Interesting Links for 17-03-2013

[andrewducker]

• Tax loophole for UK businesses set to close
  (tags: tax uk )
• What it's like doing a maths PhD.
  (tags: academia mathematics )
• Cyprus levies 7-10% on savings in banks to pay for their bailout
  (tags: europe banking cyprus )
• Are bloggers to be included in the proposed press royal charter?
  (tags: law uk viaJennieRigg web media )
• Smartphone's have

Comments

[ajr]

It's a straight-to-DVD movie, effectively, yeah. Probably about 80-100 minutes? So about the length of two TV episodes, more or less. VM was about $1.8m an episode which made it about the cheapest TV show of its type when it was on air, I believe.

'Standard blockbuster effects' would be "lots of CGI and big explosions!", which VM clearly won't go for. It's no Transformers or John Carter, heck it's not even a Firefly. The model for VM is, and has always been noir, aka classic B-movie, aka cheapest kind of film you can make. They've no need to go 'big' with anything, so they don't need to make it any more expensive than the TV show was - unless they get that much extra from the Kickstarter, natch.

I don't know how much the cast and crew were getting paid for the show, but I imagine the cast at least will be getting paid less up-front for the film and getting their money on the back-end instead, because many of them are clearly doing the project out of love. That'll help their budget go further.

I think the key thing about the budget is that, at their target, they could make the film but it would unavoidably look cheap (fewer locations, no complicated set-ups, probably less spent on costumes and set dressing, use of angles to hide fact a 'crowded' scene has no extras, etc). The more they get over that, the more they can make it look less cheap.

[despotliz]

If they got $2m they'd have $1.4m for the actual production. Given VM was $1.8m an episode 5 years ago (and IIRC they filmed in San Diego to keep the price down), I think $1.4m for a production from scratch would have been very tight indeed. There's an interview with Rob Thomas somewhere where he outlines a bit of what extra cash would get you - at the low end they basically can't afford fight scenes, so you'd get shouting instead of actual fisticuffs.