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Sci-Fi on the Cheap
lowbudgetfun writes "NYTimes.com is reporting on the Sci-Fi channel's huge investment (28 films for $21 million) for original B movies. Includes quotes from B Movie hero, Bruce Campbell." I especially liked this line from the article: "Shot on budgets ranging from $1 million to $2 million, Sci Fi's movies are made in money-saving locales like Bulgaria, Romania and Missouri."
I know it's a crappy place to live, but comparing us to Bulgaria? Thats a little harsh.
Was that not an old slashdot article, apparently that works for sci-fi movies
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Although Mansquito was awesome in its sheer stupity.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
It's the perfect place to shoot a remake of, "The Day the Earth Stood Still".
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
Great we can get new episodes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
I'm from Missouri, you insensitive clod
July 10, 2005
B Movies Invade Your TV!
By LEWIS BEALE
"ATTACK OF THE SABRETOOTH." "Bloodsuckers." "The Man With the Screaming Brain." And, most indelible of all, "Mansquito."
A combination of outrageous genre concepts, low-budget filmmaking and sensationalized titles like the roll call above are all part of the Sci Fi Channel's attempt to establish a presence on Saturday nights, when a good number of potential viewers are out, asleep or watching reruns. The programming strategy has been a major success, with numbers that far exceed anyone's expectations.
"Alien Apocalypse," Sci Fi's biggest Saturday hit, attracted 2.7 million viewers in March. That may be a pittance for CBS or NBC, but it constitutes a major audience for a niche network. And besides, said Steve Sternberg, a television analyst at MagnaGlobal USA, "Friday and Saturday have become very weak nights for the broadcast networks," which, he explained, "have not been able to draw enough viewers with original entertainment series. Cable networks can flourish with much smaller audiences. Original horror and sci-fi movies seem like the perfect programming for Saturday night."
"They're good at the 'D' word, demographics," said Bruce Campbell, a star of B movies who also wrote, directed and starred in the "Screaming Brain" film, to be shown in September. "I think they're micromarketing," he said, "which in this fragmented world makes sense. They're saying, 'Who's at home on Saturday night?' "
The answer might be surprising. Nearly half of Sci Fi's audience is female, and in the highly sought-after 25-to-54-year-old demographic category, Sci Fi is the No. 4 basic cable network on Saturdays, behind TNT, USA and TBS.
Sci Fi's foray into Saturday night mayhem began in 2002, when network executives realized that cheap, independently made genre pictures, an important element of their programming mix, were hardly being produced any more. So, said Tom Vitale, the Sci Fi Channel's senior vice president for original movies "We had a choice of recycling older movies or going out and trying to create original movies ourselves. We went back to these producers who made genre movies, and asked them if they wanted to make them with us."
People like Ken Badish jumped at the chance. Mr. Badish's company, Active Entertainment, will have produced nine Sci Fi movies by the end of 2005, high-concept features like "Mansquito" (experiment gone awry creates man-mosquito hybrid!), and "Alien Lockdown" (government science produces horrific slime thing!).
The most important element of a Sci Fi film, Mr. Badish said, "is a topical film that has relevance to our audience."
"In a film coming up," he added, "stem cells are key to the plot; in another, it's mad cow disease. Secondly, there's a good story. Like we're shooting a 'Jaws'-kind of movie featuring a giant squid. We make a reasonable use of C.G.I., because the audience wants that escapist thing. And we add emotional content, so the audience can feel for the characters."
Often that amounts to borrowing shamelessly from works like "Alien," "The Fly" and "The Thing" and then adding ideas gleaned from Scientific American or Wired.
Shot on budgets ranging from $1 million to $2 million, Sci Fi's movies are made in money-saving locales like Bulgaria, Romania and Missouri. They're cast with B-list celebrities like Luke Perry and Stephen Baldwin, with the occasional big-picture actors - Sean Astin and John Rhys-Davies of "Lord of the Rings" - making an appearance. The network pays $750,000 for domestic TV rights, and the producers make their money back through international and DVD sales.
But are the films any good? Critics have not found much to praise, though some seem to have tried pretty hard. Virginia Heffernan of The New York Times said "Chupacabra: Dark Seas" (monster runs amok on a cruise liner!) was "founded on broad clichés, overacted and clumsily blocked." But she added that the casting of serious actors like Mr. Rhys-Davies and Gianc
Hello lowbudget ... although the article matybe is interesting (as for the news is) i kinda don't like attitude. What is the funny thing about bulgaria. I LIVE here and i am proud. I have net and probably win more money compared to our standards than you. What makes you think you are better than me.
I don't intend this to be flame ... but i feel outraged
In fire we trust http://www.getoto.net
I wish they would focus on producing more original series to replace the ones they dropped. I also think they should pick up popular sci-fi shows dropped by other networks. Farscape was one of the best Scifi shows on TV. While I didn't really care for Firefly, it has a proven audience. Scifi should be all over this property once the movie is released.
I also wish that they would throw some of that money at JMS, and let him make "The Memory of Shadows" for TV.
They should also focus less on topic such as ghosts and horror movies. IMHO these do not qualify as real scifi.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
More fodder in the SciFi(TM) tradition. Bound to be plenty of scantily clad women dressed in leather, ken dolls with lots of firepower and very little to say, conspiracy theories about alien abductions, aliens taking over people's bodies, lots of slime, arcade game quality special effects, laughable technobabble, blood and gore. And to think that by not shelling out $60 (or more!) a month, I won't be seeing any of it!
P.S. Heard that this new Battlestar Galactica show was really good, but something about fuzzy robots, people wearing tight clothing and helmet-like hairstyles, and Lorne Green just stopped me from tuning in. That, and the thought of someone updating that stuff for the new millenium (the way they usually do) just made me wanna hurl.
Here you have one very good reason why SciFi as a genre, is not taken seriously by most people over the age of 12.
I enjoy a good number of B-Movies (and even a few C and D-list films), but I get worried when the predominant type of movie being produced is deliberately low-brow and sets the bar so low in fact, a first year film student could trip over it.
The idea that SciFi can be well-written and produced with some care is hard for many people to accept these days, as all they see is schlock put together on the cheap as fast as humanly possible to give the channel in question a quick cash infusion
In a day when even comic books and fantasy novels are taken seriously by the masses due to the amount of effort put into adapting them to the screen, it nearly brings a tear to my eye to consider that the bargain-bin product coming from The SciFi Channel is pretty much the cream of the crop these days.
I really don't know what I would do if a studio announced they were hiring an extremely adept filmmaker and screenwriter to put The Foundation series into theatres.
Probably cry.
What's funny about Bulgaria? Hee hee hee! Get this -- it's full of -- no, seriously -- it's full of guys who when you say it's a cheap place to make a movie
*snort*
Ha ha, sorry, milk went up my nose.
Anyway, these guys, when you say it's a cheap place to make movies, hee hee hee, they totally get all offended and post semi coherent posts on Slashdot! Haw haw haw! No, I shit you not, they really do do that! Hee hee hee... oh, those guys!
No, seriously, I saw one do it today. Ah, those guys kill me.
Cheap place to make a movie, too.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Every time I see a commercial for one of these cinematic disasters (and I don't just mean the actual disaster films) I cringe, and ask myself why are they wasting money on this crap. To this say I miss 'The Invisible Man' the series. I donno if they ran out of money or budget, but it was clever deep and well written, instead we get another snake of the week movie.
On top of this, SciFi is cutting out the Stargate opening credits to get more advert time. I know *I* want sci fi to stay 'on air' so i can keep watching Stargate and BSG, but I feel like I'm getting the poo from a 1 million Genetically modified monkeys on typewriters thrown at me with these movies.
PS. Dear SciFi. the idea of mutant screenwriting monkeys is available for a modest sum.
There's no redeeming campiness, just horrible writing with poor production values. A standard Dr. Who at least has some good writing, even when there is no budget for visuals. That alien apocalypse tripe was horrible. What a waste of Campbell. I'm sorry to hear this is working for Sci-Fi. In general, their lineup is shabby. I may soon confess that I'm becoming a Galactica convert, but I hate to see Sci-Fi's otherwise shabby efforts being rewarded with ratings. I guess we will never see Sci-Fi for thinkers when crap gets the flies.
I have yet to waste more than 10 minutes of my time on any "SciFi Original" productions - the previews are typically enough to make me shrug it off. I thought the 80's was the B-Movie period in history, but the cr4p that SciFi keeps rolling out makes some of those look like works of art. Why they waste money on such large wastes of time and drop great shows like Farscape because of production costs is beyond me. Everything they put out is a bad joke - I hope they seriously don't expect to make money off them when they print to DVD.
If only the SciFi Channel followed the original formula for B movies that made them so great: low budget affects the special effects, and even the acting, but not the quality of the story. 99% of the stuff I see on that channel (as I channelsurf) wears all its small budget on its CG.
--
make install -not war
' I'm getting the poo from a 1 million Genetically modified monkeys on typewriters thrown at me with these movies '
But since it is Scifi Channel, you know it is good glowing digital poo!
' To this say I miss 'The Invisible Man' the series. I donno if they ran out of money or budget '
I can just hear it now: "Guess what? Yeah, they cancelled our project. It turns out that they were so cheap that a show with a guy who isn't there that you never see was too expensive for those skinflints. Hey! Do you think our pilot for "Inside the Black Hole" might go?"
Where were you when the voynix came?
The idea is that if you put enough monkeys at enough typewriters, you will eventually get something great (and, of course, a huge pile of festering rubble). You don't need a huge budget to make a good movie. You just have to be lucky and smart. Consider the Blair Witch Project for example.
In my not so humble opinion, more money should be spent on script development and less should be spent on eye candy. (Actually, as computer generated 'stuff' gets better and better, the eye candy should get cheaper.) The story is what matters. Everything else is just a way to tell the story.
PS. A location is low budget until the locals learn how to milk the producers. The sense of entitlement by the Hollywood actors, techies, etc. when they complain about run-away productions just blows my mind.
We didn't have enough Tremors movies.
Too bad MST3K went off the air. Fresh meat.
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
Someone mod this up so those of us without NYTimes logins can read.
The critics' disfavor doesn't seem to bother the folks behind the films, who have no pretensions to high art. Bonnie Hammer, the Sci Fi Channel president, likes to refer to the pictures as "popcorn movies for those who love the genre," adding, "Viewers come for the ride; it's a guilty pleasure." Jeff Beach, whose Unified Film Organization has made 20 films for the network, calls them "high-concept action-adventure movies with elements that are fun, whether a creature or a disaster."
I think this is a very good point. There are many among us who will bemoan the fact that the shlock that the Sci-Fi Channel puts out makes our favorite genre look bad. Remember that it's not called The Thoughtful Science Fiction Channel, it's the "Sci-Fi" Channel. It's supposed to be a watered-down "lite" version of science fiction in the same way that "lite" cookies bear only a passing resemblance to a delicious full-fat treat. Yes, the movies they are making are terrible but look at what's out in theaters these days. It seems half the movies are horror films. That entire genre is largely a collection of poorly-executed guilty pleasures used by younger demographics as an excuse to get out of the house and indulge in a guilty pleasure. But, as has been cited on slashdot many times before, the movieplex is becoming an increasingly unpleasant experience. Sci-Fi Channel is simply providing an alternate venue for these low-quality thrillers. I think the Sci-Fi Channel has got a great idea. Now, I'm sure as hell not going to watch any of this crap myself. But that doesn't stop me from being impressed that Sci-Fi has finally started to get its act together.
GMD
watch this
These guys make the CG effects for some of the Sci-Fi movies. I bet the end result is much cheaper but at the same time with comparable quality. Outsourcing at its finest.
No wonder the Sci Fi Channel sucks lately.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Dinosaucers
First of all, some Brucelore... In Albuquerque, "The Man With the Screaming Brain" showed this weekend, and then is showing again in a couple days, with Bruce being present but those tickets all sold out long ago, so... if you snoozed, you losed. Also, Bruce will be at Page 1 Bookstore autographing his book. Of course, I'm sure he's on a whirlwind tour and visiting other cities, so wherever you are: pay attention and you'll get to meet the man, the myth, the legend.
Second: about B movies. In the last few years I've become aware of some local low-budget filmmakers, and I even got to be a zombie extra a little while back. (Maybe calling these "B" movies is a stretch, as they would go ape at the thought of a budget anywhere near the magnitude of a million dollars.) Of these people's work, one thing I've noticed is this: you can't show this stuff on TV. People, you are not seeing the "cream of the crop" on SciFi channel, because the best cheap movies have sex in them. No, they're not porn, but they're not prude either. (Oh, and they tend to be gorier than what even American TV tolerates.) Now, don't get me wrong: these movies aren't great. But they're better than the SciFi channel stuff, and they'll get some sincere laughs out of you if nothing else. Find your local cult video store if you have one, and start talking to people. Find your local filmmakers, and check out the crazy shit they're doing. SciFi channel's movies will bore you to tears after you do that.
Third, about micro-marketing. I amazes me that TV execs are actually asking questions like, "Who's at home on Saturday night?" That is so twentieth century. I have had my Tivo for nearly five years now! Is routine time-shifting (by "routine," I mean even more effortless than VCRs which have been around for decades) still not commonplace? If not, it's making me wonder if I can make money selling fully configured MythTV boxes or something, because people who watch TV need this technology whether they know it yet, or not. ;-) Timeslots, what an obsolete concept.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Missouri is in the same bag as bulgaria and romania, two nations hit hardest by the collapse of communism. What is hilarious is that this is a red republican state, as are most of the states with the largest percentage of poor people and lowest incomes....they vote against the welfare and social programs that would help them the most...talk about getting what you deserve for considering abortion and gay marriage more important than harsh economic realities.
The sci-fi channel has picked up firefly, but only the old episodes already made. It would do new episodes except that the movie contract with universal prevents it.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
This is really important if you want Sci-Fi to stick around. SciFi really is not cost effective. You'd get the same amount of viewers for a reality show for less than a 10th of the cost. If they pull this off we still have chance to see some shows we might actually like rather than more shows about celebs we don't care about.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Put that $21 million into the 3 big shows, $7 mil tob each and watch the ratings jump!
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
Sci-Fi Channel is turning the monsters-and-oversexed-teens formula into a cliche. I was watching their Saturday lineup (e.g., snakes, bigfoot, sabertooth tigers), it was all the same. If I wanted to see the same crap over and over again, I would watch the Friday The 13th DVDs that have oversexed teens who are better screamers.
They should have just hired the slashdot editors. They have proven before that they are capable of remaking articles for next to nothing.
enjoy a good number of B-Movies (and even a few C and D-list films), but I get worried when the predominant type of movie being produced is deliberately low-brow and sets the bar so low in fact, a first year film student could trip over it.
Most first-year film student movies I have seen have been worse than anything that makes it near regional TV, much less national.
The idea that SciFi can be well-written and produced with some care is hard for many people to accept these days, as all they see is schlock put together on the cheap as fast as humanly possible to give the channel in question a quick cash infusion
I'm not saying all of scifi network's stuff is gold, but they're fighting a public that isn't in love with the genre; they do a lot of cross-channel promotion, and a big draw are the series/miniseries/movies that they've put together.
it nearly brings a tear to my eye to consider that the bargain-bin product coming from The SciFi Channel is pretty much the cream of the crop these days.
Dude, save the drama fo yo momma. Scifi has always been full of laughably bad movies. It's part of the genre. The scifi cable network happens to be doing a pretty decent job at it- better than most, in fact. Almost half a dozen names instantly come to mind, of excellent stuff they've done. Dune. Battlestart Galactica. Farscape. I'm probably missing a few...
Give them a chance, and recognize that people -expect- and often -enjoy- campy scifi movies, so if it's bad, it can't hurt much. If it's good, it'll be that more of a surprise.
Please help metamoderate.
they make a better return on the slew of low budget movies. people will watch them. there is that certain acceptance of lo-fi effects and whatever of a low budget movie... where as with Spiderman or something really expensive people always expect more.
it is also way cool because they get to give money to unknown people to create these movies. there is a lot less risk. i think the coolest effect of this is that they will bankroll projects that may never happen otherwise. some of the movies might suck, but that happens anyway. even brilliant filmmakers have to start somewhere. this can be the launch pad to a lot of writers, directors, actors etc etc etc. it keeps more people working on new stuff.
by making 28 films for $21million they realized they are making a far safer bet than making 3 $7million movies. they also are going right on TV and i guess to DVD. they also have the ability to promote them endlessly to their core fans. they will own the broadcast rights forever. it's a brilliant business model.
Missouri is mentioned? I'm wondering if this has to do with the forthcoming "Ringworld" SciFi production. The Gateway Arch would make a good ultra-cheapo looks-like-hell "Arch" of the Ringworld sky. Has anyone in St. Louis seen a fat guy running around in a painted-orange "Puss in Boots" halloween costume?
Where were you when the voynix came?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Dude, don't bash the new Battlestar Gallactica series if you haven't even tuned in. It's as bad as all the fundimentalist Christians bashing "Dogma" as being anti-faith without bothering to watch it. BG has been updated, but in a very low-tech way. It's not the BG of the 70's (thank god), it's actually a very decent show.
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
as all they see is schlock put together on the cheap
Know your sci-fi: Sturgeon's Law - Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
My friend is in one of these B SciFi Channel movies. His part should air in about a month or so. He gets shot by Campell. Good times.
I just looked up some facts. Percent of people living in poverty: Missouri 10.1 % Now some blue states Oregon 11.7 Washington 11.4 California 12.9 Illinois 11.8 Michigan 10.8 DC 17.3 Rhode Island 10.7 New York 14.2 Hawaii 10.7
...just 1950s type monster flicks, by the sound of it. Thank you SciFi for taking the Sci out of Fi. Leaving us with Fi. I guess.
I've been upset about this for a while. Alot of these movies have little bits of censored profanity in them. It shows they are made for DVD distribution. Why do I care? Because these movies are not only crappy, but they are flooding the market and backed by enough money that we may see the end of GOOD B movies. What company can compete with the flood of crap SciFi puts out, especially when you realize that video stores work with distributors who deal only with certain companies. Wnat some B movies in your store, we already have a fine line available for SciFi...nobody else gets in.
Also coming to SciFi, Junk Yard Wars meets Burt Rutan. "Master Blasters" punches holes in the sky with all kinds of cool junk. Reality TV with "Who broke Mach 1" instead of "Who got voted off".
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Part of the problem is that in addition to doing "Sci Fi on the cheap" is that it is most often "Sci Fi on the crap" as well.
This isn't to insinuate that they don't have some good scifi content that they have created(I like atlantis and farscape)
Could someone explain how they can make 28 movies at a cost of $1-2 million a piece for $21 million. They must have some impressive accountants or something.
If we are lucky, maybe this will lessen to a degree the SciFi Channel's total disdain for their own genre. The endless diet of reality shows, critter/bug flicks, and psychic trailer trash shows that they either do not understand science fiction, or hate it. If the network bosses love that kind of lowbrow/trash/schlock fare, let them take it somewhere else. Showing them on the SciFi channel seems a bit like bait-and-switch.
So, poor people are homophobic, and too stupid to murder their own babies when its for their own good. Congratulations! That is the most retarded and ignorant statement I've read on /. today!
Lets compare Missouri to neighboring Blue State Illinois. MO's unemployment rate: 5.6%, just above the national average. Il: 5.8%. Mean average anual salary in Missouri is $34,130. Il: $38,360. You might think that $4,230 means something until you factor in the cost of living, which is 93.6% for MO compared to 112% for Il. That means it's 18.4% cheaper to live in Missouri than in next-door Illinois - a blue State. While we're on the subject, health costs are lower in Mo compared to Il (105.8, 112.3, 100 = baseline).
Seems to me that Illinois is a poorer state. And they voted for Kerry.
As to this notion that welfare helps poor people, go into any southern urban area and speak to families that are trying to get ahead on public assistance. Welfare laws are structured in a way that keeps the poor down. Want to own property? You won't get welfare in 44 out of 50 states. Trying to get an education? Most welfare programs won't pay for anything more than vocational training, so you can get a nice manufacturing job that pays a 'living wage'. Got children? WIC will pay for food, but it won't pay for diapers, day care, or baby clothes. So you'll have ignorant fat naked babies. Oh, I forgot. You were supposed to abort them.
Seriously. Get a clue. Don't spout such ignorant sweeping generalizations as this.
Sources: Sperling, US Government Bureau of Labor Statistics,
So does any of this surprise anyone? Sci-Fi has been replaying stuff from the USA vault for a long time and this has been a pain in the backside of viewers forever.
If there's one thing they can learn, it is how to do cheap and good. Some of my favorite straight to videos are Mean Guns, Fortress, Nemesis, and Omega Doom. Not extremely costly, and some fun entertainment for a weekend afternoon on the couch.
Cheap and good is easy to do, but Sci-Fi won't do it generally. First, they won't push the limits with violence and profanity so even well-crafted usage is out of the question.
Second, they have really bad 50s premises beat with their attempts at combining bad sensationalistic nonsense and modern news issues like genetic engineering.
Third, they have the same management that thought forcing MST3K into the grave, killing Farscape, and playing idiocy like Cape Fear would be good ideas.
So I watch SG-1 and that's about it. Other than that, I watch Anime Network on Demand, Starz and so on, and ignore largely Sci-Fi.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
They lost the rights to Star Trek to Spike TV. They cannot afford to pick up Doctor Who reruns, or any other BBC SciFi (Red Dwarf, Blake's Seven, Star Cops, etc). They canceled FarScape and Lexx, WTF? Those where good shows and they flushed them down the toliet!
They remade BattleStar Galactica into a Space Opera, more emphesis on Opera than Space. Cyclons look and act human now, they stole^H^H^H^H^H^Hborrowed that from "The Terminator". A few characters got their gender changed.
SciFi had a chance to pick up "Space: Above and Beyond" one of the best SciFi shows made on network TV, and they refused.
Stargate SG1 wasn't lame enough, so they made a Stargate Atlantis, and now they recognize the lameness and are trying to change the actors with some who were on FarScape in an effort to jumpstart the show. Yet it jumped the shark long ago.
Now SciFi is buying movies that I can rent for $1 at the local video stores because they are B-Movies that hardly anyone wants to see, so they got marked down. Some are two for $1. At least the video rentals of those movies won't be edited for TV with all the good parts taken out.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I'm incensed by the notion that the Sci-Fi channel is anything approaching true science fiction. These cheesy creature-feature marathons and medieval fantasy based shows might draw in a few viewers, but sci-fi is lucky to break a 2.5 ratings share. The article hits it on the head - sci-fi is driven by demographics and marketing, not by any commitment to the genre. In fact, you can get as much scifi off Sci-Fi as on. If not for a few key brands (Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis) they wouldn't even be on my TV.
From the article:
The most important element of a Sci Fi film, Mr. Badish said, "is a topical film that has relevance to our audience. In a film coming up," he added, "stem cells are key to the plot; in another, it's mad cow disease.
No, no, no, no!
The MOST important element of a SciFi film is STORY.
Topicality is about last on the list. I can not express how fucking sick and tired I am of shows that decide to do a "war on drugs" episode, or "child molester" or "euthanasia" or "terrorist" or "ebola" or "flesh-eating mold" or "song lyrics/video game inspires teens to kill" show. They are either totally dull, or so wacked out beyond reasonable that there is no way to willingly suspend disbelief.
If you must do topical, do something that hasn't hit mainstream consciousness yet. Be pre-topical. At least that way, chances are that the BS you make up for the story won't be so obvious.
Otherwise, just focus on the story and give me something to think about, not something that makes my bullshit-detector go off so loud that I can't concentrate on the show.
Please?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Lets just be glad that the Sci-Fi channel has gotten back to real actual science fiction, crappy though it may be, instead of the Crossing Over psuedo-mystical fantasy bullshit they were so enamored of before.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Why not make one great movie for $21 million.
The original dune series was compelling, and wonderfuly great considering the circumstances under which it was made. Acting was OK. CG was OK, but the story was a wonderful adaptaton of the novel.
How about something by asimov? Maybe make a film out of one of the Terry Pratchett novels (and have the side effect of it being hilarious). How about a decent 2001 remake with some new spin on it?
I'm convinced that War of the Worlds could have been a good movie if it wasn't directed by speilberg and didn't have a sky-high budget.
But please. No more B movies. From what I recall, Dune made a mint for SciFi. I doubt they'd recover the costs of all these B movies.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The SciFi channel is lame. They consistently
pass on a lot of good SciFi shows and movies
that have been done over the years and offer
up a current crop of self sponsored/produced
("originals" as they like to say) lame movies
and even more lame shows. And, what is this
obvious prejudice they have against "older"
SciFi? The only "older" show they ever air
is an occassional holiday marathon of the
Twilight Zone (great show!). Please air some
50s/60s/70s shows and movies (how can you not
like 'Forbidden Planet'?). Also, good sci-fi
from *any* era/decade.
$21M/28 movies comes to $750K per movie. Which is exactly what the article says the SciFi network paid for each of these movies, with the producers expecting to recoup the remainder of the costs to be recouped via other sales (international, DVD).
501 Not Implemented
Wait I just forgot - this is /. SO everyone cares!
Actually I don't care - the films sound fun but I am too cheap to get cable...
This message was brought to you by "Lack of Sleep."
Perhaps had they allocated a little bit of that money to good writer, they wouldn't come out with the formulaic crap they have. If it's not an oversized or mutated or genetic hybrid animal then it's a post-apocalyptic crapfest about a ragtag group of authority-hating commandos that save the future. The worst part is that the suckage has started to bleed over into shows like stargate atlantis, with their half-ass borg-zombie-vampires.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
It's great to see an investment in creative work, particularly one that will employ lots of people and deliver their work to a potentially large audience.
But does anyone else wonder about authenticity? The producers here appear to be saying, let's make lots of films and market them as cheesy B-movies. The cheesiness is part of the appeal! We'll sell them as B-movies, which everyone knows are funny precisely because they weren't intended to be so.
I'm not a movie expert, but a proper B-movie wouldn't be sold as such, at least not to the public at large.
My point: This project should be an opportunity for new writers, directors, et cetera to tell excellent sci-fi stories. If the effects or other production values can't be up to "Independence Day" spec, then fine. But the emphasis should be on the storytelling, not on the "cheap" nature of the production.
I have so much to say also.
First of all is that your mention that the "cream of the crop" has more sex and violence than TV allows is silly. Sex and violence do not make a movie better. A good movie is a good movie, if it has sex or violence, fine. But saying anything without them is automatically worse is just plain ridiculous.
How much better a movie would Glengarry Glen Ross been with sex and violence in it? Probably not at all. How about Iron Giant? Did the violence in Aliens make it a better movie than Alien?
I don't have any problem with sex and violence in movies, but I do have a problem with being biased against those that don't have sex or violence. The dumbasses in Hollywood have this bias too. To them, certain type of movies must have at least a PG-13 rating, and they will put in extra sex, violence or swearing to ensure it gets it. Their bias comes from how audiences respond to G and PG ratings. It makes financial sense to them, because they concentrate on ticket sales. To apply the same thinking to measuring quality is foolish.
As to your comment about time slots, TV execs want to pick up not just the audience who knows they want to see their shows, but also some people who just "drop in". This is especially true of one-time specials. So timeslots still matter. It doesn't matter as much for a well-established show with a strong following though. But anyway, they feel that they'll get more viewers in prime time than they will at 3AM, even if the increment is small. And they're probably right.
Oh, and bring back The Adventures of Briscoe County, Jr.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
21/3 = 7 mil per show. Good shows usually(HBO's Carnivale, e.g.) are around the 1.5/2 mil mark per episode. So, they could not only put the money into 3 "big shows" but shoot a whole 5 episodes of each. Rrrrrrright. If by big & good show you mean a cheap script with cheap actors & cheap everything, being shot in one room with no outside shots, then yeah, they could do something like this.
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Besides the insane rants by the staff of "Aint it cool news," I have yet to meet anyone who has seen the new Battlestar series who was "Jizzing" on themselves about how great it is. American Sci-Fi is absolutely horrible these days, bar none and Sci-Fi channel is flooding the market with even more crappieness. Why does American Sci-Fi HAVE to always have incredibly good looking people that can only half-ass act? Why does there ALWAYS have to be romance involved between the main characters? Everyone and their grandmother has been going on about "FireFly" and how great it was. Granted I have only seen a few episodes, and those were out of order, but what I saw never inticed me to continue. Why does every series have to have supermodels as actors that look like they just stepped out of a salon? Shame that Sci-Fi passed on the new Dr. Who, they are going to miss out on a goldmine.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
I don't know how Missouri was listed, that state is doing quite well.
I have lived in St. Louis for 26 years of my life before moving to NYC in 1995 and then moving to Los Angeles in 1999.
I have to be honest here. Missouri >>>>> California in so many ways it's not even funny.
See, it goes a little something like this:
o Missouri is doing fine. If you check out St. Louis for example, they have a ton of gambling boats and centers that have really help spread the wealth. If you went back there in 1999, go back there now and things are booming.
o California is in major Debt, Missouri is not. California has the highest of everything and the lowest in value.
o I pay $20 a month extra for taxes on my Cable, phone, and cellphone bill just for this stupid city of Los Angeles.
o Sure there is a lot of work here if you are an illegal alien.
o If you want to buy a house here, you will end up paying huge amounts of money for a piece of crap with bars on the windows.
o In St. Louis, I can buy a nice home that is equal to over a million dollars here in L.A.
o The traffic on the 405 is horrible, worse than what it's like in Missouri and I lose half my life on the freeway. Yeah, I have a radio in my car, but WTF, I would love to be home with the wife instead.
o The violence is worse here. I have a bigger chance of dying on the freeway while being shot up on the 405, just wonderful.
Los Angeles sucks and I am getting the hell out of here once my job ends. I earn $85k, but as soon as this gig ends, I am out of here.
Sure, it's nice to have mountains and beaches, but the beaches are overcrowded and it takes two hours without traffic to get to the mountains.
Driving here is a nightmare, people on cellphones become stupid and when it rains people don't know how to drive.
What really gripes me is the themes -- they are so trite and sensationalistic. Seriously. . . I can't see how it costs that much more to make a movie with an intelligent premise, as compared with an ignorant one.
I can understand the limitations of a tight budget, and I can forgive a lot. I can forgive cheesy sets, cinematography, props, acting. . . But I have a hard time time watching movies that are just flat-out blindingly stupid. I also have trouble watching movies that are inferior knock-offs of other movies that were blindingly stupid.
If only they would dig through SF literature, I'm sure they could find a lot more original and plausible ideas to work with. But I think part of the problem is, these guys are fans of B-movies, they come from a B-movie making background, and the only experience they have to draw inspiration from is other B-movies. So we get the same tired, silly, often downright embarrassing stuff rehashed over and over. They're too inbred.
Clearly you are not rich because God hates you and loves other people, who are rich. You should give the rest of your money to these rich people, who, serving as proxies for God, will better minister to your nasty, brutish, and short temporal existence, generally by overworking you so that they may have more worldly luxuries. In doing so, they provide an example of the reward that awaits us in heaven. You, however, must toil and suffer through your days. Amen.
They should sponsor individuals just out of film/writing school with a vision who would be willing to work on a small budget to get their chance. Sure they might end up with some failures, but they also might produce some gems. All in all I think it would be a better investment than consistant crap.
http://notanumber.net/
Production Budget: $35,000
Worldwide gross: $248,000,000
If you didn't like the movie, too bad. A whole pile of people were willing to pay their hard earned money to see it.
The trouble with the movie industry is that the technology gets in the way of the story telling. You spend too much time coping with the technology (and trying to pay for it). Too many people are employed because they can use the technology rather than because they are good story tellers.
One of the things that made the Beatles successful was that they told the boffins what they wanted and didn't settle for what the boffins were willing to give them.
As a native Missourian here are some pros and cons mostly focusing on my native St. Louis.
Pros
Low cost of living
Lots of cool stuff in KC and 'tha Lou'
Branson (depends on your opinion)
Lake of the Ozarks
spring and fall weather
Canoeing in the rivers
St. Louis Cardinals
KC Barbeque
Blues, Jazz and Ragtime
The U City Loop (St. Louis)
St. Louis Hip Hop scene (if you're into that)
Short commutes
Great Italian and Vietnamese restaurants (St. Louis)
The Arch
Really cheap parking
Really cheap (and many free) events
Chuck Berry lives and performs regularly in St. Louis!!
Plentiful tech jobs
Cons
summer humidity
Lots of rednecks outstate
Lots of meth labs outstate
Branson (depends on your opinion)
winters not quite cold enough for regular winter sports
John Ashcroft
Lousy public transportation (St. Louis)
No more airline hub (St. Louis)
No real mountains (Ozark hills aren't mountains)
No ocean nearby
Urban sprawl
Here are some St. Louis links...
Lowlife Guide to St. Louis http://www.garagepunk.com/lowlifeguide
Built St. Louis (architecture)
http://www.builtstlouis.net/
Riverfront Times (news weekly)
http://riverfronttimes.com/
Playback St. Louis (music scene)
http://playbackstl.com/
St. Louis Gateway Arts (arts and culture)
http://gatewayarts.net/
The Commonspace (all things urban)
http://thecommonspace.org/
St. Louis Restaurants
http://www.saucecafe.com/
I don't know much about Bulgaria. But I'll bet it has lots of unique and interesting things to do as well.
We might consider to accept Missouri as well if you will behave and make some progress...
Missouri probably doesn't belong in the EU, because it's large and wealthy already. Its GDP in 2003 was $194,611,000,000 USD, or $29,252 USD per capita. Its population is about 5,755,000. Its armed forces number approx. 10,500 soldiers and airmen (not including those which it contributes to the United States' armed forces).
That means that its per capita GDP is almost equal to those of the UK or Belgium, and is higher than those of France, Germany, Italy, or Spain. Its economy is larger than those of Ireland, Luxembourg, Finland, Greece, or Portugal. Its population is greater than those of Denmark, Finland, or Ireland, let alone the EU's tinier members.
Missouri is the seventeenth-largest of the United States, and is usually considered a rural state.
And, no, I'm not from Missouri, and I've never been there.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Their are lots of ways to make a good movie or series. ROD (Read or Die) the tv, which about a month ago aired on G4, was excellent even though it was animated. Stargate SG-1 is pretty good. But a lot of the movies on there are awful! It can be fine with a low budget, but right now books in many cases are better. Part of the reason is they can churn out more books than movies. Right now take Hisamis advice and read Anne of green gables!
Bulgaria, Romania and _Missouri_ ?
Any "Reality Show Producers" out there?
One where the "Astronauts" have to perform "Missions" and not everyone "comes home".
Instead of the current reality shows where everyone is in it for themselves and only one can win.
In this show the prize at the end is larger for each person depending on how many make it.
Space is unforgivving, one little mistake and your dead...
(Legal disclaimer - If you use this pitch I will watch the show, This pitch is in the public domain for anyone to use as a basis for a show. Please just make it a good show.)
No, no. That's not the same thing. Those dinosaurs are the aliens. The guy you responded to meant there are dinosaurs here who go on a rampage. Then aliens who are not dinosaurs come down and they decide to have a kill a thon. If they could get some decent effects going, I think this concept could be the only one SciFi could produce that wouldn't completely suck. Of course, they'd likely just mess it up anyways.
I'm not willing to say that big budget makes a good movie/TV show. Battlefield Earth was a good book and the movie had top rated stars and funding, and it still sucked. Ideally they would take some of that money and sponsor some aspiring directors. Do something like Project Greenlight for SciFi. Of course, they need some experienced actor/directors to mentor these projects, and Hollywood doesn't want too much of that because they like their $100 million budgets with $20 million actors.
I wouldn't be surprised if the property taxes on a California studio would be enough to build a studio in the midwest. Cheap doesn't have to mean cheesy. I could walk in to the local public library and in minutes, find a dozen good SciFi novels that would make good movies, or with the right writers, a series. Something like Larry Nivan's Destiny Road shouldn't require too much CGI.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
Thank you! I'm glad someone else said that! Sci-Fi seems like it's turned into more of a "cheap horror flic" channel than anything else lately.
... which I don't think is really what most viewers want to watch on there.
That, and the modern day equivalent of horrible b-grade 50's campy sci-fi
Maybe I'm wrong, but everyone I talk to who likes Sci-Fi likes Battlestar Galactic, Stargate, and the fact that they were showing things like X-Files episodes, not all this "It's half man, half mosquito!" and "Help! A giant snake is loose in the jungle and killing us all!" kind of B.S.
but don't mention the niggers? You are a clueless PC fuckwit.
Man, I'm sure glad they tossed Farscape, Lexx, and The Invisible man to make room for all this new goodness. I just hope Serenity doesn't get the can...
As someone who has lived in both IL and MO, I can give you a bit more accurate picture than just your quoted statistics.
First off, IL is a very poor representative for the blue states. The Chicago area, except for the wealthiest suburbs, votes heavily democratic. The cost of living is quite high. Anything south of Kankakee is overwhelming republican. The cost of living is quite low. They all want to split the chicago metro area into it's own state until they realize that there's a net flow of tax dollars toward the rest of the state. Southern population is much smaller than the Chicago metro. Chicago calls the shots politically. The rest of the state is happy to not get completely screwed.
Illinois is kind of what you would get if you took Massachusets and stapled it to Montana.
MO is split rather evenly in the cities (St.Louis and KC) between parties. The rest of the state is overwhelmingly republican. MO goes to the GOP heavily. MO has shite schools and roads. The only real non-sports tourist/vacation destination, the Ozarks, has become overrun with megasized yachts that nearly flip any appropriately sized boat when they zoom by at full speed. Have fun getting an OB/GYN if you ever have a baby on the way. Rural areas usually have cheaper medical care because it's not as good. They don't have advanced facilities and specialists nearby, so the poor people just die or languish instead of running up bills that get passed to the patients that get saved. If you get cancer in central MO, your're driving 3 hours each way, twice a week for treatment in KC or StL.
If you want a place to make money, or have things to do, go to Illinois. If you're retired, travel a lot and need a place to leave your crap, or you're a homebody who wants a cheaper place to live, go to Missouri. BTW, adjusting your wage stats for cost of living only gives your MO earnings a 5% edge.
When I was a kid, long ago, the only people who were watching TV on Friday or Saturday night were geeks like myself, who just loved all that science fiction and horror, with monsters and spacemen and giant insects. I loved it. And lately I've been noticing that the SciFi channel has figured out that there are people like me who like this kind of junk. I like it because it is funny. I liked it then because it was funny. Maybe both ease my tension about how insane the world is (today terrorists and mad cow, yesterday it was nuclear war and ... well, nuclear war was pretty scary in the 50's).
It hit me like a ton of bricks when I saw a recent SciFi channel original called something like Hammerhead. It was about a mad scientist who had crossed his dying son with a hammerhead shark. It was just like a 50's monster movie. Right down to the all the dumb parts. And the sad part is that I was really enjoying it the way I enjoyed watching all those late-night Monster Thriller Horror Theater shows.
So bring it on. If you want thoughtful science fiction, you'll have to write it yourself.
Look what you've done, slashdot, now it's spread to B movies!
f x/Bware2005/Game%20Box%201.0.jpg
http://www.schlocktoberfest.com/current_columns/g
Like it or not, the Sci-Fi channel is one of the few channels that shows enjoyable shows during the graveyard shifts. I love all the reruns of the Twilight Zone. They really help the Graveyard shift here at the central station go by.
The imminent collapse of space and time is just the Universe's way of hugging you.
A (good) remake of the classic 60's Show, "The Prisoner". It was such a great series with so much unrealised potential. "I am not a number, I am a free man"
I was wondering why one of my favorite networks - the network that brought me STARGATE!! - was showing so many shitty films.
I just hope they don't completely ruin the network. I've been seeing many many reruns and now they're showing this crap. Worries me.
...you cannot fight it.
When Theodore Sturgeon was asked why 90% of science fiction is crap, he responded that 90% of ANYTHING is crap.
- Dune Miniseries - pretty good
- Children of Dune Miniseries - sucked ass because they tried to coast of the success of Dune but completely bastardized the next two books in the series
- Riverworld movie - sucked ass because it completely bastardized Philip Jose Farmer's amazing series
- Mansquito - sucked ass as a complete ripoff of Jeff Goldblum/The Fly
- Farscape - oh wait, they killed that and the 2 main characters, and tried to appease us with a movie thing
- Stargate: Atlantis - decent, if you were a fan of SG1
- Battlestar Galactica - pretty good, unless you were an oddball diehard fan of the original series and couldn't get past the changes
- every overgrown animal movie with the exact same formulaic cast - sucks ass by default (though at least the acting was better than starwars 1-3)
B-movies are great. Crappy movies suck, big or low budget. There is a big difference between classics like Evil Dead and the regurgitated this-is-exactly-the-same-as-another-movie-but-witI generally only watch SciFi channel when they are showing classics or their Friday night lineup.
I can guarantee you that the girls in the beaches are topless too. Trust me on that one !!!
Friday nights with the Sci-Fi channel is THE BEST, Jerry, THE BEST !!!
We have Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, and then top it off with Battlestar Galactiga!!! I just cream in my pants taking all three hours of fun!
Now, I see that NBC is running just a few hours of Battlestar Galactiga. When was the last time you saw Sci-Fi on prime-time?
Who's ya daddy now, biatch!?!
I really have a hard time envisioning the type of people who actually spend a Saturday night watching one of scifi's horrid B-Movies. I have never even given any of their movies a chance, it's hard enough to stomach the adverts they run during their few good shows.
"Snake Man" , "Shark Attack", "Mutant Alien Warriors", "Over Thrust: Ghosts on Board" etc. etc.
The fact that they've spent 21 million on that crap is just insane. They could have done any number of things with that money.... used it to fund great shows that had devoted followings or clumped it together to make bigger budget higher quality films once every 3 months instead of every saturday.
I would really like to see an HBO scifi based show and/or a subscription scifi channel that was forced to treat people intelligently as they would be the ones footing the bill.
Most of their stuff is just insulting to me as film lover and part time actor.
I'll make you a deal. You pray to God for help and I'll stop the moment he shows up.
You're wrong.
I happen to like both Battelstar Galactica and "It's half man, half mosquito!" shlock. (I personally feel Mansquito has been underrated for a great cheesy monster movie, and usually rebuked by people who haven't even watched it.)
Maybe I don't represent the majority of viewers, but I certainly appreciate shlocky monster flicks a lot more than most of the 'reality' garbage shown on other channels.
{ - Generic Guy - }
Sci-Fi channel hasn't been "the one to watch" for probably at least the last 5 years, maybe more. I remember about 9 or 10 years ago they actually produced some oddball but sometimes good quality shows and movies. One I particularly remember was Mr. Stitch (hey, CleverNickName!) which I found a little off-beat but actually really enjoyed. I actually had it on video until I finally got rid of my VCR.
Anyway, there have been a few bright spots during the intervening years (Farscape and Battlestar Galactica spring to mind), but note that neither of these was actually a product of Sci-Fi. Both of these were products of other networks and companies that just happened to be partially funded/bought with Sci-Fi dollars.
Now, the problem has become even more obvious in the last two years; Sci-Fi has become the "crap horror channel" rather than anything resembling science fiction (good or bad). Their Saturday lineup these days seems to consist of indentical monster movies with different casts. I have literally flipped over to Sci-Fi while watching something else (during commercial breaks) and found myself unable to discern one movie from another. This doesn't speak well of their quality.
As far as TV Sci-Fi is going, we're returning to the early 90's: Basically we have one or two actually good SF shows on TV which aren't really SF; recently BSG has become the big name, but it's a drama with a sci-fi setting, not true sci-fi... in the early 90's I could've probably named Star Trek TNG as the name back then. I digress. The only source of good Sci-Fi today is in books... and have you actually been to the sci-fi section at Barnes and Noble lately? There's an awful lot of schlock there too which I won't touch with a 10 foot barge pole.
So where's sci-fi going? Well, today a lot of good science fiction can be found in "fanfic"; stuff based on commercial shows and movies. Of course, a lot of that is terrible as well, but there is the occasional diamond in the rough. The only thing I don't like about this is the fact that it speaks of a severe lack of imagination; using characters and ideas stolen from others.
Myself, I write my own sci-fi for myself and my closest friends. Someday I might release some of it. For now, I'm quite content to have my own science fiction stories played out on my internal Omnimax with better-than-THX sound whenever I close my eyes.
'nuff said.
As a former die-hard Sci-Fi Channel viewer it saddens me to read about the direction the channel is going. I miss shows like The Lexx (before the writing began to go downhill), Farscape, and their movies that made an attempt at having a somewhat plausible script. Last night, I attempted watching Sci-Fi's The Fallen Ones starring several B-List actors. I had heard that it wasn't that great of a movie but watching it was actually an extremely painful experience. It was the worst piece of crap I'd ever seen. I'm still hung-over from the brain cells I lost just trying to process that tripe. On another note, there's a great series currently airing in Canada called Charlie Jade http://www.spacecast.com/charliejade . It's a joint venture between a Canadian and South African production team and it's a great, hard-core, dark sci-fi series. I had hoped that it could get picked up here in the USA. Check out the web site and maybe we can make enough noise to force a network to give it a chance.
Firefly's problem is that it didn't start off with a huge bang to grab people's attention, like the plane crash in Lost, or even the suicide in Desperate Housewives. It just had a random handful of miscreants aimlessly wandering the galaxy in a beater starship. Not a whole lot of sex appeal either. Even the whore didn't tease it up much, and things went way downhill from there. Plus, the 'space western' moniker manages to turn off the scifi fans and the scifi detractors at the same time. The only viewers that initially tuned in were the hardcore scifi buffs (like me), or the hardcore Whedon fans that would tune in to watch a soap commercial if he made one.
The fact that this is a "problem" is a sad commentary on the intelligence level of general viewership. Also, if one is at all knowledgeable, many of the "Western" aspects like the 6-shooters make more sense Sci-Fi wise than everybody having exotic beam weapons. (Heat dissipation issues. Energy storage issues. Lasers & particle weapons have inexpensive yet very effective countermeasures. Impossible to maintain or build without extensive tech infrastructure. Weapons with visible beams are easy to trace back to the shooter.)
And yes, Joss Whedon is brilliant!
I suggest that you also require that Annheuser-Busch (HQ in St. Louis) start producing real beer. And pay some sort of restitution for the decades they've been brewing and marketing swill to an unsuspecting public.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
After what they did to "Earthsea" I will never watch these cynical bastards again. They wouldn't know a good story if it landed on them in a bunker buster. Total commercial shlock meisters!