking about. — Nathan Ingraham, Deputy Managing Editor

Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album

Mute: A Visual Document: From 1978 - Tomorrow

Thames & Hudson

Decades worth of record label design offers a wellspring of visual aesthetics to kickstart your own creativity. There are even a few monoliths of music and design culture that succeeded in the record industry without succumbing to the corporate machine. Factory and Mute records are such creatures. Spawned in the UK in the late ‘70s (though only Mute remains today), both companies informed generations through tales of — sometimes careless — business tactics and quality curated output. In general, they were groups driven by a DIY aesthetic and creativity unhindered by official structure.

Not only did these labels champion freedom of musical expression and help drive new genres of music, but they also became an outlet for visual designers. Most notably, Peter Saville’s (found) cover art for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album (Factory) is ubiquitous today with its mountainous range of wavy lines. Spending time digging through either of these books which are chock full of art, music and history can get your creative juices flowing. Either are a welcome gift for family, friends or even yourself. — Jon Turi, Homepage Editor

Ruhlman's Twenty by Michael Ruhlman

Chronicle Books

I’ve gotten to the point in my cooking journey where trying recipes isn’t as interesting to me as learning new techniques. Do I have a pile of go-to recipes in my Paprika app? Yes, but now I’m more interested in mastering cooking methods that essentially set you up to make your own recipes from scratch. Ruhlman’s Twenty is one of the “cookbooks” I’ve been turning to the most in my quest, and if some of the concepts in the book may seem basic, that’s because they are. Most cooking shows and online recipe blogs don’t explain why they add an acid to a tomato sauce or how to get a perfectly crispy french fry rather than an oily, soggy mess — but this book does. It takes you back to basics, explaining the proper techniques behind different ways of cooking, so that you can understand what’s happening to your food as you prepare it. And don’t worry, it doesn’t read like a textbook and there are even complete recipes in there for you to follow if you wish. Ultimately, Ruhlman’s Twenty has made me a more competent cook who isn’t forced to consult a recipe every time I prepare a meal. — V.P.

Make Noise Strega

Make Noise

A new instrument can be a decent way to snap someone out of a creative rut. But even better than a new instrument is a weird instrument. And if the musician in your life likes things on the weird side, I highly recommend the Make Noise Strega. It was designed in collaboration with Alessandro Cortini (touring member of Nine Inch Nails), and eschews most of your usual synth controls and makes sounds that are best described as weathered.

The front panel is a confounding array of glyphs and lines that look like something out of a book on the occult. The express goal of the Strega is to get someone experimenting — literally poking and prodding at the various touch panels that serve as modulation sources and destinations using a person's own body as a patch cable. It won’t be for everyone, but if you’re shopping for the kind of person who loves lo-fi warbles and nightmarish drones, they’ll love the Strega. — T.O.

POTAR Design's Sound Urchin

POTAR Design

Okay, calling the Sound Urchin an “instrument” might seem like a stretch, but the otherworldly sounds it creates are sure to inspire the musician in your life to tackle composing differently. It’s essentially a bunch of metal rods stuck to a guitar pedal enclosure with a microphone inside it. The rods aren’t really tuned in any traditional way, which allows for the creation of unexpected melodies, but it can also be a source of clanging percussion or ominous wails. When paired with some effects this strange little box is capable of being the basis for an entire composition — albeit a slightly odd one.

This particular recommendation came courtesy of Abby Santourian, a Chicago-based musician and music gear expert at Reverb who told Engadget via email: “For centuries, artists have been inspired by the sea, but I think this takes that idea to a new level…. When combined with other pedals and effects, the sonic possibilities and combinations are seriously endless.” — T.O.

The Artist Way by Julia Cameron

Will Lipman Photography for Engadget / Souvenir Press

If you’ve heard about Morning Pages, or Artist Dates, both are two core habits established in The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron’s decades-old book on creative practice. That’s probably the most straightforward way to describe this book, which walks you through a 12-week program of writing exercises and tasks, all aimed at freeing up your creative powers. The crux of it is demanding three pages of handwritten writing every day. While it’s often a stream of consciousness — and if your handwriting is atrocious, barely legible — Cameron’s advice is to simply put the writing out there, and see where it takes you. Famous fans include Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, Alicia Keys and practically half of the comedians whose podcasts I listen to, it seems. The book does get a little bit spiritual at times, which you may or may not be fine with, but the core exercises and ideas can be pretty powerful, especially if you’re in a creative rut, or simply looking to add more artistic output to your day-to-day life. — Mat Smith, UK Bureau Chief

Moog Subharmonicon

Moog

Another slightly weird instrument to consider is the Moog Subharmonicon. The sounds it produces are more “standard” than the Strega (for lack of a better term), but its sequencer and focus on subharmonics are anything but. It takes inspiration from a pair of early experimental electronic instruments — the Mixtur-Trautonium and the Rhythmicon. The Subharmonicon encourages one to explore the concepts of subharmonics and polyrhythms to create unexpected melodies and rhythms. It’s capable of that classic Moog sound, but it will also force someone out of their comfort zone. — T.O.

Sensel Morph with Thunder overlay

Will Lipman Photography for Engadget

Sometimes a person doesn’t need whole new sounds to get the creative juices flowing, but just a new way of making those sounds. The Sensel Morph is an impressively portable and flexible MPE MIDI controller with amazing shapeshifting possibilities. It can be a piano, a pad-based drum machine, a sketch pad, or an obscure controller inspired by Don Buchla — the driving force of West Coast-style synthesis.

The Buchla Thunder overlay marries the expressive possibilities of the Morph with an approach to composing melodies and harmonies that it’s fairly safe to assume your giftee has never experienced. Instead of a traditional piano layout it’s a series of pads organized into a roughly bird-like shape that you’re supposed to tap and slide along to create unique timbres. Its unfamiliarity forces anyone to stop thinking about what they already know about playing music and focus instead on the results.

Plus, the Morph has a number of other overlays so, if the Thunder has worn out its welcome, it’s still incredibly useful and flexible. — T.O.

Splice Creator plan

Splice

Sure it’s easy to just grab a drum loop from the top of the Splice charts and wind up sounding like everyone else. But there are far more interesting ways to find sounds. For one, search results can be shuffled. So, rather than just using the same Rhodes sample that thousands of other bedroom producers have relied on, a person can hit the shuffle button and grab something that might be flying under the radar. This technique can also be combined with searching for random terms on Splice, rather than pulling up specific instruments. (Just Google “random word generator” and use that as the basis for a search.) There are lots of interesting and sometimes strange sounds and loops to be found by searching for things like “clinic” and “preparation.”

The entry-level $10 Sounds+ plan includes 100 sample credits. But your giftee would probably really appreciate the upgrade to the Creator Plan. That includes 200 credits, plus access to Splice’s surprisingly excellent Astra soft synth, its Beatmaker drum machine plugin and a library of tutorials and lessons on music production under the Skills banner. Sometimes, when you’re not sure what to do, simply learning a new skill or trick can get the creative juices flowing again. — T.O.

Tascam DR-05X

TASCAM

A decent field recorder should be in pretty much every artist’s arsenal. For a musician, obviously, it’s valuable for recording samples and capturing impromptu jam sessions. Anyone can buy sample packs, sure, but building a custom drum kit from snapping twigs and the crunch of dead leaves is a surefire way to get someone thinking outside the box.

But even beyond that, it’s great for documenting ideas and finding inspiration. Yes, there are voice-note apps, but your giftee might like having a dedicated (and distraction-free) tool for documenting ideas, inspiring sounds and capturing interesting lectures or panels. A writer can set a recorder up and talk through the plot of a novel they’re working on, without worrying that their battery will die. Or a painter can record the ambience of a cafe they frequented while traveling in Paris and revisit it to find inspiration for a new work. — T.O.

I want to get one thing out of the way at the top. I wish that anyone — anyone — other than Kanye West had released the Stem Player. At this point he’s more than 10 years past the creative zenith of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and five years removed from the uneven, but decent Life of Pablo. These days, his cultural relevance is driven more by spectacle and controversy than artistic output.

Still, I can’t help but be drawn to the Donda Stem Player: It’s a fascinating and unique device. But my interest is in spite of, not because of Kanye West.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

So what is it? Well, it’s basically a tiny puck-shaped computer dedicated specifically to remixing Kanye’s latest album. Using it you can change the volume of different stems, or tracks, in the songs on Donda. For instance, if you’re wondering what “Off the Grid” would sound like as an instrumental you can simply turn down the vocals. Or if you find the sonar ping synth in “Jonah” unbearable, just turn it off. You can also create loops of little song chunks, reverse them, speed them up, slow them down and even add effects.

It looks kinda like a sex toy, though, and is covered in what I assume are surplus Fleshlights. It doesn’t feel unpleasant, exactly, but it is slightly unnerving. And the vaguely fleshy hue doesn’t help matters. The main controls on the front are four touch-sensitive strips that light up to tell you what volume a track is at or what effect you’ve selected, for instance. The whole thing vibrates, too, with haptic feedback every time you touch a button or a strip, though it can lag behind your actual touch quite a bit.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

One of the limitations here is that it tops out at four stems. This often means all the melodic content is one track. I’ll also say that the effect selection leaves something to be desired. There are two different speeds of tremolo, a few different echo options and “feedback” which is basically just an out of control echo.

Being able to quickly loop a chunk of music, reverse and slap some reverb on it is kinda fun. It allows you to transform a song into something completely unrecognizable, but it’s not super useful as a practical remix tool.

I was somewhat disappointed by the Stem Player’s ability to handle non-Donda tracks. The site promises that you can upload any song to the player. You can even drop in a YouTube link and it will parse out the audio. Then it will automatically split the song into stems so you can remix it. This is no easy task, even for pro-grade software on a high-powered PC. Predictably, it's hit or miss here.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

The Stem Player handled “DIRTY!” from JPEGMAFIA and “Stonefruit” by Armand Hammer reasonably well, though there was some slight bleed through of the synth line into the vocal stem on “Stonefruit.” Nine Inch Nail’s “Closer” fared a little worse. Half the bass line was on its own track, while the other half was lumped in with the drums. It even bled into the vocals. There was also a decent amount of digital artifacts in the stems.

It would seem that fairly stripped-down hip hop productions will do ok, but as the complexity of a song increases the Stem Player starts to struggle parsing the different parts. The Armed’s “An Iteration,” for example, was broken down into drums, vocals and a single track of everything else. Then the fourth stem, which is supposed to be for bass, was basically silent. In fact, I often encountered this issue with music I uploaded to the Stem Player myself. Badbadnotgood’s “Love Proceeding” was reduced to just two stems: drums and not drums.

I have concerns about what happens to the Stem Player in a few years or even months time, too. The only way to upload new songs to it is through the Stem Player website. So if that ever goes offline you might be stuck. I also can’t figure out how to get mixes and songs off the player. The instructions both included with the player and on the site are pretty barebones and at times, slightly confusing. In the FAQ it says you can save what you’re mixing by pressing the volume up button then it explains that “four recordings can be saved, play back from the final, red track.” The only problem is, I have no idea what the hell that means.

Perhaps the biggest knock against the Stem Player is the price. $200 is a lot to throw at a musical curiosity. Especially when that money mostly serves to feed the ego of one of the most megalomaniacal celebrities in the world.

Countess Alcina Dimitrescu isn't technically a vampire, but she's definitely an icon.

From the moment she appeared in an early trailer for Resident Evil: Village, Lady Dimitrescu captured the attention of the internet: her towering, sultry frame; her sickly-sweet smile; her massive hat; her proper yet authoritative tone. Viewers were instantly obsessed, labeling her "tall vampire lady" and demanding to know everything about her, which prompted Capcom to reveal her exact height — 9'6" including her hat and heels — months before Village launched in May.

In-game, Lady Dimitrescu commands three fly-infested, murderous daughters, and hunts the main character, Ethan Winters, across the opulent rooms of her castle. She crouches through doorways and slices at Ethan with long, blade-like fingernails, hurling insults like "rat" and "man-thing" at him the entire time, a mutant dominatrix in a flowing white dress.

Twilight Sparkle

The intrigue surrounding Lady Dimitrescu has persisted since Village's launch, and fans are betting (or maybe just hoping really hard) that the game's first bit of DLC will focus on her specifically.

Until then, and in the spirit of Spooky Season, we have insight into Lady Dimitrescu's creation from Village presentation director Masato Miyazaki, the person in charge of the game's motion-capture process. Earlier this year, Miyazaki shared details with Engadget about how Lady Dimitrescu came to be, from concept to mocap, including the ways actress Maggie Robertson brought her to legendary life.

Engadget: Did Lady Dimitrescu's design change throughout development?

Masato Miyazaki: Alcina Dimitrescu’s incredible height was conceived from the beginning and was not changed during development. The same goes for her wide brim hat and her white dress as well. However, the characteristic of her long protruding nails was something added part way through the development process. It was an idea that was implemented later as a means of adding physical elements that would make her more terrifying when you encounter her.

Lady Dimitrescu is alluring and seductive — was she always meant to be a sultry character, or did that emerge during mocap?

In the early stages of development, she was described as a bewitching character who would capture and toy with her victims. She was designed to embody equal parts beauty and horror. Based on this, the scenario writer fleshed her characterization out even further with dialogue, but she wasn’t fully realized just yet. It was through Maggie’s performance that the character was finally given life.

As with any character, I believe that the moment the script is handed over to the actor, the character becomes theirs. The character's personality and intentions are very much refined by the actor. The character Lady Dimitrescu was truly realized and came to fruition with each of Maggie’s performances.

Capcom

What tricks did you use to make Maggie Robertson as tall as possible during mocap sessions?

Although Maggie Robertson is quite tall herself, she still cannot reach the height that we envisioned for Lady Dimitrescu. Utilizing some means of extending out her height would jeopardize her performance, so it wasn’t something we could consider. We asked Maggie to act naturally. However, that still left us with the height difference between Maggie and Lady Dimitrescu that had to be addressed. We devised a few methods to counteract this issue.

First off, we shot with a mixture of backgrounds according to two standards: human scale and Lady Dimitrescu scale. While other characters performed with surroundings that fit human scale, Lady Dimitrescu’s acting was done in front of a background that fit her scale. Everyone performed with one another, but with this mixture of environments. We figured this would be the best means of allowing the actors to give their best performances without any kind of impediment. We made sure the furniture was laid out in a way so that the actors would be facing each other.

The other aspect that we made sure to stay conscious of was making sure the actors’ lines of sight were in the right positions. We set up markers so that the actors could imagine the correct height. These markers show the correct position of the eye lines and where the limbs actually are. It's a simple adjustment, but it makes a big difference in the actors' performances.

The third adjustment was the rig itself. We carefully set up the rigs of the CG characters to gracefully handle as much of the physical differences between the character and actor as possible. We wanted to make sure that we set things up so that the animators would have a relatively easier time handling any kind of miscalculations that happened along the way.

What was the strangest prop you used throughout the mocap process?

There are several, but there are two that I would like to mention. The first is the cane carried by the old woman we meet at the beginning of the village. When you see it in the game, it’s a strange artifact with a lot of components jingling about. The studio crew crafted a prop that resembles the design.

The second is the goggles that our actor Todd wore as he played the role of Ethan Winters. Since the game is from a first-person perspective through the eyes of Ethan Winters, the camera movements are based on the movements of Todd's head. Todd reprises his role as Ethan from the previous game and his performances are absolutely excellent, but there were moments where the camera would go wild during more heated scenarios. In order to suppress this from happening, the studio engineer created a pair of special goggles by hand. 

They actually turned out to look very similar to swimming goggles. The assumption was that the narrower field of vision would result in less head movement. I’m still not entirely sure how effective they ended up being, but the engineer’s enthusiasm and Todd having fun wearing the goggles are one of the many wonderful memories I have from the whole experience.

Netflix has previously given us glimpses of its live-action adaptation of the classic anime Cowboy Bebop. Its latest trailer, however, shows actual footage from the series for the first time. You'll see scenes of the crew in action, from the time they met and decided to team up to the time they start hunting criminals in exchange for bounty. It shows fight scenes with Spike Spiegel (John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda), their spaceship (the Bebop) and their corgi Ein. No Ed yet, unfortunately.

The streaming giant first announced its live-action adaptation way back in 2018, but it wasn't until earlier this year that production wrapped for season one. While the cast and crew have been shooting since 2019, production was paused after Cho got injured on set, and the coronavirus pandemic delayed things even further. Since then, Netflix has been preparing for its debut. In addition to releasing teasers for the show, the company has added all 26 episodes of the anime to its catalogue, so you can marathon all things Cowboy Bebop without having to hop services. (The anime is also available on Hulu.) 

Netflix's live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop will start streaming on November 19th.

Hayden Christensen isn't done playing Darth Vader. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he's reprising his role as the Sith Lord in the upcoming Disney+ series Ahsoka. Rosario Dawson will star as Ahsoka Tano, whom she also played in the second season of The Mandalorian. That's the first time Ahsoka's character appeared in a live-action Star Wars show — prior to that, Ahsoka was only seen in the franchise's animated entries.

Disney and Lucasfilm have yet to reveal the story for the live-action series. The Hollywood Reporter says, though, that it's set five years after the events in Return of the Jedi, similar to The Mandalorian. That Vader will be featured in a show about Ahsoka doesn't entirely come as a surprise, seeing she was Anakin Skywalker's padawan. But since Vader died in Return of the Jedi, it's unclear how his character will fit into Ahsoka's story, and whether he'll be shown in flashbacks or as a Force ghost.

Dave Filoni, who was involved in several previous Star Wars projects, will write the story and also serve as executive producer with Jon Favreau. The series will start production in 2022, though fans will get the chance to see Christensen play Vader before that in Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi that's set to debut early next year.

Fans of Mythic Quest have much more of the show to look forward to. Apple TV+ has renewed the series for seasons three and four. The second season of the workplace sitcom aired this spring, and season three will arrive in 2022.

Co-creator Rob McElhenney (who plays Ian Grimm in the show) made the announcement with the help of a couple of familiar faces: Jason Sudeikis, the Emmy-winning face of fellow Apple TV+ comedy series Ted Lasso, and Anthony Hopkins, who received an Emmy nomination for narrating Mythic Quest's standalone "Everlight" episode. The series picked up another Emmy nomination this year for its sound editing.

Mythic Quest, which is from some of the folks behind It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, focuses on the developers of a hugely successful fictional MMORPG. Ubisoft co-produces Mythic Quest, so there's certainly a degree of authenticity to the show and how a game studio might actually operate.

So, will Facebook pull the trigger and change its name? Maybe it's an attempt to dominate the conversation around the, ugh, metaverse, which has been around for years, perhaps to follow Google’s own reorganization around Alphabet or to simply create some distance from all the negative publicity, sentiment and impressions that Facebook is now associated with.

If the change is metaverse related, it could be very important to the company’s unreleased social virtual reality world called Horizon Worlds.

The funniest take I’ve seen, from Time’s Alex Fitzpatrick, is that Facebook is doing it just to meddle with people that write about the company, like how we remind readers that Google is now just a facet of the bigger Alphabet entity, a bullet point that we sometimes have to mention.

— Mat Smith

Is Apple’s M1 Max really the fastest laptop chip ever?

Apple is making some big promises with its new Macbook Pro chips

Apple

This week’s Upscaled show is all about Apple’s promises with its newest chips. The new M1 Pro and M1 Max bump the core count to eight high-performance and two low-power cores and add 16, 24 or 32 GPU cores. With twice the high-performance CPUs and up to four times the GPU cores as the original M1, these chips should be incredibly fast. Could Apple offer a compelling laptop option for gamers?

Continue reading.

Netflix CEO says he 'screwed up' on Dave Chappelle as employees stage walk out

But Ed Sarandos continues to stand by the Chappelle special.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said he "screwed up" communication with employees following backlash over Dave Chappelle's The Closer, according to a report from Variety.

He also stood by the show, saying the company heavily values "artistic expression." His comments come just ahead of a planned walkout today organized by LGBTQ+ staffers, creatives and allies.

As part of the walkout, employees will reportedly have a list of demands for Netflix, and Sarandos has been meeting them to hear their views. He said that while the company is "deeply committed to inclusion," it's equally committed to "supporting artistic freedom with the creators who work at Netflix."

Continue reading.

Some Windows 11 users can start testing Android apps

Only a handful of apps will be available at first.

Engadget

Microsoft has released an Insider Preview beta that enables the Amazon Appstore and support for running Android apps within Windows. Only 50 apps are available as part of the initial test (such as the Kindle app, Lords Mobile and Lego Duplo World), but Microsoft is promising more in the "coming months."

The aim, as before, is to make Android apps feel like they belong in Windows 11. You can multitask, check notifications and use Windows accessibility features. Mouse and keyboard input is available, but many apps will predictably benefit from a touchscreen.

Continue reading.

DJI's new cinema camera has a built-in gimbal and LiDAR focus system

The LiDAR should offer 'sharper, faster and more reliable focusing.'

DJI

DJI has revealed the Ronin 4D, a new cinema camera system with a built-in 4-axis gimbal, 8K resolution and LiDAR rangefinder that promises "sharper, faster and more reliable focusing." With a price starting at $7,199, it's clearly aimed at the professionals, but we can all dream, right?

The Zenmuse X9 camera is exclusively for the Ronin 4D. It's available either in a 6K model that can handle 6K at 60 fps and 4K at 120 fps, and there’s the 8K 75 fps version. It can capture files in RAW, ProRes or H.264, allowing maximum flexibility in production. DJI claims 14 stops of dynamic range, and it should be good in low-light thanks to the dual-native 800/5000 ISO.

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‘Cyberpunk 2077' PS5 and Xbox Series X/S upgrades delayed until 2022

CDPR also postponed its upgraded version of 'The Witcher 3.'

Despite CD Projekt Red insisting at the beginning of September it was still on track to release the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of Cyberpunk 2077 by the end of the year, that's no longer the case. The developer now plans to ship the console and PC upgrades for the same game in the first quarter of 2022 (i.e. by the end of March).

In its financial report for the first half of 2021, CDPR included a chart suggesting that around a third of its development staff was working on Cyberpunk 2077 support and the current-gen version as of June 30th.

Continue reading.

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Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has said he "screwed up" communication with employees following a backlash over Dave Chappelle's The Closer, according to Variety. At the same time, he stood by the show, saying the company heavily values "artistic expression." His comments come just ahead of a planned walkout organized by LGBTQ+ staffers, creatives and allies. 

After debuting earlier this month, The Closer was met by a storm of criticism from the LGBTQ+ community, who called it transphobic. At the time, he told employees that Netflix would never allow titles "that are designed to incite hate or violence, and we don’t believe The Closer crosses that line." 

Now, Sarandos has said he regrets the way he handled the situation with employees. "Obviously, I screwed up that internal communication," he said in an interview with Variety. "First and foremost, I should have led with a lot more humanity. Meaning, I had a group of employees who were definitely feeling pain and hurt from a decision we made. And I think that needs to be acknowledged up front before you get into the nuts and bolts of anything."

Obviously, I screwed up that internal communication. First and foremost, I should have led with a lot more humanity. Meaning, I had a group of employees who were definitely feeling pain and hurt from a decision we made. And I think that needs to be acknowledged up front before you get into the nuts and bolts of anything.

At the same time, Sarandos said in a separate interview that "my stance hasn't changed" regarding to the decision to stream the special. "We do tell our employees upfront that we are trying to entertain our members, and that some of the content on Netflix you’re not going to like," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "The inclusion of the special on Netflix is consistent with our comedy offering [and is]… one of those times when there’s something on Netflix that you’re not going to like."

As part of the walkout, employees will reportedly have a list of demands for Netflix, and Sarandos has been meeting them to hear their views. He said that while the company is "deeply committed to inclusion," it's equally committed to "supporting artistic freedom with the creators who work at Netflix." He added that Netflix would not add a disclaimer in front of the special as employees requested, reasoning that Chappelle himself gives a warning at the beginning. 

Sarandos also addressed the issue of transparency in the company after an employee was fired for leaking internal company documents showing viewer figures for Netflix shows, including Chappelle's previous special. "We’re deeply committed to the culture of transparency," he told THR. "And it also depends upon a great deal of trust with our employees that we continue to secure, but we don’t plan on changing any of our internal operations around that."

Disney has shaken up its movie release calendar, with several Marvel Cinematic Universe flicks being delayed. The revamped schedule, which Variety reports is due to a production-related snowball effect, affects the slate for 2022 and beyond, and it will have a knock-on effect on Disney+.

All of the MCU films Disney had on the docket for 2022 have been pushed to a later slot. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was penciled in for March 25th, but now it's taking Thor: Love and Thunder's old date of May 6th. The next Thor movie will arrive on July 8th, in turn pushing back Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to November 11th.

The schedule shifts mean there will only be three Marvel movies next year instead of the planned four, as Captain Marvel sequel The Marvels now has a release date of February 17th, 2023. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has moved from that date to July 28th, 2023. On the flip side, Disney brought one mystery Marvel movie (hopefully Guardians of the Galaxy 3) forward by a week from November 10th, 2023.

Elsewhere, the next Indiana Jones movie has been delayed by 11 months. You'll need to wait until June 30th, 2023 for Harrison Ford's fifth stint as the iconic archeologist. Ford sustained an injury while filming this summer, though he's now back in action. A live-action Disney movie, a 20th Century film and two Marvel flicks (all untitled) have been removed from the 2023 schedule. 

Remarkably, given how many times the film has been delayed over the years, Disney hasn't shifted Avatar 2's release date. It's still on the schedule for December 16th, 2022.

It remains to be seen what impact these changes will have on Disney+. For the rest of 2021, Disney has committed to an exclusive theatrical window for its films before they're available to stream, but it hasn't divulged how things will work in 2022 and beyond.

The company adopted a simultaneous release strategy for some of its movies over the last year or so amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with Mulan, Raya and the Last Dragon, Cruella and Black Widow requiring a $30 Premier Access pass for early access on Disney+. Disney's decision to let viewers stream Black Widow at home on the same day it hit theaters prompted a now-settled lawsuit from star Scarlett Johansson. Pixar movies Soul and Luca went straight to streaming as part of regular Disney+ subscriptions in some countries.

Elsewhere, some MCU shows on Disney+, such as Loki and Hawkeye, tie into the theatrical movies. As such, the scheduling of future series might be impacted by the overhauled theatrical slate.

Netflix has always closely guarded the exact streaming metrics that may reveal why programs are considered a success... or cancelled. That black box cracked open a bit with documents obtained by Bloomberg detailing the company's scores for "impact value" and "efficiency." An example of that is Squid Game, which generated $891.1 million in impact value on a budget of just $21.4 million for an efficiency of 41.7X, according to Bloomberg's latest report. 

The documents first came to light with Dave Chappelle's controversial special after the company fired an employee for supposedly leaking confidential information about the show's viewing data. (That employee reportedly spoke out against leaks to colleagues, according to The Verge.) Those metrics revealed that Chapelle's previous special, Sticks & Stones, generated slightly less impact value than it cost to make, according to Bloomberg.

Other figures showed that around 132 million people watched at least two minutes of Squid Game in the first 23 days, beating a record set by Bridgerton. Netflix occasionally releases similar information for certain shows, but it doesn't disclose how many people stuck with or finished shows — which can often inflate figures compared to typical TV ratings. 

According to Bloomberg, however, Netflix estimated that 89 percent of people who started Squid Game watched at least 75 minutes, or more than one episode, and 87 million people finished it in the first 23 days (66 percent). Viewers watched 1.4 billion hours of the show in total. 

An attorney representing Netflix told Bloomberg that it would not be appropriate to disclose confidential data contained in documents it reviewed. "Netflix does not discuss these metrics outside the company and takes significant steps to protect them from disclosure," the attorney said.