FX!

The proliferation of relatively cheap, industry-standard special effects software available at a consumer level has led to the blossoming of low budget epics. The days of needing a $100 million+ budget to adequately render your surreal dreamworld or far-off, imaginary wonderland are gone. In their stead is a swarm of films produced for relatively low budgets due to the ease of access to incredibly powerful effects software.

This has been a godsend for filmmakers with large-scale creative visions but without the name recognition and industry clout to get studio executives to sign a check for a nine digit budget. Films like District 9, Predators,  and Gareth Edwards' upcoming thriller, Monsters are all making waves in Hollywood because of the comparatively low cost-to-output ratios.

Each of the aforementioned could pass for enormously budgeted Hollywood cash-cows, but none had a budget over $50 million; Predators being made for $40 million, and District 9 made for $30 million. Predators was written and produced by Robert Rodriguez, long a champion of home-brewed filmmaking; a fact attested to by his inclusion of "10-minute Film School" DVD extras.

Edwards' film, which concerns two people's journey through an alien-infested Mexico (that's space aliens, if the jackass senator from Arizona had questions) was made for under $20,000, a sum utterly unheard of in modern Hollywood's world of science fiction epics. But considering that Edwards' made a historical epic about Atilla the Hun, doing all the effects work by himself in Adobe After Effects, he's probably the one pull a film like Monsters off.

Check out the unbelievable special effects work that Edwards did for Atilla in After Effects.



The scope of Atilla is stunning. The fact that it's effects work could have been produced in somebody's bedroom is unreal. The idea that the software that made it is in the hands of hundreds of brilliantly imaginative filmmakers is perhaps one of the most exciting things happening in film today.

Short films are perhaps the best showcase for this new wave of talented effects artists and directors with shorts like The Raven and the incredible Half-Life 2 "fan film" (does that term even have any meaning anymore?) Escape from City 17, both of which are embedded below.

The Raven:


Escape from City 17:



This low-cost, high-scale revolution has paved the way for cool films like The Warrior's Way that, in years past, would have (at best) suffered greatly from low budgets or (more likely) simply would never be made.


The Warrior's Way is a great example because, as you can see in the trailer, it's far from flawless; you can pick out the effects shots instantly, as there is a weird artificiality about them. But that slightly processed look does not get in the way of the world the effects are trying to create. If anything, it magnifies the surrealism that the film is trying to impart, or at the very least gives it a lovable B-movie aesthetic.

Also helping the B-movie aesthetic? Geoffrey Rush exasperatedly exclaiming, "Ninjas!"

One thing effects software has not figured out how to improve is bad writing. But they're working on it.

So does this new wave of low-budget filmmaking signal the end of massively budgeted epics like The Lord of the Rings trilogy or Avatar? Hell no. Stupid question. I seem to remember Avatar doing pretty well on the whole "return on investment" thing.