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Discworld Fan Film Possibly the Largest Scale Fan Film Ever
An anonymous reader writes "After clocking in at $82,000 on their Kickstarter campaign, two Troll Bridge trailers have been released online showing helicopter shots in New Zealand (video) and a large scale bridge set that was built and shot on (video). A Behind the Scenes (video) has also been released demonstrating what fans are now actually capable of, given decent crowd-funding. The film has finished shooting and is expected to be released next year. Sir Terry Pratchett has been apparently thrilled with the progress."
But can it beat Star Wreck for best production award?
Lest you auteurs out there get too exciting, thinking you're going to film your Michael Bay ripoff dream project for a song, keep in mind that the entire cast and crew *volunteered* on the project (some for years). If you were to factor that cost in, it wouldn't surprise me if the actual cost of this project was well north of $1 million.
I just wanted to mention that, because these kinds of fan films often advertise incredibly low budgets that mislead a lot of people to think that real filmmaking is easy and cheap, and anyone can do it. It reality it takes a team of pros to produce a decent effort (not just some shitty student film or Youtube novelty). It's just that very low-budget efforts often get those pros to *donate* their services. They're not going to do that for your average Michael Bay ripoff.
My personal favorite professional-grade fan film is Broken Allegiance, easily the best Star Wars fan film ever made (IMHO). It was shot in Australia with a volunteer cast and crew made up of film professionals for about $10,000. It's one of the few fan films I've seen with professional lighting, actors who aren't horrific, and a halfway decent script. And it's one of the few Star Wars fan films that plays it straight instead of doing the 10-millionth stupid parody of a franchise that's almost become a parody of *itself*.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Hell, it doesn't translate out of any of the books whatsoever.
Discworld plays, board games, video games (yes, Discworld I and II were NOT "Discworld", just Simon-the-Sorceror style cash-ins), etc. 99% of the Discworld merchandise is absolute tat. Hell, even the endless calendars, "science books", and everything else are a waste of space.
I don't blame Pratchett and/or his agent for cashing in - far from it, I'd do the same. But it remains true that every adaptation outside of the books just can't do them justice.
Hell, I cringed through the first 10 minutes of the TV adaptations we had over in the UK "starring" David Jason, etc. Ick. I had to switch it off.
Some series you can do justice too (whether they have or not is another matter) - Lord of The Rings you can do quite well (though I don't like the current versions, there's sure to be a remake in 10 years time with even more "extra footage"), most sci-fi authors you can do quite well. But comedy literature is a tough one to crack and it won't translate to the screen properly at all.
All it *will* do is put people off trying to read the books because they've seen the (crappy) TV/movie versions.
In one book, Death has a scythe that's so sharp it slices his sentences in half when he speaks. Vimes is an ugly, fat, old alcoholic copper that kicks arse (okay, they NEARLY managed that in a lot of 80's cop shows). Unseen University is technically invisible (or not, depending on which part of which book you read). There are pages of explanations spread across 20+ books about how some of the elements of the world came about (e.g. klacks, other dimensions, Angua, Dibbler, etc.). How the hell do you translate that to a movie or even a play?
They should stop trying. At best you can attempt an amateur play or an audiobook reading. At worst, everything else you put out ruins the books even more.
Death has a scythe that's so sharp it slices his sentences in half when he speaks.
"The ticking of the clock stitched the blanket of time."
Drop the unfilmable metaphors and you lose half of the best stuff.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
No, he has a good point. The actual budget is far in excess of $82,000. $82,000 is just how much liquid cash they spent. The opportunity cost of the entire film is, as he stated, somewhere around $1 million or something.
Consider this. What if the people who volunteered their time instead just donated money?
If those people gave $1 million, which was then spent to hire other people to do what those people volunteered to do, the end result would be the exact same.
You'd have $82,000 left over to spend on the set, etc, having spent that $1 million dollars on acting, labor, etc.
Would the cost of THAT film be $82,000? No, it cost $1,082,000.
So because this money was donated, you're not counting it?
Or because the volunteers immideately "spent" the money on themselves, it doesn't count?
Its economics.
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I guess Clerks was shot for like ~$23,000 and it was pretty professional cinematography. They had to shoot in B&W and most of the actors volunteered as well, though.
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Should all fan fiction be NYT Bestseller List worthy?
All fan art worthy of the Louvre, instead of something that looks like it belongs on my fridge?
I cringe to think of what you say about your kid's macaroni art family portrait.....
So why do amatuers making a fan film have to display a professional hollywood level of expertise?
The whole point is its a labor of love from people who love the topic, regardless of their expertise. It had meaning to them, as well as to (hopefully) other fans who can also appreciate it for what it is. I'm not conflating anything. You are however very confused.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Is impossible to translate fully a Discworld book, just too much of them is not visual. Instead, try to do a different film that catches the spirit of it.
I'd quite like Gilliam to have a stab at it.
Gilliam has been trying to get funding for his completed script of Good Omens for over a decade. (But it looks like it's going to be done as a TV movie instead.)
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