Green Screen Cinema

Monica Sender, Whomever You Are, I Apologize

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:49:50 -0400

Today I want to share some of the challenges associated with maintaining the USC School of Cinematic Arts group on LinkedIn. To be clear, I think the LinkedIn site is an outstanding example of design and execution. They are really professional and they go to great pains to protect your privacy. With the exception of last week, when they went a little too far. Last week LinkedIn decided to change how groups are administered. They took away a number of the tools that group owners had used to determine just who was requesting group membership. So all of a sudden, right after the change, I had a queue full of people that wanted to join the USC School of Cinematic Arts group and I had no way to tell if they were really USC alumni.

So I had to start guessing. The first guy in my queue was clearly a spammer, as his name was Jim Nasium (get it, "gymnasium"). So I deleted that guy. Then there was someone named Monica Sender, and though I couldn't figure out what that name stood for I assumed it was something untoward, so I deleted her. I finally got down to the names of actual filmmakers, but I didn't know what to do without the additional information that LinkedIn used to provide me, so I sent an email to LinkedIn asking for some guidance here. How was I supposed to vet group members if I couldn't even send them an email confirming their identity?

Then I got to thinking about that Monica Sender name. What if I'd made a horrible mistake? So I googled "Monica Sender". It turns out that Monica Sender may be a real person after all. Here is her filmography at the New York Times website:

Monica Sender, Art Assistant

So now I want to apologize, Monica, whomever you are, wherever you are. If you are real then a grave injustice has taken place and I am sorry. In this digital age it is far too easy to dismiss fellow humans and ignore their contribution, for there is always something new and different to click on. I hope to find out one day if you are real, but of course I will never know because I use LinkedIn groups.

Gemini Division File No. 01

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:50:26 -0400

So far on the show we've learned that Rosario Dawson's boyfriend is a cybernetic machine that wants to kill her. And in the future something tragic happens to the iPhone and people have to resort to using Windows Mobile.

Now that you're up-to-date on the plot of NBC's new "faux" viral video Gemini Division you can spend your time wondering why NBC ever threw money at this in the first place. And to think SAG was going to strike over this kind of thing. I am so interested in the car crash that this show is shaping up to be that I'll be covering it all the way till the bitter end. Which may come sooner than you think. If you click the community tab on the site, this is the ghost town that you come across:

I truly cannot believe that NBC couldn't be bothered to post a single blog entry here. And I especially love that the page promises to "immerse me in bonus content and mysteries". It really is like a car crash: I want to turn away from the site, but it's just so bad that I have to keep watching. I'll let you know who crawls out of the wreckage next.

Paula Wagner's Looking For An Exit

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:35:15 -0400

This morning the WSJ reported on something that everyone on the set of "Death Race" was aware of months ago: Paula Wagner doesn't really work for United Artists anymore. Though Paula is currently the CEO at United Artists, in her tenure she has produced more films for the competition ("Death Race" for Universal, "The Eye" for Lionsgate) than she has for the home team. The one film she actually released under the UA banner was a tremendous flop and the December release of "Valkyrie" is shaping up to be a Hindenburg-sized disaster as well.

Seriously, Tom Cruise as a Nazi? Those guys kinda have an image problem. The WSJ reported that "Mr. Cruise will likely not be part of her producing ventures going forward" which for the first time in a long time makes me sympathetic toward Tom. Could it be that he was actually the faithful one in this breakup?

I think there's also a lesson in here somewhere about the praetorian ethos that has crept into the top levels in Hollywood. Sure, people have always changed jobs on a whim, but this may be the first CEO that couldn't even be counted on to produce films for her own shingle. Dawn Steel, you are sorely missed.

Tim Shriver Hates Tropic Thunder

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:04:00 -0400

You've probably heard by now that Special Olympics Chairman and CEO Tim Shriver staged a protest at the "Tropic Thunder" premiere last night (due to the film's repeated use of the term "retard"), but did you know that Tim previously worked at the studio that produced "Tropic Thunder"? Apparently hell hath no fury like a producer scorned. While Timothy had no problem cashing DreamWorks' checks when he was a producer there, he's certainly in their face now. But strangely his bio still reflects glowingly on his time in Hollywood:

As part of his passion for promoting the gifts of the forgotten, Shriver has harnessed the power of Hollywood to sharethe stories of inspiration and change, co-producing DreamWorks Studios� 1997 release, �Amistad,� and DisneyStudios� 2000 release, �The Loretta Claiborne Story.� He is Executive Producer of �The Ringer,� a Farrelly Brothers�film, and he has produced or co-produced shows for ABC, TNT, and NBC networksI think somebody wants to get their name back up on the big screen. But maybe turning an event organization into a political organization is not the best way to do it.

Now don't get me wrong, I completely support the sporting events that Tim Shriver stages. It's the moral campaign he is waging that gets my attention. If you visit the Special Olympics website there is now a prominent, front-page link that eventually leads you to an conservative web site. The site is supporting Tim's "Tropic Thunder" protest with a post called "Just the facts about Tropic Thunder". In the post the author makes numerous accusations against the film (above and beyond the use of the term "retard"), such as:

Maybe the author doesn't have kids herself, because even a 2 year old knows that farts are funny. And this is, ultimately, the place that Timothy Shriver's protest leads you to, a highly political site with a deep agenda that really has nothing to do with intellectual disabilities. And that is something I don't find funny.

Gemini Division's Botched Launch

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:00:00 -0400

Rosario Dawson. Science Fiction. And a title that sounds an awful lot like one of my favorite sci-fi novels: The Cassini Division. NBC's new webisodic series Gemini Division seems to have all the elements of a smash hit. So why has nobody heard of this thing?

For starters, take a look at this promotional clip for the show, which debuts on August 18th. If you watch the clip you'll be only the 81st person that's actually done so (as of this writing). I think more people have viewed my lawn than the show's promo material (actually my lawn gets pretty good numbers on YouTube, so maybe that's not a fair comparison). The thing I really don't understand is that with Rosario Dawson leading the cast they should have viewers lined up around the block for this thing. Here's the promo she did for her last film, "Death Proof".

Though this kind of salacious advertising turns away her female fans she can certainly pack a theater with young men. Also, the show is prominently displayed on the homepage of NBC.com.

And did I happen to mention the fawning seven page review of the show in this month's Wired? So what went wrong?

The first problem with this show is that it's entirely built around advertisers. Watch for more Cisco product placement than you can shake a VoIP phone at. Next, the site that is hosting this show is entirely devoid of community. While the NBC parent site does allow you to sign up and create an online presence, the Gemini Division site doesn't recognize the login. There is a long, gruesome thread about the broken login system that plagues NBC and I can confirm (after several attempts) there appears to be no way to login to the Gemini Division site. Which is literally the best way to infuriate the online community.

As an independent filmmaker I see the arrival of advertising driven webisodes (starring household names) as both a blessing and a curse. It creates a new employment path for film students that want to get into the business, but it also crowds the space that was previously owned by really sincere, offbeat individuals that would otherwise be asking you if you wanted fries with your burger. Should slick dealmakers like Stan Rogow (the show's producer) take away the creative outlet of these folks? There are those that would argue there is plenty of space for both types of productions, and that you can simply ignore the commercial webisodes if you so choose. From the lowly numbers that Gemini Division is turning in it looks like that is exactly what viewers are doing.

iTunes Bricked My iPhone

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:44:41 -0400

When you plug your new 3G iPhone into your Windows XP desktop, iTunes will pop up and ask you if you want to upgrade your software (to version 2.01). Though it may seem like iTunes has your best interests at heart, iTunes has a heart made of stone. Do not go along with the iTunes plan. Tie yourself to your mast and ignore her siren song. For she will crash your iPhone on a sea of incompatibility and brick the thing. She's a jealous mistress that way. It turns out that the only way to resuscitate your phone after the "iTunes update of death" is to recover your phone back to the original factory image. And where is the "recover" button located? In iTunes, of course.

When I came groveling back to iTunes, asking her to "recover" the iPhone she had just destroyed, I could swear I heard her whisper, in soft electronic tones,"I ain't mad. I ain't never been mad. We're gonna get a little place. Down in the flat, we'lI have a field of alfalfa for the rabbits. And you get to tend the rabbits." And then she wiped away all my contacts, notes and music (as a result of the recovery process).

Remind me not to get on iTunes bad side.

Where Did Cuil.com's $33 Million Go?

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:36:22 -0400

If you randomly type letters into your browser you might have come across Cuil.com this week, a new search engine that claims to have "Three times as many Web pages as Google!" The site has a Wal-Mart heir on the board, $33 million in funding and absolutely no ability to return relevant search results. It may be the biggest search engine implosion in the history of the internet. You really should give this site a try. The results are hilarious. For example, if you enter "Cuil com" into the Cuil.com search engine the first page of results does not include Cuil.com:

Didn't anybody tell them that a new search engine launched this week?

While Cuil.com may not be aware of its own existence Google certainly is. Here's what Google displays when you search for the term "Cuil":

Google seems to be taking the Cuil threat seriously. Instead of providing a link to Cuil.com (as the top ranked result) Google essentially says,"We'd rather you read this bad press". Remind me to not get on the bad side of Google.

To be fair to Cuil, returning relevant search results is not the easiest thing in the world. Search engines have to deal with the overloaded meanings we place on various word combinations. Take the phrase "Green Screen Cinema". This is a common term in the film industry but the first two words in this phrase could be used to describe such things as the environment or patio blinds. How does Cuil handle the term "Green Screen Cinema"? Cuil doesn't even know there's a GreeScreenCinema domain. Nowhere in the search results could I find my site name.

After a number of different searches I finally did find a link to my site, next to a picture of some Bollywood star. Cuil made it appear as if the picture came from my site but it's not my image and I don't think Cuil has rights to it either. I don't know what offense would cause you to shut down a $33 million investment but I imagine that putting fake pictures next to search results is near the top of that list.

I don't think Google has to worry about this site. Cuil may be funded by Wal-Mart, but it bares more than a passing resemblance to a Bialystock and Bloom production. Check out Cuil.com before they shutter the production and run the producers out of town.

MetaFest Call For Entries

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:35:09 -0400

Fellow 'SC alumnus Mark Poggi contacted me the other day about an online film festival he's working on called MetaFest. The call for entries just went out and Mark would like your submissions of 10 minutes or less. The winners get a theatrical premiere here in the Bay Area (in addition to exposure on Metacafe.com) so it sounds like a pretty good deal all around. Here's Mark's press release:

Metacafe�

Microcinema International

www.metacafe.com/metafest

Free Film School: Dissonance

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:16:19 -0400

At long last I am proud to present the movie that Moby doesn't want you to see: "Giant Baby Attack!" This film is a demonstration of the concepts of dissonance and ostinato as they are found in the Poltergeist score, written by Jerry Goldsmith. Dissonance (a clashing or unresolved musical interval) and ostinato (a constantly recurring melodic fragment) are staples of the horror genre. To see how these concepts work to make otherwise brave people sleep with a light on, read more. "Giant Baby Attack!" initially sets the tone of the film by repeating four vibraphone notes over and over again. Though the initial video images are cheerful, the repetitiveness of the soundtrack is quite creepy. It almost sounds as if there's something wrong with the orchestra. Why do they keep repeating those notes? Don't they have sheet music? Is the conductor dead?

Ostinato of deep notes (called "basso ostinato") sets an ominous mood. An extreme example of this technique can be found throughout the Halloween soundtrack. Though John Carpenter could not read or write music at the time he composed the soundtrack, by simply imitating the basso ostinato style he was able to create a truly effective soundscape.

The "Poltergeist" score is an example of what can be done when this style is in the hands of a master. Filmtracks calls it an "intelligent horror score that slowly and brilliantly transform attractive harmony into frightfully atonal terror". From the samples I've used in "Giant Baby Attack!" you can hear the incredible complexity that Jerry Goldsmith brought to the score. Not only were his basso ostinato sections rich with layers that evoked emotions in the listener, he then pierced that fabric with dissonant wails that were truly frightening.

At the height of the panic in "Giant Baby Attack!" there is a clockwork sound that clashes directly with the orchestra. The use of dissonance at this point unnerves the listener. It throws the listener off balance and makes them long for the relative clarity of the basso ostinato (creepy though it may be). In this way ostinato and dissonance act as the one-two punch of the cinematic world. The soundtrack puts you on edge intially with ostinato, then takes away whatever sanity you had left with a sharp moment of dissonance. This is how true horror is created.

I hope I've made my point that you don't have to revel in gore in order to scare your audience. A horrifying tone can be set with a plodding, repetitive score punctuated by dissonant shrieks. Watch "Giant Baby Attack" without the music and see how different the experience is. Dissonance and ostinato make this film much more frightening than would be possible otherwise.

'He won many battles, his childhood friends became famous soldiers'

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:23:54 -0400

If you're a science fiction fan like me then you've probably seen your fair share of the SCI FI Channel. I think I can even say without fear of marital retribution that the SCI FI Channel is hands down better than the Food Channel. One of the great things about the channel is that they fund their own "Original Movie" productions. And the movies they produce are great. Take the case of "Grendel", which debuted about ten months before Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf hit theaters. It was the exact right product at the exact right time.

I'm so enamored of their productions that I wanted to find out what kind of people actually work for the SCI FI Channel. As luck would have it I was able to get in contact with Ron Fernandez, the screenwriter for "Grendel". Ron also wrote Rock Monster for the channel.

Here's how Ron broke into the business:

Dark Knight in IMAX: Great Film or Greatest Film Ever?

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:11:39 -0400

This radiant Dark Knight review just came in from guest correspondent Jason Calacanis. Jason writes:

Paramount Loses $450 Million Financing Deal

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:13:29 -0400

Paramount Pictures is in trouble and I don't see a Federation ship on the horizon that's going to swoop in and save them. You probably already knew that their star player is looking to get into business with an alleged Indian video pirate. Then just yesterday the studio admitted to losing a $450 million film financing deal with Deutsche Bank. Normally I wouldn't raise an eyebrow over a financing deal gone bad, but apparently some of the funds were meant to cover films currently in distribution. From The Hollywood Reporter:

Paramount's outside financing effort was designed to provide production funds for two dozen or more feature films from its upcoming slate, including "Tropic Thunder," produced by DreamWorksNext week Paramount screens "Tropic Thunder" for the press. The film is in the can, so there shouldn't be any remaining production costs. Did Paramount just lose their ad budget? In the case of "Tropic Thunder" it could just be that Paramount just wanted to unload a turkey before Thanksgiving dinner. The press screening that I mentioned doesn't actually include any film critics. Valleywag reports that,"None of the invited reporters, as best we can tell, are film critics." Maybe Paramount was hoping that the Tech Trader Daily blog (one of the invitees) will give the movie a glowing review. The blog sure went easy on the Novellus Q3 Guidance, you know, so maybe they'll come through. As Robert Fulford says,"In the search for useful quotes, no outlet is too obscure".

Aside from the flop that "Tropic Thunder" is shaping up to be the studio now has a serious, long-term problem. Where is the money going to come from? The Los Angeles Times reports today that "Paramount does not plan to seek another overall slate deal through a bank but instead will continue to co-finance its movies on a picture-by-picture basis with partners such as Spyglass Entertainment and Level 1 Entertainment, a person familiar with Paramount's strategy said". This does not bode well for Paramount. In the past the same partner (Spyglass) that brought them bombs like "The Love Guru" has turned around and delivered hits to the competition. Today Warner Bros. is sitting on a big pile of cash from the $51 million opening of "Wanted", a Spyglass production. Paramount wakes up in the middle of the night from dreams about that kind of opening.

I think it's called the snowball effect. Once the town sees that you're weak, they'll only bring you the projects that no one else will take. For years Paramount couldn't get a decent film off the ground (outside of the Star Trek franchise), and then Spielberg waltzed in and saved them. Now that he's signaling that he wants out, the financing has dried up and people on the lot are having serious meetings about "Love Guru II". If for some reason Level 1 cannot come through with a reboot of the Star Trek franchise (already pushed from Christmas 2008 to May 8, 2009) they'll use the Paramount lot to park cars. If the $450 million from Deutsche Bank was earmarked to pay for the next Star Trek film then Paramount should start hiring valets now.

S.F. Frozen Film Festival Opening Night

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:44:42 -0400

The S.F. Frozen Film Festival is now under way after last night's kick-off event at Space Gallery. The festival includes a number of gems this year, but if you do only one thing this weekend I recommend you catch the Oscar winning short film "Simulacra". "Simulacra" stars a robot that emotes so well he makes Wall-E look like he phoned in his performance.

Photos from opening night can be found on my Flickr photostream. More screenshots from "Simulacra" can be found after the jump:

SXSW Panel Picker

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:03:18 -0400

The countdown to SXSW 2009 continues. Today I received confirmation that two sessions I proposed will be included in the SXSW Panel Picker. The Panel Picker is an online voting application that allows you, the filmmaker, to decide which panels will be included in the SXSW 2009 line-up. The Panel Picker goes live one month from today, so when the times comes I hope I can count on your vote. Maybe we can build a bridge in your district or something. Isn't that how politicians get elected?

Here is the confirmation I received from the SXSW team:

http://www.sxsw.com/interactive

Ten Minute Film School

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:02:24 -0400

Robert Rodriguez has been in the press lately for his marital woes (pictured here with his woes), but I prefer to think of him as the UT film student that shopped a $7,000 feature for the spanish home video market (El Mariachi) all the way to fame and fortune. If you want to know how he went from total obscurity to being represented by Robert Newman at ICM you should read this early interview. The interview took place during Robert's first trip to Sundance and in it he announced "I created my own film school, the Robert Rodriguez Film School."

Though the school only operated for a short time, six years later Robert released a short called Ten Minute Film School that dissected a chase scene from El Mariachi. He's released additional episodes over the years, which together make up a nice primer on low budget filmmaking. The videos are worth a look, but I wouldn't be much of a whaling captain if I could be comforted with just that. After a little digging I was able to find an early class transcript in which Robert promised to teach the students everything they needed to know about film in ten minutes.

For your consideration, here is the original Ten Minute Film School: Good Morning Class!

Now a famous film-maker a while back said something about 'Everything you need to know about film you can learn in a week.' He was being generous. You can learn it in ten minutes.

Set your watches we will be out of here in ten kids.

Okay, so you wanna be a film-maker?

(Class choruses 'YES')

Wrong! You ARE a film-maker. The moment you think about that you want to be a fillm-maker you're that. Make yourself a business card that says you're a film-maker, pass them out to your friends, soon as you get that over with and you've got it in your mind that you're one you'll be one, you'll start thinking like one. Don't dream about being a film-maker, you are a film-maker. Now let's get down to business.

Let's Play!!

What you need to learn is that being creative is not enough in this business. You have to become techinical. Creative people are born creative - you're lucky. Technical people however can never be creative. Its something they'll never get. You can't buy it, find it, study it - you're born with it. Too many creative people don't want to learn how to be technical, so what happens? they become dependent on technical people. Become technical, you can learn that. If you're creative and technical, you're unstoppable.

Experience - Do you have experience in movies? You do, right - you WATCH movies. Now you need to have movie experience - you're not going to learn from just watching movies, you're learn some things, you'll learn more picking up a camera, making your own films, your own mistakes - mistakes don't have to be mistakes, everything is subjective - a mistake to one person is actually a piece of art to someone else. Hide behind that, tell everyone its art, you can get away a lot.

Start with a screenplay. Does anybody here know how to write? No - good. Everyone else writes the same way. Start writing your way. That makes you unique. You can take writing classes, that's good, but don't bother to go to film school or you'll be making films like everybody else. We want to see your film.

How do you write a script? Well, you obviously don't have a lot of money or you wouldn't be in my class. So you wanna make a movie but you don't want to spend a lot. You're gonna come up with problems everyday on your set. You can get rid of the problem one of two ways - you can do it creatively or you can wash it away with the money hose. You got no money, you got no hose. So let's make a screenplay for a movie you can actually make without having to make your parents poor. Let's make a cheap movie.

How do you make a cheap movie? - Look around you, what do you have around you? Take stock in what you have. Your father owns a liquor store - make a movie about a liquor store. Do you have a dog? Make a movie about your dog. Your mom works in a nursing home, make a movie about a nursing home. When I did El Mariachi I had a turtle, I had a guitar case, I had a small town and I said I'll make a movie around that.

How do you visualise a movie? With storyboards, you can do that. You can previsualise your movie and draw them out, but what you should really do is make a blank screen for yourself and watch your movie. Close your eyes and stare at this. Imagine a screen, imagine your movie. Shot for shot, cut for cut. Sit there, close your eyes and get rid of everybody, get rid of all your thoughts in your head except your movie and watch your movie. Is it too slow? Is it too fast? Is it funny? Does it make sense? Watch it and then write down what you see. Write down the shots that you see. And then just go get those shots.

Equipment. OK let's go over the equipment. The worse the better. You don't want anything too fancy, remember this is your first movie - you're not Spielberg yet. I used this one for El Mariachi, almost the same one, I used a 16M this is a 16S, this is exactly what I had.

It helped me move fast because it was light, it was very noisy so I could do the sound in a wacky way, but this thing here would cost you about $2000. Don't spend that kind of money, find some monkey that own's one. I found somone who had one of these sitting around, he wasn't using it. I borrowed it from him, I shot my movie.

(Points at what look's like a damn heavy tripod) Look at it, this is a nice stand, its a very solid stand, y'know what's gonna happen? The camera is gonna stay on the stand, you're just gonna keep it there, 'cos its so nice, meaning your movie's gonna look...stiff. Take it off of there, sit in a wheelchair, push yourself around, get some energy in your film. That's the great thing about first films is that they have so much life and so much energy. Big productions can't even duplicate that energy, because they've got too good a stand and too much crew and everything is really smooth and polished and its lifeless. Add life to your film by getting rid of the fancy stuff. (Points at the tripods) Too good, too heavy, too good - just use your hands.

Here's a lightmeter, this isn't the write one, I broke my other one. This is a spotmeter, that's OK but it's too fancy. You just need one with a little white dome on it, point it to your subject, read the light, look at the number on your lightmeter - remember your lightmeter is your friend - feed that into lens and the iris, and then you're set. Start shooting.

Don't overlight. On Mariachi I had two lights, regular lightbulbs, they were balanced for indoor film, so look fine. In fact everyone said the lighting looked moody because there was very little light . Your mistakes, your shortcomings suddenly becomes artistic expression.

Finally, postproduction. When you've finished shooting your movie what do you do? (Picks up video mixer) These are your friends my friends. Video editing systems, computer editing systems, anything like that, its immediate, its easy, its cheap. Do not cut on film. Film is your enemy. You may be shooting on film but don't cut on film. If any of you want to cut on film get out of my class right now. Go spend $20,000 on a real film school and do that. You'll never get a job though - believe me.

Everything is on computers or video these days. Film is slow, film is expensive, film is not creative - film take's too long. Cut on tape that's what I do. I shot Mariachi for nothing. I edited on video. I had a three-quarter inch master that looked beautiful because the negative was transferred right to tape. There was no middleman so it looked like 35mm - clean, pristine. I made VHS copies of this, sent them out all over Hollywood. I never made a film print. (Picks up film strip) Waste of money. You have to string them up, they get worn out. They're expensive. They're copies of your negative. You don't want that, you don't want copies of your negative, you want your negative...on tape. Where people can duplicate it and watch it and get you work.

OK so you've made your movie, you've cut it, you've got it out, people want you. What do you do? The first thing you want to do is get an agent - right away. Hollywood is full of sharks, you need a shark working for you. These guys go and get you the best deals, they get you the best prices, they get you the best movies.

What you've learnt is what no one else has. How to make a movie dirt cheap. No one else in Hollywwod knows how to do that. You guys can make them cheap, you guys can make them better, don't get swallowed in the system, take advantage of your position.

Now I make movies that are still low budget but they look like big budget movies because I learnt the techniques that I just showed you today.

All right I've got to go back and do my own films so I hope you guys learnt something today, I hope you grab some of these cameras and go shoot something of your own, I hope you write down the ideas that you have, the dreams that you have.

Stop aspiring, start doing.

See you in Hollywood - be scary!

Free Film School: HDV 24p Workflow

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:52:56 -0400

If you've ever physically spliced two pieces of film together you know how magical the 24 fps frame cadence is. I don't know if there is a psychometric test that can confirm this, but it seems like the images linger just long enough to make a lasting impression, while maintaining the proper motion of objects. When Sony 24p cameras were first used to shoot a feature it was clear that a new age of cinema was upon us. In today's article I am going to detail a low cost workflow that will allow you to shoot high definition video at 24 fps.

This workflow employs the tools detailed in my previous workflow article. To recap, it relies on a low cost HDV camera (the Canon HV20) and a low cost post production environment (Adobe Creative Suite 3). There are two reasons why HDV was selected for the video format: camera cost and disk space requirement. When it comes to cost per pixel, HDV cameras cannot be beat. HDV is considered a consumer format and as a result the cameras are a fraction of the cost of DVCPro HD gear. In regard to disk space, you'll find that the 25 Mbps data rate of HDV allows you to squeeze 5,000 minutes of footage onto an entry level PC with a terabyte of storage. The DVCPro HD format, on the other hand, eats up to four times the disk space and also requires greater disk throughput (which means your disk subsystem needs to be gold plated). Don't get me wrong, we're not against professional gear here at Free Film School, we just want to define an affordable option for filmmakers that aren't sitting on a big pile of cash.

Let's begin with your camera set-up. The Canon HV20 allows you to shoot in SD, HDV and HDV 24p (the more recent model adds an HDV 30p mode as well). To shoot in HDV 24p put the camera in Play mode, open the Camera Setup menu and under HD Standard select the HDV 24p icon. The HDV 24p icon looks like this:

Do not confuse this setting with the Cine Mode setting that is found under Recording Programs. You don't want to use Cine Mode. The Cine Mode icon looks like this:

Though the two icons are nearly identical, the Cine Mode setting plays some tricks with your aperture and shutter speed that you want to avoid. My recommendation is to shoot in HDV 24p without any additional in-camera effects (like Cine Mode).

Next you need to make sure that you are shooting with the highest shutter speed available. When the camera is in Camera mode click on the Func. button on the back of the camera to bring up the camera settings. The top item in the list is shutter speed (Shutter-Prio.AE). Click on the item to see the shutter speed choices and from the choices select "TV". This will set a fast shutter speed which will help make your images crisp and clear. A slower shutter would brighten up your images, but that is exactly what we want to avoid. The ugliest thing about video is the blow out that is common with bright images. We want to capture all the image data we can (not blow it out). So we'll use a fast shutter and correct the white levels in post.

Next you'll need to knock down the exposure level a couple stops (another way to avoid blow outs). With the camera in Camera mode click on the Set button at the back of the camera to bring up the manual controls. The Set button has a torturous method for getting into exposure mode which I'll let you figure out for yourself. Once you are in the exposure mode click the exposure down until the image in your viewfinder is crisp and clear. It's OK for the image to get dark. What you are trying to do is tame the sections of your image that are too bright for the DIGIC DV II image processor to handle. Level set for the bright sections of your image (even if the rest of the image now looks darker than you'd like). Don't worry, white levels are easy to fix in post, but if you blow out your image there won't be anything there to fix. Now go out and shoot. I'll wait here till you're ready to edit.

Are you done shooting yet? Geez, I just about finished knitting you a scarf. Now you need to transfer all your footage to the PC. Make sure the camera is set to output HDV and not DV. You'll find that Adobe Premiere is great at capturing HDV, but for some reason the HD capture tool that comes with Windows Vista Ultimate (Windows Movie Maker HD) can only capture DV. And even that feat cannot be accomplished until you've installed a number of third party codecs. So if you see an automatic pop-up window appear when you connect your camera to your PC make sure you do not pick the default choice "Import Video using Windows Import Video", that would be disasterous. Instead select "Edit and Record Video using Adobe Premiere Pro".

Choosing the "Adobe Premiere Pro" option throws you into the intro screen for the product where you are asked to either open an existing project or create a new one. Create a new project and load the "HDV 1080p24" preset from the "Load Preset" tab.

Once the preset loads, Adobe forgets why you opened Premiere in the first place and just sits there. Select File > Capture to open the capture window.

When the window opens you might see the following error at the top:

Can't Activate Recorder, Try Resetting Camera. If you get this message either you failed to load an HDV preset when you opened your project or the camera is not in the HDV output mode. Make sure that you actually shot in HDV, that your camera is set to output HDV and that your Adobe Premiere Pro project is loaded with the correct HDV preset. Once you get past this error the capture process is a trivial affair (simply click the red record button in the interface).

Once you are done with the capture process the first thing you'll notice about your files is that Premiere does not think they are 24 fps. Premiere says they are 1440x1080 at 29.97 fps and Premiere is correct in this regard. Because of the way the HDV standard was implemented by all parties involved your 24 fps video is actually stored in a 29.97 fps wrapper on disk. It's as if 3:2 pulldown was added to your content.To fix this problem you will have to remove the 3:2 pulldown. Luckily the Adobe Creative Suite comes with an incredible tool for doing this called "Interpret Footage". The full version of the tool can be found in Adobe After Effects, while a neutered version of the tool can be found in Adobe Premiere Pro. Since we have to correct white levels in After Effects anyway we might as well use that version of the tool. So now you'll need to close down Premiere, open After Effects and import all your footage into that environment.

Once your assets are included in your After Effects project you can select an asset and then click on File > Interpret Footage > Main and the "Interpret Footage" tool appears.

This tool will get your video out of the 29.97 fps shell that it's stuck in. Simply click the "Guess 3:2 Pulldown" button and the tool will find the original 23.976 frame cadence in the file that you have submitted. The tool is a little confusing in that it says "Conform to frame rate: 29.97" but simply ignore that. Down in the "Fields and Pulldown" section there is another message that says "Effective framerate of 23.976 ftps" and that is the message that matters. You have now converted your 29.97 fps file to 23.976 fps. Click "OK" to return to the main menu and then repeat this action for each of your clips. This is the superior method of converting Canon HV20 output to 23.976 fps. There is an inferior method that you might stumble upon by accident. If you fail to interpret your footage, when you go to output a movie from your Premiere project (after editing is complete) you can force Premiere to produce a 23.976 fps movie. This process, however, will clumsily remove frames to get to the 23.976 fps goal, and the result will be noticeably jerky.

Finally you will need to boost your white and gamma levels in After Effects (to compensate for knocking down the exposure setting in the camera). Since there is actually an art to this I will cover this process in more detail in my next post. For now here is a summary of the ground we have covered so far:

The original footage was shot in HDV at 24p with a TV-speed shutter. It was under-exposed 2-3 stops to avoid blow outs. The footage was then captured to disk where it was stored in a 29.97 fps shell (i.e. 3:2 pulldown was added). In post the captured footage had the 3:2 pulldown removed (getting it back to 23.976 fps). White and gamma levels were then bumped up to compensate for the under exposure. I hope you like the workflow as it stands now. At this point you have some gorgeous 23.976 fps footage and you never even had to wind a Bolex once.

Wii Video

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:45:16 -0400

I'm always keeping an eye out for the next big video platform. Nintendo's Wii never really caught my attention since Nintendo doesn't even mention its video capabilities in its marketing campaign. So when I bought a Wii for my daughter's birthday I thought it would be just another toy that the kids abandon after a few weeks. But within a few hours of the console's debut every single member of my household had used the device and an unruly line had formed next to the TV. When I heard my mother-in-law shouting "Die! Die! Die!" at the screen in Korean I knew I had a hit on my hands.

Can this addictive little device be used to deliver video? Read more to find out. I started my quest out with Red Kawa's Wii Video 9 video converter tool. This tool claims to convert video "into the specific video formats that are playable on the Wii". It produces MJPEG files in an AVI container (at 2 Mbps) and FLV files (at 512 Kbps). When I tested out an assortment of AVI and FLV files on my Wii I could see the AVI files but not a single FLV file was discovered by the interface. In visiting the support forum for the product it turns out that nobody has been able to get the FLV files to work, since the Wii only supports MJPEG in an AVI or MOV container. What kind of converter tool is this?

The free kind. It turns out that Wii Video 9 is just a shell for the FFmpeg encoder. If you're familiar with this encoder you know that it's the basis for a whole host of horrible encode tools. You'd also not be shocked to learn that the encodes produced by the Wii Video 9 converter look like they've been dragged under a bus.

So that tool is not going to get your video into the 20 million Wii households that have become bored with Wii Darts are looking for something else to do. But can you tap this market at all? It turns out that (when it comes to user provided content) the Wii only plays MJPEG files. There's an additional deal breaker in that the files must be under 30 minutes in length. And, lastly, the device only accepts these files via an SD card interface. So your business plan is going to look something like this "Green Screen Cinema will distribute crappy, short videos on a medium that costs more than the Wii itself".

Perhaps video won't be 'coming soon to a Wii near you'.

Should You Take a Screenwriting Class From this Man?

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:56:29 -0400

There's not a whole lot of show business going on in Silicon Valley, so when I heard that Santa Clara University offered a screenwriting class I thought I'd sit in and see what kind of gems could be found. The fact that SCU offered the class really caught my attention. As you know there are more scam artists than you can shake a script at preying on the Hollywood bound. If you're an actor you'll be told to get new headshots and take acting classes. And if you're a writer you'll be tempted to salve your artistic anguish with an occasional dose of screenwriting class. So what kind of pill is SCU selling? Research on the professor, Brian Adams, doesn't turn up much. He graduated from San Jose State University. He worked on a local show called "Dialing for Dollars" that got this review from the Metroactive site:

Only the sick, retired, malingering or hard-core unemployed are able to stay home and catch Dialing for Dollars (weekdays, 1-3pm)OK, so his trophy case is not overflowing with Emmys. But I did find a report in the Evergreen Times that stated:

He also gives his reviews of the Academy Award nominees each year at a meeting of the San Jose Rotary Club.I think that's what passes for "connected" here in the Valley. Fair enough, it sounds like he's put together a career outside of Hollywood which is not always the easiest thing to do. So are his brilliant ministrations worth the $34,950 that SCU charges per semester?

I wish I could give you an answer, but before Brian even uttered the words three act structure he escorted me from the premises. Maybe "escorted" is a strong word, but I do remember actual contact with my arm as I was ushered from the classroom.

So there you have it. Tossed out of a screenwriting class by an SJSU grad. A bit humiliating, but a good reminder of why the world needs a Free Film School. I think our new slogan is going to be "we get thrown out of film school so you don't have to". There might also be a lesson in there somewhere. Though you might have dined with Lew Wasserman if you want to cut it here in the Valley you really should consider joining the Rotary Club. I hear they give a great presentation around Oscar time.

A Disturbance in the Force

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:23:00 -0400

Here's some insightful career advice from Darryl Barker (Beethopia). Darryl started his career with an internship under George Lucas that lasted all of one day:

Darryl Barker Productions

Technorati

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:29:50 -0400

Here at Green Screen Cinema we've been around the block with a number of of web technologies (going all the way back to our Atari 800 and its 1200 bps modem). The technologies we really like these days are adCenter, Adwords and Feedburner. But since Google will not even return our domain name when people search for our domain name (seriously, try finding us in here) we had to set up accounts at Digg, Current, reddit, Vimeo, Metacafe, emPivot and every site that has the word "film" in the title, just to help people find us. It's not been an easy road. Minutes after joining Vimeo we received fishy email from a variety of sources. The reddit site might have been programmed by monkeys. And Metacafe is just plain creepy (they promise to pay for your content and yet their front page is filled with content of dubious ownership).

Needless to say we've taken the walk of shame home after locking lips with these guys. And these sites are not the worst offenders out there. There's one flack blog site we've said we'll never join. Never ever. Not if we were the last two websites standing and we had to repopulate the species together. Well, we're gonna have to eat our words since they own the 12th spot in a Google search result we're trying to break into. Pucker up, baby, because today we joined the Technorati. I wouldn't normally blog about joining a site but Technorati is struck with such hubris that you actually have to blog about them in order to activate your account. Here's the backlink they demanded I post on my site: Technorati Profile. They specifically said to post this link 'in a blog entry'. But if you've ever used html you know that there's no tag for 'blog'. You could hide the link in a 1 pixel div tag and it would look the same to their systems. They're kind of like Dr. Evil, waking up from 30 years of frozen, cryogenic sleep and demanding one million prominently displayed backlinks.

Web technology has moved on and Technorati has not kept up. The Technorati spider, which is supposed to confirm the existence of the profile link during sign-up, was defeated by the structure of my site and never found the link. I think, now, I have to drop the link in the U.S. mail in a SASE before they'll activate my account.

So I did it, Technorati, I succumbed to your aging hipster cologne and slicked back hair. But frankly I'd rather cradle my phone in an acoustic modem.

Spielberg Near Deal with Alleged Indian Video Pirate

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:56:48 -0400

If you read the Wall Street Journal this morning you could not have missed the front page story about Spielberg's impending deal to sell a large stake in DreamWorks to Reliance ADA Group. What you might not have known is that Reliance is also on the radar of Universal Pictures' Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations group for allegedly pirating Hollywood content. A couple years ago I got a call from Aaron Markham, a really nice guy that happened to be the Director of Internet Anti-Piracy for Universal Pictures' Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations. He had the unfortunate task of sending out cease and desist letters to suspected video pirates. He was trying to find someone at Reliance that he could send one of these take-down notices to because they were selling pirated Universal Pictures content through their Reliance Communication division. Not hosting, mind you, but selling via a Unix-based video solution they had put together themselves, in-house.

Here's what his form letter looked like at the time (I don't know if he ever sent it out, maybe Steven can deliver it for him now):

Anatomy of a Web Video Hit

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:26:31 -0400

Before we get into the details of my recommended HDV workflow I thought you might like to see just what success in the web video space looks like. Take a look at this YouTube Insight graph, provided by Solomon Chase:

This is a chart of the daily views that Solomon gets on YouTube. Solomon is a young cinematographer based in Georgia, and his impressive, stylized videos are a YouTube sensation. He gets emailed by directors that want to work with him; men want to be him and women throw their underwear at him. He will get to work in his chosen profession until the end of days.

When I first spoke with Solomon he was completely shocked by his success on YouTube. He told me that the response was so overwhelming at first that he didn't even get through all the email. Months later he discovered that the director of the Winnie the Pooh movie wanted to work with him (among other offers). When I asked him if he wanted to work on features his response really surprised me. He said that he wanted to work on short films to keep the quality of his output high and then build from there. This is a guy that, when Hollywood calls, doesn't even read the email. How'd he do it? This next graph shows how people came to find his video:

As you can see from the graph, almost half of his views came from related video clicks. This means that the representative frame of his video was so compelling that 50,000 people clicked through to it. Pretty simple, right? Well, to get his video into a position that people could see it to click on it is a bit more complicated.

The first factor that determines if your video will show up on people's radar is the title and the metatags associated with it. The title Solomon selected for this video was Rainy Day Cinematography which, while being an interesting title, is not something that relates to a large number of other videos. So his metatags must have really been the driver. If we dig into the metatags I think we'll strike gold.

The metatags that Solomon selected for this smash hit were:

HV20

This list begs the question, were tens of thousands of bored teenagers looking for videos starring a guy named Sam? The answer is no. The key term in his metatag list was HV20. Solomon published this video right when the Canon HV20 hit the market. The HV20 was one of the first consumer HD cameras and at the time there was a huge amount of buzz and interest surrounding it. Solomon certainly helped himself out by choosing a hot keyword (for which there was not a lot of competing product).

I decided to test out this theory by running an Adwords ad for the current model number, HV30, and sure enough after 2 days I am getting a 1% click-through rate (while the click through rate I get on other keywords is less than half that). Thus hot, niche keywords really do make a difference. I also tested out this theory by posting a similar video (though certainly not as technically adept) twice to YouTube. Once with Solomon's keywords, and once with more niche keywords and less generic keywords. The video with more niche keywords is doing much better than the video with only one niche keyword. Which means that Solomon could have even more traffic if he simply dropped keywords like "Sam" and "art" and added keywords like "HV30" and "HDV".

Is it all about keywords, though? I regularly post videos for which the target audience is still in diapers. I know, it's a tough demographic to get in front of a computer terminal. And my viewership number reflects my tiny demographic. Take a look at Solomon's demographic:

This is the kind of mass appeal that would make a Disney exec cry. He does as well with 0 year olds as he does with 45 year olds. This is a tribute to the technical excellence of his work. It's also highly entertaining and only 55 seconds long. What's not to love? The key lesson here is that quality does count on the web.

Now that Solomon's clip has gained a viewership, YouTube's "what's related" algorithm ranks it above other videos, and a snowball effect has ensued as a result. A year after the clip's release he is getting 400 hits a day and his popularity is holding steady:

Was this clip's success entirely dependent on the timing of the HV20's release? The HV20 was certainly a factor, but it turns out that most of the serious content that Solomon posts is a hit. A 3:45 minute long music video that he put up in 2006 still has legs (at about 140,000 views). There must be some common factors across his videos.

If you look at his channel you'll only see 122 subscribers, so it's not like he has a big fan base out there pushing his stuff once it hits the streets. His audience is mainly people that discovered his content through the YouTube interface and liked what they saw. Rainy Day Cinematography currently has 336 favorable reviews while his music video has 443 fans. Those are great numbers.

Now don't get me wrong. There are bigger hits out there. But most of the popular videos on YouTube have some kind of catch (usually involving cleavage) and you certainly cannot build a career out of them. Solomon is a died-in-the-wool, sincere filmmaker that is simply practicing his craft. He looks to have a promising future because of his talent and the exposure that YouTube offered him. Now if he would only answer his email.

Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Morgan Fairchild

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 13:02:57 -0400

Did you know that Alan Rosenberg, president of the Screen Actor's Guild, was elected into office by only 8% of the registered SAG members (Morgan Fairchild, the runner-up, got 7%)? And now this guy is threatening to shut down the town with an actors' strike. In the middle of a recession. Is this guy nuts or what? I'm worried that he's going the route of Ronald Reagan who, during his time in office, became convinced that he had actually been a navy fighter pilot and a cowboy. Alan played the role of a cut-throat attorney on L.A. Law, and when he was elected to run SAG back in 2005 he said, ominously,"I am looking forward to ... ensuring Screen Actors Guild is the great and powerful organization it has been and always will be." Alan has certainly been playing power politics of late. Upset that his sister union caved-in to the studios, the L.A. Times reported on Friday that Alan pushed through a "plan to persuade 44,000 joint [SAG/AFTRA] card holders to vote down the [AFTRA] agreement". He essentially wants to send these joint members a message, that if they know what's good for them they'll scuttle the AFTRA deal. I think he was going to send each member a dead fish wrapped in the L.A. Times, which oddly enough, is something the Times tried a few years back to increase subscription rates. Anyway, the New York branch of his union has had enough. They came out Thursday with a statement that said the action was not authorized by SAG's full board and would waste as much as $150,000 in guild funds. They said it represented an "unconscionable attempt to interfere with the internal business of a sister union" that would "forever tarnish our image as a union."

Maybe this guy is nuts. The directors settled, the writers settled, and AFTRA is about to settle on a contract with the studios. But Alan keeps beating the war drum. He even thinks he can unwind the AFTRA deal. He may get his strike after all. This weekend's Wall Street Journal dedicated a whole bunch of front page real-estate to Hollywood bracing for a new strike. But the article mentions that Alan hasn't even taken a strike vote, a process that takes about three weeks. Which means that there is literally no way for Alan to have a legitimate strike by June 30th, the SAG contract expiration date.

Now why would a guy that seems to be in love with idea of being out of work not take a strike vote? Could it be that the 10,748 actors that voted him into office now have a rent payment to make? Or could it have something to do with the other 109,252 actors that did not vote for him? I think Alan is aware of how tenuous his hold on power is. And if Alan is aware, you can bet your unsold script that the studios are aware as well. So give us all a break Alan. Your demand that all new media productions (regardless of budget) be covered by SAG is ludicrous. My four year old son, who I regularly put into my YouTube videos, is not going SAG, I am sorry to say.

In the old days, if a production wasn't SAG they'd get a few Hell's Angels to ride down to the set and drive around with their noisy choppers for a few hours. That pretty much kept the independents in line. But now that the means of production are no longer in the hands of the few those hardball tactics are not going to work. I guess he could do a reverse IP look-up on each video that is submitted to YouTube, but I don't think there is an adequate supply of Hell's Angels for that to work out.

Alan must have seen the studios dragging MP3 downloaders into court and thought to himself,"Hey, I could just sue FLV uploaders that don't sign on with SAG!" But you were only an attorney on TV, Alan. Your evil plan for net domination will have to wait until you actually finish law school. It's true, "Point of Seduction: Body Chemistry III" is no "L.A. Law", but if Morgan had won at least we'd have a deal by now.

Free Film School: Affordable HD Workflow

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:06:09 -0400

Today's column is being written for the filmmaker that does not have $10,000 laying around to spend on their cinematic debut. If you have a big chunk of change you'll find no end to the people that'll help you spend it (whenever I want to put a huge hole in my budget I call Snader and Associates ). But I don't want to see you spend that kind of money. HD technology is moving so fast that whatever you buy today is going to be gathering dust in a couple years. That's why an affordable HD workflow is so important. It's a great way to try out the format and learn the pitfalls without parting with your hard-earned cash.

I'm going to review a workflow that employs a $600 HDV camera, a $600 software suite and a $1500 PC. What kind of results can you expect for $2700? Take a look at the clip I'm running at the top of this article. The filmmaker, Solomon Chase, garnered almost 100,000 views on YouTube with this clip (which exemplifies affordability). And just look at the thing. It's gorgeous. It's dripping with gorgeous. They'll have to mop the gorgeous off the floor once the clip leaves the building. And the whole thing was shot with a $600 camera. The first place you can save money in an HD workflow is with your camera purchase. There are a number of HD formats out there right now but only one offers both affordability and incredible quality. That format is HDV. HDV gear skews heavily toward the consumer market, which keeps the prices low. If you've read my technology posts you know I am madly in love with the Canon HDV camera line-up. Last year's consumer model (the HV20) can still be purchased at Ebay for $600 in the box. How can you go wrong at that price? The image is comparable to the hallowed Canon XH G1 and the HV20 is about 1/10th the price. Thus, my camera recommendation is the HV20.

The next big ticket decision you have to make is which editing software suite to buy. I know, I know, the Earth won't continue to revolve unless you can use Final Cut Pro on your Mac. But have you seen how much you spent on your Mac? The turnkey price for a Final Cut Pro seat (G5 included) is $23,000. That's just nuts. In an earlier article I showed that you can make a decent HDV edit with Window Movie Maker HD, and that product's free (with the purchase of Vista Ultimate). For this affordable workflow I am recommending you enroll in a community college class of your choice so that you can quality to buy the student version of Adobe Creative Suite 3. It's the best $600 you'll ever spend ($299 at Adobe partner schools). And even if you hate the suite you'll end up with a legal copy of Photoshop.

Finally you'll need something to power your NLE environment and for this workflow I am recommending the HP Pavilion Elite. It's the cheapest way to get your hands on a terabyte of RAID 0 disk and you get a great computer to boot. And believe me you'll need it. The Adobe Creative Suite system requirements are as follows:

If you happen to have a machine with these specs sitting around then you're ahead of the game. But as they say at Disneyland, you must be at least this tall to ride the rollercoaster.

Good luck putting your system together. In my next post I'll walk you step-by-step through an HDV shoot, post and edit workflow using these tools.

A Worthwhile Internship?

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:16:40 -0400

Just recently I was able to pry a "how I broke into the business" story out of the hands of Ashley Michael Karitis. Ashley is currently a student at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and his script "Saving Tulips" was just named a finalist in the 480 competition.

For those of you that have not lived under the yoke of the 480 process, it's a "competition" that USC runs to see which students will actually get to make a final thesis film. Only a few thesis films are shot each year, which means there are numerous students at USC that spend $35,000 a year to not make a final film. I know, it boggles the mind. Now do you see why your parents were pushing for Free Film School?

Here's Ashley's account of how he broke into the business with an internship at an independent film production company:

Current.com vs. YouTube

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:20:50 -0400

If you've read my technology articles, you know that nothing gets me as steamed as a bad video transcode. To find the worst offenders I recently performed a comparison of video quality at the leading video upload sites. The comparison found that YouTube is guilty of the worst transcodes in the history of mankind. But YouTube has such a great embedded player and such insightful recommendations that I keep getting sucked back. Until today.

Today I am testing out the Current.com embedded player (above) because of some exciting changes coming to the Current.com site. I can't publish any details about their plans, but I will say this: the team at Current (Mario Anima, Dan Levine and Robin Sloan) recently trapped me in a room for two hours without food or water and convinced me to buy time shares from them. Either that or they convinced me they are going to blow YouTube out of the water. I can't say which one. But seriously, Robin was the only one that had a sandwich. I think YouTube threw the first stone in this fight. YouTube claims that "people around the world have been using YouTube to report on the events". Which is true if you count "looking up someone's skirt" as an event. Then today Olivia M. threw down the following challenge on the YouTube blog

"We're announcing the launch of the Reporter channel type. Reporter channels are just like other YouTube channel types �- such as Comedian, Guru and Musician -- but are specifically intended for citizens and professionals dedicated to informing others about the news and events in their local communities and around the world."Hmmm. That kinda sounds like the turf that Current.com has carved out, doesn't it? It looks like YouTube is hoping their army of skirt-chasing vbloggers can take a chunk of the netizen news business away from Current. Let me tell you this, it won't happen without a fight. Stay tuned to Current for details.

Oh, and one last thing. If you find that you like the Current embedded player (because, for example, their streams don't freeze even 5 seconds the way YouTube streams do) then you will need to do one tiny thing before you can actually use their player. You have to remove the classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" attribute from the object tag in the Current embed code. This was the Flash class ID five years ago (see the MSDN article from 2003 on this subject), but a few things have changed since then and explicitly naming this class ID causes the player to fail for newer machines. But don't hold it against the Current guys. Al Gore may be a horrible web programmer, but he has game-changing ideas about how to build community.

Free Film School: Tempo

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:36:46 -0400

Today were are going to look at a key video concept that is taught at USC: tempo. Three things control the tempo of your film: your editing paradigm, your on-screen action and your music. What do I mean by editing paradigm? Your editing paradigm is the expectation you set up in the mind of the viewer from the edits they've seen thus far. If you take the case of the film "Iron Man", you'll find that most of the action shots run somewhere between two and four seconds in duration. This is consistent throughout the entire film. The audience is trained early on that they need to pay close attention, and they are also comforted to know that scenes will be paid-off quickly. It is a joy to watch a film with a tight and consistent editing paradigm.

You can't do much about on-screen action after the film has been shot, so let's move on to music selection. If you take a quick look at the short film I've prepared for this article, you'll see a chase scene set to the theme music from "Indiana Jones" (composed by John Williams). The music has a very fast tempo (allegro) and is somewhat agitated (agitato). Music that is allegro agitato adds energy to your video, regardless of the video content. If the on-screen action does not fit well with the energy created by the music the result is a visual discord that makes the audience want to leave the theater, go home and write scathing reviews for the New York Times. This is what we want to avoid.

How can we bring the soundtrack into harmony with the visuals? The first rule of thumb is to not attempt to sync your onscreen action with changes in the music. This will draw too much attention to the music.

The next rule is to cut out the heads and tails of shots that do not contain action. If your character has exited the frame the shot is probably over.

The next rule is to cut a shot once it's provided the information it has to deliver. For example, if your shot ends with a long zoom-out from a character performing a single action (like eating a sandwich) you should cut as soon as the action has registered with the audience. There is no reason to keep zooming-out once the audience gets the idea (they didn't show up to see your camera work, they came to see what the character is going to do after he eats that sandwich).

Once you have tight scenes that maintain audience interest you'll find that the music is not noticed as much. Good! Next let's get the music noticed even less by choosing music that has a tempo that matches the energy of your scene. In the example provided the allegro agitato tempo matches the visuals quite well, especially when the alligator is chasing the kids. At the very end of the film the music reaches a crescendo, which provides the audience with a sense of closure.

The "crescendo effect" occurs when the music no longer blends into the background. This can be helpful when the music is used to make a very specific point (i.e. the chase is over). When cutting for "crescendo effect" it is possible to let the image sit on the screen past the point of new information. In the example you'll see the kids safely drive away from the alligator (in a single shot that lasts for about eight seconds) while the music reaches its crescendo. If there were a number of quick cuts at this point the images would draw away from the feeling of closure provided by the music.

Thus we come to the last rule of tempo, which is that every rule I've described is made to be broken. The important thing is that whatever music you choose and however you pace your shots at the end of the day you need to get the emotional response that you were after.