A SF Youtube short has been picked up.

These kinds of tales are inspiring, no doubt about it. Kinda makes me wanna pick up the art of CGI. Of the handful of shorts that have been made into features (or at least optioned for such), it seems to me like they're all REALLY heavy on CGI. That doesn't mean there isn't a really cool story there. I'm just saying that like you, these kind of developments do make me question what I'm doing.

Also, I hope this movie actually gets made. Looks pretty sweet!
 
It does look sweet, but the plotline seems obvious - I mean, the robot suddenly has memories of a family life as a human, so he was obviously a brain or memory implant of some kind.
 
Aspiring Mogul said:
I've been thinking of doing a SF series on Youtube, hoping for the same thing. Any thoughts?
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You should pursue production.

Keep the budget sensible on a spec project, tho.
Throwing money doesn't equal greater results.
"Update 1:
Thanks for all the positive feedback everyone! This has been a labor of love on a budget of $0 with personal expense on my part and no funding. It makes it all worth while when we see other poeple responding to it. Thank you! - Aaron Sims"​

Premise and story rules over CGI & glamour.

I/we look forward to what you and others here come up with. :yes:



How far have you come since then?: http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=36074
I imagine quite a bit.
 
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Archetype was awesome. Saw it a few years back. My first real acting coach was one of the producers. I hope she made out like bandit. :cool:

I've been thinking of doing a SF series on Youtube, hoping for the same thing. Any thoughts?
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Do what you're really good at.

.
 
I think it's folly to attempt to do the same thing as someone else and assume that you'll be able to follow the same path. There are many different shorts and ideas that have been picked up for numerous reasons, not just for the quality (or even presence of) CGI, VFX etc.

It's mostly to do with story, luck and/or being in the right place at the right time and knowing/showing your film to the right people.

Make great films and you'll make a name for yourself.

Make carbon copy films because you think it will help you get noticed and (IMO) you're setting yourself up to fail.
 
rayw said:
You should pursue production.

Keep the budget sensible on a spec project, tho.
Throwing money doesn't equal greater results.
"Update 1:
Thanks for all the positive feedback everyone! This has been a labor of love on a budget of $0 with personal expense on my part and no funding. It makes it all worth while when we see other poeple responding to it. Thank you! - Aaron Sims"​

Premise and story rules over CGI & glamour.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the encouragement, Rayw. :) I wonder he literally spent $0, because the props must have cost something. SF is expensive, and I've been trying to get a feel for the costs. Can a ST cheapo episode be done for $30-50K? I'm asking because I simply don't know.



I/we look forward to what you and others here come up with. :yes:



How far have you come since then?: http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=36074
I imagine quite a bit.
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Yes. I've learned a ton in the past year, thanks to a producer who was partners with Ilya Salkind (Superman I and II). I've also met Louise Levison, author of Filmmakers and Financing, who also gave me ideas.

My idea now is to do a SF series, which can build support over time, so I can use that to get funding for more professional work that can make money. Of course, Directorik would say I have a new idea every minute. :)

I'm almost ready to go, and Louise said I should go to a genre that I'm passionate about - IOW, if I like SF, then I should do that, as opposed to mystery or horror. But, again, I have to get a crew together, and, above all, I have to figure out the story background - is it SF as in Star Trek? Or superhero as in Spiderman? I'm leaning towards space opera because I just saw ST, but I'm concerned about the cost, as I said.
 
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jax_rox said:
I think it's folly to attempt to do the same thing as someone else and assume that you'll be able to follow the same path. There are many different shorts and ideas that have been picked up for numerous reasons, not just for the quality (or even presence of) CGI, VFX etc.

It's mostly to do with story, luck and/or being in the right place at the right time and knowing/showing your film to the right people.

Make great films and you'll make a name for yourself.

Make carbon copy films because you think it will help you get noticed and (IMO) you're setting yourself up to fail.
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Thanks, Jax. :)

My idea is to do a series, so I can build an audience over time, which would allow me to approach the studios for funding so as to do a TV series or movie. I don't want to go straight to movies, because I was at the American Film Market last November, and it seemed like all or nothing - if you don't sell, the investment is wasted. But, if I go with a web series, the episode can be watched by others, and so the business can be built. That's how Star Trek became what it is today.
 
Web series can be successful and can be a good way to build an audience. On the other hand, web series can also be a good way to lose money.

Having seen friends attempt to create web series' only to lose a crapload of money on them when they average 400 views/episode, I think I've come to the realisation that you either need to cater specifically to the YouTube audience (ie: create something stupid) or you need to approach web series' the same way you do a short film for a festival. IMO, you should make what you can make with the money you have, with the intention of first and foremost telling a great story. If your series (or film) finds an audience, that's awesome, and if it starts to make money, well that's even better. Making great film and making money do not always go together when it comes to web series' and I think to have both, you sorta need to have a certain magic formula, which is not dissimilar to the magic formula you need to sell an indie feature. I think a good webseries is not dissimilar to making a good indie film, except that I guess you can essentially make the 'film' in stages, rather than all at once, and judge your success as you go along (ie: is it worth creating more episodes?). Just as with indie film, installing the right people in the right roles lifts your chance of success.

Just my 2c from what I've assessed. Take it or leave it :)
 
I agree w/ Jax.

Having seen friends attempt to create web series' only to lose a crapload of money on them when they average 400 views/episode, I think I've come to the realisation that you either need to cater specifically to the YouTube audience (ie: create something stupid) or you need to approach web series' the same way you do a short film for a festival. IMO, you should make what you can make with the money you have, with the intention of first and foremost telling a great story.
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Don't for a minute think spending $30 - $50k on a webisode season is reasonable.
That's a nice chunk of change to be spending on lottery tickets which is what filmmaking-for-profit essentially is.

Seriously, it's not the execution that people love and will conceivable pay to see.
It's the story, with execution taking a far back seat.

Pseudo-paradoxically, each episode needs to be film festival worthy, but that again doesn't always equal "a ton of money thrown at it."
These aren't all big budget short productions even with a guaranteed (for some lucky bastard) purse at the end of it: http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=47367
Was the winner the most expensive production?
Nope.
Did all of them spend "some" money.
Yes, they did. But not any cartoon amounts.
 
A Batman fan film was made for $27,000.00, and it was seen to be of pretty good quality. So I'd presume a good SF webisode would cost $30-50K, not including sweat equity.

Has anyone done any SF webisodes or fan films?
 
How much do you think this 5min trailer cost? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woxgr_GtFnU
"Concept trailer for the Sci-Fi Action "Goliath" shot in 3 days in Alaska and 3 days in San Diego. Total budget: $150 This project was a one man effort, meaning i had to do it all: concept, props, DP, camera op, directing, editing, post VFX, sound design and so on.
However i used a few seconds of b-roll to put VFX on top of it and there is one 1 sec. shot at the end is taken from "the day after tomorrow" guess which one..... it was a temprarerly solution, this trailer contains some temp shots and GRFX, im working on replacing them with my own, new version is coming soon, here is the link:"​


I've no idea what this budget was: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPwuU5V8htw
But the crowdfunding for the seminal series went "Meh... " despite "millions of views" on some internet TV site: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/530407494/malice-the-webseries/

Ain't no tellin' what the budget is for 'Voyage Trekkers': http://www.youtube.com/user/Squishyshark/videos?view=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_Trekkers
But their crowdfunding campaign "raked in" even less: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/voyage-trekkers-season-2?c=home

And have you watched the BTS for Aidan5?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_coPZiO2jA8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK0KeHFvPlE
To me that looks like a sh!tload of effort, work, and resources at play.
All that for a pretty flimsy season 2 turnout: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/benbays/aidan-5-season-2


So...
Honestly, each of these faux trailers and web series look better than complete rookie cr@p, but hey aren't big budget productions either, but I don't think that's what's stopping them from going much farther.



Now, onto my observations about scifi features...
Recently I've noticed a big theatrical release shift into lo-fidelity scifi features, which I call scifi-lite.

Heavy scifi would be the traditional Star Trek, Star Wars, Avatar, The Fifth Element, Lockout, Dredd, Oblivion, Battleship, Transformers, After Earth, John Carter, et al sort of stuff with space suits, sets, and SFX that've gotta cost big-tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars to produce.

Whereas scifi-lite just has "suggestions" of scifi elements but very little actual scifi-ery.
The Source Code, Monsters, The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless, Inception, Another Earth, Melancholia, and the ultimate in scifi-lite: Never Let Me Go. I think the ONLY scifi element in that entire film was the STATEMENT that these clones were being bred by their super-wealthy originals for their organs. Pfft. yeah. "Sci Fi" my eye.
(Not to mention the cult following for Shane Carruth's Primer: some left over tech scraps, some large cardboard boxes + duct tape. Woo-hoo! Can't beat it with a stick!)

If THAT'S the route you wanna consider... then $30-$50k might go a long way if you play your cards right.

For that kind of money, a starship/space station means you're talking about considerably less in sets than what the producers of "Moon' got away with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(film)

I dunno.

Izzat the total production budget, double that for marketing and promotion, or half that for production with the other half for marketing and promotion?
 
rayw said:
Oh, and for the ultimate kick-in-the-ballll...balance sheets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4

142,085,487 views.

For... what production budget?
For... what technical execution?

Well, cruciatus curse me in the baseball sack. :mad:
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The magic of YouTube ;)

There's also the 'happy medium' I guess

Bryan Singer's series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZedLgAF9aEg&feature=player_embedded
averaging ~500,000 views/episode

And then there's this (with millions of viewers/episode):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s6UiEuCYXA&feature=player_embedded
 
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rayw, those videos look awesome. But I was thinking of something more along the lines of what the team at Star Trek: New Voyages have done. Take a look at this episode.

I was thinking of a fan series, but Directorik suggested doing something original, which is what I'm going to do. The owner of Phase 2, James Cawley, bought an abandoned car dealership in upstate NY and converted it into a soundstage. I understand I don't have to spend that kind of money, which I don't have, so I'm hoping to do quality work for cheap.

James Cawley earns his living as an Elvis impersonator, so maybe I should do that and make the big bucks. :D
 
Amazing story, nonetheless. It's truly incredible how one person's idea can reach such lengths and be enjoyed by so many people, and in turn be picked up for something as big as a feature film. When it only started out as an idea...

Congratulations to the short filmmaker and his accomplishments, hopefully John Davis and/or his companies don't completely alter his production/script.
 
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