Venus Rises first webisode Ikarus available

The first episode of science-fiction series "Venus Rises" is now available on vidcast. "Ikarus" is a short film prequel to Venus Rises Series 1. Viewers can watch "Ikarus" Here. The main url for the project is http://www.venusrises.com/ where you can find all sorts of information about the project. This is what I have been able to glean from the website about the series:

• "Venus Rises" is an independent science-fiction vidcast series by J.G.Birdsall. The year is 2050. Earth was devastated by a chain of cataclysmic events leading to a pandemic collapse of governments. The human race colonize Mars and Venus, narrowly escaping with technology amassed by mega-corporations during Earth's final days. As Venus becomes home to the working class, and Mars the seat of power, two friends enlisted in the Mars Defense Directorate uncover the first signs of civil unrest. Humankind finds itself once again at the crossroads of extinction.

Ok that being said, I have watched it and can now review it. I really have to make a couple of points. The internet and therefor the web is certainly not a new incarnation. In the early day, yes, the whole system was the wild west so to speak, large big name sites were far outweighed by the hobbyist, hacker and scammers. Original material was truly forward thinking and deserved every bit of support that could be garnered. But at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, many parts of the web are getting long in the tooth and for the most part its a pretty staid mall. Major studios and network work in tandem with their web counterparts. In general this gives us choices of high quality entertainment....for the most part. In the past the wildcat producer was constrained by lack of fund, expertise and equipment, but their offerings were balanced of the bleeding edge of tech. Wild cat producers today have pretty much the same constraints, but for a different reason. The expertise is there, the equipment readily available and funds, well considering that the cost per minute for production is vastly lower due to the fact that so much can be produced in the very powerful computer equipment available for pennies...its not as much a major concern as it used to be. If your an independent producer today on the internet, its because you HAVE to or WANT to. But conversely the output does not HAVE to be less than acceptable. Sanctuary shows us that professionally made programming is possible with little more than an actor and a green screen. When I see SanFran invaded by Star Wars on YouTube, produced by a single person with a digital recorder and a working knowledge of digital production and editing....and find it damn good. Or when I see parodies of Tron done with Cardboard for Christ sake and find it wildly entertaining I realize that the internet viewer no longer has to be equated with sub par production. So with Venus Rising I find that what would have been viewed as ground breaking 10 years ago, merely comes off as painfully quaint. Maybe if VR wasn't reaching so high. If it placed itself right in amongst the fan produced Star Trek movies, it certainly would not be out of place. The graphics are on par with a quickly produced video game, The sets are overly dark and poorly lit, the dialog is poorly mixed - overly loud and then inaudibly quiet - which leads me to think the actors were all wearing mics and no boom operator... the dialog has characters thinking out loud to themselves and at times seems to be pervy 13 year olds. One minute drooling over the lone female and next calling off closing distances on a screen. yes, I am afraid I flinched quite a bit.

So... independent content is always of interest so go check it out. Don't go in expecting too much and you probably will have an entertaining few minutes.