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.

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.

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.

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?

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 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?

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?

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 to leave." Jeff went on to direct over 20 feature films. One could argue that leaving film school launched Jeff's career.



At the other end of the spectrum is the sorrow of Wendy Milette. Wendy's bio says she received her Bachelors degree from USC Film School's Critical Studies program (graduating top of her class) and her MFA from USC Film School's Production program. What Wendy's site doesn't tell you (which you can find out from this incredibly detailed blog) is that Wendy was one of the chosen ones at USC. She was the TA for the head of the editing department. She was selected to direct a 581 (i.e. USC funded her film). She was provided every opportunity that USC could afford. And after graduation she shot one short film and then never worked again.

What conclusion can be drawn from this tale of success and woe?

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.

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 content for the theater you can move the audience perspective around (you have the option of using different shots, different locations, etc.). This makes film unique and compelling and as a result we need some way to describe this unique effect. Today we will review the mise en scène of "V for Vendetta".



This is V's lair. This is what happens when you have amazing camera and art departments. Notice that even though the focus has been pulled off V and the background is completely blurred you still get a sense of the full depth of the location. This is because the lighting design highlights object edges and at the same time allows for deep shadows. There's also a great three point set-up that really makes Natalie Portman stand out.

Let's look at some additional examples...

I don't know about you, but I really like "how I broke into the business" stories. Howie Wiseman just sent me a great one about Shelley Winters and the low-budget film City on Fire:

Even mighty oaks from little acorns grow.

In our continuing "how I got into the business" series one of the greats, George Hickenlooper (Hearts of Darkness, Factory Girl), had this to say about his humble origin:

Continuing our "how I got into the business" series is Gabriel Leif Bellman, USC film school grad and co-director of the Frozen Film Festival.


Gabriel writes:

Before we get into the nitty gritty of professional film production I'd like to spend a little more time talking about your career. How much money are you going to make? Are you going to have a nice house? Or will you be living off government cheese? So much of this depends on where you start out and what you strive for. If you are primarily interested in money you should probably head straight for a hedge fund and forget about this film thing. But if you have a love of the cinema then you are probably wondering what your life is going to be like pursuing that one great love. Let's start at very the beginning, as Julie Andews was wount to say. Let's look at some origin stories.



We'll start with a quick tour through Alpha Cine, where I got my first big break.