How much would a decent Fan Movie cost?

PayBack · Post by **PayBack** » 2006-02-06 08:52pm

I was wondering how much a decent Star Wars vs Star Trek movie would cost to make. I've seen some surprisingly good pure SW fan movies, but very average vs movies.

Were I to win lotto this Wednesday (though it's only about NZ$11 million plus about another million in "toys"), how much do you think it would cost to make an hour long movie of acceptable quality?

I'm only curious because if I ever won, that's one of the things I'd likely waste my money on. Could one of Revelations quality be made for a couple of million US?

OmegaGuy · Post by **OmegaGuy** » 2006-02-06 09:04pm

Have you seen Star Wreck? It was made on a pretty low budget and was excellent.

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2006-02-06 09:04pm

Note: this is assuming you have permission to use the Star Wars and Star Trek material. This is not a cheap expense, and would probably use up all your money and more.

Depends on how many people are willing to work free/cheap out of love for the idea, and how many of them have acting talent. You pretty much have 3 major expenses (assuming you can write the script yourself... after all, it's your dream!)

1) With 3d software getting so cheap and powerful these days, the effects end is actually fairly easy to do. If you have some skilled people interested in the project, your only problem on that end is going to be getting a render farm to do it all in a reasonable amount of time. As Revelations proved, it doesn't take professionals to get an acceptable effects quality anymore.

2) Actors are the most important thing, and can go either way. You absolutely need people with some good talents here. This is the major weakness of fanfilms, the so-called actors are painfully bad at acting. If you have some friends with the talent, this might be a small expense. If you don't, you'll probably end up spending a lot of money on hiring them.

3) The remaining expenses aren't too bad. Sure, renting a professional-quality camera and filming locations might be expensive for the average person, but with a budget of millions of dollars, they're within reason.

It's really too variable to say for sure how much it would cost. There's clearly a lot of people interested in the idea, who would work for free/cheap. So it really depends on how many of them you know and can convince to join the project.

PayBack · Post by **PayBack** » 2006-02-06 09:18pm

Somehow I think the permission thing would be unlikely... Hey Paramount, I'd like to make a movie about the Empire kicking the Federations ass.. ok by you?

Would they actually sue? They'd look pretty dumb suing some individual making a vs fan film. hmmm then again they do sue individuals a lot these days don't they.

PayBack · Post by **PayBack** » 2006-02-06 09:21pm

OmegaGuy wrote:Have you seen Star Wreck? It was made on a pretty low budget and was excellent.

Yeah I have.. that and Revelations are what got me thinking about it.

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2006-02-06 10:25pm

PayBack wrote:I was wondering how much a decent Star Wars vs Star Trek movie would cost to make. I've seen some surprisingly good pure SW fan movies, but very average vs movies.

Were I to win lotto this Wednesday (though it's only about NZ$11 million plus about another million in "toys"), how much do you think it would cost to make an hour long movie of acceptable quality?

I'm only curious because if I ever won, that's one of the things I'd likely waste my money on. Could one of Revelations quality be made for a couple of million US?

Several million US dollars is FAR more than you'll need. I think most of best-looking fanfilms cost several thousand dollars.

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2006-02-06 10:36pm

Revelations cost $20,000

Broken Allegiance cost $6,000 Australian dollars, which converts into $4,453 US.

PayBack · Post by **PayBack** » 2006-02-06 10:40pm

Excellent... thanks.. I don't have to win as much as I thought before I can start my script

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-02-06 10:51pm

Broken Allegiance cost $6,000 Australian dollars, which converts into $4,453 US.

And that was an excellent fan film, better than Revelations, IMO.
I seem to recall almost all of its budget was in catering, actually. If you live in the right area, it seems a lot of people are willing to donate time and material.

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2006-02-06 10:58pm

Noble Ire wrote:
Broken Allegiance cost $6,000 Australian dollars, which converts into $4,453 US.
And that was an excellent fan film, better than Revelations, IMO.

I agree. IMO, Revelations is vastly overrated. It has the best visual effects in any fanfilm I've seen, but once you get past a certain threshold (Duality, Broken Allegiance, KnightQuest) it's all sufficiently good to me. After that, the film needs a story and interesting characters to entertain me.
Revelations had neither. The actors were TRULY wooden (remember that dumbass journalist who wrote that it was better than AOTC?

), and the story ranged from dull to incoherent. I wish some of the other fanfilms I just mentioned were held up as the standard to judge other films against, rather than Revelations.

PayBack · Post by **PayBack** » 2006-02-06 11:06pm

Well I'm just downloading Broken Allegiance now so I can't say anything about it yet, but I agree about the acting in Revelations... but then it wasn't any worse than I would have expected when you have the main characters being the fans making the film (an assumption on my part).

The other problem is no many of the main characters looked like trekies.. and by that I mean overweight with heavy eyebrows... and I can say that because... ummm well I have heavy eyebrows and could do with losing a few KGs lol

However I'm not a trekie and wouldn't be caught dead dressing up in private let alone in public!

.

However the special effects were impressive for a fan made film.

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-02-06 11:11pm

However the special effects were impressive for a fan made film.

Really, among SW films at least, any piece without phenomenal effects isn't worth your time (since they generally lack good stories and actors as well). In recent years, fan-made works have become incredibly well done on the VFX front, on par with or surpassing most professional quality stuff from the nineties.

PunkMaister · Post by **PunkMaister** » 2006-02-06 11:29pm

Any links to this Star Wreck or other crossover fanfilms if any?

PayBack · Post by **PayBack** » 2006-02-07 01:11am

Google is your friend

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-02-07 04:40am

According to the FAQ, the budget of Star Wreck was "almost zero", thanks to using volunteers and having only virtual sets and free location shooting.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-02-07 08:35am

I'd prefer to see fan filmmakers spend their money towards something productive, such as stop breathing...

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-02-07 09:52am

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:I'd prefer to see fan filmmakers spend their money towards something productive, such as stop breathing...

Have you ever seen Star Wreck VI ?

Elheru Aran · Post by **Elheru Aran** » 2006-02-07 02:16pm

PayBack wrote:Google is your friend

Most of these you can find on theforce.net, I believe. Also a bunch of other fanfilms; Batman Dead End for one.

PayBack · Post by **PayBack** » 2006-02-07 04:34pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:I'd prefer to see fan filmmakers spend their money towards something productive, such as stop breathing...

I don't see why. It's not like they charge for their movies, and sometimes you get half an hours free entertainment out of them... and I'm yet to see a single fan flick that wasn't better than Starship Troopers II.

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2006-02-07 06:43pm

Actors would have to be good, yes. But what many seem to be neglecting is the vision, the script, the director, things like that. They are vital for inspiring the actors so that the movie can mean something on an emotional level. Enough hollywood productions have shown that no actor can save a movie from shitty directing and scripting.

As for Broken Allegiance... after watching it and then rewatching it with a friend, I can honestly say it remained one of the most dissappointing fan films I've seen. It was disjointed, lacklustre, unoriginal, and poor in almost every respect. The obsessive need to shoehorn in a badly cast Vader was the least of its problems. No, the two "Sith" -- what laughable conceit, that those two would style themselves as anything beyond the rudimentary Force adepts they were -- must, as the main characters, bear most of the blame as the overhyped, poorly drawn, and, beyond all else, shallow creatures that they are.

The space battle in the beginning was out of place, even though it was adequately rendered. As for the bounty hunter's ship, it was far more impressive; there was obviously some technical competence on this badly mismanaged team. Sadly, the whole planetbound part emerged as an unmitigated disaster, evoking at best the dizzying heights of a Voyager episode of the week.

As for the fencing, the less said, the better. Suffice to say that, as a fencing affectionado holding expectations based on previous fanfilms... it made me wish to vomit.

Ultimately, the movie falls not because of these flaws, but simply due to the fact that the plot is unworkable. It makes little sense that Vader would train a pair of rank incompetents to be, of all things, Sith -- furthermore, to train his own apprentices, and that poorly, would be a clear signal to the Emperor about Vader having outlived his own usefulness. The hunt was handled in the same moronically plodding manner, as if all Vader had was the Executor and a handful of TIE Fighters. The action was handled ineptly, by rote, without any of the sense of daring and adventure that Star Wars should evoke. And most damningly, since the characters are pointless and the story vacuous, the movie would have been forgettable even if it had worked in all other respects.

But the movie's not a total loss for all that -- the damsel in distress was slightly cute, and one or two of the parts of dialogue recycled from other movies and sf series were still worth a chuckle this time around.

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2006-02-07 08:02pm

Were those two supposed to be Sith, or just trained in the ways of the Sith? That makes them no different than Assaj Ventress, Lumiya, and numerous other characters from the EU. They might have seemed "incompetent," but it's made clear that they have only been training for about a year.

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2006-02-07 08:11pm

Jim Raynor wrote:Were those two supposed to be Sith, or just trained in the ways of the Sith? That makes them no different than Assaj Ventress, Lumiya, and numerous other characters from the EU. They might have seemed "incompetent," but it's made clear that they have only been training for about a year.

They're called "apprentice Sith" versed in "Dark Jedi lore", as if the two were synonomous. They're far too old to be trained in the ways of the Sith in any useful capacity, and in fact they don't at all act even remotely Sith-like.

seanrobertson · Post by **seanrobertson** » 2006-02-07 09:48pm

Eleas wrote: But the movie's not a total loss for all that -- the damsel in distress was slightly cute, and one or two of the parts of dialogue recycled from other movies and sf series were still worth a chuckle this time around.

Agreed (and nicely said).

I honestly didn't think BA's Vader was too bad, though; the fellow in the suit tried too hard to imitate Prowse's overly-aggresive gesturing, but the voice actor did the best James Earl Jones approximation I've heard in a fan film.

Eleas · Post by **Eleas** » 2006-02-07 10:11pm

seanrobertson wrote: I honestly didn't think BA's Vader was too bad, though; the fellow in the suit tried too hard to imitate Prowse's overly-aggresive gesturing, but the voice actor did the best James Earl Jones approximation I've heard in a fan film.

Thank you.

The reason the Vader voice was good was because the voice actor is a pro, the "definitive voice of Vader" next to James Earl Jones, or so I hear. He worked on KnightQuest as well, among other projects. The quality of his performance is quite sufficient for any fanfilm.

My problem is not with the way Vader is played, but rather the way he's used. Because if there's one thing that Vader is not, it is ineffectual, and that's basically the role he's assigned throughout the movie. He was used not as a protagonist but as a tool for exposition and to reprise his old song and dance of wanting that ship, et cetera. The very definition of stretch and extend.

Honestly, they would have been far better off just using an OC Inquisitor instead. If nothing else, it would have given them something to explore.

PayBack · Post by **PayBack** » 2006-02-08 07:27pm

And is it just me, or was the finger wiggle during the force choke just embarrassing?

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

How much would a decent Fan Movie cost?

How much would a decent Fan Movie cost?

Re: How much would a decent Fan Movie cost?