$300 Sci-Fi YouTube Video Lands $30m Movie Deal 315
krou writes "A producer from Uruguay who made a short science fiction film and uploaded it to YouTube has landed a film deal with Sam Raimi's Ghost House worth $300 million. The film, which shows spaceships and giant robots attacking Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, was made by Fede Alvarez for around $30. 'I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios,' he said. Alvarez is to develop and direct a film based on one of his ideas, but there is no word yet on the writer."
About time (Score:3, Insightful)
Further proof that Hollywood is running out of good ideas, and must turn to new sources.
Re:About time (Score:2, Insightful)
and why complain where they get their ideas if it is a good film?
For me, this is just an example of it becoming easier for smaller artists/designers/producers etc to be able to show themselves on the world stage, nothing more.
Re:About time (Score:4, Insightful)
Further proof that Hollywood is running out of good ideas, and must turn to new sources.
Proof that Hollywood has a lot more more to fear from this trend on the internet than than just copyright infringement... the more amateur file makers gain recognition and rewards - the better quality their films will become. Diluting eyeballs and eroding profit margins for Hollywood. Yay!
Real costs (Score:5, Insightful)
As awesome as that video is - and it is pretty damn awesome, let there be no mistake about that - I suspect that it only cost $300 if he's considering the time of himself and his friends to be worth zero. (I'm assuming the group scenes were the result of getting a bunch of buddies together.)
I'd be interested to know how many hours of his own time were spent on that.
However, it is pretty awesome and the mere fact that he can do stuff like that with his limited resources is a sign that he may well deserve that money.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy did a great job with the special effects, but story wise - meh.
So... what's your point?
It has no story. Aliens or robots kill humans is not a story and it's been done to death.
It's a very pretty video of a special effects demo.
I'm impressed by the special effects and not impressed by his story telling ability.
I can't think of any other way to put it.
Nice effects - and good first scene (Score:3, Insightful)
How many hundreds of hours does it take to create something like this?
To his credit... (Score:4, Insightful)
To his credit, the plot of the YouTube video was a lot more interesting than around 80% of the movies that Hollywood does churn out these days.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:3, Insightful)
but, but, he got a movie deal out of it and only spent $300 bucks? what have you done lately?
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2, Insightful)
What development do you want him to do in a 5 minute piece?
I guess if his goal was to impress you with his storytelling ability he failed, but if it was to advertise his vision to Hollywood, he succeeded.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Otherwise, point taken.
Re:$300 is not the real price (Score:5, Insightful)
That price clearly does not include the value of his time or any number of other things
The value of your time is whatever someone is paying you for it. If nobody is paying you for it, then that time is worth $0. It almost certainly has a non-monetary worth, but you don't add that to your budget tally.
For a direct comparison, when the contractor working on my house bills me for 20 hours at $30, and tells me that he donated 3 hours to fix a mistake he made or because he was being anal retentive about getting something perfect, my bill is $600. Those extra three hours, hypothetically worth $30 each, actually cost $0.
Just call it a hobby project or something, but don't claim it only cost $300.
It certainly was a hobby project, yet I don't see why that means it couldn't have been made for $300. My contractor isn't doing it as a hobby, it's his livelihood, yet the same rules apply.
Alvarez Doesn't Get 30M (Score:5, Insightful)
The project is budgeted at 30M.
This is Alvarez's first project, probably no agent, definitely no actors attached to it, so they will probably give him an 'advance' and then lots of interdependent if-then conditionals. He won't get any on-screen credits. (That sets off a bunch of payouts the producer normally keeps) Then one of two things happen to a first-time writer/creator.
1. The conditionals are never met. Alvarez keeps his pittance of an advance and makes a little beer money. This is normally how it works for a project off the street.
2. The producer reinterprets the contract or has some sort of magical contractual difficulty with Alvarez if the project is successful. Alvarez then might see his five figures after a few rounds in court and 6-figure legal bills.
Check out the legal wrangling on 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' as an example. According to the producer, that was an 'unprofitable' film. Welcome to business deals in Hollywood.
What did Raimi see in this guy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Could be someone is pulling a fast one on this guy?
There is nothing in the film that shows any originality or creativity in ideas. It seems like a amateur copy of scenes from "War of the Worlds" and "Independence Day".
So, what did Hollywood Studios see in this guy?
That he can make a hacky special effects film for $300? Even there, anyone can see that if you used the proper accounting methods, the budget was probaly way more than $300. All those crowds running was previously shot and reused dfootage. If he had to perform original shooting of those scenes, the budget would go way over $300. Same goes for the explosions and other special effects. He probably spent a long time on creating those but did not include the dollar value of that time which typically would add thousands of dollars to the film's budget. So, I am not seeing what he brought to the table.
Those fan-created Star Trek episodes have more going for them than this.
The day is coming where we don't need holywood (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a new idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Further proof that Hollywood is running out of good ideas, and must turn to new sources.
It's not even new - it's "War of the Worlds" and "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" mixed together.
The guy did a great job with the special effects, but story wise - meh.
Golloywierd will throw in some hot chick in short shorts and lots of cleavage and it'll make a few hundred million.
Mod parent up and GP down. It's very nicely done, but the only "good idea" here is having the robots attack South America instead of North America this time. Clearly he was doing a tech demo tribute to several large (and mediocre) recent Hollywood movies.
Re:Nice vid and all, but I've seen that movie befo (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not a new idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Stan Lee, Peter Jackson and many others had trouble getting their alleged fair share of the $$$ from Hollywood.
Re:Real costs (Score:4, Insightful)
It only cost $300. It also had opportunity cost, which is not something that can be calculated reliably. If his other opportunities for that time would all have gained him $0, then his opportunity cost was $0. In this economic climate, that's a distinct possibility.
Re:PR/Viral marketing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering that he had a "flood" of offers in his email before most of the world even heard of it? Yeah, I'd say it's a PR stunt.
Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
What? Other than FX, which hollywood is pretty good at, what exactly does this film show?
That at least one of the barriers to market entry (the cost of producing good FX) is much lower than many people expect. Lower barriers to market entry mean more competition, potentially, which could be good for us lazy consumers either through lowering the cost of our entertainment or, preferably, increasing the variety of it.
Why might it improve variety? Good FX this cheap means there is one less thing standing between some impoverished writer/directer with good ideas and opportunities for him/her to see those ideas brought to fruition without having to involve the big money people who will panel beat the ideas into a lifeless mush designed not to put off any of the lowest common denominator audience by asking them to think and/or feel something they haven't thought/felt many times before from watching the homogenised output the industry is often lambasted for. The FX don't need to be giant robots - if things keep moving this way (and I don't see why they shouldn't) in the near future anyone with the right ideas+talent+time could create a full CGI production (removing set and sound studio expenses and reducing casting issues) of any type, not just SciFi/fantasy.
In short, this guy has achieved something impressive on a very low budget. Given his achievement, even while accepting it isn't perfect by any means, don't you wonder what he and/or other people could do in future with more time+budget?
Why no support for a low budget phillipino horror (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$300 is not the real price (Score:3, Insightful)
The value of your time is whatever someone is paying you for it. If nobody is paying you for it, then that time is worth $0. It almost certainly has a non-monetary worth, but you don't add that to your budget tally.
No, there's this thing called opportunity cost that can be used to value a hobbyist's time. For instance, if I can get $8/hr on Saturdays working at a coffeeshop instead of playing computer games, then it's worth at least $8/hr for me to spend that hour blasting virtual monsters with virtual rockets instead of making tasty espresso for impatient customers.
Re:Nice vid and all, but I've seen that movie befo (Score:3, Insightful)
"...it's the kind of thing anyone with a few weeks of experience with 3D animation would try to avoid..."
Or they tried to make the movie effects as accurate as possible.
It is called Wind Shear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_shear [wikipedia.org]
It is the reason people are told to buckle up in airplanes when they are nowhere near landing. Doppler radar can catch it even though it is not visible to the naked eye (unless it contains particles that are visible) and thus the pilots know it is coming. Unbuckled people have been killed being tossed about in airliners because of it.
You Have Wil Wheaton Derangement Syndrome (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy did a great job! 300 bucks, uploaded to Youtube, and he gets a Hollywood gig out it!! It's the Cherished Daydream of half the digital video hacks on this board -- maybe the whole 'Net. And you're going to hate on him because you think it's merely "a very pretty video of a special effects demo."
God bless this sonuvabitch. Let's see you do better.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen people tell a story with a still photo.
Yes I agree but I've seen really bad movies that are overflowing with plot holes, such as Transformers 2, gross 832,747,337 worldwide making it the third-highest grossing film of 2009 as of October 13, 2009. Hollywood is not an Artistic consortium.
Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers_2 [wikipedia.org]
You are missing the point (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:About time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:About time (Score:3, Insightful)
It probably also doesn't include the cost of the render farm needed to render something like that for the big screen. There's a big difference in the number of pixels on a youtube video versus the number of pixels on the silver screen, and while his CGI was very good (better than I've seen even 5 years ago in some Hollywood-produced movies), the audiences have very high expectations for quality. If you're going to render the CGI for a feature-length film made for the big screen on a desktop computer, expect it to take a while.
Making a movie costs so much money because of the time that gets put into it, because of the actors who feel justified asking $20m for a cameo appearance, and because of the cost of materials and publicity.
Missing the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm thinking you're missing the point. If I were Hollywood, I'd be interested in this not because of the plot or the acting, but because the guy made a pretty impressive scene with lots of pretty sophisticated special effects on a shoestring budget.
If I were Sam Raimi, I'd be thinking, "If he can do that for $500, even if $500 is exaggerated and it actually cost him a grand or two, then for $300 million, I could probably get a hell of a lot more bang (literally) for my bucks than I'd get using traditional Hollywood special effects studios."
The "cgi bonanza" is likely precisely what they're interested in, not the shakeycam or acting.
Turns out he is a big PR man - check his showreel (Score:3, Insightful)
Turns out he's a big PR agency guy - makes adverts for Pepsi and the like presumably for national prime time tv, for some sized budget. So it's not so much "young art school student and mates make $300 movie and gets lucky" more like "talented, experienced, well connected ad. movie maker in the media business makes fun film in spare time when he's not directing SFX heavy corporate videos and gets a step up to making feature films". More of a case of media people talking to each other than famous director's teenaged son asking his dad to watch something kewl him and his mates are all watching at school. Check his website showreel.
But fair play to the man. Still got a bit of a break. Go for it. I am really liking the fact that aliens are landing somewhere other than New York or LA for a change. (if you were aliens I wonder how you'd choose where to land? biggest cities? means Mexico and India have to be in with a shout!). District 9 had some nice African angles, I'd be interested to see how a Uruguayan angled sci-fi film might look.