Feature Film Made In GTA IV
from the film-world-is-changing dept
Nearly a decade ago, we talked about how the concept of machinima was becoming more mainstream, and plenty has happened since then. People have made all sorts of cool stuff within video games. Slashdot points us to a short blog post by someone pointing out how it's becoming cheaper than ever to make movies these days, and points out a few great examples. The first one is a feature-length film made entirely in GTA IV. Stupidly, we can't embed it here, because apparently there's a Universal Music song in there, and Universal is requiring that the video only be shown on YouTube, so that it can monetize it. It seems pretty ridiculous that Universal would get the only money from YouTube on a 90-minute film.Separately, that original blog post has a short film made for $300 that has pretty damn impressive special effects for that little money:
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How else could they afford the software to do this for effectively nothing?
Makes me wonder sometimes about the two faced nature of TD.
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That ignoring that PC's are not bought for film production exclusively and nor is the digital cameras and assuming they did go to the high end of the spectrum which is unlikely the price comes down if the camera used was a simple digital one without any great features that you can buy for around $100, I did motion tracking in cheap digital cameras is not that hard.
Anyone with a computer and a camera any camera can do some beautiful things today.
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Money is not the issue, work done is.
This is a lesson to everybody complaining that they don't have the money to do it, they don't need the money they need people willing to work for something, that is all they need.
If we want to solve problems people need to realize now that governments won't help them and greedy people behind companies won't also, they need to start working and producing their own solutions.
Helthcare, food, shelter and quality of living can all be done by the people, the government is indispensable for protection that is all they are good at.
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So, is it so inconceivable that talented/knowledgeable people are dedicating their valuable time to create something of value that they'll give away, simply because they derive pleasure from creating?
It's the same kind of motivation that keeps Wikipedia and open source going, which appears not to be in short supply on the internet.
I find it quite fascinating tbh: creators are connecting and self-organising online, and in many cases they are actively competing against established companies. Art is also catching up, and perhaps in the near future we'll see feature films with CGI produced entirely by a distributed team of volunteers...
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"in the near future we'll see feature films with CGI produced entirely by a distributed team of volunteers"
Really, it has already happened. But you didn't hear about it.
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So how much money would you add to the tally of $300, if the people worked on the project for free, because they loved to do it?
And I'm thinking they already had the software on their computers, either from school or such, so that doesn't count towards the cost.
BTW, why ARE we discussing how understated the costs are on these kinds of movies.
Bottom line is, you don't need a trillion dollar budget to make a decent movie. SFX don't need to cost that much, I mean my jaw hit the floor when they showed Mel's special ability, the only seemingly wobbly thing was the floating arrow. THAT's the disruptor in this case.
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Despite the old saying that "money is time," time only has a monetary cost if you put a price on it. I, like many others on the internet, don't mind donating some of my free time for free to improve a distributed project. If you think about it, even YOU are using up your time posting comments on a forum -- will you be sending Mike an IOU?
"Really, it has already happened. But you didn't hear about it."
Very probably true, however like I said I've yet to hear of such a project competing with the established players (THAT I would have heard, I think).
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wtf
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Good gods, man. What was the actual cost of you posting that comment? Your computer and internet bill must make it expensive, and we haven't even gotten into the costs of raising and educating you.
Why would you comment without hope of being properly reimbursed?
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"in the near future we'll see feature films with CGI produced entirely by a distributed team of volunteers"
Really, it has already happened. But you didn't hear about it.
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Really, it has already happened. But you didn't hear about it.
What is your point?
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There you are, spending your time, and no one is paying you for it.
Has anyone ever considered the cost of people watching movies? Hundreds of unpaid people in a theater. Who is going to shell out the cash to keep those people in the seats?
/Can't someone just do something for fun?
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Myself included. And I've actually made AND sold two independent feature films, spending cumulatively about 6 years of my life on them, and while they did return the investors $$$, I never made a cent off them - including never recouping my own deferred salary as a producer.
Worth it? Not really.
I would have far rather have made a $3-5K feature than $100k - at least the odds (if all my clearances are in order) on making an actual profit are far better at that cost level.
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Besides which, everyone knows that all artists who are paid for their work do shitty work anyway. Name one paid artist who is better at his or her job than any random amateur doing it from the heart. Can't do it, can you?
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We don't actually need the greedy bastards, we need good people that work hard.
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My response was to point out that the argument that this person probably spent more money on this video than what MM says isn't an argument for patents and copy protection laws, it's an argument against them.
There are many other reasons why we don't need patents and copyrights and no reason why we need them, at least the way they are set up today.
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But those are not the only ones.
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How else could they afford the software to do this for effectively nothing?"
I really should not feed the trolls. Or defend something that doesn't require it, but what the hell.
Free video editting software from apple and Microsoft
Blender is an GNU GPL project for video editting and CGI.
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How else could they afford the software to do this for effectively nothing?
Wrong wrong wrong again.
There is plenty of open source software around for doing this stuff.
Without the existence of copyrighted software there would be even more.
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Also machinima is getting better everyday the one reason for that is that the graphics are getting better and better all the time so people get an entire environment to use that is already done and they mostly need to worry just about the dialogues. If anybody has seen the latest games like Metal Gear, Silent Hill 8 or Resident Evil they would have noticed how good the graphics are today and the stories are getting compelling with John Carpenter being one of the contributors to Dead Space 2 or something like that.
Instead of just watching a movie you can now interact with the thing, who wants to seat there and watch something for 2 hours when they can get inside and explore?
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The price barrier is broken, it is no more. That limiting factor to do things is gone only the imagination can stop others now.
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http://beyondblackmesa.com/
Half-life inspired fan-film (10 mins) with awesome effects, made by 7 friends on a budget of $1200.
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That sucked!
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Then I talked to my other friend who is a real-estate agent and he said they weren't! What a maroon! I told him he better start looking for another job!
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Overvalue your content much?
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Don't know why people put so much effort into these things and then hire actors that haven't taken basic drama, or that they don't have proper sound set up.
Overall really impressive. But really what this shows me is that nothing is worth paying money for anymore in terms of movies/film/TV. I am pretty much done with that.
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Takes time for paradigms to change
Conventional Wisdom. It's what's for dinner!
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I would ask those people why. Photography is no longer the realm of professionals, millions of amateurs know are able not only to take good shots, but to use tools effectively to create things, the Gimp can not only retouch photographs it can create a whole bunch of effects and can be used extensively in professional work(e.g. The 300 movie is one example of that). Thousands of sound engineers and musicians have access to open source easy tools that can do almost anything you can imagine, so sound and music can also be done by amateurs today on the pro level, now is happening to video, the quality may be poor today, but probably won't stay that way forever, on the technical level people can do almost anything any big production can already with budgets that would be laughed at by the big boys, but they shouldn't this means they will soon have to compete not with piracy but with free open good enough products that may hit the market in a decade or so as more and more people realize they don't need others to tell stories they can tell those stories themselves and have the means today to do it on the cheap end of the scale to a level that rivals professional productions. The only thing that amateurs don't have yet is an idea of what it is needed to accomplice good story telling and they are learning fast. The internet enables people to learn things in a fraction of the time it took the movie and TV industries to realize their protocols. 5 years ago amateur film making was a hobby thing, that only your parents could be proud of, today you get people saying "Wow! that is amazing dude!" and it is opening a market to smaller competitors to get a foot in, but that is not the only factor, a lot of people are angry with those people for doing what they are doing to the population and are scrambling to find alternatives, the fight on piracy actually may create a market that could destroy the very people that believe in enforcement to sell anything. Crazy I know, but once you look at how the software industry reacted and what came out of that you would respect more that kind of reasoning, open source didn't came about because it was not needed it came about because of a very deep frustration with the players and what they were doing and what that was teaching others to do. some may believe, it can't happen to them, well push other harder enough and tell will go for the alternatives illegal initially, and legal right after.
On a completely different note, I found this video on Youtube about the Science of Watchmen, this little video shows a physics professor that uses super heroes to explain physical phenomenon and bypass one of the number one problems in teaching today, transferring the sense of utility of that knowledge to the group, thus creating the necessary drive for it to happen in a fluid, productive way.
Hope he does not get sued for infringement or have to pay royalties to all the studios and publishers out there so he can teach something, after all he is stealing the work of others to incorporate in his on.
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Actually amateur film making has always been better than this - many well known names in the cinema started as amateurs. Two that spent a long time as amateurs before becoming part of the professional cinema are Ken Russell and Warwick Davis.
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You could also make something like Red vs Blue that is selling well apparently to the point the guys can buy hardware to trash and film it.
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