Last week I listed 10 reasons you shouldn't go to film school, figuring the anti-establishment argument would be the more controversial of the two (thus posting it first). Many who took exception to my points didn't seem to understand that I was also planning on posting a follow-up article exploring the flip side of the argument (although, in my mind, the reasons to go seem a lot more obvious). Hopefully these points will give a prospective film schooler some food for thought.

Every aspiring filmmaker asks the age-old question at some point: should I go to film school? Will I be a better filmmaker for it, or will I spend a lot of money on education only to end up taking a job as a waiter to pay off my debt, wishing I'd spent the money on a guerrilla DV short instead? It's a tough question, but unfortunately no one can make the decision for you; the only universal piece of advice anyone can give you is, "it depends." And while I've made my own choice--indeed, my personal site is located at nofilmschool.com--I can see it both ways. Thus this week I'll look at 10 reasons why you should skip the .edu; next week I'll throw out 10 justifications for sending in your application.

RED's greatest promise is that it will irreversibly change the landscape of filmmaking technology. But what if it ends up being a huge piece of vaporware? Or what if it's not even a camera, and it turns out to be founder Jim Jannard's top-secret project to build the ultimate rocket launcher? Here's how RED has already succeeded in blowing up the video camera market--no rockets required.

Guba has been a player in the video sharing and downloading market for years, but today they've reinvented themselves by making major Hollywood films available to download off the internet--legally, and with perpetual ownership.  Currently there are 200 movies and television shows available from Warner Bros., which are available both on-demand (for $2, plus or minus), and to-own ($10 to $20, depending on the title).  The current license allows you to sync the download to a portable device, burn a DVD, and watch it on more than one computer (two, to be exact).

While Guba may be first to the punch, the limitations of their content--Windows-only, lower-quality than a DVD--combined with their pricing structure (which puts most movies very close to the price of a full-blown DVD) means that Guba probably won't blow the download-to-own market wide-open.  Despite the obstacles they're currently facing, the odds are still in Apple's favor to take a large chunk of this pie--the full-blown iPod Movie (or whatever it'll be called), the iTunes Movie Store, and Front Row 3.0 promise to be a powerful triumvirate indeed.

[via TechCrunch]

TV shows like "Lost" or "24" require seven-figure budgets--each episode--to produce.  But the storylines found in your typical American sitcom--"Everybody Loves Raymond" or "Will & Grace," for example--don't typically require the number of locations and effects that make the action shows so expensive.  With TV's revenue model rapidly undergoing change--shows on iTunes, ad-supported streaming at ABC.com, full seasons for sale on DVD--there's no reason a low-budget sitcom couldn't air on the internet--and be profitable.

Enter "The Burg."  Set in New York City's oh-so-hip Williamsburg 'hood, the show is set to premiere at theburg.tv today.  There have been preview clips running on YouTube for weeks (see below)--watching them, you immediately understand that a show by and for hipsters wouldn't be successful on network TV anyway.  After all, cool kids don't watch TV.  I don't, or at least, that's my official line.  It remains to be seen how good the show will be, but check out the clip below, and if you like it, head on over to The Burg.

 

 

The RED One supercam that we've covered a thousand times on this site--not because we love it, as it doesn't exist yet, but because it's possible that it will revolutionize the film/video industry--has a somewhat unique pre-order program in place.  You pay $1,000 to get a spot in line for the camera (refundable anytime, goes towards the eventual purchase price), and you gain the privilege of being among the first to get your hands on one.  DVXuser is running a promo right now where you submit your best idea for a RED camera feature on the forum, and the winner (picked by REDman Ted Schilowitz himself) wins their own pre-order spot.  You don't win the CAMERA--but you do win your own reservation, in the top 100 (retail value: $1k).  If you've got a hankerin' for a particular camera feature, get to suggestin'.

MovieBeam is a new $200 set-top box that comes pre-loaded with 100 movies on its internal hard drive, and offers yet another new way of watching movies at home.  It's a blend of cable's video-on-demand and pay-per-view services: you pay $4 (or $2 for an older film) to watch the movie of your choice, with access to the movie for 24 hours.  The MovieBeam's innovation isn't that it circumvents the DVD-in-the-mail routine of Netflix or cable's monthly bill--it's innovation is that it downloads new movies every week in the background, without a computer or an internet connection.  By delivering data over PBS's airwaves, the MovieBeam can function as a standalone movie service, as long as you're located in a major metropolitan area.

Word on the street is that there are plenty of online video sharing services currently available.  So what does veotag offer to differentiate itself from all the others?  Functionality for deep tagging and table-of-contents, which make videos on veotag navigable.  For longer videos and content that spans more than one subject matter, this functionality is of paramount importance.  It also optimizes video content for search engines, along with a number of other benefits.  It's easier seen than explained--so head on over and check out their patent-pending site (still, as you'd expect, in "beta").

Despite the fact that both machines offer up nearly identical specs, Apple is really trying to differentiate its MacBook Pro from the cheaper "consumer" MacBook.  One of the ways it has done this is to announce that Final Cut Studio is unsupported on the MacBook--but what does "unsupported" really mean?  Not much, says CreativeMac--they ran benchmarks with Final Cut and Motion and found that the consumer laptop runs both applications faster than a G5, and nearly as fast as the MacBook Pro.  With the exception of a couple of Motion benchmarks, the $600+ cheaper MacBook is every bit as fast as the "Pro" machine.  If you're a hobbyist and you like saving money, you might be hard-pressed to spend the extra loot on the Pro.

[via TUAW]

Warner Bros., RES magazine, and Jumpcut are running a contest allowing entrants to re-cut the trailer to "A Scanner Darkly."  You can either download the trailer elements and edit them in your editor of choice, or you can edit the trailer directly in Jumpcut's best-of-breed online editing interface.  While Jumpcut has a lot to offer, the contest is offering up uncompressed video clips as well as dialogue and music files, which would seem to favor the experienced editor who has access to their own NLE.  Award-winners, as voted on by users at Jumpcut.com, can win prizes ranging from a movie poster to a video editing workstation valued at $8200.  The contest deadline is June 7th, but the audience will start voting on your trailer as soon as you upload it--so get crackin'.

[via CinemaTech]

Withoutabox, the online film festival application system (think of it as the college "common app," except for film festivals), has launched its networking/promotion/interaction page, AUDIENCE.  I've used Withoutabox in the past to submit to film festivals before, and the service works as advertised--not that it automatically gets you into film festivals, but it does get your materials to the festivals without a hitch.

AUDIENCE is designed to be a place where you can promote your film, post images, blog, and interact with fans--rather than merely serving as a go-between for filmmakers and film festivals, Withoutabox now wants to serve as a middleman between filmmakers and filmgoers.  It's a great idea, and they've been working on it for a while--the question is, what will motivate a filmmaker to promote their work at Withoutabox, rather than registering their own domain?  The answer: most filmmakers worth their salt will probably do both.  Head on over and check it out.

Indie Film Live has gotten their hands on one of the first Silicon Imaging SI-1920HDVR cameras, and are putting it through its paces on an independent feature film shoot.  We first wrote about the SI camera when it was announced at NAB, which was only a month ago; thus the Indie Film Live folks are putting the camera through a trial-by-fire, as it is still technically a prototype.  If you're interested in the camera, check out IFL as they blog their experiences with the camera--they should be putting up footage from the shoot soon.

I'd like to welcome myself to the wonderful world of Apple.  A month ago I bought my very first Mac, the 15" MacBook Pro.  Then, today Apple announces a consumer version of the same laptop (see preceding post) which offers almost all of the same specs (minus the video card) for a grand less.  My reaction?  As a filmmaker, I wouldn't have bought the consumer version anyway.  Fine.  But then Apple announces new MacBook Pros, a mere three months after their original introduction:

• The base model had been bumped from 1.83 to 2GHz, for the same $1999.
• The 2.16GHz model now hits the $2499 price point that my 2GHz model once occupied.

Additionally, you can now buy the MacBook Pro with the glossy display found on the consumer MacBook, which doesn't seem particularly appealing for editing and other creative work.  I guess I can't be all that mad about my own MBP: the new 15" version still only comes with Firewire 400 and a 4X, single-layer DVD burner.  Considering the 17" MacBook Pro is the same thickness as the 15, Apple really doesn't have an excuse for not including it.  Filmmakers waiting for the 17-incher's DV features on the 15 will have to wait... another three months?

[via TUAW]

Stargate Digital, a Los Angeles post-house, is doing some of the best effects work available on the tube these days.  Studio Daily has the scoop on the process they use to create virtual backlots (placing actors in environments using greenscreening and matchmoving) for shows like Las Vegas, Crossing Jordan, and Desperate Housewives.  It's hard to believe that this process is more cost-effective than actually going on-location with a skeletal crew, but then again, these are TV studios, so they don't have to pay for the studio space--it's their studio.  For indies, the cost-benefit analysis would probably be very different.  Be sure to watch the video presented in the article; greenscreening is still fairly obvious to me most of the time, but a lot of these shots had me fooled.

Avid announced a bevy of product updates at NAB, including new versions of Media Composer and Xpress Pro, which we mentioned previously.  But they also announced a number of brand-new products, the most interesting one being Avid Interplay.  Dubbed "the world's first nonlinear workflow engine," Interplay appears to be Avid's attempt to shore up their stronghold on the multi-editor enterprise market (which they've managed to largely hold onto, thanks to strong media management features and their Unity storage offering).  Interplay is a set of media- and project-management tools that allow for centralized project administration, as well as streamlined encoding and archiving.

The NLE market is a lot more competitive today than it was five years ago; all the major players have a solid and robust offering in place.  Now the feature battlefield is expanding to features like workflow management (Interplay), and software integration, as recently demonstrated by Adobe's Dynamic Link.  Will Interplay be enough for Avid to stave off the up-and-coming (at this point, that's a gross understatement) Final Cut?  At the enterprise level, probably, but the smart money is on FCP 6 shipping with an overhauled media management system, and the rumored Final Cut Extreme will put the press on Avid even further.  It's an interesting time to be an Avid shareholder... which I'm not.