Sci-Fi on the Cheap 353
lowbudgetfun writes "NYTimes.com is reporting on the Sci-Fi channel's huge investment (28 films for $21 million) for original B movies. Includes quotes from B Movie hero, Bruce Campbell." I especially liked this line from the article: "Shot on budgets ranging from $1 million to $2 million, Sci Fi's movies are made in money-saving locales like Bulgaria, Romania and Missouri."
Article Text (Score:5, Informative)
B Movies Invade Your TV!
By LEWIS BEALE
"ATTACK OF THE SABRETOOTH." "Bloodsuckers." "The Man With the Screaming Brain." And, most indelible of all, "Mansquito."
A combination of outrageous genre concepts, low-budget filmmaking and sensationalized titles like the roll call above are all part of the Sci Fi Channel's attempt to establish a presence on Saturday nights, when a good number of potential viewers are out, asleep or watching reruns. The programming strategy has been a major success, with numbers that far exceed anyone's expectations.
"Alien Apocalypse," Sci Fi's biggest Saturday hit, attracted 2.7 million viewers in March. That may be a pittance for CBS or NBC, but it constitutes a major audience for a niche network. And besides, said Steve Sternberg, a television analyst at MagnaGlobal USA, "Friday and Saturday have become very weak nights for the broadcast networks," which, he explained, "have not been able to draw enough viewers with original entertainment series. Cable networks can flourish with much smaller audiences. Original horror and sci-fi movies seem like the perfect programming for Saturday night."
"They're good at the 'D' word, demographics," said Bruce Campbell, a star of B movies who also wrote, directed and starred in the "Screaming Brain" film, to be shown in September. "I think they're micromarketing," he said, "which in this fragmented world makes sense. They're saying, 'Who's at home on Saturday night?' "
The answer might be surprising. Nearly half of Sci Fi's audience is female, and in the highly sought-after 25-to-54-year-old demographic category, Sci Fi is the No. 4 basic cable network on Saturdays, behind TNT, USA and TBS.
Sci Fi's foray into Saturday night mayhem began in 2002, when network executives realized that cheap, independently made genre pictures, an important element of their programming mix, were hardly being produced any more. So, said Tom Vitale, the Sci Fi Channel's senior vice president for original movies "We had a choice of recycling older movies or going out and trying to create original movies ourselves. We went back to these producers who made genre movies, and asked them if they wanted to make them with us."
People like Ken Badish jumped at the chance. Mr. Badish's company, Active Entertainment, will have produced nine Sci Fi movies by the end of 2005, high-concept features like "Mansquito" (experiment gone awry creates man-mosquito hybrid!), and "Alien Lockdown" (government science produces horrific slime thing!).
The most important element of a Sci Fi film, Mr. Badish said, "is a topical film that has relevance to our audience."
"In a film coming up," he added, "stem cells are key to the plot; in another, it's mad cow disease. Secondly, there's a good story. Like we're shooting a 'Jaws'-kind of movie featuring a giant squid. We make a reasonable use of C.G.I., because the audience wants that escapist thing. And we add emotional content, so the audience can feel for the characters."
Often that amounts to borrowing shamelessly from works like "Alien," "The Fly" and "The Thing" and then adding ideas gleaned from Scientific American or Wired.
Shot on budgets ranging from $1 million to $2 million, Sci Fi's movies are made in money-saving locales like Bulgaria, Romania and Missouri. They're cast with B-list celebrities like Luke Perry and Stephen Baldwin, with the occasional big-picture actors - Sean Astin and John Rhys-Davies of "Lord of the Rings" - making an appearance. The network pays $750,000 for domestic TV rights, and the producers make their money back through international and DVD sales.
But are the films any good? Critics have not found much to praise, though some seem to have tried pretty hard. Virginia Heffernan of The New York Times said "Chupacabra: Dark Seas" (monster runs amok on a cruise liner!) was "founded on broad clichés, overacted and clumsily blocked." But she added that the casting of serious actors like Mr. Rhys-Davies and Gianc
Re:Bad Attitude (Score:2, Informative)
Work in eastern Europe is cheap (Score:2, Informative)
already been done (Score:3, Informative)
It did pick up firefly (Score:3, Informative)
Sturgeon's Law (Score:3, Informative)
Know your sci-fi: Sturgeon's Law [jargon.net] - Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud.
What's hilarious is your ingorance (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Article Text (Score:4, Informative)
I love Bruce Campbell.
Re:are we talking scifi, or drama? (Score:3, Informative)
Schedule [scifi.com]
Type "firefly" into the search box and hit return. The signal returns this coming Friday - in order, even *grin* but they aren't airing all the DVD episodes, apparently. (why I don't know)
SB
Re:Master Blasters (Score:3, Informative)
That's been tried. "Salvage One", from 1979.
"Progress" in Missouri? (Score:3, Informative)
Missouri probably doesn't belong in the EU, because it's large and wealthy already. Its GDP in 2003 was $194,611,000,000 USD, or $29,252 USD per capita. Its population is about 5,755,000. Its armed forces number approx. 10,500 soldiers and airmen (not including those which it contributes to the United States' armed forces).
That means that its per capita GDP is almost equal to those of the UK or Belgium, and is higher than those of France, Germany, Italy, or Spain. Its economy is larger than those of Ireland, Luxembourg, Finland, Greece, or Portugal. Its population is greater than those of Denmark, Finland, or Ireland, let alone the EU's tinier members.
Missouri is the seventeenth-largest of the United States, and is usually considered a rural state.
And, no, I'm not from Missouri, and I've never been there.
Re:"Progress" in Missouri? (Score:3, Informative)
What that term actually says is that 'People in Missouri make almost as much as people in the UK or Belgium'. Oooo, scary. Almost as much!
Its economy is larger than those of Ireland, Luxembourg, Finland, Greece, or Portugal
Luxembourg? WTF? Do they even have an 'economy'? And didn't you then say it has a larger population than Ireland and Finland?
So, to rephrase that paragraph in a saner manner:
That means that people in Missouri make slightly less than people the UK or Belgium, and slight more more than those in France, Germany, Italy, or Spain. It is larger than Luxembourg (Yes, you didn't say that, but everyone is bigger than Luxembourg.), Ireland, and Finland, and thus so is its economy.
The one unqualified comparison is that its economy is bigger than Greece and Portugal, and it's probably smaller. Those are some real EU leaders, there.
This has been a your daily lesson of 'How to lie with statistics'. if you look at what he claims, you can see Missouri fits in perfectly as a member of the EU. (Except that it's not a county, of course, nor is it in Europe.)