Stan Rogow, CEO of Electric Farm Entertainment and director of the company's large-scale made-for-the-Web series Gemini Division, says he knows exactly when he realized the time for such a show had arrived. His son, now 15, had asked Rogow if he watched a show called CSI. "I told him I do,'" Rogow recalls, "and then I said, 'I didn't know you watched CSI. Where do you watch it?' 'On my computer,' he said. 'You know it's on CBS, right?' I asked my son. And he didn't know that! Well, right there, I thought, 'This is it.' The time for original content on the Internet was at hand."

Gemini Division—distributed by NBC.com and available on their site and at geminidivision.com—is more involved than most of the network content on the Web right now. It's not bunch of "Webisodes" built around an established TV show or a replay of such a show. It is original content with a name-brand star (Rosario Dawson) designed to be seen on the Internet.

Rosario Dawson (Grindhouse, Killshot) stars in the 50-episode cop show with a science-fiction twist, whose episodes are each three to five minutes long. The show is shot in HD entirely on a large greenscreen stage at GMT Studios in Marina del Rey by seasoned cinematographers Robert Seaman and David Klein and a group of very experienced technicians. Nearly all sets and props are the creation of 3D animators in post. Rogow directs and Art Director Duane Loose oversees the look of the live-action setups as well as the virtual world.

Seaman, who took over when Klein had to move onto another job a few weeks into production, shoots A-camera footage in HDCAM on a Sony HDW-F900. B-camera is a Panasonic AG-HVX200 that records 720p to P2 cards. B-camera also shoots footage that will be seen inside the show's screens (computers and cell phones).

Editor Bryan Irving brings all the material into Final Cut Pro (running on Apple Mac Pentium workstations) in that software's 720p HD codec. Sometimes during the input he will make use of the 1080 resolution of the HDCAM to allow him to push into a frame to reposition something or create a zoom effect without having to down-res footage. "We'll reframe shots that are too wide or add some motion, and we can go into the F900 frames about 30 percent and still be higher resolution than the 720 we finish to," he says.

Seaman stresses that the made-for-the-Internet series was hardly simple or low-tech. The delivery spec required material that could work on screens from a cell phone to broadcast HDTV to Blu-ray disc. "Shooting Gemini Division required all the skills I have accumulated through years as a cinematographer," he says, "and we had a very a very experienced gaffer and key grip. The whole crew had to be excellent. There was a huge volume of work to get done quickly. There was no sitting around making decisions about where a key light goes or where to place the camera or how much exposure we'd need. We needed to have a digital imaging technician to make sure the greenscreen always read at 50 percent and that there was no spillover onto actors. Focus in HD can quickly go between extreme sharpness and really not sharp. We had to make sure the focus was perfect and there were no back focus issues so the pins—the point of light in an actor's eyes—were never soft."

Seaman and Klein used no filtration in front of the lens, primarily to give the animators and compositors as clean an image as possible. "We used lighting that could both integrate with the [virtual] sets and ensure that all the actors looked their best," he says. "I'd use Sky Pans to light the upper part of the greenscreen, space lights somewhere on the floor, and then hang three or four 2Ks from the grid. Then on the floor we would use large soft sources like 10Ks and Nine-Lights coming in from the sides through grid cloth and maybe also through some 216 diffusion. It made practical sense to light from the side, but it also went with the look the director and art director wanted of dramatic half-lighting."

They shot the 50 episodes over eight weeks, treating the whole thing as a single feature in the sense that they would shoot entirely out of sequence as setup and makeup or costuming needs dictated. "The thing that allowed us to keep moving so fast was this script," says Seaman. "It was really a script and a bible for the look of the series from start to finish. It was literally five inches thick! But we could always consult and know very quickly where we were in the series and what was required."

Irving, who edited all 50 episodes with a single assistant, says that he, too, relied on the intricately detailed script to move fast and know what was expected for every scene. "A lot of the style is really in the script. It's pretty specific as far as what the backgrounds and locations should look like at the end. We're working with actors against greenscreen, so you have to imagine what everyone's surrounding will look like. Then we would treat what we did almost as an animatic for the animators and compositors to start working on when we'd finish our part of an episode."

Much of the financing of the show comes from what Rogow refers to as "very seamless product integration." Companies including Microsoft, Intel, UPS and Acura pay to have their brands be seen in Gemini Division's world. "We work hard to make it about the story and have the products make sense within that. I think our audience is very savvy about that kind of thing."

Rogow takes pride in Gemini Division having a strong story with high-quality acting and technical excellence. "Every episode has a beginning, a middle and an end," he says. "It's not just one scene. It has to be compelling on its own, advance the plot and the characters, and have a cliffhanger. And all that in four and a half pages! Everyone involved is very professional and has pride in their craft. If you want integrity in the final product, that's very important. This show is so far away from someone putting a camera on a tripod, acting like a goofball and posting it on You Tube."