If most films were made that cheap with that bad of picture and even worse, sound quality, and using ADR even, it would be rejected by most film festivals. However El Mariachi went big, and boosted off Robert Rodriguez's career? How is that his film was the exemption to the rules? Did the producers just have really good international connections to get it shown in theatrical releases all over the world or what?
How did El Mariachi get so big with such poor quality?
- Thread starter harmonica44
- Start date
He wasn't that before he became that, if that makes any sense. He had to get there, and El Mariachi is part of that story, even if not the beginning.
Yeah, I can deal with getting struck by lightning. Even that breaks down to "Talent doesn't happen to everyone."
Cool, well, that's true.
Again, though, it's more tan talent as well, but luck isn't one of those things, IMO. I guess everyone's mileage varies.
In that case, I'd ask, why bother even trying this if you think this is mostly luck? Why not choose something that's much cheaper as a hobby? Or, if you're a hobbyist and you aren't in it for some kind of profit, then that's cool too... none of this applies to you and you can do whatever you want.
On my end, it's Talent, Technical, Tenure, and Taste. Three of those, and you can make up for the rest.
Whatever you call being at the right place at the right time with the right amount of subjective talent.... Most people call it luck, but you can call it whatever you want.
I don't feel I have a choice. I make movies. It's what I do and I cannot imagine doing anything else. I make a living at it now, so it's no hobby for me but a career AND my passion.
Okay. But you knew what I meant. You knew I wasn't talking
about movies that broke even and/or made profit. You know I'm
talking about movies like Paranormal Activity that were huge
hits and saw theatrical distribution.
I have seen hundreds of very good ULB movies that combine
talent, taste, technical and tenure and still did not find theatrical
distribution. I wish it was as simple as talent, taste, technical, and
tenure.
Like I said, be VERY talented, work your ass off, and be really, really, really, really lucky. You could make a film that makes Citzen Kane look like bad home movies and without a good dose of luck (made possible by a ton of hard work) it still isn't going to happen. RR had a good product, he worked his ass off and took huge risks to get in front of the right people AND he was just in the right place, at the right time, with the right film.
I'd say there are plenty of good or great movies that were distributed and still never went anywhere, revenue wise. Some even have poor critical revue.
It's kinda crazy.
SHAUN OF THE DEAD comes to mind. Great movie, great reviews, cr@p revenue.
(Flinching) ZATHURA my kids love, fair reviews, barely broke even.
HENRY POOLE IS HERE. Trashed at box office and reviews.
BE KIND REWIND. Sweet little feel good flick, lame revenue and reviews.
Surely we all have our pocketful of cinematic treasures that others just kinda smile politely at but inarguably the films are commercially or critically unsuccessful.
And these were films someone thought they could make a buck offa.
What's worse is when everyone widely acknowledges the film is fried sh!te yet the lemmings keep forking over the Andys, a la REVENGE OF THE FALLEN. $836M for something that garnered a Rotten Tomatoes 20% approval.
W.
T.
F.
What chance to half-baked (to be both polite and generous) industry fan-fic pics have?
The math.
The odds.
Luck is... weird.
Everything else quantifiable is likewise... weird.
It's kinda crazy.
SHAUN OF THE DEAD comes to mind. Great movie, great reviews, cr@p revenue.
(Flinching) ZATHURA my kids love, fair reviews, barely broke even.
HENRY POOLE IS HERE. Trashed at box office and reviews.
BE KIND REWIND. Sweet little feel good flick, lame revenue and reviews.
Surely we all have our pocketful of cinematic treasures that others just kinda smile politely at but inarguably the films are commercially or critically unsuccessful.
And these were films someone thought they could make a buck offa.
What's worse is when everyone widely acknowledges the film is fried sh!te yet the lemmings keep forking over the Andys, a la REVENGE OF THE FALLEN. $836M for something that garnered a Rotten Tomatoes 20% approval.
W.
T.
F.
What chance to half-baked (to be both polite and generous) industry fan-fic pics have?
The math.
The odds.
Luck is... weird.
Everything else quantifiable is likewise... weird.
I wish the first two were what it took. But we all know filmmakers
who are VERY talented and work their asses off but still do not get
theatrical distribution.
This is a misconception of the business of filmmaking. This movie was made for little money in the UK and already made its money back AND had been released on DVD before it opened in the U.S.
This was an "indie" film in the UK from the makers of a highly successful and award winning TV series "SPACED".... they were not that high a risk investment in the UK and they haven't truly broken through in the U.S. yet.
Hi, John -
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2004/SHAUN.php
Yeah, I see your point. You're right.
6X ROI ain't nothing to poo-pooh.
I just thought SotD was a wonderful film and can't believe rubbish of the likes of VAMPIRES SUCK can thoroughly trounce it.
Perhaps I was thinking that although $30M ain't shabby, it certainly seems like a genre giant deserving much more appreciation than compensated for.
So, while financially and critically successful I feel Wright & Pegg are being robbed by "luck".
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Shaun of the Dead was a great film; smart script and a sharp satire -- consequently it didn't have a prayer of resonating with modern audiences.
The 30M isn't an accurate number, that's what he's saying. It's well beyond that for all markets accounted for. That's where the misconception's at.
Now, Scott Pilgrim is a different story. It'll probably break even in its ten year life cycle, but that might've been a big hit.
Shaun of the Dead did quite well across the board.
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Shaun of the Dead is also a great example of the varying definitions of "success".
Did it make a profit? Yes.
Did it help the careers of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg? Yes.
Did it make them houshold names? No.
Did it get them their multipicture deal at the studio of their choice? No.
Don't get me wrong, I found the movie to be successful artistically and career-wise, but if someone were to put it up against the scale of Bryan Singer going from Public Access to Usual Suspects to X-Men, then no, it was not.
My point is that "success" is subjective. As it relates to the original poster and posts, Shaun of the Dead was by award winning famous people in the UK coming off a highly successful TV series. This would be like saying Jennifer Aniston is a complete unknown before she did her first indie feature even though she did FRIENDS for years.
No matter how well someone does, there's always some guy who can always say it wasn't good enough.
Robert Rodriguez is successful by most people's definition. I find him motivational. I also think he greatly misleads people with how "easy" it is and how he completely omits several crucial elements that go into making a GOOD movie, as opposed to any ol' piece of shiite.
Did it make a profit? Yes.
Did it help the careers of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg? Yes.
Did it make them houshold names? No.
Did it get them their multipicture deal at the studio of their choice? No.
Don't get me wrong, I found the movie to be successful artistically and career-wise, but if someone were to put it up against the scale of Bryan Singer going from Public Access to Usual Suspects to X-Men, then no, it was not.
My point is that "success" is subjective. As it relates to the original poster and posts, Shaun of the Dead was by award winning famous people in the UK coming off a highly successful TV series. This would be like saying Jennifer Aniston is a complete unknown before she did her first indie feature even though she did FRIENDS for years.
No matter how well someone does, there's always some guy who can always say it wasn't good enough.
Robert Rodriguez is successful by most people's definition. I find him motivational. I also think he greatly misleads people with how "easy" it is and how he completely omits several crucial elements that go into making a GOOD movie, as opposed to any ol' piece of shiite.
Hopefully I don't sound too mean when I say this, but I personally do not know many filmmakers that are at least three of the four T's, and even less of those are business savvy.
I know a lot of technical people, but talented with broad or marketable tastes? Or, the tenure? Not really... and, that's just being honest about the content I see.
It's all pretty simple, to me... It just isn't easy.
It's "simple" except there are factors over which you have absolutely no control. Every micro budget, comes from nowhere and makes the filmmalers "stars" movie (again) involved the filmmaker making the right movie, at the right time, that somehow got seen by the right people. For every 100 or more likely 1000 really well made, marketable micro budget features that get made maybe 1 has the level of success we are talking about. Not becauyse the film was "better", or the filmaker was "smarter". They were just lucky, they drew the gut straight, they hit the lotto. It's just a reality to have to resign yourself top in this business.
They set the stage that allowed that luck to happen via their talent, hard work, business acumen, etc... However the odds were that even if they did all those things right, it still wasn't going to happen for them.
They set the stage that allowed that luck to happen via their talent, hard work, business acumen, etc... However the odds were that even if they did all those things right, it still wasn't going to happen for them.
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While it's positive and optimistic..
If MONSTERS (2010) is the bar for well-made marketable, salable, micro/nanobudget feature film... then I would bet my camera that there are not, and were not, will not be 100 well made or marketable micro budget features at any given point in time, at any given point in history.
Even saying 20 is pushing it.
I haven't seen more than four well done short films in the last year.
Shorts... I've seen maybe 6 or 8 in the past six months. That's attending festivals with my own film and seeing, probably 60 or so shorts. So that's roughly 10% of the ones good enough to get into a mid-tier film festival that I thought "Wow, this guy is really talented, this is a very good film". Features, I've seen maybe 1. Of course the rub is that we will never see most of them. That's the point. We have no idea how many films just as good as El Mariachi (showed his potential, but really a pretty bad movie) or Paranormal activity (gimmick movie), or Blair Witch (gimmick movie) never see the light of day for us to get a chance to see them.
Yeah, you could definitely say that the good ones may not get a chance to see the light of day. I suppose my POV is that if you have a Monsters, Troll Hunter, or something similar laying around it won't take much effort to get it sold.
The very... very sad reality is that Monsters really is one in a metaphorical million, and so was El Mariachi.
I'm not interested in Blair Witch or PA, or citing them. I don't like when people use them as success stories because they're hokey. I'd much rather spout, until tired of the taste of 'em, guys like Gareth Edwards or ladies like Lena Dunham.
It's also probably worth mentioning that I think a short should be somewhere between THE RAVEN on the low end of the scale, or on the high end Successful Alcoholics or BlinkyTM.
My bar's pretty high. When people talk about competition, honestly, I don't consider other no-name or nano-budget filmmakers my competition. They're my peers and we're all learning. My competition's at a higher level, where I strive to be. I set it that high because that's what I want to accomplish.
So, my POV is probably really skewed because of my unrealistically high bar.
I have pretty high aspirations as well. I have every intention of making a film so good, so marketable, so hard to ignore that it gets snatched up and allows me to follow it up with a couple of total sell out studio projects giving me the resources to retire to a comfortable life in Malibu. I just know that my talent won't be enough. I'm going to have to be lucky too. Right now my focus is on learning the craft. Making every movie better than the one before it. My first movie was decent, better than most first films. My second was pretty good, won a few awards. I'm in pre-pro right now on my third which I intend to be good enough to get into top tier (SXSW, Sundance, etc...) festivals. We'll see where it goes from there.
I wish you a sincere, not a keyboard commando catty or snarky, "Good luck!" with that.
I'd like to see a lot more successes, a wild fire of successes for most of the people here.
