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| The Demise of the Sales Agent |
| 2008-09-03 12:56:32 |
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.
Has the independent bubble popped? The Journal certainly thinks so. Today's article goes on to document the demise of the independent business as a whole, mentioning the closure of Picturehouse, Warner Independent Pictures and Paramount Vantage. But for the folks slogging it out in the trenches those companies were about as independent as Czechoslov...
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| If Kids Ruled the World Hits the Festival Circuit |
| 2008-08-27 00:27:11 |
If you happen to be in Long Beach the weekend of September 20-21 you really should stop by the Museum of Latin American Art to catch the 4th Annual Los Angeles International Children's Film Festival. On Sunday (the 21st) the festival will unspool the Green Screen Cinema production If Kids Ruled the World, a short film about kids trying to save the environment by shopping at Whole Foods. It's your big chance to support locally grown, organically produced film.
And did I mention that admission is absolutely free?...
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| Greatest. Blog. Ever |
| 2008-08-23 22:48:29 |
In case you missed it when it first aired, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog is back online, at Hulu.com. The show was written and directed by Joss Whedon, and it's literally the funniest, most inspiring video blog ever created. If you click over to the site now I promise your computer will thank you.
If you're still here (and, really, I hope the only reason you're still reading this is that the click button on your mouse doesn't work) it won't spoil anything if I blog about the show's premise. The premise is that Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) wants nothing more in life than to join the Evil League of Evil. The Evil League of Evil is composed of Professor Normal, Fake Thomas Jefferson, Tie-Die, Dead Bowie (played by Jed Whedon), Fury Leika and Snake Bite. Their leader is Bad Horse, an evil horse that sends singing telegrams. The League demands that Dr. Horrible gain notoriety before they will consider his application for membership. It's much better than it sounds on paper. ...
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| Monica Sender, Whomever You Are, I Apologize |
| 2008-08-19 16:49:50 |
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 a...
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| Gemini Division File No. 01 |
| 2008-08-19 00:50:26 |
Rosario Dawson's boyfriend is a cybernetic machine that tries to kill her.There, now you're up-to-date on the plot of NBC's new "faux" viral video, Gemini Division. Oh, and one other thing, the boyfriend looks like some guy that won a contest. You'd think with this kind of money they could get an actor for the role.
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 even be bothered to post a single image or blog entry here. Doesn't anybody on the show own a computer?...
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| Paula Wagner's Looking For An Exit |
| 2008-08-14 12:35:15 |
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 ha...
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| Tim Shriver Hates Tropic Thunder |
| 2008-08-12 17:04:00 |
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 Timothy previously worked at the studio that produced "Tropic Thunder"? Apparently hell hath no fury like a woman 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 Brothersfilm, and he has produced or co-produced shows for ABC, TNT, and NBC networksI think somebody wants to get their na...
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| Gemini Division's Botched Launch |
| 2008-08-10 21:00:00 |
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...
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| iTunes Bricked My iPhone |
| 2008-08-06 12:44:41 |
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 ...
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| Where Did Cuil.com's $33 Million Go? |
| 2008-07-31 10:36:22 |
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 have to try this site out before they close it down. 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: Do they really think I want to buy a semi-detached house in Ireland?While Cuil.com may not be aware of its own existence Google certainly is. Here's the text that Google displays on the top of the page when you search for the term "Cuil":In fairness, most concluded that Cuil would not be a "Google Killer". But the pondering over its chance would be laughable if it weren't so boring.This is Go...
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| MetaFest Call For Entries |
| 2008-07-23 23:35:09 |
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®, one of the worlds largest video entertainment sites with 30 million unique visitors per month, and with Microcinema International, a leading international exhibitor and specialty markets distributor of the "moving image arts, are teaming to create and curate MetaFest 2008. The MetaFest call for entries, open through September 10th, 2008, invites short video, film and digital media submissions of 10 minutes or less that are narrative, humorous, artistic, dramatic, animated, documentary, mockumentary, music, experimental, alternative or avant-garde in any genre, format or style. Fil...
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| Free Film School: Dissonance |
| 2008-07-20 19:16:19 |
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 ...
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| 'He won many battles, his childhood friends became famous soldiers' |
| 2008-07-17 14:23:54 |
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:
Basically I got out of school with no idea what to do next, so I locked myself away in a small apartment near the beach and just wrote screenplays for ...
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| Dark Knight in IMAX: Great Film or Greatest Film Ever? |
| 2008-07-17 09:11:39 |
This radiant Knight">Dark Knight review just came in from guest correspondent Jason Calacanis. Jason writes:
The Dark Knight Reviewed----------------------Thanks to TechCrunch.com I was able to see the latest Batman film--The Dark Knight--last night at the IMAX theater at Universal City in Los Angeles. It was an amazing film, with stunning visual, amazing performances and a great story. I thought I would give you my impressions. IMAX, IMAX, IMAX----------------------First, you have to see this film in IMAX. If you haven't seen an IMAX film yet this is the one to see. Now, the entire film isn't filmed in IMAX but the parts that have leveraged this technology are like nothing you've seen before. For most of the film (i.e. non-action sequences) the film is in letter box with the top and the bottom of the screen not being used. However, when the film moves to cityscapes and action sequences--BANG!--the full screen is used. This is done so seamlessly that you wouldn't even notice the switch in for...
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| Paramount Loses $450 Million Financing Deal |
| 2008-07-15 12:13:29 |
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 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 bef...
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| S.F. Frozen Film Festival Opening Night |
| 2008-07-11 11:44:42 |
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 "Simulcra". "Simulcra" 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 "Simulcra" can be found after the jump:
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| Frozen Film Festival |
| 2008-07-08 11:16:31 |
Mark Twain once said,"The coldest winter I ever spent was my summer in San Francisco." Of course, Mark Twain said this before global warming kicked in, so now the naming of the Frozen Film Festival (which is being held this week in the middle of a sweltering San Francisco summer) doesn't seem all that apt. But the programs are already printed up, so what are you gonna do? If you're in town this weekend you really should check it out. There's an opening night gala this Thursday and during the weekend you have two chances to see the Academy Award winning short Simulcra.Here's a screenshot from Simulcra:Here's the low down on opening night, from Yelp.Festival schedule is after the jump:
2008 Film Screening ScheduleFriday, July 11th, 2008Roxie TheatreS.F., CA5:30pm, Friday July 11thArchyARCHY documents the highs and lows of iconic surfer Matt Archbold over the last 25 years of his career. From advancing the evolution of aerials in surfing to tackling the massive Tubes at Off The Wall ...
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| SXSW Panel Picker |
| 2008-07-08 09:03:18 |
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:
Dear Jimbo,Thank you for submitting the two programming ideas to the Panel Picker for the 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival. Please read this receipt letter carefully as it contains lots of important information.The programming idea you submitted are as follows:"HDV 24p Workflow" and "How to Get Fat Money From YouTube"Cool cool cool. These are both really interesting ideas -- and both are particularly relevant to the converge...
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| Ten Minute Film School |
| 2008-07-07 11:02:24 |
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 School">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 cha...
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| Free Film School: HDV 24p Workflow |
| 2008-07-05 14:52:56 |
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 rea...
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| Wii Video |
| 2008-06-25 10:45:16 |
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...
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| Should You Take a Screenwriting Class From this Man? |
| 2008-06-24 21:56:29 |
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 wi...
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| Now a Member of the Technorati |
| 2008-06-21 01:29:50 |
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 fi...
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| Spielberg Near Deal with Indian Video Pirate |
| 2008-06-18 10:56:48 |
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 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 tim...
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| Anatomy of a Web Video Hit |
| 2008-06-17 11:26:31 |
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 e...
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| Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Morgan Fairchild |
| 2008-06-15 12:02:57 |
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] agreeme...
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| Free Film School: Affordable HD Workflow |
| 2008-06-15 01:06:09 |
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 ca...
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| A worthwhile internship? |
| 2008-06-08 22:16:40 |
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:
I worked in my office two days a week, 10 hours a day. It was a 35 minute commute to the office from USC and I would have loved to have been reimbursed for gasoline and lunches--which doesn't ad...
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| Current.com vs. YouTube |
| 2008-06-06 21:20:50 |
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 YouT...
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| Free Film School: Tempo |
| 2008-06-04 12:36:46 |
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...
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| Camera Shoot-out: Sony HDR-FX1 versus Canon Vixia HV30 |
| 2008-06-02 12:40:27 |
I don't know about you, but I have been eagerly awaiting the video revolution. When the first consumer videocamera came out I thought, this is really an improvement on film: you don't have to wait for the lab, the viewfinder shows you exactly what the final image is going to look like. This is going to change the industry! But here we are more than two decades later and only now are high definition videocameras finally coming onto the market at a reasonable price point. I don't know what derailed the revolution, most likely it was the high margins that all the new gear commanded when it first came out. The revolutionaries got fat and complacent. But in the last two years some low cost, high quality gear managed to break through the party apparatus and is now in the hands of consumers.For this shoot-out we are going to compare one of the old guard, high margin video cameras (the Sony HDR-FX1) to a truly revolutionary camera (the Canon Vixia HV30).
How do I despise thee Sony, let ...
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| Never Take Their First Offer |
| 2008-06-01 08:25:00 |
I just received a great "how I got into the business" story from Melinda Briana Epler, production designer. She turned down an offer to work for free on the Richard Linklater film "SubUrbia" but made such an impression on the production design team that they eventually offered to pay her, proving that you can break into the business and make a car payment at the same time. Melinda writes:
I am a documentary filmmaker but originally started in the art department and worked as an art director and set decorator on 25 film and TV projects. My big break happened in 1995, when I briefly lived in Austin, Texas. I was good friends with the location managers on the Richard Linklater film "SubUrbia". They told me where the production designer's office was, and I hand-delivered my resume to her (Catherine Hardwicke, who has since gone on to become a Director herself). Unfortunately, Catherine was out, so I actually handed it to her assistant.Now being an artsy person, I didn't have just...
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| Camera Set-ups of the Rich and Famous |
| 2008-05-30 21:35:30 |
I promised that we would get into low-cost HD camera gear next, but before we come down to Earth I thought we should keep our heads in the stars for one more post. Let's take a look at the camera set-ups that are employed when money is not an object and assistants are hired so phones can be thrown at them. Let's look at the camera set-ups of the rich and famous.
Above is a set-up from "Superman Returns". From my last post you know that Bryan Singer, the director, prefers the Panavision Genesis HD camera. Bryan is really ahead of the game here. He has an all-digital workflow that allows for a quick turnaround time on effects work. It seems that camera teams that shoot effects realize how important it is to shoot digital.Our next set-up comes to us from one of the greatest living directors of our time, Wolfgang Petersen, seen here making one of the worst films of our time, "Poseidon" (go figure). Petersen likes the Panavision PFX Panaflex 35mm camera. It's so large a family of r...
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| Moby Doesn't Like Babies |
| 2008-05-27 16:21:47 |
I don't know about you, but I like babies. They're adorable. Who doesn't like babies? Well apparently Moby doesn't. I went to his website and applied for the Moby Gratis program. It's a program where supposedly he'll give you the rights to one of his songs for use in your web video. So I proposed "Giant Baby Attack!", the moving story of a giant baby that devastates downtown San Francisco. It was going to be a green screen epic. Sounds great, right?
Not if you're Moby. Here is the rejection letter Moby sent me:Gratis Request no. 7451 has been denied. This is because you did not provide enough information. Please login to your account at Moby Gratis if you would like to submit a new request or if you would like to ammend your original request providing more details. Thank you for using mobygratis.com!I'd sure like to know what additional information Moby is looking for. Does he need to make sure the plot beats in the second act are spaced far enough apart? Because I was thin...
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| How To Lose Money Making Web Videos |
| 2008-05-26 11:33:21 |
The New York Times ran a great story this weekend on John Sloss, a sales agent for independent films. John is starting up a company called Cinetic Media that "will act as sale agents for filmmakers who have been left on the sidelines". Hmmm, what an altruistic guy, you must be thinking. Well, read on, the article said his "goal is not exhibition in theaters but rather distribution via the Internet and other growing delivery routes like cable on-demand services". Oh, I see, venues in which filmmakers actually lose money.It seems that YouTube's video streams don't make it all the way to New York, because if they did Mr. Sloss would realize that there is no money in web video. Just last week Akimbo threw in the towel after trying to sell video on-demand over the internet. How are all these people losing money on web video?
This is the brutal reality of content on the web. Without scale you will never keep your visitors' interest. Thus we end up with people like Mr. Sloss that are...
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| Free Film School: HD Workflow |
| 2008-05-26 00:21:31 |
It's finally time to get your hands on a camera. Here's Bryan Singer with his. Since this is Free Film School we're not going to have access to the Panavision Genesis HD camera that Bryan prefers, but neither will we waste your time with the silent movie nonsense that USC starts you out with. We're going to look at an affordable HD workflow that will allow you to easily publish to the web. I mean, 86 million people watched Evolution of Dance. That's 47 million more than the number of people that went to see "Superman Returns". You've probably heard me say there's no money in web video, but the web is the best way to get immediate feedback on your work. At this stage in your career you need as much audience exposure as...
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| Is Film School For You? |
| 2008-05-25 18:55:44 |
Indie Slate ran a great article this month in which low-budget auteur Jeff Burr (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, Puppet Master 4) said,"I think film school can be very beneficial to a lot of people. It all depends on expectation and intent. If you are just going to mark time and then use the school's equipment and feel you know it all already, then don't waste your time and money; just make a movie." Jeff attended USC Film School but left partway through the program after making the short film "Divided We Fall". Jeff said about his student experience,"In making the movie, we broke a lot of rules ... and it was apparent that USC wouldn't back another Burr/Meyer epic, so I felt it was time t...
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| Hollywood Comes To Holland, Michigan |
| 2008-05-23 00:18:35 |
Where do you go to get Mr. Willis a double-tall half-calf iced latte in Holland, Michigan at 1:00 AM? Hundreds of newcomers to the business will get a chance to find out when production ramps up in Holland this year. Why is Hollywood making the migration to Holland, Michigan?
A number of states, including Michigan, are dramatically increasing the financial incentives offered to film productions the Wall Street Journal reports. How good is the deal? If your script is approved by the Michigan Film Office you'll get back 40% of your spend.Locals are already planning for a deluge of iPhone-wielding production executives. One enterprising local, Hopwood DePree, has converted an abandoned Reddi-wip factory (located in Holland) into a series of soundstages. Should you brave the Michigan winter for your 40% kickback? I would do it, if only to be able to finally say on a film set,"What's that delicious smell?"...
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| Green Screen Technology For People That Can Read Lips |
| 2008-05-22 22:20:06 |
I finally got my hands on the new Adobe Creative Studio 3 and spent a couple evenings with their green screen product, which for some reason is called Ultra CS3. (Isn't that a detergent?) After producing a number of green screen clips I can confirm that Ultra CS3 delivers horrific audio sync problems with an outstanding user interface.
The keyer controls (shown above) are quite impressive. There are sliders that control the alpha curve and sensitivity of your matte, so you can easily wrangle your matte into shape. There are highlight and shadow sliders that allow you to control whether or not the shadows falling on the green screen will appear in the final composite. All told there are 14 controls that allow you to tweak the way your content blends in with the background. Which makes it really simple to produce great looking composites that (for some reason) end up being totally out of sync with the audio track. It appears that Adobe has made a green screen product for pe...
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| Free Film School: Mise en scène |
| 2008-05-19 11:32:50 |
Now that you've heard more career advice than you'll ever need it's finally time to start developing the technical competency you'll need to make compelling content. There are dozens of departments that you could specialize in, but there is one concept that you must learn first no matter who you are or what you do. Since you're enrolled in Free Film School you should refer to this concept as "mise en scène" (you'll sound more like a film student if you use random french terms like this).What this concept refers to (other than the literal translation of "put in the scene") is the unique affect that sets, lighting and camera placement have. Why should you care about mise en scène? Well, since you're not developing conten...
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