Last night, the new sci-fi show “V”, had a major dip in the ratings (from 13+ mil in the pilot, to 10.6 mil for the second episode). The only way from here is the bottom, just like any other genre show lately on TV: Dollhouse got canceled today too. FlashForward’s and Heroes’ ratings are a disaster too. Except Lost and BSG, no other genre shows have seen an actual return in their investment in the last few years, and a date for a natural, non-abrupt ending.

So what’s wrong with sci-fi shows? Why are bullshit like NCIS get over 16 million viewers, and genre shows hit rock bottom within few weeks of airing? Here are the reasons why, in my opinion:

1. The writers are buffoons

Except the two main LOST writers, I have been personally disappointed with all other writing teams on TV. None of these people have the vision, drive, and money to create an epic franchise of a show, rather than going to work 9-5, sitting behind a desk, and simply rehash whatever we’ve already seen on TV the last 60 years.

Add to that their scientifically weak plots, which drives the younger generations (who actually gone to college and they know that there’s no sound in space) away. Sci-Fi has to be “hard sci-fi” in this day and age. Having Flash Gordon-type bullshit doesn’t work anymore.

I think that the networks need to employ young writers. Just like Damon Lindelof was inspired by Twin Peaks and brought LOST a step further at 31 years old, the networks should find new writers, who have been inspired from *recent* shows, like LOST, and then try to innovate and bring their own shows one step further.

In other words, sci-fi writing must have innovation in the story telling method and plot, backed with hard sci-fi. And it has to be epic. Complex stories with many characters involved. Small stories about a small group of characters that no one cares about when there are bigger fish to fry (just like in V), just won’t work anymore.

2. Young people don’t watch much TV anymore

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Americans watch more TV than EVER before. Almost 5 hours a day (God help us, although I recently read that Greece is SECOND in that list!!!). But it’s the youngsters, the important 18-49 year old demographic that advertisers are after, that actually watch less. With the booming of the Internet, people spend a lot of their free time browsing (and not necessarily YouTube), rather than watching TV. And it’s that demographic that usually watches sci-fi shows.

3. Money

There’s a reason why LOST was so successful originally. Its 2-episode pilot cost in the excess of $14 mil, more than any other TV show before, or after. But the reality is, to create an epic show, with lots of characters and elaborate sets, you need money. Normal TV shows usually get between $1 and $3 million per episode to shoot, and unless you move to the cheaper Vancouver studios to shoot, or you only get uknown actors, your budget won’t be enough to create a truly great pilot to hook your viewers up. LOST hooked people mostly with its first 4 episodes for example.

4. No space ships

The last “space”-based sci-fi show on network TV was Firefly (BSG was on cable). That was 2003. Since then, we are fed with daytime-like soaps that happen to have sci-fi elements in them (e.g. the terribly dull Dollhouse). That’s just not enough to inspire the sci-fi crowd.

See, science fiction is mostly liked by people who try to look at the big picture, the future. They are idealists, visionaries. Therefore, offering them a soap with some sci-fi elements in it, just won’t work anymore.

5. People aren’t into sci-fi anymore

The truth is that NASA hasn’t exactly inspired people in the last 20 years. Their new spaceships look like ass, and are crammy as hell. All this make people not want to have lots to do with the whole space thing. Laugh it all you want, but it’s a factor. Why do you think Apple is selling like crazy?

This is my editing desk: a 2.4 Ghz Core2Duo DELL PC, 6 GB of RAM, an nVidia card, Vista 64 bit, with Sony Vegas Pro 9 32bit (for plugin/codec compatibility reasons), and two monitors. The 28″ one runs the main Vegas interface at 1920×1200, and the secondary 22″ one previews the actual video in 1:1 ratio size at 1920×1080 (so I can see all pixels as they truly are and edit/color-grade accordingly).

Click for a larger view

The video project loaded is a music video that I am working on for a Bay Area singer/songwriter. I used 18 tracks there. The look I chose for this video is a green-ish low-contrast look. I am hoping to have the video released by Sunday, after we re-shoot a few scenes on Saturday.

On the left side you can see my Canon HV20, 120 GB iPod, and my new smartphone, the HTC Hero. I still need to use better speakers with that PC system though. We have some very good high-quality Logitech speakers in storage, we just haven’t taken them out to connect them. So I am still editing with these $10 speakers (although most of the time I am using some very good headphones, so it doesn’t really matter much).

Red Giant Software released yesterday a Vegas version of their brand new product, Magic Bullet Mojo. Mojo is a simpler version of Magic Bullet that only has one goal: to make your footage look like the Hollywood movies of the last few years: teal-looking, but by preserving the skin color (which can be a tricky thing to achieve without this plugin). I tried the demo, and it indeed does what it promises. The algorithm they use to auto-figure-out where the human face is in the frame, and preserve that color, works great. You can use the plugin’s UI to bleach or warm your video, punch it, change the color tint from green to teal to blue, select the way the algorithm finds the face in the frame, and finally, how much you want these settings blended with the original, ungraded look.

Talent is Dave Tsui, from the Bay Area band HIJK

The only problem I encountered is that the “mojo” slider punches up contrast and/or gamma (even with “bleach”/”punch” all the way down). I would prefer to contrast/gamma my video separately if required, with the use of another plugin, and only use Mojo for its teal/skin abilities. Finally, on Vegas, we are used to double-click the UI’s slider buttons to get them to jump back to their default values, but this doesn’t happen with the Mojo UI.

Update: One more example. Except the unwanted dark gamma change that I can’t get rid of with Mojo, the rest of the tint is as it’s supposed to be. I know that to some of you it looks weird and that the original picture looks more natural, but the point of Hollywood movies — that Mojo emulates — is to not be natural.

We watched the remake of “V” tonight on ABC. I’ve only watched bits and pieces from the original TV series, but this is besides the point, since this is supposed to be a full reboot of the show.

So basically, “V” is mediocre at best.

The problem is that the episode felt rushed and disconnected. It felt like a 2 hour pilot, cut into 1 hour. Things just go too fast and we don’t have the time to really see the reactions of the world on this new major situation.

Adding to that is the unbelievable behavior of people towards the aliens. When the original message off of the spaceship is done, everyone claps their hands and welcomes the new world order. If that was a real life scenario, people would just panic and loot everything in front of them. No one in their right mind would believe that message of peace. Or when that anti-V terrorist finds out that his old friend is actually alien he seems to accept it and go on by his business instead of showing even a small shred of disapproval.

And, oh, did I say “aliens”? Sorry about that. It’s “Vs” (pronounced vees), or “Visitors”. No one is calling them what they really are, aliens that is. Apparently ABC had a problem making it an alien show, of fear of alienating housewives (get it?).

Finally, there was very little mystery left in the series after the first 45 minutes. Two guys already getting revealed as aliens instead of one of them, or none. The show feels like it’s a cold-told tale of things happening to a few people we care nothing about rather than adding mystery, and making it a high-impact plot to the whole of the planet (we need to SEE it rather than just brush it off like nothing happened and accept the new world order out of thin air). Where is the UN and US government and military of the world in all this? UN got referenced but we see nothing that went on in that building.

Overall, just like “Flash Forward”, and “Heroes” before that, “V” is a good idea with a bad implementation. I don’t understand how some people can screw up a production so much. I wonder if the only talented TV writers left in the world are Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. At least these two guys can only screw up romantic plots, but when it comes to action/mystery/thrill, they know their shit.

Update: New York Times’ review got it right too.

I had one of these good and sucky all in one days.

Good: Going to Google’s headquarters to shoot a video for a company. Then, I had a nice lunch with JBQ there. I spent most of my day editing that video today, since I need to have it ready ASAP for a presentation.

Bad: Cage the Elephant’s marketing staff got me a press pass for the band’s concert in SF after TWO weeks of having me “on the wait”, in order to review the performance for a music magazine that I very occasionally write for. But by some sort of miss-communication in the morning, they removed my photo/video pass request. I emailed them at 1 PM with the exact requirements, but they didn’t reply to that email. I emailed again, and by 4 PM they told me it’s too late to get authorization for photo/video (I requested a pass for a 1-minute video, nothing more than that). So I got pissed off, and I didn’t go to the concert. I mean, I wanted to go there to visually also show to readers how it feels to be there, it wasn’t for that 16 bucks the ticket costs. Thank God, I can afford these 16 bucks. I must say that in the 10 years that I am dealing with PR/marketing people of various software/hardware companies, I never had major problems with them. As much as engineers like to poke fun at their marketing people, the technology marketing people rule compared to the entertainment ones.

Good: While still thinking that I have a photo pass, and while at Google, I stumbled at Romain Guy, a software engineer (and serious photographer) who works along my husband on Android (read at the end of this article about the funny way I got to know Romain). He was trying to sell his (second) Canon 5D Mark-II, and I was in need for a good low-light camera for the concert tonight. So I bought it. It looks good so far, although its ergonomics are a bit schizophrenic.

Bad: I can’t put off that laundry anymore. I hate laundry.

Of course, the 7D is a better deal in terms of video, and I still suggest to all of you to go for the 7D instead of the 5D. I went with the 5D because the price was right (as a second hand unit), we have lenses that better suit the 5D, and because I needed the camera tonight for the concert (that I eventually didn’t go).

Ok, off to go watch “V” now. After I start off that stupid laundry…

Back in April I wrote a blog post about what solution would be ideal to feed our 65 GB of music library to our main speaker-set and amplifier. There was nothing that was doing exactly what we needed to do, so we were thinking of buying a second 400 CD-changer appliance, to fill it with our existing CDs and burned iTunes purchases.

The Sonos system was also discussed as a possible solution, but we were not happy with the fact it could not hold our library in the device itself, and needed constant streaming. We were not looking for a streaming system, but on a device that could hold all of our music in its internal drive, and get easily updated when we need it to.

Eventually, we added an intermediate step. We held back from the 400 CD-changer purchase, and bought a 120 GB iPod Classic with an Apple dock that featured a line-out. The problem with that solution is that we could not see what the heck was playing in the iPod’s 2.5″ screen while we were sitting on the couch, 2.5 meters away. Not to mention that for some reason the “back” key on the remote for the dock did not work with the Classic. Add to that the fact that the iPod line-out audio quality was below par (low volume compared to other input sources in our amplifier), and so sooner than later we were again in the market for a solution. Our Zune 120 GB and its dock had the similar usability/volume problems btw.

What made us root for the AppleTV was its “Remote” application for the iPhone/iPodTouch. There we are now, sitting on our couch, using the exact same UI as in the iPod Touch’s amazing music UI to control our AppleTV. We don’t even have to turn ON the HDTV to control it, it’s headless (that was one of our requirements)! We simply turning it ON once using its remote, then the iPod Touch’s “Remote” application takes over for the music control, and when we need to turn it OFF we just use the AppleTV remote again (long press on the play button puts the AppleTV on standby). Audio quality is punchy, CD-quality, much better than the iPod/Zune dock’s line-outs.

So far, so good! Only thing missing from the “Remote” app is the ability to rate songs (the UI is there but the rating mechanism is not implemented — maybe it comes in a future version)!

I don’t use the AppleTV for video playback, since the Sony PS3 is a much better solution for that (better support for formats and 1080/30p). But it’s perfect for our music, and maybe even for some streaming internet radio (new feature in the AppleTV 3.0 firmware).

Some have suggested that we could use a small laptop/PC with MPD in it, but there is a certain installation/configuration/annoyance associated with that. Turning ON the laptop/PC from standby would require to physically go close to the device, and then we would have to use MPD remote applications that simply don’t have the elegance of an Apple-designed app. Instead, the AppleTV just works, and we are able to _easily_ sync it with our iTunes installation too. That’s a major bonus since we use iTunes. Even more interestingly, the AppleTV is *cheaper* than a dedicated small laptop/PC running MPD.

So basically, for us at least, the “Remote” application is what made the whole difference for us, not necessarily the AppleTV itself. It’s one of these times that a side-project like that app is, brings value to other products!

UPDATE: I wrote an article, comparing the Apple TV music experience to MPD’s.

Disclaimer: The following is meant as an analysis of the situation based on my experience as a tech journalist for some 8 years, and on my own personal opinion. It’s not meant to disrespect RED, or its founders. In fact, as a true tech geek, I am a fan of the whole RED project!

UPDATE 2: And now I am BANNED from the REDUser forum, for discussing my points VERY CALMLY with others. I was name called, but I never name called back. I simply explained my points, civilized, as you can read there.

UPDATE 3: Re-instated at the forum. Thanks everyone who spoke up about it.

RED just published an update on their vaporware line. You can read about it here & here.

Basically, these are hyperbole vaporware products, made by hype machines rather than engineers. Oh, I don’t dispute the fact that maybe 1-2 of these products announced last year and today will see the market at some point, but I do dispute the fact that they will be able to create all that stuff they are promising, and at the prices that they are promising. Already, now it’s becoming obvious that getting a usable Scarlet model is a $10k affair, and not a $3.5k as they had you to believe last year.

All this made me remember of my mother who used to tell me about an old man in her mountain village (I believe he’s long dead now) who had this moto: “promising is gaining, giving is losing”.

Basically, RED is a dream. Not your dream. But Jim Jannard’s dream. The guy’s a billionaire, and so he put together the RED company on the side. It’s obviously his “hobby” (it certainly feels that way). If the company goes nowhere eventually, oh well, at least he had fun doing it. But I keep thinking that all the millions he had poured into this, he could have either:
1. Simply make small modifications on the original RED while continuing R&D on new technologies without promising the most crazy things to his customers. Instead, follow a more traditional path regarding R&D and production.
2. If he just wanted to pour money down a hole, he should have given the money to people who need it instead, e.g. via Unicef.

Not all is bad from the whole story though. RED *has* contributed in the move from film to digital in Hollywood. I give them credit for that, and I thank them for that. But unfortunately, 99% of the time, it’s never that “first” company with the vision that ends up taking over that market. Instead, it’s the second or the third company in that sector who will learn from RED’s mistakes and dominate.

What I am saying here is that RED is going to die. There’s no way Jannard and his zillions can sustain this crazy business model they have. Just like the Xerox Alto was the first graphical personal computer of its kind but never went anywhere, RED will be seen the same way in 10-20 years from now. We would see RED with this romantic eye, but there won’t be any RED left at that point.

Who’s going to steal their thunder? In my opinion, it’s Canon. To create such complex technology, and especially at competitive prices, it requires an already established company with vast experience of both the technology and the market. Canon has the ability to simply evolutionize (rather than revolutionize) their existing technologies and catch up with RED — and even become better than them. Evidently from their recent VdSRLs and the rumored large-sensor prosumer cameras coming next Spring, I personally see Canon taking over Hollywood with as of yet un-announced offerings sooner than later.

But RED? It is Jim’s dream, and we were all in it. But I just woke up. I just hope Jim does too. Jim, save your money. That’s all I can say to you. Because I am a fan!

Update 1: A lot of people have a problem with the word “hobby”. Let me be clear about this. I believe that Jim does have a genuine interest about what he’s doing! He’s not an amateur. When someone has a serious hobby doesn’t mean that it’s just something he/she does on weekends.

But what it also means, in my book, is that he/she could be starting the business based on the interest about the technology in itself, and from pure curiosity, and for the cool factor, and not to create an actual profitable business. To me, a lot of things RED feel like “if it becomes profitable, even better — if not, well, we had fun researching and playing engineers”. While this is all fine if you’re a billionaire, it doesn’t strike me very nice if I was to be a customer.

I simply — for the life of me — can not take seriously RED when they spread themselves too thin over so many products. I just don’t see these as actual final products, I see them as beta stuff that someone put together in an R&D lab. Proof that the RED One had so many firmware upgrades so far. A “product” with the traditional sense, in that price, should have been bullet proof from Day 1. And I just don’t see this happening with the new line of cameras — if they ever come out.

In other words: In my own opinion, RED doesn’t know how to release PRODUCTS. There’s a difference between breaking new technological ground, and actually putting that new technology in an actual product. A product that is meant to be a product, and not a lab unit.

Two months ago I wrote an article explaining how to achieve the “film look”. In the article I mentioned shallow depth of field as the last of the requirements. I know a lot of people are buying these 35mm adapters (and stupidly I did so too in the beginning) trying to fool their way through into filmmaking. This is no different than owning just a cheap VW beetle car, and painting it like the ultimate racing car. Who are you trying to fool here?

There are other aspects that should take priority when you are shooting a movie, and it seems that this team from Spain have their heads screwed on the right way. Here’s their trailer for a short movie they shot with a stock Canon HV30 camera, without any 35mm adapters. It looks fabulous. How they did it? Read the link above.