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Beware The Hype, Not the Witch
The movie industry is in shock over the "Blair Witch Project," which is clobbering wannabe blockbusters like "Deep Blue Sea" and "The Haunting."
BWP looks to be one of the most profitable movies in modern times. It cost about $30,000 to make and is expected to earn as much as $140 million.
That kind of profit margin, unprecedented in modern filmmaking, sure gets the attention of the people who run the entertainment industry. And it's also send the media into digital over-Hype once again. The "Blair Witch Project" is a lot of fun. And it's truly original. But it's not a great movie, nor even a particularly frightening one.
It does, however, seem to be the most important story in the world this week. The press is reminding us again that if you can't be first, you might as well try to look hip.
Perhaps to cover their own behinds, chastened Hollywood producers are blaming the success of BWP on the movie's crafty Net and website campaigns. The simple truth may be a lot tougher for them, and for all those overheated reporters to face - this is a more original, contemporary and kid-savvy movie than Hollywood is capable of making.
The embodiment of anti-hype, BWP is now the personification of it, analyzed on evening newscasts, on magazine covers, and pondered by newspapers all over the country. And very quickly, of course, to be mimicked at a movie theater near you.
This film is, in fact, being hailed by its distributors as a cultural landmark, a new kind of Net phenomenon, as if the world could withstand any more.
"There was a young Internet audience out there that hasn't been tapped," says Bill Block, a happy partner at Artisan Entertainment, which distributed the movie. "This movie converges with that audience. They've embraced it. All the kids have seen it on the Internet. In some ways it's the first Internet movie."
There is, in fact, some evidence that the BWP reveals a generational divide. It's drawing hordes of people age 18 to 30, the Net-savviest demographic group in the country. People over 35 are not seeing it in great numbers, nor liking it much when they do.
But is this really an "Internet movie?" Or is it simply a good movie for kids whose real implications are too complex and unpleasant for the disconnected, decidedly non-interactive giant companies that run media, movie and other information and entertainment industries?
The movies website, www.blairwitch.com, has from the first abandoned the traditional line between reality and fiction by displaying updated police reports and video interviews that make the movie and the story on which its based seem true. Discerning readers and viewers will quickly get that this is fiction, but some kids buy -- or perhaps pretend to buy -- the idea that the "Blair Witch Project" is literal and real.
Although it's not clear how many people believe the movie to be a literal documentary, there are still arguments all over the Web, especially on hundreds of mailing lists on ICQ and Hotline (or just type Blair Witch into your search engine) about whether the movie is true.
This is the perfect kind of hype for a movie like BWP. It offers raging controversy and debate over an issue of no real consequence whatever.
In a different way, the temporal furor is reminiscent of the (calculated) scare the late film genius Orson Welles gave the country decades ago when he broadcast "War Of The Worlds" - panic inducing radio reports of a Martian invasion in New Jersey.
Given the ubiquity of modern media, and the communicative nature of the Net and the Web, the fact that the story is fictional will get around soon enough, although there will be pockets of fanatics who don't want to believe it, and the inevitable media reports about how dangerous the Net is to the impressionable young, blah-blah, and how much it needs truth-tellers like the ones in media.
There's no doubt this move marked highly savvy use of the Web. The Blair Witch website logged more than 20 million hits even before the movie came out. Now Block says the number of visits is closer to 80 million.
But the mega hype surrounding a movie that was strikingly minimalist, non-traditional, and non-corporate suggests some grounds for caution, especially about the world's "first Internet movie." As of this writing, there is no such thing as an "Internet" movie, only one that can be touted there. If the "Blair Witch Project" isn't a great movie, it might very well be an influential one. For more than a decade, the indie film movement has been building seadily, nibbling at the edges of the gargantuan studio system. If the BWP results in the making of more innovative films by idiosyncratic filmmakers, then the Net will have, however indirectly, added something else to the culture of the world.
BWP is, in many ways, the perfect teenage/Web movie. It's unnerving without being frightening. It has lots of suspense and little horror. Its young actors were tossed into the woods with no script, clear direction, and dwindling amounts of food. So they were highly credible.
Because it's so fast-moving, grainy and herky-jerky, there are many discussions and disagreements about details of the pictures and the story, including the murky ending. Thus it lends itself to being debated, discussed, seen and re-seen. You can't go see it and not talk about it, or disagree with somebody about what you saw.
The movie was also tailor made for younger kids because it came out of leftfield. The grownups didn't make it, the kids did. Making a $30,000 movie with unknown directors and actors, with no script, special effects or studio support is almost a rebellious act in itself, something anybody under 30 can relate to. This movie is, in fact, a victory for individuality over the corporatism that has captured Hollywood along with publishing and journalism.
By presenting the story line as real, the aura around the movie became more eerie, generated more controversy.
By initially avoiding traditional Hollywood hype - bombardment print and screen campaigns quoting critics, showing trailers, offering marketing tie-ins with fast food chains - the campaign for the movie was refreshing and original.
But the campaign for BWP was tailor-made for this particular movie. For all the hype, the very same campaign wouldn't help woofers like "Deep Blue Sea" or "The Haunting." It doesn't necessarily have universal implications for other films, or speak to the evolution of a new kind of Internet entity.
In conventional media and business, where the Net is continuously either hyped to the skies or demonized beyond all reason, there's a tendency to assume that because a particular project works once online, computer networks are going to revolutionize a subculture or industry overnight.
In this case, the film's distributors noticed the Web-site was drawing crowds, and that kids were loving the idea of the movie, and pumped nearly $20 million into a conventional - and definitely non-digital - advertising campaign. That was quick, but hardly revolutionary, thinking.
By using technology so skillfully --- digital, hand-held cameras, Global (satellite) Positioning Systems that guided the actors through the woods - the makers of the movie also gave it a techno-savvy and jarringly realistic quality.
The actors were believable. They could be the kids next door, or at the next desk. This is a level of reality no longer available to the gazillion-dollar Hollywood offerings which, while they vary wildly in quality, are loud, overpowering and frequently over-written, animated and produced. In lots of ways, the BWP is a rejection of everything about Hollywood, especially the way it makes and hypes movies.
The odd thing is that no Hollywood studio could make a movie like this any more, not matter how jazzy a website they came up with. The studio system - now totally dominated by enormous conglomerates in desperate need of "Titanic" style profits - makes it virtually impossible for a movie like that to come from within. Nor do they necessarily want to make those kinds of movies.
If movies can really be made by unheard of kid directors for tens of thousands of dollars, what does that mean for the hordes of high-priced actors, directors, studio VP's, techs, publicists, marketers, designers and animators involved in the production of even the lowest-budget Hollywood movie?
Small wonder the people in LA are running around claiming that the BWP is an Internet movie: the alternative is unthinkable.
If the Net has had any great impact here, it's typically via connectivity: letting kids find a movie they will love, and vice versa.
The originality of the BWP will be lost soon enough. According to reporters, more "lost" film from the three main actors, Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard will be found for the sequel.
You can bank on this: BWP II won't do as well or be as good.
As producers and journalists scramble to figure out why this movie did so well, they'll almost surely skip the most obvious answer: it deserved to.
Big studio competitors like "The Haunting" haven't stumbled because of their traditional Web marketing campaigns. They are doing poorly because they suck.
You can take this to the bank, too: "Bowfinger," a hilarious spoof of Hollywood movie-making will do just fine, even without a razzle-dazzle Net campaign.
The best way to grasp the success of the BWP is to go to a movie theater and watch the audience watching it. Any movie that can glue 200 teens to their chairs for more than an hour without hardly any of them making a sound understand its audience.
The secret to making an "Internet" movie isn't only marketing it on a Website, it's grasping as well that the cultural sensibility of the Net generation is truly different. If the BWP project was an Internet movie at all, it's because it was creative, surprising, relevant, interactive.
The real question isn't how Hollywood can use the Net to pump its movies; it's whether Hollywood is capable of making movies that people who grew up on the Net and Web will want to see.
If you want to see the website, and don't want or can't use the plugin that the main page requires, go to http://www.blairwitch.com/mythology.html, you can access the content of the site without needing plugins (just don't hit the "Home" link).
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Open mind, insert foot.
There seems to be a lot of BWP bashing going on here, so I figured I'd put my two cents in in support of the movie. Yes, the movie was cheaply made, but a lot of research and planning went into it, it wasn't just a throwaway piece. The pre-release marketing (the Sci-Fi channel mockumentary and the website) were well targeted, and not as annoying as most marketing. The hype after everyone realized how well the movie was doing is very very annoying, but that doesn't make the movie any less good.
I'm not saying everyone will like the movie, but I certainly did. The actors were very beleivable (not necessarily sympathetic or competant, but they weren't supposed to be). The director set the mood well, and left enough to the imagination to scare the wits out of me. Seeing Freddy jump out of the shadows and disembowel sombody doesn't scare me. Seeing a pile of rocks outside a tent, that is scary, but only if you have some idea what the rocks are. At the theater I went to, only two people left during the credits; I'm used to seeing only two or three people remain to watch the credits (one's usually me).
I fear that a lot of the movie went above people's heads, and those are the people bashing the movie or yawning. Others haven't even seen the movie and are just bashing the hype. Bash the hype all you want, but the movie was well done.
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Open mind, insert foot.
BWP stands for Bristol Workshops in Photography. I guess Katz is afraid of wedding photos. I never realized the profit margins of photo studios could be that high. :-)
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Open mind, insert foot.
It scared me. It was creepy and it gave me the willies. The actors didn't *look* like actors (in fact, they all vaguely look like people I know), the woods looked like any woods I've ever been in, etc. The film was a huge relief after all the crappy slasher movies I've seen in the past few years.
Sure, it had its problems (specifically, I thought that the part at the end felt much more scripted than the rest of the film did). Still, it was fairly original and well done. I also liked the fact that it didn't go for the typical movie cliches -- the interaction between the three felt really genuine.
What I don't get is all the people (and there always seem to be a oddly high number of these on /.) who ruin the movie for themselves because they can't suspend disbelief. Why did they end up in the same place after heading south all day? BECAUSE THE WOODS WERE FRICKIN' HAUNTED! (I can just see a /.'er sitting in front of his monitor right now saying to himself "Ha! The moron! There are no such things as haunted woods!"; I'd hate to see a movie a person like that would actually enjoy).
I heard a guy in the theater complaining that "we never even see the friggin' witch". Any maybe that's the problem -- everyone's so used to having the camera shoved into the gore that people don't appreciate a more subtle approach. Maybe we can't be scared without a special-effect laden 30 foot iguana running around eating people. Maybe we live in a world where many people don't appreciate Hitchcock anymore and think that "I Know What You Did Last Summer II" is a good example of the horror genre.
Now that's scary.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Redirection: If you find yourself walking in circles when you should not be -- after heading in one compass direction or following a terrain feature, for example -- you are likely the victim of a redirection hex. The patch for this involves smearing yourself in the blood of a newly sacrificed black lamb and chanting "Cthulhu en vek tatty" five times while facing toward the east. Should this fail, your next best solution involves lighting a major forest fire and waiting for the firefighters to gets there...
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Not that anybody noticed, but he died back in June. When I was a kid one of our neighbors had a bunch of his stuff. All I remember is that it was as saccharine as Doris Day and about as filling (sheesh, anybody remember "Que Sera Sera"? If not, count your blessings!).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Second, I agree that Hollywood (as it stands) is not capable of producing stories of this kind. I'm not so sure it's a case of "over-writing" as a case of "over-glossing". Shine is fine, but when you have no texture, nothing to grasp onto, it's a mess.
Third, BWP is no "Internet Movie". It was promoted on the Internet, sure, but the movie itself was never tied in any way to the Internet.
(I'll sneak in a quick plug for the Free Film Project, where volunteers are working together to produce genuine Internet Movies, for even less than the BWP cost.)
I think that the success of the BWP shows, once and for all, that Independent filmmakers are producing what people want, rather than what people get told they want. This -may- shake up the film industry, in a big way. If Independent film starts being played more in the big cinemas, Hollywood is in for a rough ride, and one it might not survive, for all it's money and glamour.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well of course that was all just a hoax. Nothing ever happened at Grovers' Mill, NJ in 1938. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work here at Yoyodyne.
--John Parrot (forgot my passwd)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Wait a minute... It's a great movie, but is it worth the cover of both "Time" and "Newsweek?"
Maybe this should be:
Wait a minute... It's a great movie, but is it worth the cover of Slashdot...again?
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
*sigh* I don't get it...
Why did you watch the film, then? Why do you watch any film? If reality is what you want, with maybe some action or gore, why not just go sit on a street corner downtown some Friday night? Barring that, I guess you could watch COPS from the comfort of your couch.
Do I really believe in haunted woods? No. Do I believe in demented psychopaths who screw with campers and amateur filmmakers in various ways, including chopping up their friends and leaving body parts as presents? It's possible.
The wonderful thing about storytelling, though, is that it doesn't have to reflect reality 100 percent. In this particular story, they tried twice to get out of the woods by seemingly foolproof methods. They walked due south all day, and wound up in the same place. They followed a creek all day, and wound up in the same place. Could they have messed up because they were inexperienced? Of course. In the world that the storyteller has created, though, it could also be that the Blair Witch was messing with them via supernatural forces.
But I guess that some people can't deal with the idea that the world OF THE STORY doesn't necessarily coincide with their own version of reality. To each their own.
--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Yeah, yeah "there's a filter" yadda yadda. I'm not saying Katz sucks here, I'm just saying this particular article didn't seem to have any real [point || relevance || interesting ideas].
Not to even mention the specific bits I'd take issue with. "Not a good movie... not scary..." Bullshit. Some people are scared by this movie, some just aren't (hint: it seems to have something to do with how developed your imagination is). But either way, it is a very very "good" movie, by any sort of artistic, filmic standards. You don't get much of it the first time, but on a second viewing (when I could stifle the terror somewhat and pay attention to what the movie was actually 'doing'), I was amazed by how well put together it actually was.
I could go into more detail, but, much like the article itself, it would be the sort of thing that not many people here would care about. And, I'd be hard pressed to squeeze "the internet" in there every other sentence. So I won't. :-)
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
%s/30,000/1.5 million including marketing/g
How come there's an "open source" entry in the
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
For some interesting insights on independent movie making and movie costs, I recommend 'The Unkindest Cut' by Joe Queenan. Hatchet-man film critic tries to make his own movie, spends $ 65,000, falls flat on his face. Oops.
D
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The big difference is that they used digital video, not film. Rent a DV camera at $ 100-150 a day, buy ten MiniDV tapes at $ 15.99 each, and use the balance for props and lunch for the cast and crew. (I'm not joking about that last; read any book about small-time filmmaking, and you'll find one of the most essential things to provide in even the lowest-budget production is good meals. Have Spago cater your film and all else is forgiven).
Blair Witch used at least some 16mm film. 90 minutes or so of 16mm film costs about $ 7,000 to purchase and develop. In addition, you have to use an expensive to rent film editing studio instead of being able to use your $ 3,000 PC [including editing hardware/software] for the editing.
Rodriguez [sp] made his $ 7,000 movie by buying the film and developing it, buying a small number of props, and begging, borrowing and/or stealing everything else. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of this was that he didn't have the funds for synch sound equipment. As a result, when the film was released, Columbia had to pay $100,000 to fiddle with the sound track in order to make it acceptable. Rodriguez planned originally to release it only on video, so he edited it using free video editing time from a public access TV station. So the film had to be re-edited for release.
I should really put a link to my DV FAQ here: http://www.amazing.com/dv/dv-faq.html . Lots of information for DV fans.
D
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Could be the filmmakers made it for $ 30k and the studio then massaged it for $ 270k. Something like that happened to Rodriguez's Mariachi movie (I have a slightly more detailed explanation elsewhere in this discussion).
Of course the important thing is that $30k was all the filmmakers needed to raise to get the movie to the point where the studio was interested. So from their point of view, it took $30k of their money to do the film.
Still a pretty good return on investment.
D
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You're way overstating the case here.
... and some effective grassroots marketing.
Mr. Showbiz interviewed the Last Broadcast team and while there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that the BWP people saw the other film, BWP had been filming off-and-on for at least six months before the film of LB was available. There's nothing in this article saying anything about 'reviewing options with lawyers', either; the LB guys are very cordial. Actually, if they're smart, they realize that the BWP success is the best possible thing for their movie -- at this point THEY might be the beneficiaries of a million-dollar deal.
No matter your feelings on the paper trail here, there have been dozens of student-film projects along the same lines. The cinema-verite-made-cheaply-with-videocams idea is certainly not new; the student-actors-on-a-roadtrip idea is not new; and the we-aint-tellin-if-its-true idea is not new. In fact, the only thing BWP has going for it is technique
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
And films like _Blair Witch_ killed it -- or at least, that's what a lot of critics have felt for some time.
There was a brief flowering of truly original, offbeat product, culminating in the success of studios like Miramax and New Line -- which were then bought by mainstream studios (Disney and Time/Warner, respectively), eventually leading to more mainstream product.
The most prominent indie film festival is Sundance, and Robert Redford, its founder, just quit on the grounds that it no longer showcases innovative product. The films brought to Sundance aren't original films by people who would never get work in Hollywood, but derivative low-budget fare made by people trying to GET work in Hollywood. Just look at the decline in ethnic faces and the rise in white faces in so-called indie movies, and you'll see that marketing forces have had their say. Perhaps a film like _Office Space_ or _In the Company of Men_ is worthwhile, but they no longer represent cutting-edge filmmaking using ideas Hollywood would never touch.
Also, the rise of what probably should be called "alternative" moviemaking has all but obliterated the market for any kind of foreign film in the US. It's no coincidence that some of the most intriguing films lately have been made by directors in such odd places as Iran or Croatia: the corporate Hollywood product practically doesn't exist there, so there's a market for local films.
It's really sad, because you're right -- BWP is more innovative and interesting than standard H'wood fare such as _The Haunting_, which despite a highbrow cast chose to rely on expensive CGI to make itself scary. On the other hand, a standard studio film such as _The Sixth Sense_ also makes the same point, effectively telling a scary story without lazily relying on effects, and generating some of the strongest word-of-mouth referral business in some time. So it's not impossible.
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
I wouldn't worry about the anwhere-it's-not-popular crowd, they don't make up that much of any group, especially not hte linux crowd. I've been on the mailing lists of a number of open source programs, and believe me, the important people there are doing it for love, protection from boredom, personal gain, personal need (people who want tools and thus are writing them), etc. I've yet to see one group where anyone who made significant contributions was concerned with the fact that what they were doing was popular or not.
:-)
What you say about the slashdot crowd may be partially true, but remember that that portion of the crowd that you are talking about doesn't contribute much anyhow.
Those who want to be in the minority will, thankfully, always be the minority. You don't really have to worry about them.
Btw, I don't remember his last post about this, but I think that Katz is a lot closer to the mark on this one, what he said was more or less true. BWP wasn't revolutionary any more than any successful movie was revolutionary. It was largely in the right time at the right place. From what I heard it's a well told ghost story, told in an original style. The fact of the matter is that people can get used to just about anything, hence you always need new styles, or old styles which are now new again. Ii sure hope that hollywood doesn't start trying to imitate BWP. I like movies where I can make out the actors much better than ones where half the time I might as well close my eyes.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
There's no other explanation. Katz is a robot. /. hold dear.
He is clearly CmdrTaco's AI project, searching the web and net for hype, and then making obvious commentary based on it's input from various sources. Taco has deftly incorporated the geek value system into the AI's processes allowing it's algortihms to always make seemingly legitimate tie-ins to things the people on
Excellent work Rob!
-Rich
Is it just me, or does it seem like this doesn't quite qualify as "news for nerds"? I think Katz is a good writer, but it seems like his submissions belong at Salon, or somewhere else. Look at it this way: If this article were posted on Salon, and I submitted it, would it get posted on /.? I tend to think not... I realize I could filter out all the John Katz articles, but then I'd miss the occasional one that he writes that actually is news for nerds. Just my .5/25 of $1.00 ...
Juiced? Or Not?
This is only mildly related to the topic, but did anybody hear Howard Stern on Monday? Some moron from Memphis called in, she said she worked at a magazine, and she asks Howard, "Did you see the blair witch project? Was that real?" and Howard mutes her and makes fun of her and stuff, and then he goes, "Yes, it was all real. The director of the FBI called me and the president of Artisan, the company that distributed the movie, in to a meeting to talk about this." He went on and on, and the moron was like, "Oh wow. Are you serious?" and Howard goes "Honey, I am totally serious." She goes, "You know, I thought it was real, but I wasn't sure, because some people are saying it isn't." Howard goes, "have you ever seen any of those actors before? If this was just a movie, would they hire somebody with a big ass to play the girl?" So he mutes her again and he goes, to the mic, "Watch this, I'm going to sell her the Brooklyn Bridge." And you know what? He actually sold her the Brooklyn Bridge. He told her for an investment of $300 a month, she could make up to $1500 per month from her cut of the tolls. "Are you serious?" Anyway, he did it. It was hilarious. Then he told her they're building a bridge from NY to VA, but he told her she couldn't get in on that deal, because he was buying the entire bridge.
Like I said, only remotely related to the topic, but it was hilarious. Hopefully E will show this one. Also on the show were a guy who had his Mom and wife strip to promote a movie, and a midget porno star.
rooooar
Here's an article from The Philadelphia Daily News comparing BWP to something that screened a year earlier at Sundance called The Last Broadcast.
f eatures/FCOV16.htm
Both are very similar movies. BWP got popular.
http://www.phillynews.com/daily_news/99/Jul/16/
There were dozens of fan-run websites, the 'official' movie site provided a party-line, and let the other fan sites run wild with rumor and conjecture. Video and audio clips abounded, and fan art proliferated. There was almost no television advertising -- at least very little that I saw. The interest in this movie was entirely fan based. The studio noticed this early on, used it, and encouraged it.
Of course, I refer to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. It's an 'internet movie' just as much as the Blair Witch Project is. Remember Men in Black? They created a 'UFO sightings and ET conspiracies' website to hype their movie (before they even admitted it was a movie!), and when they were ready to announce the movie, they rolled the www.MenInBlack.com site into the movie site. Many serious X-Filers were seriously pissed.
The Hollywood glitterati is just mad that they didn't think of this first. The fatcats are mad that they didn't get their mega-million-dollar cuts of the 'production costs'. It's not like they've tried to do something like this before...
Hollywood, you got beat at your own game. Suck it up and deal.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Katz, and other shifty geeks out there: get your own mind. Like the movie, or dislike it; but don't dislike it because others like it. "I took the road less travelled by/And that has made all the difference." Bah! The only difference it makes is trashing your life on the whims of others.
Mr. Katz,
Are you forgetting that you yourself were touting this movie as a revolution in filmmaking only a week or so ago? Why do you fuel the hype then feel it necessary to criticize major publications for publishing what (in theme) is very similar to your original article about the movie? Sure, I think the media is putting too much emphasis and importance on this movie (which I didn't find particularly revolutionary, ingenious, or frightening) but I'd rather read about the success of the Blair Witch Project rather than most of the other trash that magazines publish!
~GoRK
I haven't seen it and don't want to - I hate scary movies. Give me a funny one any day of the week.
... volenteers should be easy to find ... only problem is the cost of film. And the script.
What I admire about the production is that they took their disadvantages and made them into advantages. Have a cameraperson who can't shoot? No problem - fold bad shooting into the plot. Have only 16mm and cheesy video equipment? Fine, make sure the plot requires it. Fantastic idea. Wish I'd thought of it.
However, I don't see this as being an easily duplicatable success, since it's really a one-idea movie. Copies of it are just that, cheap copies of a cheap concept. I'd only make a $30,000 movie (and yes, I could if I wanted to) if I had a unique concept. Too many clones of this will appear, and they'll all fail.
Thinking about this, I wonder how a parody of this would do? Seems like you could do almost the same thing, play it totally for laughs, and have a watchable movie that could still be made for next to nothing.
Arriflex 16mm cameras are for sale cheap on eBay
With all the competition about to bleed out of the woodworkd, it had better be good. Bear that in mind if you want to do one of your own.
D
PS This might not be news for nerds, but I think it is stuff that matters. I appreciate Jon' coverage of this issue. Just wanted to say that due to the large number of people slamming him about this story.
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All in all, a pretty week showing by Mr. Katz. Nothing even close to his masterpiece of:
pooptruck