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).

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.

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?