Don’t think big, think small. Don’t aim your content at a wide audience, target it to a select and special subculture. That seems to be the school of thought for many these days, and could definitely be seen as a motivating factor behind the creation of Film Riot, Revision3’s entry into the tips-for-indie-filmmakers market.
Launching today, Film Riot definitely demonstrates a polish beyond, say, Diggnation, with sharp editing, cinematography, and graphics — which is fitting, because the show’s whole purpose is to support quality execution. In the first episode, a brief intro from host Ryan Connolly segues into a 3-minute comedy sketch using the lightsaber and phaser fire effects later demonstrated in After Effects.
Connolly is capable, yet not exactly life-changing. (Here’s a tip, Ryan: Rolling your eyes at the puns in your scripted banter would make a lot more sense if you were not the credited writer of the episode.) Also, the opening sketch was a bit off-putting for me, as it’s weird to see a network that has shown such devotion to celebrating nerd culture launch with an episode that uses the word nerd pejoratively. It’s also a little aggravating to see that the sketch builds its punchline around “Oh, why don’t the nerds’ hot girlfriends understand them?”, which always strikes me as a major logic breakdown: If these guys are really this lame, why would they have such hot girlfriends? And if their girlfriends really can’t stand putting up with nerd stuff, why were they dating nerds to begin with? (This is one of those dilemmas that only seems to come up in fiction.)
Each tutorial segment is introduced with clear instructions about the difficulty level of the effect, as well as the supplies required. But so far, the emphasis is on the digital, not the physical. Film Riot’s VFX techniques are created by and tailored to Adobe After Effects (which is practically the only company on Earth not sponsoring the show), but the principles could be translated to other applications easily enough — at least, as far as I (a relative post-production n00b) can tell.
I asked two VFX pros to check out the episode, and both of them thought the demos were well-crafted, though one recommended Video Copilot and Video Effects for Directors as superior tutorial alternatives. Both agreed that these are not demos for beginners to using the software, though, even if the techniques being demonstrated are pretty basic.
It’s impossible not to compare Film Riot with NextNewNetworks’ IndyMogul: same general subject matter, same targeted audience, same comedy/tutorial hybrid format. In an effort to evaluate the two, I dug up IndyMogul’s own lightsaber-building episode, which is much shorter than Film Riot’s (padded as the latter is by a much longer comedy sketch and sponsor break).
But IndyMogul farms out a lot of its instruction to relevant web sites, especially when it comes to the lightsaber VFX, focusing instead on the actual physical creation of an extremely realistic lightsaber handle. Film Riot, meanwhile, went to WalMart and bought a plastic handle, reserving the bulk of its energy for the actual creation of the lightsaber effect. It could be argued that this would be the approach most indie filmmakers would also adopt, perhaps indicating that Riot is more in tune with its audience. But honestly, IndyMogul’s demonstrations of practical effects are more fun to watch.
So in the ensuing months, we may see conflict between the two springing up within the independent-filmmaker-watching-online-video-demos community. But much like how most nerds don’t have trouble enjoying both Star Trek and Star Wars, there’s probably room in that community for both.
