“Earthfall” (Pilot)
An object falls from the sky and spreads radiation over North America. Homeland Security Agents are dispatched to investigate and contain the damage. What they find will have implications for the entire world.
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Original 'Cosmonaut' logo by Claudio Oliverio must not appear without attribution.
Great Job peeps
Can’t wait for the next episode. I really like the subjet matter and I am sure the ‘slickness’ production wise will come with the next few episodes and kill the niggles.
Will get a donation off to you soon.
Brad
Looking for Orchestral Music for further Projects? I am a Composer from Germany with the abilitys and the Equipment to do some things for Projects in the Future.
Ask me.
Greetings Vasquez
Vasquez
It was great, i downloaded the pilot at lime wire and i can’t wait for more. I will tell all my friends about it! Good work!
Ellen
Hi there!
Stecman’s comments are very detailed and i can only emphasize his points. I will elaborate a little so you have an example. The scene at the beginning were the three astronomers (by the way do not mix up astrology and astronomy. if you need elaboration with such things send me an email, i am an astronomer 
catch the probe in their survey. When the two younger colleagues are called by the older one suddenly only two can be seen by the camera. That is irritating to say the least. One knows there is someone but he is cut out on purpose. To make things worse, when he starts talking the focus begins to jump back and forth between the active persons. I assume you wanted to make this calm scene a more dramatic but don’t do it by sending your audience puking due to vertigo, pleeeeze. No fast movements at short distances, it does not increase the experience. Nice joke at the end of the scene, though 
I know you will improve through exercise and i hope you get to shot a lot of scenes in the future, your ideas are awesome.
Just wanted to make some comments on the great job you are doing. I have donated $5 to push your cause forward
David
This was good enough to make me donate.
I fiddle around in the open source 3d animation program Blender quite a bit. I know I could do better SFX than you, and I am not that good. I suggest you try to recruit from blenderartists. http://blenderartists.org/cms/
Feel free to contact me if you need some 3d-effects though, depending on how complex you need it I might have the time and energy to try and whip up something.
David Jansson
I just finished watching the pilot, and have to say, I am wishing for more episodes, and soon!
This has an excellent plot line for its audience (mainly of geeks) that can be developed quite well. The distribution via BitTorrent is a phenomenal idea, and I hope that your project really takes off.
Thank you!
Andrew Schwartzmeyer
There is a problem with the reflection at around 13:05. In the reflection, the woman
is on the right. But in “real life” she is on the left. At one point I thought we were
seeing the view out the window as seen from someone inside, but then the male lead
waves to the to doctor inside the window, and he comes out. So it definitely is supposed to be a reflection seen from the outside. It needs to be flipped 180
degrees (I suppose it was shot from the inside perspective).
I second the comments made previously. Excessive use of the handicam is not very cinematic. And quick movements, spinning around, etc., are definitely vertigo inducing. Try emulating Hitchcock (i.e., montage) rather than Kubrick.
ManekiNeko
could someone from the distribution side of the project contact me please?
James
No pilot episode is perfect. The “astrological” goof was cringeworthy, the episode got off to a slightly awkward start, some of the pacing was off, and some leaps of logic need to be better explained. It’s early days and despite the flaws, there’s an interesting story beginning to unfold – I can’t wait to see the next episode!
However, please, please improve the non-torrent support! After some frustrating attempts to either download or stream from non-torrent sources I was about to give up until I found a subtitled full episode on YouTube (thanks to tavin15). It would be great if future episodes could also be released in full on YouTube… in the original unsubtitled form
All the best with future episodes!
John C
Loved the pilot, can’t wait for the next installment…. also gives much needed perspectives on some cold war attributes… perhaps putting the equally nutty ideas of the US at the time would also be a good idea!? Star Wars lasers in orbit as a good example…
Stuart Brown
I’m also a user of audio sutie Logic… could contribute to soundtrack/foley/music if you’re interested
Cheers
Stuart Brown
Nice guys, Nice!
I can’t wait to see the next episode, great work!
coschi
It seems similar to “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein, about a young man born on Mars, comes to Earth, teaches us to ‘Grok’. I hope the similarity ends there.
Bucksix
umm… the ending quotes Baikonur Cosmodrome, Star City!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what the F****
baikonur is in kazhakstan, star city is near moscow
clepto
Nice, I like the story.
It’s nicely done considering your budget, but I noticed the absence of people besides the actors – the scenes sometimes felt a bit deserted – also, some rooms were a bit empty, or rather seemed unnused.
Markus
Dialog a bit cheesy in places. Technical errors as noted above. But I found it easy to suspend disbelief and immerse myself in the plot – which totally rocks. Saw some comments about the music being good – I’ll have to go back and re-watch because I really didn’t notice the music (which I think is a good thing – music is supposed to add atmosphere without being obvious about doing so
Currently I see 14,600 seeders on the lower resolution Xvid torrent pushing the movie to 1,712 new recipients. 177,197 completions! I hope they all enjoy it as much as I did.
Tony
I wanna see more, the story is catchy, intriguing…
Camera… needs some work, this story/set doesnt suit the handheld style…
Sound… you´ll make it better in the next episode
Set, costumes and looks of the actors could be cleaned up a tad bit. I doubt that even the lowest of the low in any governmental agency sits in an office where most walls are untrated concrete… even most parking garages has their walls treated… And probably throw in a few objects more, or is this the new agenda to finally get rid of clutter in federal offices, just dont let them have anything that can cause clutter!
In the end, I really feel that Pioneer can be a thrill
Tor
I loved the pilot, if I say as he does send a donation as soon as possible, greetings from Argentina
Leonardo
when i did see the ad on the pirate bay i was skeptic
i thought, almost no money i can’t be that good, but if you look behind the dizzying camera work,
you see a good story
thanks for sowing this i can’t wait till the next episode.
patie
Finnish subtitles, if you want to add link to your website: http://www.subiarkisto.org/subiarkisto.php?action=file&id=5555
sledge
I love it. I can’t wait to see more. Congratulations.
Garth
Dumb question. How do you play back the downloaded file? What format is it?
Zzz
This was totally excellent!!! We can’t wait for episode 2!!! Who is our cosmonaut friend and how did he get to Earth? Will he be up and talking in episode 2???
Ultrawoman
I really enjoyed your first of many episodes. Looking for forward to the next. I can see where this going already. Keep it coming.
Steve of Australia
I just posted a blog on this at andrewschwartzmeyer.com, I’m hoping I can attract a few more viewers.
Andrew Schwartzmeyer
Wonderful! Thank you so much. Looking forward to more!
Gorelog
Stumbled over the torrent by chance, hadn’t heard of it but the indie-scifi premise made for torrent sounded interesting.
First of all, congrats on actually making a full episode. The logistics of that alone is admirable. That’s the main pro, the other is that the story seems like a good idea for a scifi story. But then the cons start flooding in.
Firstly. The main plot, while interesting, is somehow always somewhere else it seems. Everything that sounds cool to have seen has already taken place where the camera wasn’t located. Instead we are presented to a cast of characters mumbling about something I don’t care about while mentioning the things that I would have rather wanted to see.
I am grateful that the characters where sufficiently diverse in looks so that I wasn’t confused as to who was what, but then again some genuine personalities would also made me care a bit for them. Far too often I started drifting off for a minute or two, realizing my drift and returning finding that things where just like when my mind left… to look at the wall. My, that wall has an interesting texture. I wonder if this takes place underground. I wonder if this whole facility is employed with only these two… oh my god a character!
Which brings me to the next thing. The camerawork. I see that you are going for a lean-mean style of shooting with only one shakeycam-setup per scene. But without top notch actors and a masterfull script, there’s gonna be a lot of transportation-stretches with that approach. Stuff that just goes on while waiting for the next beat. The worst examples are just that, when the camera starts to pan over some concrete and we are litteraly staring at a shakey wall for half a minute. My suggestion, break a rule. Start jumpcutting if you don’t have cutaways or alternate angles to utilize. It would speed up the slow parts, the urgency would come across better and you could still have some long running shots in a few select scenes. Those would be more impactful in that case I reckon.
Also, it’s in my experience that making whole scenes in one shot tends to slow a production down more than multiple setup scenes. So if it’s for budgetary reasons that the format was chosen I advice strongly against it. instead, invest in a secondary camera for coverage at least to lessen the jump-part of jumpcutting.
Then there are pure goofs and pratfalls and leaps of logic in some cases and in other scenes the characters refuses to acknowledge the blatantly obvious. And holy cow, is that the cameramans shoes I’m looking at in the shot down the stairs?! Those shoes and the off-screen voice in the beginning made me wonder if maybe the camera was supposedly a character that we’re seeing from 1st person. I was even toying with the idea that the camerawork was a documentary-shooter a la The Office. To say the least it distracted me from the story you were trying to tell with the magic marker on the iMac screen.
But again, I recognize that a serious amount of effort went into this from all parts. But as it stands right now I would want a whole lot of changes in structure and style before I start following this or going so far as to donate. Mostly I would want less telling and more showing.
I hope I don’t sound too negative, I applaud this achievement since it made me watch the whole episode and then after that, I looked up the wikipedia-page, this official page, reading all of the comments above and then taking time to write all of this I just wrote that I will look back on tomorrow and wonder what I’m blabbering on about. I wouldn’t go through all that for a crappy YTP-video.
Cheers and keep it up!
Johan Malmsten
One question here:
You are using h264 codec and vodo says it’s been downloaded circa 450000, right.
Aren’t you violate MPEGLA license for h264??
spc
Congrats on making the $20.000,- mark! We’ll be waiting for episodes 2,3 and 4!
Mark
Thank you for another more helpful post.
Vedeževanje
Great episode, one the first great new sci-fi shows I have watched in a long time because this could be real. I can’t wait to see the next episode(s), is there an ETA on when that might be? Again wonderful job and I look forward to seeing more of this in the future!
Grant
I watched this episode and I have a few things to say about it.
AUDIO:
The music is good. It’s more than sufficient and is properly used to set the mood. Thumbs up.
The dialogue however, sounds muffled and is sometimes difficult to hear. Please work on that. Especially in the beginning it came across as a home video, which is a damn shame.
VIDEO:
The handheld shots take some getting used to. In other (professional) series it’s a bit distracting, and I feel this is not the exception. It feels like you’re a general onlooker, and in some situations for example in chaos, that’s fine, but sometimes it bordered nauseating. The colours are very pleasant to watch, though, and I strongly encourage you keep that palette going.
The sets are minimalistic, and I guess that’s fine given the zero-dollars budget you guys are working with. It gives me a message of some underground group of people. A bit like the X-Files with all the warmth sucked out of it. So far I haven’t got any complaints about the looks. We could see more of it, though. I miss proper establishing shots. Sometimes I feel kind of lost in the room.
WRITING:
The dialogue is nice. There’s a quip here and there, the characters are smartasses (I loved the “there was no fax”-part), and it definitely has potential. However, the plot feels quite flimsy and I actually got a bit tired watching the episode. It could use more meat. Show more, talk less, please.
Suspension of disbelief is sometimes a bit too far stretched.
Forty-something languages? Really? Please, a bit more modesty. Can’t you say twelve or fifteen?
Where did that leap come from? Am I supposed to believe that one guy just remembered some Russian words the cosmonaut shouted at him when he doesn’t even speak Russian? And this woman totally construe the meaning from it? There’s a giant leap there.
And the revelation that it was a child born on Mars. The first thing I thought was that it was ridiculous, and that’s not a good sign. I don’t know anything about how the cosmonauts got there, how they lived etc. That they have set foot there is something I can accept, but I’ll just have to expect that they lived in this hostile environment for decades AND had a kid? Who returned to earth?
Stuff like has me scratching my head, but there’s definitely a lot of potential in here considering it’s a 0-budget series. Just my two cents. So in short:
Pros:
+ Fitting music
+ Decent acting
+ Nice quips
Cons:
- Mediocre camerawork
- Dialogue not always clear
- Logical leaps and stretching suspension of disbelief too far
TagDaze
..single cpu, cannot play .mkv ;(
Eternal.Hermit
Loved it!
Aleks
The 40 languages remark was a sarcastic comment, it was supposed to mean “a lot”, not to be taken literally. And of course if they explained in the pilot how the child was born and survived on Mars there’d be no need for the rest of the series…
I thought it was extremely well done considering it only cost $6k, but I too got the feeling it was trying a bit too much to be like a generic US drama. That stupid banter they have just seems silly to the rest of the world (and maybe even within the US, I’d be really surprised if you guys spoke among yourselves like that), and ok, I get that he likes coffee but you don’t have to keep going on about it. The pacing was a little slow, but that’s a criticism I have about most shows. I think it was good that you didn’t put the “scientists” in stereotypical white labcoats, after all, most of us look down on mainstream shows for doing that.
All in all I think it was a fantastic effort, I only donated $25 but will donate again when the next three episodes come out – if nothing else I think this method of production is the way of the future so I’m happy to support it as much as I can!
Adam
Follow-up to previous post about the picture being too dark. I moved it over to my Mac and it looks great. Not too dark. So now I wonder what’s wrong with my PC setup. I was playing it using the VLC media player as it was the only player I could find to play the MKV envelope. It might be useful to have some advice on how to best play this video.
Peace,
Rob:-]
RobShaver
Well crap. I see my “previous post” did not get posted. When it didn’t show up immediately I assumed it was a moderated comment stream. I don’t have the energy to recreate it now.
RobShaver
Thxs Johan Malmsten for expressing so perfectly what i was mumbling myself about this first episode.
Members & Cast of the Pioneer show, i hope u listen to every comment done in pioneerone.tv and vodo.com (like the one that Johan expressed), because there are some strong recommendations and advice for you improving the show.
Digital Jedi
You should release torrents for iPod versions for the rest of the series! Great job, keep it up
Torrents
Im a convert! just wattched it!i love it
Nellyz
I just watched the pilot…and immediately donated $25. Very impressive. The acting’s not bad, after you get past the rather wooden scene at the observatory…you could have edited out the long silences during the phone conversation with the dude at the golf club, though. But you guys really need to get a second camera: the panning shots back and forth from one actor to another are just painful.
PS: you also need to add a $50 donation option. I came to the donation page intending to give you $50, but since the only options were $25 and $100, you got $25. (I suppose could have donated $25 twice, but why should I give PayPal/banks two lots of currency conversion fees?)
Paul
Just started watching it now – looks promising. There’s some picture breakup of the type I sometimes see during a TV broadcast on terrestrial digital. I’m wondering why this should happen?
John Edwards
Watched the entire episode and it’s very good – has the makings of a great story. Was it shot on film or video? There was a lot of picture break up though and that only happens with a broken broadcast signal or dirty recording heads. It needs to be fixed
John Edwards
Damn. How tired i`am about all this “russian” bullshit. Well, I saw mach more of stupidity, but can U at least read somth, before repeating all this talestories about bread, vodka and clearing snow in Siberia?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
its in english? so there shouldn`t be any troubles for U to read.
The plot is intresting, but i fear it wil be ruined by ignorance. I hope it`s just my imagination.
slicem
Nice work! However, there is a mistake at the begining of the pilot… you shouldn’t have said “astrological survey” but “astronomical survey”.
Laurentiu
Good first episode. But I’m with Laurentiu on that “astrological survey” should have been “astronomical survey”. It should have been caught before the episode was released. Other than that… Great job!
Gert
not bad but if u wanna make professional internet-donation movie u should be more carefull with screenplay. before makin episode why not to googling the web and check the screenplay weak information places? The Baikonoor and Star City are not in Russia for example they in Kazahstan and not all Russians drinkin vodka especially in Soviet Nucliar Defence
With all this film looks like movie for children.
Roman Frolov
And Annoyed Canadian has the point. If U wanna make Pioneer One as Z-category film only for “American Idiots” (for not many number thanks God
) don’t listen 2 us. Star City near the Moscow not at the Kazahstanian Baiconoor.
Roman Frolov
Hi guys,
Very nice job.
I loved the Pilot.
I intend to donate soon.
I have disclosed Pioneer One to all my friends.
Congratulations from Brazil.
Alexandre
Nice episode! Started a little slow, which I would caution you against in the next episode, but I totally respect the desire to let the story play out at its own pace. Good acting. Good camera work. Ignore the folks who suggested you operate with two cameras. The pans were very well done.
Overall, good job!
Angelo