Discworld Fan Film Possibly the Largest Scale Fan Film Ever

An anonymous reader writes "After clocking in at $82,000 on their Kickstarter campaign, two Troll Bridge trailers have been released online showing helicopter shots in New Zealand (video) and a large scale bridge set that was built and shot on (video). A Behind the Scenes (video) has also been released demonstrating what fans are now actually capable of, given decent crowd-funding. The film has finished shooting and is expected to be released next year. Sir Terry Pratchett has been apparently thrilled with the progress." But can it beat Star Wreck for best production award?

The budget isn't $82,000

[crazyjj]

Lest you auteurs out there get too exciting, thinking you're going to film your Michael Bay ripoff dream project for a song, keep in mind that the entire cast and crew *volunteered* on the project (some for years). If you were to factor that cost in, it wouldn't surprise me if the actual cost of this project was well north of $1 million.

I just wanted to mention that, because these kinds of fan films often advertise incredibly low budgets that mislead a lot of people to think that real filmmaking is easy and cheap, and anyone can do it. It reality it takes a team of pros to produce a decent effort (not just some shitty student film or Youtube novelty). It's just that very low-budget efforts often get those pros to *donate* their services. They're not going to do that for your average Michael Bay ripoff.

My personal favorite professional-grade fan film is Broken Allegiance [wikipedia.org], easily the best Star Wars fan film ever made (IMHO). It was shot in Australia with a volunteer cast and crew made up of film professionals for about $10,000. It's one of the few fan films I've seen with professional lighting, actors who aren't horrific, and a halfway decent script. And it's one of the few Star Wars fan films that plays it straight instead of doing the 10-millionth stupid parody of a franchise that's almost become a parody of *itself*.

Re:The budget IS $82,000.

[Zaphod The 42nd]

No, he has a good point. The actual budget is far in excess of $82,000. $82,000 is just how much liquid cash they spent. The opportunity cost of the entire film is, as he stated, somewhere around $1 million or something.

Consider this. What if the people who volunteered their time instead just donated money?

If those people gave $1 million, which was then spent to hire other people to do what those people volunteered to do, the end result would be the exact same.
You'd have $82,000 left over to spend on the set, etc, having spent that $1 million dollars on acting, labor, etc.
Would the cost of THAT film be $82,000? No, it cost $1,082,000.

So because this money was donated, you're not counting it?
Or because the volunteers immideately "spent" the money on themselves, it doesn't count?
Its economics.

Re:The budget isn't $82,000

[oddjob1244]

Even with volunteer work, in a Youtube comment in the first link Snowgum films say they have exceeded the $82,000.

"Originally it was set at $82,000 - but we've since casually chugged on past that point."

Who knows how much this really cost.

Re:Anybody else think the trailers were ridiculous

[Zaphod The 42nd]

I guess Clerks was shot for like ~$23,000 and it was pretty professional cinematography. They had to shoot in B&W and most of the actors volunteered as well, though.