If nothing else, On the Lot should deliver some painful lessons to would be film makers. I watched it last night and for the first time since I was a child I covered my eyes so I couldn't see the horror that was on the screen.

 It was painful... and more so because you know that it was (more or less) real. Sure they edited it to emphasize the pain and I know that with editing you can change the perception of what has happened... but some of that was too brutally real for my liking.

So many of those fifty contestants were really, really bad in the room during the pitch and watching them stumble their way through the pitches was hard. There are a lot of people who seem to have a mean streak and enjoy watching people embarrass and humiliate themselves... I'm not one of them.

I was hoping that it would be more like Mark Burnett's first season Contender which was actually the best reality show that I have watched... which isn't as ringing an endorsement as it sounds since I don't watch very much reality TV. Just the other day I sat down with my mom while she was watching the king of reality shows American Idol and I had no idea how they went about the judging and voting. I'm out of touch in this area... by choice. There is too much emphasis on showing people at their worst; lying, petty, deceitful and poor losers. I have no interest in watching that.

I am going to keep watching this simply because it is so closely aligned with the business that I want to get into but I really hope that they try and inform the viewer more and try to show more supportive, decent and honorable behaviour with the contestants. 

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Just a quick note about my first article going up on Downloadsquad.com . I'm going to be writing about casual content creation; the tools and techniques for creating short movies, animation, online comic books, machinima... the quick, easy and inexpensive ways to get acceptable quality while having fun.

 The Content isn't Just Gonna Create Itself People

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• First is that they have tentative dates for the completion of the original orders and mine looks to be - "August - Serial #301-550 (90% enabled feature set)". Even with the 90% enabled feature set I'll be happy to get my hands on it. They say that the last things they expect to enable are the RGB recording to 1080p and 720p... so I'll still be able to record 4K and 2K to REDCODE RAW. Since the REDDRIVES can hold something like 3 hours of 4K REDCODE, it'll be sweet to capture with that and REDCINE can convert it to 1080p or 720p if I want that. From the looks of it, the full feature set will be available in by October and they are saying it will be user upgradeable. They also announced that if anyone in the first 750 want to cancel we now can get 120% of our deposit back.
• Second is that the Red 18-85mm f2.8 zoom lens seems to have gone AWOL... in it's place is an 18-50mm zoom. This loses a lot of versatility even if it is about $3,600 (they have conflicting prices up as of this morning) less expensive than the one I put a deposit down on. I hear that the deposit is transferable to the new zoom but if Red would sell me the 18-50mm zoom along with the newly announced 85mm f1.9 prime lens for the price quoted on the old zoom...
• Third is the Red prime lenses. They are saying that it will only be sold as a set of 15mm f2.8, 25mm f.1.9, 35mm f 1.9, 50mm f1.0 and the 85mm f1.9... for $19,975. At $4,000 each this is a phenomenal price for a set of fast primes like this but it is still more than I can afford right now.
• Fourth is a biggy for me- Red and Birger Engineering are working together to develop an adapter for the Canon EOS line of lenses to fit the Red One. I knew that they were working on one but I didn't know if it had physical control or if it was via tethered PDA or PC... which would make it near useless for me. It turns out that it will have "remote focus and iris control from RED’s SuperGrip™ or other remote controllers". The prototype is on display at NAB but they haven't announced pricing yet. Simple math can't let it get too pricey though... the Red cinema lenses are cheap enough that if it goes over $1,500 or so then it won't be that big a jump to get to the 18-50mm zoom. My 16-35mm f2.8L is $1,600 and it isn't a cinema lens with their gearing and lack of breathing while racking focus. To extend the Canon lens set out to cover the Red zoom you would also have to get another lens like the 50mm f1.2L for another $1,400 dollars. That comes to $3,000 for Canon glass alone so if the adapter is another $1,500 then you are within $1,500 of a true cinema lens. I already have some L glass but I'd think twice about spending a comparable amount to adapt EOS lenses as to get a cinema lens. I really want to know how much this is gonna cost because there are a couple lenses I'm looking at buying if the adapter is within reason... I'm hoping for less than $1,000 but I'll have to wait for- "Pricing and delivery will be announced shortly."
• Fifth is some sketchy information on what the Red Digital Cinema company has on the development slate: A "Professional Pocket Camera", a line of "4K displays" and a "4K Projector". There is supposed to be more information when Gibby posts his second feature up on Studio Daily... but he's already a couple hours over due. I'm thinking that these are all at least a year out but I really wish that there was a 4K display available at Red prices today. A 4K display would have about three times the resolution of the Apple 30" Cinema Display which only does 2.5K... I'm not holding out for it to be very cheap but $2,000 would be awfully nice. The 4K projector, if it follows the Red M.O., will compare to the Sony 4K projector as the Red One compares to the Sony CineAlta F23... about $20,000 to $120,000.
• Sixth is that Apple is touting that they will have native ability to work with REDCODE in Final Cut Pro 6... uhhhh where are you on this Adobe? I can't really afford to switch over to Apple for this but it would be nice if I didn't have to transcode the footage into another codec for editing purposes.
• Seventh is that we'll be getting some fine footage to look over after NAB has wrapped up and the Red team has gotten back to the office. Jim took Boris and Natasha (the Red One prototypes) over to New Zealand and Peter Jackson put them through their paces with handheld, Steadicam, crane and helicopter mounted footage that they cut into a short film with first world war setting... trenches and biplanes... the whole enchilada. Rich people just have more fun than those of us with a considerably more modest financial status.

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Of course they do give the usual "dates subject to availability" and the word from Jim Jannard is that the first 100 will go out the door without full software functionality (upgraded later with a patch) but the numbers are interesting.

 They have a second Red for rent and it is called "Hobbes". Yes, Calvin and Hobbes.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah... I know that it is "weather" and not "climate" but when you wake up on April 3rd to -22 Celsius (about -8 Fahrenheit for those still stuck in the King's 18th century... and about 250 Kelvin for those anticipating the 22nd century).

This year is going to see us with snow for over half of the year... and they want me to try and STOP global warming? I think I'll go set some brush piles on fire. 

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I'm beta testing a new machinima creation software package called Moviestorm and I'd like to be blogging about it... but because it is still in beta and will change considerably before it is released, they have asked that we don't do much commenting on it publicly until it is closer to a released product. That said, I don't think that they'll mind me saying that I am really stoked about this program. There are a lot of gotchas when creating machinima with game engines; the limits on canned movement, the difficulty of getting any lip syncing, the amount of scripting needed to do even the simplest scenes if you don't have a network of gamers ready to walk your characters through their motions, the difficulty of getting custom content into the game... the list does go on. While it is a lot quicker and easier than traditional animation, at heart they are still games that have some movie making capabilities bolted onto them.

I was hoping that 'The Movies' was going to be the first machinima focused platform but they lost their way and tried to close it off from outside content, forced you to play a game that most had no interest in, and claimed the created content as their own...WTF ? They've since tried to muddle their way out of this mess but it has been too little too late.

While it isn't actually a machinima program but rather a true (albeit limited) animation package, you can do interesting stuff with iClone software... as long as it is talking head style projects.

There have been a few other aborted attempts but Moviestorm looks like it will end up being the first full scale machinima creation package available to the general public.

The drawbacks you ask? Well, no matter how hard they try, they are going to be at least a generation behind with their graphics. There is no way that they will be able to compete with Unreal Engine 3 for sweet visual goodness. But then again, unless Epic sets out to create a software package specifically designed to create machinima, Unreal Engine 3 based games won't be able to create the range of actions and emotional responses without a massive amount of work. And machinima is all about the (relatively) fast and (relatively) easy.

I'm hoping that they will lift the restrictions on public discourse as we get closer to the targeted May release date.

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I can't say that it is great cinema but it was fun to work with them. Sam is already saying that there needs to be a sequel 'Two Turtles vs One Little Egg'.

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I have been fighting this website for almost a month now. It has been showing either a blank page, part of the header or a "sorry while I upgrade" for all that time.

There has been a lot of cursing and swearing thrown Joomla's way. I reinstalled Joomla, I upgraded Joomla, I reverted to an old database, I hunted through backups of the database for one that worked, I messed with the configuration file, I messed with the configuration file again, I created a new database, I reverted to the old database, I reinstalled Joomla, I cursed and stomped my feet in a right royal tantrum. I messed with the configuration file some more.

I really tried to figure out what I did wrong.

I really tried to figure out what Joomla did wrong.

It turns out that it wasn't me or Joomla. It turns out that my hosting service, Easyhosting.com, was kind enough to upgrade me from PHP4 to PHP5.

Not so much as a by your leave, they just slipped it into my drink while I wasn't looking and then laughed as I staggered around trying to figure out why everything was all screwy. Once I figured that out, it took me all of thirty seconds to set it back to PHP4.

Now I have to try and figure out how much damage I did to the site while I trying to "fix" it. You can't mess around that much without messing something up.

So now I sit waiting for that something to crash the site catastrophically.

Thank you Easyhosting. Thank you very much. 

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Bill Cunningham from over at DISContent has what I believe to be one of the best assessments on the current sorry state of Canadian television and some steps to fix it. I've been saying pretty much this for years - partially because I am a libertarian and see the intervention as morally wrong, but also from a strictly pragmatic point of view because the corporate welfare makes the business side weak and political oversight makes the creative side weak.

Maybe it takes an outsider with no axe to grind before the PTB will pay a little attention... and maybe some of the Canadians reading that article will be spurred to try and fix things rather than simply trying to secure a paycheck.

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I commented on the article Gates says TV is doomed, Internet where it's at - by Greg Robertson over at DownloadSquad - where he made fun of Bill Gates in a Reuters article where he predicted that "I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had,". My comment bloated out to some 1500 words when I also commented on a bunch of other comments... so instead of letting it languish on that site (if it even gets up there- my email service has been really compromised as of late) I figured I might as well clean it up and post it here since I make a few points that are relevant.

So here it is.

Greg, you may be making fun of Bill for being late to th game, but I'll make fun of him for jumping the gun on this one. It's going to take longer than five years for the internet to turn TV into a lame duck. Cable and satellite television combined with a PVR is a combination that is far superior to anything that can be delivered via the Internet within that time frame.

Mythor wrote: "How would having a Tivo allow me to make the meatpuppet talk about the results for my area during an election?” and “How will Tivo let me watch the entire Archery competition during the Olympics when no one airs more than 2 minutes of it during the 17,000 hours of coverage?”

To get a “meatpuppet” to talk about the election as it relates to particular geopolitical concerns, you still need people to research the issues, people to write up the research, people to work the teleprompter, people to work the camera, people to work the computer that captures/encodes and transmits the image... if you don't have a local television channel then I really doubt anyone will go through that trouble so that five people can stream it into their homes. What you will get is a thousand individuals in their home office doing some reading, taking some notes and then sitting down in front of their camcorder to pontificate on the subject... and 999 times out of 1,000 that person's pontification will be wrong and worthless so why don't you just do the research yourself so that you are wrong in your own unique way?

While I am a fan of fencing, which gets about as much attention as archery, the best that we can expect is one locked down camera pointed at the action and feeding it live to the Internet. The network will have spent billions of dollars to get the rights to the Olympics and even though they aren't going to cover archery they will lawyer up and bury anyone who tries to walk onto their turf. The Olympics are in the business of selling the rights to show the sports and they will protect the billion dollar broadcasters – I kind of expect them to start banning video cameras from the events. The broadcaster's team covering the events has a limited budget and they aren't going to pull $100,000 away from the money sports to give even cursory coverage to a sport that won't get the audience numbers to justify it. The Olympic Committee might be able to make marginally more money by selling the rights to individual sporting events rather than an overall but the broadcasters will fight that tooth and nail as they try to get an exclusive.

Ed1040 wrote: “Most 'net users have above a 1.5Mbps connection already dedicated to their PC.” and “As for HD TV, it is more compressed in band than analog. It'll allow for more channels on the same pipeline at a better resolution.”

There are still millions of people who own televisions but have NO Internet access of any kind. While a lot of 'net users have what is euphemistically called “broadband access”, it is actually medium bandwidth at best and that 1.5 Mbps is just enough to squeeze ONE standard definition feed... if nobody else in the house is using the DSL or nobody in the neighborhood is using your cable Internet. And this can only go on for a short time before most ISPs will throttle the access back because you have gone over the limit that they have set for your monthly or daily traffic. Just downloading an hour of HD to watch offline (since you can't watch it streaming) would get most services throttled unless you throttle it yourself or set it up to download during a non-peak time. The ISPs always promise “up to” x.xMbps for a reason, that is the highest they can hit when the traffic is light. If the Internet access viewership becomes even 25% of broadcast television then the infrastructure would be brought to its knees- there isn't enough bandwidth for even that fraction of the population to switch from over-the-air/cable/satellite and there won't be for a lot longer than five years.

Nobody will be looking at HD digital versus analog of any stripe, they will be comparing digital to digital. The uncompressed high definition signal is about six times the data of standard definition television and even when they use greater compression on the HD broadcast signal they still have to give up about four SD channels to accommodate one HD channel. If we are talking about sending it over the Internet then there is no reason that they can't use a similar level of compression for SD and so they start looking at having to give up six SD channels for each HD channel... and then they start thinking that they could go to less that standard definition video and carry ten or twelve channels... and if they compress even more you end up with YouTube carrying twenty or more crappy feeds instead of one acceptable HD feed.

Joost, because it uses peer to peer delivery, is attempting to get around the bandwidth problems and while it technically may work, it still ignores traffic limits that most ISPs enforce.

And we are still left with the fact that quality content still has to come from the professionals.

Man wrote: “I want TV with extras, a 50-inch dedicated box that is smart enough to go online if I need more info about a show. For instance if I'm watching "24" and an extra looks familiar I want a button to press that will list all the credits or do a screen capture. If Jack has a cool cell phone I want to hit a button so that I can order it online (hint: there is your ad revenue).”

This only works for a sliver of all possible viewers. They can't be interested enough to be caught up in the show- but they can't be bored enough to switch away from the show. John Cassar, Joel Surnow and the team are screwing up royally if you are watching “24” and idly wondering “who is that woman walking through the background... I'm sure I saw her on last week's CSI: Hoboken” or “That there is a mighty fine looking cellphone... I wonder how many minutes I would get with a two year contract?”

Ron Martinez wrote: “RichP at #9, believe all the flavor is chewed out of that "user generated content is dopey kids doing jackass tricks and free music rants" meme. Online video services have become a rich repository and reflection of the culture at large, with everything from juvenilia to consciously crafted art, first person journalism (including footage from extreme conflicts), and everything in between. If it's real life your after (assuming you don't mean "real" real life, unplugged) you'll find it on the big mirror that is YouTube much more quickly and in greater variety than you will channel-flipping or browsing the aisles at Blockbuster.”

Grant Robertson wrote: “More and more we're finding great entertainment in low-buck, short format indie video and, in five years, the upper echelon of 15-24 year olds who are currently rocking the funny on sites like YouTube will be a force to reckon with, possibly even taking notches out of networks like Fox and NBC.”

Ron and Grant- please show me ANY of this “consciously crafted art” or “great entertainment” that is “rocking the funny”! I am constantly scouring YouTube, Google Video, Revver, Metacafe, Brightcove, Yahoo Video, DivX Stage6, Blip.tv- and the best that I have EVER found was a pilot for a sitcom that was rejected as not being good enough for network television.

 Nobody's Watching did get some interest and NBC is thinking about actually giving it a slot now.

I shot a two hour pilot for a one hour dramatic television show called Ragnarök: the Series - and despite having spent something over $50,000 on it and getting the equivalent of a couple hundred thousand dollars of services donated – the production values on it are not up to the quality that even a cable channel's pilot is expected to have.

Right now, Youtube is a vast wasteland where the only quality is content ripped from established media outlets.

Even the mediocre television shows coming out of the studio system REQUIRE a good writer, a good casting director, good set designers, a good first AD, good grips and gaffers, a good cinematographer, a good director, good actors and a good editor... all of this overseen by a good showrunner to keep it focused. For a show to be great, one or two of those can be merely good while the rest have to be exceptional. The chances that you can get together a group of people who are even adequate in all these areas... but not actually working at those jobs... and can volunteer their time... not gonna happen. The vast majority of the people who try to do any of those jobs will never be more than adequate at them even if they work hard at it. The number of people who will ever be good at those jobs is limited and the best that Youtube can do is showcase the raw talent that might, just might, be able to produce watchable material if they are put together with others who are already good at their jobs.

I think that there is the opportunity for a couple of break out shows to originate and thrive on the Internet alone (I have a few ideas of my own for this) but it will take an entirely new backbone and a hundredfold increase in overall bandwidth before the Internet eclipses over-the-air/cable/satellite television. I don't see that happening inside of five years- and probably not inside ten years. Until then, the Internet will be restricted to a supporting roll for traditional media and a distribution channel for niche and long tail productions.

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Here I am keeping a pretty close eye on what is being developed for film and television using Variety , Hollywood Reporter as well as paying for the Pro levels for Done Deal and IMDB - AND following the space community through the National Space Society , Planetary Society and the Mars Society ... and still I managed to miss the Astronaut Farmer. How the hell did that happen?

It is the story of a former aerospace engineer and astronaut wannabe who had to quit his job at NASA but never gave up on his dream of getting to space.

Space Inc., the television series I'm trying to pitching right now, is about a billionaire who made his fortune with the express goal of using it to open space.

It will be interesting to see the challenges that Mark and Michael Polish wrote in for Billy Bob to face... and contrast them to what I have in my pilot script.

If you think either one of those are outlandish science fiction, I'd like to point out that NASA spends approximately eight and a quarter million dollars an hour - and the first private space craft, SpaceShipOne , was built with what the government spends in about three hours of the workday. Space is very expensive when civilians do it... but it is insanely expensive when the state does it.

Polish Brothers Construction and Spring Creek Productions both seem to be focused on feature films and television movies... but I wonder if they could be enticed into series television? I see it as the best creative outlet... but I can also pitch it as a cash cow with a payout that could go on for years.

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William Barron, the lead in the television series Space Inc. that I am creating, is attempting to launch a private space mission to re-direct a nickel-iron asteroid into orbit around the moon. 

For Christmas, my Mom gave me this piece of the Campo del Cielo meteorite that fell in Argentina between 3800 and 6000 years ago. This is an example of what William is after and it will be a good piece to have when pitching the show.

It is one thing to say that Space Inc. is the story of an driven man willing to do whatever it takes to put together a space mission to capture a nickel iron NEA (Near Earth Asteroid) into lunar orbit so that he will be able to mine it... and it is another thing to drop this on the table and say that there are asteroid out there that are made of this just waiting to be turned into space stations... and right now there are people planning how to do it.

Just imagine an asteroid made out of this but over a hundred meters in diameter and trapping it into orbit around the moon. It would take over $20 trillion dollars to put that much metal into orbit. How would you like to be the worlds first trillionaire while leading the most exciting and important adventure that the human race will ever undertake?

The civilian space race that we are getting into right now will be the most exciting, dangerous, fascinating and the largest wealth producing event in the history of well... history. John Carmack of id software has Armadillo , Jeff Bezos of Amazon has Blue Origin , Robert Bigelow has Bigelow Aerospace , Elon Musk has SpaceX , Jim Benson had SpaceDev and now has the Benson Space Company, Richard Branson has Virgin Galactic ... this is the dawn of the civilian space race and if a person can't make a brilliant, exciting and Neilson Ratings champ out of this then they should just pack up and go home.

The perfect home for this show would be with Morgan Freeman's Revelations Entertainment... the man is a very good actor and seems to be as big an advocate of space exploration as I am. And could you imagine if I were able to lure him into the lead on a one hour dramatic series! He would be phenomenal as William Barron!

Now in this fantasy world the studio would hire Tim Minear to run the show while I learned the ropes. 

TV gold I tell ya.

Now how to get the pilot screenplay onto his desk? 

Mom also gave me a second piece that is a slice from a Vaca Muerta meteorite (which is a prime example of a mesosiderite ) which is a mix of stone and nickel iron. Very very cool.

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Wal-Mart wants to force the online distributors of movies to give them a cut for... ummm... no discernible reason. Call it the “We don't want to lose market share to more efficient distributors just like we took market share from thousands of others” cut of the profits.

 If Wal-Mart had any ability to see past the next quarter's profit and loss report they would have kiosks set up in the audio/video section that could download directly to iPods and Zunes. Faster, less hassle and with real time browsing.

If they want to use strong arm tactics against these companies, they should be forcing Apple and Microsoft to allow them access to the players. It's bad enough that the media conglomerates are forcing the tech companies to drag their feet, now retailers have to get in on it too?

Every single time that something came along that was better for the consumer, the media creators and distributors saw it as the end of the world. Everyone cried and wailed when television first came out... and then everyone made more money. Video and audio tape were supposed to ruin everything because people would be happy with bad dubs from their friends... and then everyone made more money. Compact disks and DVD were going to doom the industry because the digital nature made it so easy to make perfect copies... and then everyone made more money.

If Wal-Mart wants to throw their weight around, here are some ways they can force the industry to make customers happy while making more money for everyone:

1)There should be a selection of visual and audio quality to suit the end user, with high compression for handhelds for less than a dollar on up to hi-fi 2k HD for $100. Crippling the audio and video without a commensurate lowering of the price is antagonistic and builds resentment since they are screwing the end user... should they really be surprised that the end user they are ripping off doesn't feel very guilty for ripping a disc or two? The music industry is horrible for this but the movie industry looks to be taking their cue from them.

2)The only DRM that should be on it are the end user's name embedded in the stream using steganography techniques so that blatant and high volume pirates could be pursued. From the very first purchase, the whole industry accuses every single one of their customers of being liars and thieves, then fights them at every turn. They tout every pirated copy as a lost sale when everyone knows that they would have been lucky to have sold one copy out of a hundred. The antagonistic layers of accusation and distrust, treating their customer as the enemy... this has done more to encourage copyright infringement than any technological change could ever do.

3)The profit margins need to be trimmed so that pirating isn't economical. Criminal enterprises aren't undertaken unless there is a very high margin, if there isn't then it is easier and safer to stick with the legal. The greater efficiency and much large purchasing power of the huge companies allow them to make their copies for less than the pirates. The key difference here is compensation to the music and movie associations and they have to accept a lower per unit amount/percent to allow the price to come down. They would only be making twice as much money on four times the sales... someone just has to grab them by the collar and yell “dumbass- you'd be making twice as much!” To which the dumbass would probably cry and say that they could be making four times as much, completely missing how they actually made more.

Companies tried to restrict, delay and even stop every advance that was good for the customer and now they are trying to do the same with downloading media. It would be a loss for use but would serve them right if they succeeded.

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Now I am going to start populating the Links section.

I actually have over 3500 sites bookmarked in my browser but rest assured that I will only be putting the best of breed up here. The first ones are going to be links to writers blogs since I feel that they are amongst the most useful for the primary focus of my site - screenwriting.

I will also break the blogs of Canadian writers out into their own category. While this will allow other Canadians to find these focused links easier I would hope that those from other countries check them out as well since they are good solid sources of information on the craft of writing... just with a little Canadian flavour.

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