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...and I imagine Duck will be all over this one.3 dudes, a good camera, and some compositing, and WWII can be yours:

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@reader2.panix.com:
[nq:1]...and I imagine Duck will be all over this one. 3 dudes, a good camera, and some compositing, and WWII can be yours:

I saw a short on TV last night. I remember it well because it was shot locally, and I recognized the street corner. It'a about 10 min. long, about a trio of shoplifting con men (and woman) pulling a staged heist on a camera store. It's okay, not great. Well-made, well-lit, wel-shot, but it's nothing that's going to win any aeards.
But the end credits read like it's freaking Lord of the *** Rings. Five actors, ten minutes, and there must be AT LEAST 36 people involved in the shoot, not counting all the service companies listed.

Costume design team, make-up team, hairstyle team - all for people dressed in normal, everyday frumpy street clothes that any of the actors could have worn to work. Script people, continuity people, shoelace wrangler, split infinitive supervisors, sandwich-crust-cutters... And the financing! From all the financing agencies listed in the credits, that thing must have cost the equivalent of the GNP of a small country. Well, no wonder, when you've got half a dozen people in charge of Holding Up The Wall By Leaning On It on the payroll.
Cripes, it's a freaking ten-minute short. It's set entirely inside an 800 sq. ft. store, save for the last ten seconds when the characters run outside into a waiting car. It has five actors. Nothing blows up, no car chases. no special effects. Oranse could have shot, edited and released it in the time it probably took them to have a committee meeting to pick the committee that would organize the committee to start thinking about the movie.
That ain't independent filmmaking. It's bloated bureaucracy where no one scratches their ***** unless they storyboard it and finance it with $250,000 first. JHow the **** can anhone be creative with so much dead weight?
What a joke.
jaybee

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[nq:1]@reader2.panix.com: That ain't independent filmmaking. It's bloated bureaucracy where no one[/nq]
I think it's fallout from the independent film schools. They seem very good,but they
seem to be staffed by pros and teach the 'professional' Hollywood method of
production. Then the folks go home and there's a shout out "hey gang, remember
how much fun that was last summer? Lets Make a Film'. Everyone get's a credit,
they work hard over a long weekend and it looks really good. And apparently it's occasionally
even seen by someone other than their mothers. Kinda cool actually.

Remember the credits on "Bambi meets Godzilla' were four times longer than the film itself.

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@reader2.panix.com:
[nq:2]That ain't independent filmmaking. It's bloated bureaucracy where noone[/nq]
[nq:1]I think it's fallout from the independent film schools. They seem very good,but they seem to be staffed by pros ... and it looks really good. And apparently it's occasionally even seen by someone other than their mothers. Kinda cool actually.[/nq]
I'm sure that movie took a week to shoot, and it spent a few months in post-prod. It's creativity by committee, where any creative impulse or spontaneity is smothered by all the "preparation" and second-guessing.

There's a lightbulb-changing joke in there.
[nq:1]Remember the credits on "Bambi meets Godzilla' were four times longer than the film itself.[/nq]
That was the joke. But it's no joke anymore.
jaybee

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@reader2.panix.com:
[nq:1]...and I imagine Duck will be all over this one. 3 dudes, a good camera, and some compositing, and WWII can be yours:

We had another meetup of our independent film and TV group last weekend. I met one guy who writes, directs and produces webisodes. I won't address the script and acting, because what really interests me is that he's employing guerilla filmmaking tactics. He shot the first episode on a tiny HD camcorder and a monopod (he bought a Canon XL-H1 to shoot the rest) and got around the problems of shooting in the street without permit by inviting all the neighbours to play extras. Instead of complaining to the police about the commotion, everyone made sandwiches for the cast and crew, directed traffic and otherwise volunteered to help out with the production.
Thing is, he did a lot more with zero budget than a lot of people do with financing. Over the past few months, I've received a lot of offers for free services from professionals - people who would rather work on a small independent project than sit at home and watch TV, and that oincludes a composer who asked to do the soundtrack. You can put together real pros to make a very slick-looking short, for next to nothing except creative satisfaction.
Which is why, when I see shorts like the one on TV last night that were made with an army of people and a budget equivalent to five years' salary, I have to wonder whether some people in the biz wouldn't be better off as accountants or insurance salesmen.
http://pleasestandby.ca/
jaybee

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