Monsters

[DraconianOne]

Very interested by this film which is coming out in the UK in November. It's a very low budget sci-fi monster film allegedly made for £15k (about $20k?) by a guy who took his two leads and a camera (a Sony EX-3?) to South America and basically shot the film then did a load of post-production afterwards by adding all the CGI. It's been raved about by people at festivals (although so was Blair Witch Project which, personally, I fucking loathed) and I will say that the trailer does look nicely shot and scenes that have been released don't quell my interest.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7o7YMvKZtw

UK (London!) folks - this is being shown on Saturday 28th August at 9PM in Empire Leicester Square as part of Frightfest if you can still get tickets! (I won't be there as I'm running that weekend).

[DraconianOne]

This film is being released in the US on 29th October but is available for legit online viewing now on Amazon if you're in the US for the loveyoulongtime sum of ten dollah.  Link

Addendum to my description above though - it's a low budget sci-fi film that may not have many monsters in despite the title. Still being raved about by various people I respect though.

[Morfiend]

Necro.

I saw this last night. They managed to make a "Monsters invade from space, ransack mexico and advance on the USA" fucking boring as hell. I mean, really.

Blah.

It could have been really cool, but the director seemed to be trying so hard to make the movie artsy, that he forgot to actually make a movie. OK maybe that was a bit harsh, but I really wish he would have spent a little more time on the monsters, and a little less on lingering glances.

Also, the voice acting in the phone scene was about as good as Jerry the poolboy from Sharktapus. "That, I do sir".

[apocrypha]

Don't forget the giant sensor dust through half the movie!

I mean, ffs, if you're going to make a movie using DSLR's then good on you, but clean the fucking sensors first you lazy, unskilled, inexperienced film school dropouts!

[murdoc]

I really liked this and the slow pace of it. They were trying pretty hard to make an artsy monster movie, but I thought they were largely successful with that.

[Engels]

What ticked me off about this was the trailers I saw, which indicated this was a shoot 'em up splosion fest with space monsters and lazorz. Then I got a 'heart warming' humanist flick, which is fine, but not what I was in the mood for, so I felt unsatisfied.

[DraconianOne]

Don't forget the giant sensor dust through half the movie!

I mean, ffs, if you're going to make a movie using DSLR's then good on you, but clean the fucking sensors first you lazy, unskilled, inexperienced film school dropouts!

Because by the time they found out, back in the UK, of course they could go back to Mexico and do reshoots on their sub-$100k budget. With their improvised cast. Alternatively, they could say "Fuck it! No-one's actually going to give a shit and the people who do are fucking geeks we can ignore."

I say this as someone who worked on a short film where half the footage from one days shooting was out of focus because of an obscure camera setting that neither the DoP nor the 1st AD noticed. Not only that, the 1st AD used to teach seminars about how to use the camera - he was mortified. Shit happens and you don't always have the time or money to fix it. Unless you're a megabucks studio.

I really liked this and the slow pace of it. They were trying pretty hard to make an artsy monster movie, but I thought they were largely successful with that.

I loved it. Best alien invasion (post-invasion?) film I've seen in a long time. Also a game changer in terms of how it was made - it's shown up a lot of very bad big bucks films.

[Arthur_Parker]

Then I got a 'heart warming' humanist flick

[DraconianOne]

Then I got a 'heart warming' humanist flick

No.

[Arthur_Parker]

Oh must not be the one I remember then, pity I thought it was pretty good whichever film that was.

[Threash]

No, you are right.  If we are talking about this movie. 

[Hawkbit]

Awesome setting and environment.  I liked the camerawork.  Story needed some work.  It was a solid 70% to me, with 50% being the setting alone.  Still, dumb people doing dumb things...

[apocrypha]

Because by the time they found out, back in the UK, of course they could go back to Mexico and do reshoots on their sub-$100k budget. With their improvised cast. Alternatively, they could say "Fuck it! No-one's actually going to give a shit and the people who do are fucking geeks we can ignore."

I say this as someone who worked on a short film where half the footage from one days shooting was out of focus because of an obscure camera setting that neither the DoP nor the 1st AD noticed. Not only that, the 1st AD used to teach seminars about how to use the camera - he was mortified. Shit happens and you don't always have the time or money to fix it. Unless you're a megabucks studio.

They were shooting on Canon 5D's I seem to recall. Mainstream cameras, not exactly difficult to clean the sensors. On any kind of extended photo project (still or movie) any photog worth a damn will clean their sensors daily, at least. Plus did nobody review *any* of the footage at any point during shooting and go "Oh fuck guys there's a lump of dust the size of a cockroach on the sensor"? Or even look at the footage on the camera LCD ffs! If the professionalism was so poor that none of those things were done then how about some editing? Giant blobs of sensor dust are trivial to clean up in post. Shit, if you're trying to keep post budget down then just clean up the chunks that were on big, open sky shots. Easier, cheaper, and those were the ones that glared out.

My point is that it makes the film look amateurish. Which is fine, unless half your marketing is based on claiming you made a shoestring budget film as if you'd succeeded in making a film that looked professional for that money. When they hadn't.

I've had several friends say things like "Check this awesome film out! It's as good as a $200m Hollywood blockbuster but cost peanuts to make!". No. It doesn't look like a mainstream cinema release. It looks cheap. It's badly filmed, poorly processed, badly scripted & acted and, as a film, sucks giant ass. If they were asking half the usual ticket price to see it in theaters and if the DVDs retail for $5 then fair enough.

[DraconianOne]

They were shooting on Canon 5D's I seem to recall.

They shot on a Sony EX-3 with Nikon lenses. They set up a couple of laptops in a hotel each day to download data and review the rushes. They had the director who manned the camera, a soundman, a line producer, a spanish translator and two actors and that was the entire crew. I've watched the film several times and I can honestly say that I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. Granted I'm more generous towards it understanding the context of how it was made but I can be equally harsh about low budget trash like Blair Witch Project or that godawful, £45 zombie movie, "Colin". About everything else, well, that's, like, your opinion man. I tend to side with BAFTA and say it was definitely worth a nomination and that it's an outstanding achievement.

But, seeing as it's so easy to make a film for peanuts with a DSLR and the knowledge of cleaning camera sensors, here's a challenge for you: I know you've got the gear (can't remember what camera you've got but getting hands on a 5D or 7D isn't hard), the lights, the lenses and everything else and I know you've got access to models and I bet some of them would love to act. Go out and make a 90 minute film. Wait, no - let's make it easier: 75 minutes minimum. You don't have to go abroad - film it in Leeds or somewhere (Bradford is probably as post-apocalyptic as I remember it). Set up an IndieGoGo project if you need to crowdsource some funds - hell, maybe some of the guys here will contribute to an F13 project in return for an Associate Producer credit. You might even find someone to write it for you. Hell, I've got a draft script that could be shot on the Yorks Moors (low budget creature feature) but there are other people here who are no doubt better writers than I am.

I started writing this feeling facetious - but now I think I'm not entirely joking about this challenge.

What's stopping you/us/anybody here?

[apocrypha]

Heh, everyone's favourite playground response to a criticism of something they themselves like - let's see you do better!!11

First, I'm not a cinematographer. Stills photography and cinematography are very different skills, and I have enormous respect for good cinematographers. Secondly, no, I don't have the required gear nor any way to access it. I shoot with a Nikon D700, which has no video capability. My lights are strobes, not hot lights. I know models, not actors. I've just looked it up on IMDB and that says the budget for Monsters was $800k. I'm probably able to scrape together 1/1000th of that at the moment.

If we start insisting that only people who can do something themselves can make any criticisms of that field then where does that leave us?

Here's a bunch of films that were shot for less than Monsters, that I think knock the living shit out of it, both technically and artistically.

Primer ($7000)
Napoleon Dynamite ($400k)
Halloween ($300k)
Night of the Living Dead (~$100k)
Mad Max ($200k)
Kontroll (~$500k)

I agree about Blair Witch, I thought it was shit. I haven't seen Colin. Is it OK for me to level criticisms at something that you also dislike? Low budget films are a mixed bunch, but I think that list above demonstrates that some people can do a damn sight better than Monsters. Which was shit.

[DraconianOne]

EDIT - nothing to see here. Fucking waste too much time arguing shit on this forum.

So long.

[Merusk]

*waves* Hope your ass stops bleeding.

[apocrypha]

Well there was me thinking this was an interesting discussion too...

[Margalis]

Man, you guys got all worked up over the most trivial shit imaginable. 

[Merusk]

Hey now, only one person got all worked up about it. So much so he apparently quit the board, so you can't even say, "you guys."

[DraconianOne]

Hey now, only one person got all worked up about it. So much so he apparently quit the board, so you can't even say, "you guys."

thread, not board. Yet. Believe me, when I do quit the forum, there will be toys thrown out of prams like you've never seen!