TV: Categorizing - by Sam Mariotti

What about the plot “bleeding” effect? Where is the line drawn between a tv series and a tv serial, and when and why do they bleed into each other? Can we define shows like Friends or Scrubs as “series” television when they have obvious subplots that are “serial”? My thoughts are… yes, we can define them as series TV. After all, just like with obvious series TV like Family Guy, we can watch the first, middle, and last episodes (or any one in between) and still know exactly what’s going on. Completely serial episodes in this “bleeding” category are so rare that we can hardly group them with more obvious serial television like Lost, Weeds, or The West Wing.

Serial television originally came from the soap opera. Think about how crucial it is to watch the episodes of a soap opera in order. With every twist, turn, affair, and coma, you’d never know what’s what if you jumped in and out of the show like you can with shows in the bleeding category.

A lot of this bleeding occurs in comedies, and I think that has a lot to do with the category change. Shows like Everybody Love Raymond and Seinfeld rely on comedy to tell their stories, so the serial subplot is a lot less necessary to pay attention to because the subplot is generally more serious and about the “real lives” of the characters. We wouldn’t enjoy or get lost in shows like these as much if the serial subplot was made as important as the comedy. Like I said before, these are simply different ways of storytelling.

Drama reigns in the serial show because we are following the dramatic lives of the characters through “realistic” turns and challenges in their lives. In Sex and the City, we find that we need to see the characters succeed in their love lives. In Heroes, we want to see our characters overcome and prevail even through their differences and sacrifices. We want to be reassured of Sydney Bristow’s strength through her never-ending trials in Alias. No matter how unrealistic the plot or storyline is, every obstacle, twist, and fall is real for the characters of the show, and therefore real for us.

This transference of realism is known as “suspension of disbelief.” When we watch, see, read, or hear a story (tv show, movie, play, book, song, etc) we pause our own skepticism and tag alongside the plot and the characters as if they are just as real as we are.

Serials tend to rely on dark comedy as much as drama for this same reason. Irony and sarcasm are real to us, so the creators and writers of our shows are keen to add these elements of real life to the fiction. The serial generally shies away from the unrealistic (but effective in its element) slapstick of the series. Though lines may be blurry at times, I don’t necessarily think definition is as important as understanding.

What about the shows that seem to reset every episode as if nothing really changes? Kenny always dies and comes back to life in South Park, The Simpsons never grow up, and Jerri Blank from Strangers With Candy is somehow back in high school at age 46. These shows are simply sketch comedy at its finest. They defy definition and we are happy to let them because they keep us laughing.

Realism, drama, comedy, and fiction are not the only factors for us to consider when thinking of our favorite shows. Next time, I want to talk about the importance of plot, story, genre, and theme. So please keep reading and most of all, as always, keeping watching TV!

Organizing Chaos - by Nate Haustein

I just finished an exhausting 24 hours of shooting, in several locations and for several different clients and purposes. Traveling between 4 different cites and even more locations within them gives even the most in shape team a run for their money, especially when you’re hauling around an entire set of equipment. Though exhausting, its always rewarding to look back on the projects and see the footage or performances my crew and I achieved.

Last night we shot in Minneapolis, MN in a fairly active part of downtown, as well as some other various locations. The purpose: a webisode for a small internet-based company. More or less, we had an actor in full “rockstar” garb walking down the street acting like he owned the place. It was a lot of fun, and no one on the street really knew what to think of it. One thing I’ve learned from shoots like this is that organization is possibly the most important part of a complex production. Making sure that everything is completely planned out before the camera is even out of the bag can make or break a production day. Without a plan, we’d be dead in the water.

Producing films with higher levels of professionalism takes more people, more equipment, and more time to set up. I appreciate my team every day as we distribute production jobs, making sure that everything works how it should, and in the way the others expect it to be done. Getting along with your team, and being able to think alike makes a complex shoot enjoyable to do, and incredibly fast to complete. Even if you are working with a completely new team, clearly communicate your intentions on what the project is, how you want it to look at the end, and what people are responsible for. Making sure that everyone knows exactly what is going on saves time, and more importantly, money.

Some things I think are necessities for any shoot:

• Make sure everyone involved knows when they are needed to be available. Then have them show up 15 minutes earlier.
• Plan out exactly what will be shot. Make a list, or even better, a storyboard of the angles, lighting, and blocking.
• Note the equipment, props, people, and anything else that has to be at each location.
• Have roles! If you have people to help out, agree on responsibilities so that things get set up faster, and so there is less confusion or deliberation during actual production.

The list could be even more specific with things like charging batteries, having enough tapes/media, but it might go on forever. Something else that should be noted is that shooting also takes flexibility. Being in the field brings many challenges, mostly ones you don’t expect. Like that janitor walking down the hallway with a loud garbage can, or the worker who starts using a circular saw a few feet to the left of the camera. It’s raining? Uh oh. Being able to think on your feet, fixing problems without jeopardizing the flow of production is perhaps the most important skill to have. It takes time to learn, but once you figure it out, things get a lot less stressful when something goes wrong.

So now, it’s time for a vacation away. See you next time.

Battle of the Hipsters - by Nate Haustein

I’ve found that writing an entry on Sunday night is rather relaxing, so join me tonight in my observations as I look at two marketing strategies from Microsoft–one I think that works, and one I think isn’t quite as effective.

Several years ago, Apple Computer began a sort of reinvention of itself, possibly one of the most notable in recent history. One that upped the computing power of its hardware and marketed its proprietary operating system, OS X, as one of the utmost simplicity. A hit series of “I’m a Mac” commercials featured young, hip Justin Long representing Mac computers, continuously antagonizing John Hodgman, acting respectively as a PC. Still running strong years later, the commercials highlighted all the features available only on a Mac.

Likely sick of being poked fun at, Microsoft needed to come up with a plan to battle these incredibly successful ads. The solution was (uninterestingly enough) the “I’m a PC” campaign. At first, the campaign focused primarily on the supposedly real people who use the Windows operating system. A human interest approach that exposed a good deal of talented and interesting characters and how they use their computers. So far, so good. In the last year or so, however, Microsoft has gone to a new sort of commercial. In these 30 second ads, so called Laptop Hunters are “found” in the parking lot of a big box computer retailer such as Best Buy, and offered $1500 or so to buy any computer they want. If it costs less, they keep the difference. Participants usually walk around, see some features they like in a few laptops, bash the Mac computers for price or performance, and then settle on an offering from HP or Dell.

Lauren is a redhead. Read more about that here. Oh, and EDIT: it seems like Lauren isn't really a random person. She's an actress. Oh well, I almost expected it.

Ok, hang on a sec. Who’s paying for these commercials? The branding says Microsoft, but these ads are selling computers. Microsoft is just making the software that runs on them. In the end, it seems like the take home message is “I got a insert PC manufacturer name here, and not a Mac.” In fact, it’s more like, “Anything is better than a Mac.” Since Intel chips became standard on all new Macs, they can run Windows too. I know I do on mine from time to time. But when it comes down to it, more PC-only models sold means more guaranteed Windows licenses for Microsoft. With a valid competing pre-installed operating system like OS X, it likely cuts the percentage of Windows purchases to the single digits.

Now lets get this straight, I’m not necessarily critiquing the Windows operating system, or any PC manufacturers in particular. I believe that Windows, and it’s associated PC hardware is extraordinarily valid in many situations. Then again, as market shares continue to shift across operating systems, this divide in application may very well change. I do think that Microsoft should rethink it’s marketing strategy to something more original, and perhaps one that actually markets their product for its own quality, rather than relying on the prices of the hardware it runs on.

There’s the bad, now for the good.

Another piece of software that Microsoft holds an incredible market share on is Microsoft Office. Completely integrated in the majority of business and educational establishments, Microsoft needs to find a way to peddle its latest revision of the program suite every couple years or so. We’re all sick of hearing about a program that allows us to do, usually, work. So updates have been, more or less, lackluster. Microsoft needed a way to advertise it’s money-machine as something, well, cool.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is it...

The trailer appeals in every way a viral video should. It’s funny, it’s exciting, it looks good, and it’s short enough for anyone to watch. Another key to the video is that it doesn’t take itself seriously, at all. Nothing is spared from being ridiculed, most notably the help-giving paperclip from years ago and an extensive list of fonts. At the end we all ask ourselves how on earth do infiltration teams and helicopters relate to Microsoft Office, but it really doesn’t even matter. The sheer awesomeness carries the trailer and the productivity suite on its own. Maybe all of this will be explained in 2010...

Why We Love TV - By Sam Mariotti

We all love TV. I say this with generalization of course; I mean, I know there’re a few pariahs out there who claim they don’t have time for the tube. There are those who say they’d rather spend their time amid “real” literature with their noses buried in a book. Some might even say that television is a lost art— that the shows of today could never compare to the nostalgic comfort of "Lassie" or "I Dream of Jeannie."

The way I see it, and the way an overwhelming portion of the population sees it, television is no lost art at all. It’s in fact adapted, changed, and molded to our fast-paced lives to become just as important to us as real literature, just as nostalgic as "M*A*S*H," and cookie-cutter cropped into half-hour segments to fit any lifestyle.

For the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about why we love serial television. I’ll explain a couple major differences between a television serial (ex. "Lost," "Weeds," "Sex and the City") and a television series (ex. "The Simpsons," "30 Rock," "CSI"), just so we’re all on th

e same page.

1) In general, a serial calls for you to watch each episode in succession so you know what’s going on. You can’t just pop in and out like you would in a series and expect the same results (edge-of-your seat nail biting, emotional attachment, long talks at the water cooler, etc).

2) A serial uses a linear timeline to

build story and character while a series relies on a varied assortment of moments to do the same. They’re simply different types of storytelling, each with their own intent. Basically: serial=anthology of novels, series=collection of short stories.

So why do we love the serial? We all want, nay need, drama. I don’t just mean your typical dramatic thriller where boy and girl meet constant obstacles but still maintain a mad love for each other.

Whether it’s through drama, comedy, sci-fi or thriller, today’s television serials know our desires.

We desire the thick, juicy stuff that has us up at 3 in the morning with the “just one more episode” flu. We’ve grown tired of mythic storytelling so we’re given pragmatic testimonies. We yearn for relatable characters so we’re graced with anti-heroes.

Above all, we need a break from our own busy, tiring, tragic lives. Luckily, these characters that we know and love live lives that constantly spin more out of control than our own lives do. It’s a healthy version of Schadenfreude – we don’t have to derive pleasure from real people’s misfortunes, just the fake characters who embody them.

Finally, our beloved serials convince us that love bears substance, patience fosters virtue, and the courage to face the day pays off in the end. I promise it’ll only take seven seasons of learning from others’ mistakes to understand what we’ve always been taught.

I love TV, and I want to know why. I hope you want to know too. Over the n

ext few weeks, we’ll analyze different elements of the television serial that provoke our affection. So keep reading, keep loving, and above all, keep watching TV.

Popular Pirates

Last week everyone was talking about a certain video posted on YouTube. Email forwards, radio hosts, TV stations and social networking sites were hot on the tail of this rapidly spreading piece of user-created content. In about a week, nearly nine million people watched a five-minute amateur wedding video called “JK Wedding Entrance Dance.” It was just that. Instead of conforming to the more traditional song, the dozen or so people in the bridal party did the unexpected and broke out the dance moves to Chris Brown’s “Forever.” If you haven’t seen it yet, spend a few minutes below and get up to speed with the rest of the country.

It was a novel video, but the thing that struck me most was the music. Chris Brown, “Forever,” in it’s entirety. As of late, YouTube has been increasingly concerned about keeping copyrighted music out of the videos on its site, introducing an automatic detection system that scans the music in uploaded videos. And with the recent downloaded music scares, that’s probably a good thing. So how is it, you might ask, that a video can survive over 9 million views (now more than 15 million) when it has an unlicensed soundtrack with one of the most popular songs of the year? Let’s analyze this a bit more.

About six months ago, artist Chris Brown had a problem when a few aspects of his personal life likely jeopardized his fan base. You can read more about it if you’re interested. Perhaps Brown’s craving to revitalize his image has left him (or his agents and lawyers) open to bending the rules a little bit concerning copyright infringement. Amazingly, the video has remained untouched by YouTube, or any representatives of the recording label, quite a feat nowadays for something other than an official music video. It seems as if everything thats’ been crammed down our throats related to copyright for the last decade can be changed as long as the original content owner profits from it. To be honest, it makes me a little nervous about our legal system’s whims, especially as a content producer myself.

EDIT: The couple has set up a website devoted to the video, trying to raise money for a charitable cause. The charity, The Sheila Wellstone Institute stands for ending domestic violence in communities. Honorable, and naturally it ties in to Chris Brown's incident. A bit of a dig on an artist who helped them become web-famous.

U.S. copyright law basically defines fair use as using content for critical, satirical, news or educational purposes, but requires the material to be “reasonably brief” and attributed to its rightful owner. That’s how shows like The Simpsons and internet blogs such as this one get away with using the material. As far as I can tell, the wedding video doesn’t fall under fair use. Even worse though are the freeloaders who copy the video to their own YouTube account, hoping to drive viewers towards their own goals and financial gain. Like this one. Shame. Shame.

Oddly enough, I saw a message from the original uploader of the video to the uploader of one of the copies. It read: “I am the owner of this video and if you do not remove it I will take legal action.” Huh, really?

I don’t want to come across as being critical of the couple and their families who did the dancing wedding video–I thought it was cute, imaginative, and progressive in nature. Not to mention it was never fully intended for a mass audience. I simply want to draw attention to the methods being used to market a song and it’s artist in a far different and unexpected way than was obviously first imagined, and the ways in which laws are being made and interpreted in a rapidly changing mediated environment. Apparently, if you become popular enough, copyright infringement is just fine.

SD Cards, the Future, and You

Remember how DVDs were the next big thing? Or maybe for some of you, cassette tapes? Well I’m saying that the next big thing in media acquisition and delivery is the SD (Secure Digital) card. Now before some of you get on my back about internet delivery, hear this: even though the internet has provided a great way to deliver content, producers still need to account for people who are behind the cutting edge of technology, not to mention the psychological satisfaction of actually receiving a physical item. Perhaps in a decade the majority of the United States, and likely the world will have internet fast enough to satisfy all requirements, but until then, we need a new format to subside with. SD anyone? I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d rather not wait an hour for my HD movie to download when I can have it now off a piece of plastic the size of a postage stamp.

Cost for a card has dropped to a fraction of what it was 3 years ago, and capacities have increased nearly a hundred fold. Speeds have increased, and continue to do so. People want their content–now. Faster, more reliable. and likely soon to be cheaper than a CD or DVD, SD provides that speed for a transitioning user base whether it’s being used for audio, video, image or data storage.

Beyond content delivery, SD, and it’s newer, faster SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) variant has also become the recent standard for acquisition. Big names Canon, Nikon and Panasonic have all caved into the pressure to make SD the media of choice for consumer and prosumer grade point-and-shoot and DSLR cameras, and now a card that holds around a thousand pictures costs less than a roll of film. Its acceptance has made it cheap, universal, and available. What’s not to like?

SD has been in my mind for the last few months due to its relevance in the video production world. As tape-based formats such as HDV are in their way out, the obvious next step is a tapeless workflow, giving higher resolution, better data rates, faster transfers, and greater durability.

There are really only a few choices for this in the sub-$10,000 category of video: a segment with many independent producers such as myself. P2 cards, designed for Panasonic camcorders such as the HPX-170, give the greatest data rates but also have the most substantial price, well over $1,000 for a 32GB card, which in turn produces about 3 hours of top-quality video–let me remind you that one hour DV/HDVtapes are about $3. P2 cards are rather large, however, as they are designed to fit in the 54mm slot on some laptops- bad news for Mac users.

Sony’s answer to this is the SxS Pro Expresscard format–essentially the “new” laptop card format, coming in at 34mm. Compatible with their XDCAM EX camcorders, the SxS Pro sticks are also quite pricey, comparable to P2 at similar capacities. One answer to this price hurdle was made by a company called e-films, with their MxR Adapter product. The MxR allows the inexpensive SDHC format to be used inside an Expresscard carrier, eliminating the need to exclusively use Sony’s format.

The SDHC cards are mainly being used now by Panasonic, Canon and JVC. Of most note is Panasonic’s HMC150 camcorder, which records to SDHC cards up to 64GB in capacity. To compare costs with the other formats, a 32GB SDHC card costs about $270. JVC recently released several camcorders that record to the cards, and its only a matter of time before Canon, who has been manufacturing consumer models with SD acquisition for several years, releases new prosumer models that also use the specification.

Solutions for file-based acquisition have been around for a while, but so far have been expensive or limited in functionality for real-world situations. In my opinion, the FireStore, a hard drive based recorder did not meet the needs of all productions due to its limited storage space, physical size and dependence on a battery. This being said, it’s essential that the tapeless format be fully integrated into the camera.

There are also a number of negatives for SD including a 4GB file limit, the fragility of the card’s connectors, and the current data limit of the cards for higher quality recording. I do think, however, that most of these can be corrected by software updates, manufacturing practices and the general advance of technology in making newer versions, or as SDHC cards are concerned “classes.” Currently Class 6 cards are some of the top rated for video acquisition, maxing out at around 24Mbps for AVCHD.

For more on AVCHD, see last week’s post.

I’m not the only one banking on a bright future for SD. In the latest release of Apple’s MacBook Pro has ditched the Expresscard slot for one that supports SD. Keep in mind that the MacBook Pro is designed for media professionals. It doesn’t leave much for manufacturers to realize that they want their products to work with perhaps the hottest laptops on the market. Taking all of this into account, I hope to be producing entirely tapeless products from start to finish: shooting, storing and delivering on SDHC, or another similar format within the next year or so. With any luck, the normal consumer will adapt to the technology smoothly, perhaps with devices offering multiple options for viewing such as DVD/VCR combo players, making content delivery easier, more affordable and more compatible than it’s ever been before.

No Love for AVCHD

I was surprised today by the release of the latest incarnation of Apple’s video production suite, Final Cut Studio 3. The update was sudden and without warning, no mention of it graced the presentations at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June or the giant NAB (North American Broadcaster) show in Las Vegas the month before. Nevertheless, in these days of rapidly progressing digital media, the advancements found in the new programs are quite relevant to modern workflows. Tighter integration between editing and compositing programs is one major selling point of the suite, as well as greater automation to speed production. Apple added 5 new flavors to the already popular in house PRORES codec, from an offline quality to a full 4:4:4:4 finishing codec. I found everything I expected and more in the hundreds of upgrades, except for one thing: native AVCHD support.

For a few years now, consumer camcorders have been using a codec called AVCHD, an MPEG4-based compression scheme that has remarkable quality at quite a low data rate. In fact, the compression is twice as efficient as widely popular tape-based HDV, not to mention the resolution is an actual 1920x1080 pixels, compared to the 1440x1080 of HDV. First used as a strictly consumer format, AVCHD began to move its way up the ladder to prosumer and professional demographics when the data rate being recorded by the cameras surpassed that of other formats, such as HDV. Around 2008, Canon and Panasonic (as well as several others) offered cameras with a data rate of 24Mbps, nearly that of HDV at 25Mbps. Considering the efficiency of AVCHD compression, and the option of uncompressed audio, the new format became a viable option for those looking for an affordable way of recording HD programming.

Now that you know your history...

Final Cut Pro, the central editing component in Final Cut Studio is now in its 7th revision. It touts itself as a program that can handle nearly any type of video format with ease. Apparently not AVCHD. The Final Cut solution to AVCHD is to first convert to Apple’s PRORES. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. In fact, it’s probably what I would do myself if I had a camera that shot AVCHD. The reason for doing this is to ease the computer’s processor during editing. Because the codec is so compressed, the computer needs to work hard to uncompress the footage for editing, slowing down the work unless one has a sufficiently fast machine – compression is an entirely different topic I’ll have to cover at a different time, but you get the idea. AVCHD is fully supported in iMovie ’09, shipped free with every new Mac computer. All I’m asking is for the $1000 flagship video editing program to support it, should someone choose to edit natively. One instance I might find it useful would be quickly cutting together vacation footage or the like. PRORES takes a lot of hard drive space, not to mention time to convert. Hacking together a few shots to put up on YouTube shouldn't have to take long in the world’s most advanced editing software. Video editors have some of the most powerful computers on the planet, for some reason, I don’t think that a little extra processing power is going to be a big deal for most, especially if the projects are kept simple. For someone serious about video production, they understand what AVCHD is, know when to use it, and know when to encode to something different – a choice that countless iMovie users don’t even have.

Sony’s Vegas editing software has natively cut AVCHD footage for some time now, and as more and more cameras are being offered in the flavor, it’s only logical for other software manufacturers to follow suit. In the brand new MacBook Pro I purchased last month is an SD card slot. A large percentage of current camcorders record to cheap SD or SDHC cards, in you guessed it, AVCHD. It would seem logical for Apple to fully support the format they are fully aware of, as the expresscard slot was removed for the SD option. The top-of-the-line Sony EX-1 and EX-3 camcorders record to the Final Cut Pro supported XDCAM EX format, yet Apple removed the way to transfer the files by eliminating the expresscard slot in the 15” MacBook Pros. I’m not saying I don’t like my computer, but sometimes things seem a bit backwards. Maybe someone will realize this soon enough and offer a fix in the next Final Cut Pro update.

Next Time: SD cards, the future, and you.