Internet: Not Ready For Prime Time

I’m not an engineer, so I don’t understand the technicalities of this, but Michael Jackson almost killed the Internet. People who do understand the technicalities are saying this is just a sample of how the Internet would be crippled it there were an actual large scale calamity.

Every time I start rambling about Internet delivered video, someone always says, “What about the bandwidth?” I live under the naive assumption that Internet bandwidth expands constantly under some kind of Moore’s Law equation, but I guess that’s not true. Does this hinder the eventuality that much of the video content that we consume will come through the Internet?

Video Games Save The Movies II

I posted last week about how the movie studios could tap into the video game licensing bonanza that the music industry has enjoyed with the success of Guitar Hero and Rockband. A couple days later, I saw this story in Daily Variety about the company Yoo Star. The headline reads “Film may have found its ‘Guitar Hero’.”

Yoo Star packages a web camera, a portable green screen, and basic post production software into a consumer friendly interface for under $200. They give you a handful of scenes from actual movies to green screen your self into. It sounds mildly amusing, but its ludicrous to think this gimmick has the same kind of licensing potential as Guitar Hero.

Are the studios not seeing the same demos of the Microsoft Natal that I am? I assume that the studio’s would be clamoring all over themselves to license movies to Microsoft for integration with motion capture and artificial intelligence technology. I don’t want a half-ass green screen of myself in “Witness.” I want to be Batman, acting opposite Heath Ledger’s Joker. I don’t know how far away we are from that possibility, but its gotta suck to be Yoo Star right now. They’re selling a web cam and a green screen while the video game industry is building the Holodeck.

Here are two predicted downsides for the studios that contributed footage to Yoo Star:

A) Yoo Star will overwhelmingly be used to make fun of your movies. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that:
B) Yoo Star encourages uploading of the resulting videos! Its built into the marketing plan! I thought the studios had an aversion to uninhibited uploading of their movies? Now they risk filling the internet with inferior fan made versions of famous movie scenes, most of which will be making fun of the movies and their characters.

That seems like a lose lose for the studios, and its probably not worth whatever licensing fee they’re getting.

DVD Shovelware

I ran across this short article in Video Business covering an event called the Digital Video Conference. There are countless digital media conferences these days, and substantial debate about Internet delivered video. These debates tend to be too myopic, or overly broad, and the terminology becomes cross purposed and conflicted.

First of all, I’m often unsure what is meant by “Internet video.” Does that mean video that I watch on my computer screen? Or does that mean video content delivered to my living room TV via the Internet? Those are two different phenomenon, and the broad debate over Internet video often ignores that these are two potentially different business models.

Secondly, Hulu gets injected into these debates because of the perceived success of the site. In this Video Business article, Hulu is labeled as an “aggregator” as opposed to “network programmers” like NBC or Fox. This a confusing generalization because A) Hulu is owned by the “network programmers” in a joint venture between News Corp, NBC Universal, and Disney. B) The network programmers are themselves a form of aggregator. They’re actually “packagers,” but that’s a fine distinction in this media landscape. If Hulu debuts an original production, they’ll be a “packager” too.

I don’t know how Internet delivered video will shake down for independent producers, but right now it smells a bit like the DVD boom of the early 2000s. The big conglomerate media companies paid for the development of the DVD format, remastered their back catalogs, spent millions marketing the format to consumers, and created a retail valuation. Once that infrastructure was in place, independent producers were able to exploit the new medium and sell movies to millions of consumers they didn’t previously have access to. If those producers had spent more time building brands and establishing better relationships with consumers, the transition to Internet video delivery might not be so daunting. Instead they turned the DVD market into “shovelware” by glutting retail shelves with too many mediocre movies. Now retail is dying, and few of those producers have the kind of direct customer relationships that equal sales on the Internet. They’re waiting for the studios to set up an Internet infrastructure that they can slide into, wondering if lighting will strike twice.

By the way, lightning does strike the same place twice, all the time.

Making An Illustrated Film – Godkiller

This week I’m back to work on “Godkiller,” Halo-8′s first Illustrated Film. An Illustrated Film is a highly stylized animated movie that mixes original graphic novel illustrations with motion graphics and dramatic voice performances to create an edgy new style of story telling. Its like Liquid Television meets Ralph Bakshi, allowing us to tackle stories that we wouldn’t be able to do with video.

Halo-8 doesn’t have experience producing animated titles, so I didn’t have a post production work flow in place. I sought advice from a couple of people who work with traditional animation, then tried to adapt that work flow to Illustrated Films. The VO recording was handled by The Engine Room in Hollywood. We recorded the voice actors in separate sessions as “wild lines,” meaning there was no cut picture for them to reference. After the session, I would get the audio files organized by script page, which left me with the chore of compiling all the takes together. Basically, I gather each take of every line of dialogue and stack them on top of each other in the timeline. When all of the takes are compiled, I have what I call the “Take Matrix.” There can be anywhere from 2 to 12 takes of every line. By putting each take on a subsequent audio track, I can solo individual tracks and quickly hear every take of a line. After the Take Matrix is assembled, I go through every take and copy the select take to track one. When I’m done with that process, track one represents a completely compiled performance for that actor using the best read of each line. If I need to make tweaks, I can easily go back into the Take Matrix and audition other reads.

This was especially useful in working with Lance Henriksen’s performance. Lance likes to do long takes and fall into a groove. He’ll do a bunch of these long takes, kind of riffing on the dialogue and making subtle variations along the way. His compiled dialogue performance ended up with a lot of edits because I went deep into mixing and matching his variations, pulling individual phrases of a monologue from several different takes. It makes for a really dynamic voice performance.

"Take Matrix" for Lance Henriksen's performance in Godkiller.

Once you’ve got a Take Matrix for each actor, its very easy to combine all of the actors selected takes into the final dialog track for the film. You just go to track one of the Take Matrix for each actor, copy from the compiled performance on track one, and paste the dialog into the master edit. Its easy to make tweaks as necessary by going back to the Take Matrix and auditioning new lines.

Pop Skull DVD

I spent much of last week authoring the DVD for “POP SKULL,” a new release from Halo-8. Pop Skull is a manic, twisted, drug-infused and award-winning psychological horror film directed & co-written by Adam Wingard (“HOME SICK”), starring & co-written by newcomer Lane Hughes, co-written and co-produced by E.L. Katz (“AUTOPSY“), and produced by Peter Katz (“MORTUARY“). These guys made a great film in Pop Skull, and Director Adam Wingard went the extra mile on special features for the DVD. Special features can quickly turn into a wank, especially the formulaic publicity schlock that ends up on many DVDs from the major studios. But not for Pop Skull. Adam gave us seven short films, nine deleted scenes, on-camera intros for each of the deleted scenes, a short documentary featurette on the origins of Pop Skull, an audio commentary with himself and the film’s star Lane Hughes, DVD menu backgrounds using elements of from the film, and still photos of the lead actors for the DVD cover. Its all well crafted, and in perfect sync with the aesthetic of the film. Pop Skull is definitely a film geek’s DVD, and we are excited to be involved.

The DVD comes out July 28th from Halo-8. Here’s the trailer:

Paid content is doomed

I produce paid content. Some of it is even pretty good. But on my best day, I don’t know how to compete with this:

This was produced as an art school assignment. It has 1.1 million views. Here’s her followup video:

The Death of “Good, Fast, Cheap”

The saying goes, “Good, fast, cheap. Pick two.” Its a clever anachronism, and broadly applicable to a wide range of endeavors. I doubt that it was coined to describe working in TV and movie production, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard it used over the years. Trouble is, it makes less and less sense every day. In fact, In the revised landscape of media 2.0, its straight up nonsense.

Let’s break this saying down into its parts:

“Good” – The definition of “good” is entirely dependent on the expectations of the audience. In the fractured, niche driven mediascape of cable TV and web video, where most video professionals do their work, “good” content is that with an authentic voice and a unique point of view. If the production values are positioned to support authenticity, then the content will have value to the viewer. So “good” really means “good for what it is.” Or more accurately, “good for the market in which the content competes.”

“Fast” – Once you’ve figured out how to satisfy your market place, you need a system for the consistent release of timely content. The zeitgeist moves too quickly for us to spend two years producing a movie, TV series, or webisode, and releasing quality content at regular intervals is the only way to stay visible in the vast ether of niche media. If you miss a couple of release opportunities, the fan base generated by your debut will quickly forget that you exist.

“Cheap” – The price of HD prosumer equipment has fallen sharply over the years, so there’s less excuse for video production to be costly. Decide what kind of production value your marketplace demands and produce accordingly. If you drastically over produce, then you end up with a system that can’t sustain the consistent release of material, and your beautiful production values will disappear into the ether. You’re better off using modest resources to build a following, then expanding the production values as applicable.

So I guess the revised saying goes like this:

“Good, fast, cheap. Pick three.”

Its not funny anymore, but at least its useful.

Video Games Save the Movies

If we’re lucky, there might be a market for hybrid video game-movies:

In the meantime, I see the studios looking for the same kind of licensing windfall that the music industry has enjoyed through titles like Rockband. They could license classic titles and recreate scenes in 3D where the game players act out one of the roles. Sounds ridiculous, but imagine playing a recreation of the bank robbery sequence from the movie “Heat.” You are Robert De Niro, and you’re interacting with a 3D Tom Sizemore and Val Kilmer, and the outcome changes based on your actions and dialog. Or how about playing Batman against Heath Ledger’s Joker?

Red Bull BC One And The Curse Of The Phantom High Speed Camera

BC One is a world wide, annual break dance competition organized and produced by Red Bull. They have a massive investment in grassroots culture and sporting events, and BC One is probably the most entertaining event in the roster. Red Bull has been trying to sell this show in the U.S. for years, and with the recent success of other dance competition shows, MTV finally took the bait. The clip below is the intro for the MTV show.

A couple different editors worked on this intro, specifically the “I am a b-boy” section, and the Rokka on-camera intro. I cut the rest. I was really pleased with the graphic open where the dancer is in front of the stenciled walls. The walls were actually shot clean, and the stencils were added in post using After Effects. Our designer, Steven Jones, found those classic French images and treated them by hand to look like painted on stencils. The footage was shot on the Phantom high speed camera. The Phantom is an amazing toy, but it can create some political baggage if its not used properly. The Phantom cost far more to rent than a standard HD camera. Its about three times as much, depending on the configuration. When you are trying to justify a rental that is three times the standard rate, you might aid your cause by showing amazing demo clips like the infamous shark catching the seal video and you say “We’re getting the camera that shot this.” Everyone is blown away by that shot, but it sets a ridiculous expectation for delivery. In our case, the phantom footage was beautiful, and the slow motion helped the aesthetic, but the effects were very subtle. Inevitably, the Executive Producer asked why we needed to triple the camera rental for such a subtle effect. In other words, “Where’s our shark catching a seal?” Its not that our footage wasn’t beautiful, but we had an editorial and graphic concept in place that dictated the structure of the piece and it didn’t allow time for long, dramatic slow motion effects. If you promise the shark catching the seal, you better deliver the proper equivalent:

Is the IPhone killing Final Cut Pro?

Editors have been complaining for years about Apple’s ambiguous support for professional products. I feel their pain, because its seems crazy when Apple calls something a “pro” model but removes commonly used access ports, or fails to innovate over several successive software releases.

I was an early adopter of Final Cut Pro. Back in 2000 I used version 2.0 and a Digital Voodoo card to edit a promo for Fox Sports. That was a horrible experience, but I finished the spot and stuck with the software because it was affordable and flexible, two traits not shared by Avid back then. A few years later, Apple released the first Ipod, then the Itunes store. I realized then that Apple didn’t care about my needs as a Pro Apps user, and our relationship was not made to last.

Apple is a hardware company. They only produce software to generate demand for hardware. They have no interest in creating innovative post production solutions. The Wikipedia site for Final Cut Pro states very plainly that Apple bought Final Cut Pro from Macromedia as a “defensive move.” Macromedia’s beta version of FCP was built for Mac and Windows, and Avid and Adobe were moving toward the Window’s market, purportedly because of Apple’s notorious policies of secrecy and exclusion. Apple thought it was worth buying FCP to keep desktop video users on Apple hardware. It was an effective strategy for maintaining a market foothold, but its not a plan for innovation in video production.

My prediction: Final Cut Pro has three years to live. Maybe four.

Apple’s domination of the gadget market takes the focus off of desktop computer users, so they no longer need video production professionals to bolster the Mac market share. I’ve been squawking for weeks about the imminent rise of the “Consumer-Producer” and the dissemination of professional video production into common knowledge. Apple will use this growing trend to combine Final Cut Pro with IMovie and bundle it with all new Mac computers. The Apple “reality distortion field” will frame it as a democratization, movie making set free, or whatever. This consumerization will allow Apple to cease development on professional features, and the Pro Apps department will die quietly. Software companies with a real interest in post-production innovation will fill the professional void and we’ll be better off.