Giant Robots from Uruguay

A homebrewed film from Uruguay supposedly made for just $500. It was good enough to get filmmaker Federico Alvarez a trip to Hollywood, an offer to make a film and a chance to work with Sam Raimi on developing the film that had a "compelling original story". Um, yeah. Giant robots blowing crap up. Cool, but not original. Check it out for yourself.

7 comments:

Creginald Vandercleve said...

Impressive, and it ain't even 3D/IMAX! Imagine what the guy could do with $5 million, a fraction of the budget of an average Hollywood movie.

_______ said...

Info is a bit slim, but he was offered a $1 million up front and up to £30 million for the film. Ran that through a currency converter and it would be just a little more than $48 million. I'd rather see that movie than Avatar.

Bruce Lewis said...

Me, too. This is the best actioner of the year, dammit.

He should do the upcoming ROBOTECH movie.

Unknown said...

See, the thing is, technology is leveling the playing field. The cost to make a movie is within anybody's reach. Looks like this guy edited everything in Premiere and did all the compositing in After Effects.

Of course, Hollywood doesn't want a bunch of unknown auteurs making better movies then something they spent $500 million to make. No way you're gonna get your film distributed and shown at the local multiplex or given a shot at an Oscar. There are gatekeepers to keep you in your place.

But there's the internet. And eventually there's gonna be too many people who figure out that they too can make a movie and get it out on the web. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.

_______ said...

I agree completely. The power is going back to the artist and the consumer. They just have to connect again and realize they are in control. Not the big media conglomerates, i.e. Hollywood.

Unknown said...

$300 is what he paid for the extras ($5 each + food)

The director posted on a CG board about the making of this. I was right about Premiere and After Effects. He did all the 3D modeling and animation with 3dMAX, an off the shelf 3d program. He says if he'd paid himself and the other two guys who did the 3d modeling the short would've cost $15,000. Even at that cost it's still pretty impressive. Consider most TV commercials are budgeted at hundreds of thousands.

Anonymous said...

nice post. thanks.