You might have heard that YouTube is moving into long-form content. They've been acquiring the rights to low-budget episodics and back-catalog film titles and have created a new page on their site to highlight the buys (called the Shows page). While I am excited to see YouTube try new things, the mix of titles is truly baffling. On the one hand they feature Funimation titles like Full Metal Panic and Fullmetal Alchemist (which were huge hits in Japan) right next to the worst web series ever produced by man, Gemini Division. And then there's the obligatory National Geographic content, which is so overexposed that they will soon be giving away the online distribution rights as a prize at the bottom of cereal boxes.

Is there any chance this new YouTube offering will get the nation's kids to tune in for hours at a time? Read on and find out.

Watchmen, the ironic, counter-culture comic book series from the 80's has been turned into a non-ironic, spandex-and-tights superhero movie that in every way betrays the heart of the original work. There, that being said, I wanted to also provide you with some objective film commentary regarding the movie. Which I hated.

If you compare the above panel from the comic, in which the Comedian faces off with a disgruntled group of peace activists (notice the hippie symbol on the girl to the left) and little old ladies, with the following montage from the film (which can be found at the movie's promo site) you'll see that the normal, peace loving citizens have been replaced with a bunch of really big thugs.



The filmmakers completely changed the thrust of the scene, which in the comic book highlights the tension between vigilantism and peace. In the comic book the scene plays out like this: a crowd gathers due to the police going on strike, the crowd throws a tomato and a small tin can at the Comedian, the Comedian threatens them with a grenade from atop the Owl's ship, and the crowd disperses. The fact that the crowd is composed of normal looking people with a valid issue makes the Comedian seem completely out of touch. The comic book depicts the Comedian as borderline psychotic and attempts to place the reader's sympathy with the crowd.

In the movie version the crowd hurls a firebomb at the Comedian, which sets fire to the Owl's ship and in response the Comedian heroically jumps down into the middle of the unruly mob. You might notice in the final movie still that once the Comedian jumps down into the middle of the crowd, they still hold their ground! They've firebombed him and they are looking for a fight. The whole thing is set up like a traditional fight scene; throughout the scene the audience is rooting for the Comedian to beat back the thugs. What was meant to be a commentary on vigilantism has been turned into a sad version of Kung Fu Panda.

I think the animation business is in trouble. I just took my son to see "The Tale of Despereaux" and, while charming at times, the final 20 minutes were lifted right out of Orwell's 1984:

"The rat", said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible audience,"although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of that. You will have heard of the things that happen in the poor quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare not leave her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they will strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dying people. They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless."

My son actually had to watch rats tie up a princess and eat her, all the while hearing her painful shrieks. Eventually Despereaux saves the princess by releasing a cat, but at that point the logic of the story had gone so far over the deep end that I felt like the abyss was gazing into me. I don't know that I would call "The Tale of Despereaux" Orwellian torture porn, but it's not a kids' film. If anything it's a perfect example of what the animation glut is doing to the animation business.

I ran the numbers and I'm pretty sure that Sumner Redstone, owner of Paramount Pictures, is hoping that Pixar's 'Up' will dominate the box office when it opens on May 29th. Why is Paramount's head cheerleader rooting for the other team? It's a long and twisted tale, and at the heart of it is a father's love for his daughter. Sumner wants Pixar to succeed at Paramount's expense because his daughter bet the farm on Disney Digital 3D.

Pirates were in the news this week, seizing their 83rd vessel off the coast of Somalia and the entire Korean DVD market. It might be more accurate to say that pirates have always controlled the DVD market in Korea and this was just the week that Warner Bros. admitted to this and pulled out of the market altogether. Prior to the announcement Warner Bros. was the only major studio still trying to sell $19.98 DVDs in a country where the latest Batman film can be purchased in any subway station for $3 (5,000 Won). Warner now joins the other major studios in wondering if they'll ever see revenue beyond theatrical distribution in that country.

But what Warner should really be worried about is whether or not the situation in Korea is a harbinger of doom for the U.S. DVD market. I think it is.

There's a fundamental theory in economics that if people want your product more when the economy is down your product is "inferior". Or stated in another way, everybody in the entertainment business is getting crazy rich right now. Take a look at yesterday's earning report from Time Warner: profit from the content business is up 14% from last quarter. Another entertainment powerhouse, Activision Blizzard, reported incredible earnings yesterday: revenue more than doubled. The CEO, Bobby Kotick, went on to state that "there's nothing that would suggest to us today that our business isn't going to continue to perform well".

So how can you get a piece of this action?

I don't know if you had your calendar marked, but yesterday might have been the most important date in the history of online video. It was the date that Strike.TV went live. Stike.TV is a video site that offers original content from WGA members. It was dreamt up during the depths of the WGA strike and the results are amazing. The production standards are far higher than anything else on the internet, and it introduces a business model that is going to revolutionize how online video is produced and sold. Though the first day viewership numbers were mild by YouTube standards, I think we just witnessed a launch that changed the world.

I had a chance to interview Michael Tabb, Supervising Producer and Head of Submissions at Strike.TV and here is what he had to say:

Wherever money and art collide, a few crooks are created as a byproduct of the chemical reaction. That's what a few dozen acclaimed filmmakers found out this week when Sundance notified them (via email) that they wouldn't be getting paid from the online distribution deal that Sundance had guided them into. The crooked company in the middle of all of this (as filmmaker Carson Mell told IndieWire) is Mediastile, an online distribution company run by Clive Davis' kid. The company has allegedly been stealing from Sundance filmmakers for years.

A few months back I argued against the sales agent business model that is championed by folks like John Sloss. In a nutshell, these people take on as many clients as possible and try to make a fast sale at Sundance or Cannes. They have very little at stake in the productions they push and use extremely aggressive negotiation tactics to get to a quick close. Just three years ago the New York Times called John Sloss a new power broker and printed John's claim that he 'virtually owns Sundance'. What a difference a few years can make.

Today the Wall Street Journal reported that this year most of John's slate at Sundance went unsold.

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

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 DreamWorks

Next 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?

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:

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.

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.

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.