Visual Style on a Budget

Scott Kirsner's Cinematech blog has an excellent overview of the Indie visual FX panel at SXSW. Especially important to pulp filmmakers are the links to free sketching and storyboarding programs online.

This is where all the cool stunts and visual FX start in a movie, and the more time you spend drawing and planning it out the less you have to spend in actual dollars.

Creativity trumps budget every time.

A Classic Style on a Budget

The Bat Whispers - 1930 - 65mm

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This is from the 1930 film, THE BAT WHISPERS, based on the classic Mary Roberts Rinehart's stage play. It was said to be one of the influences for THE BATMAN and you can see why.

Note how the miniatures are integrated into the camera moves (long before computer-control), and that they add to the shadowy, Caligari- Art Deco -esque style of the scenes. Today, you could do everything they did back in 1930 on your desktop computer.

It isn't meant to be realistic - it's meant to be stylistic - and precisely because it's not realistic is why it works. People tend to forget that when working on a genre show.

This is how you work genre and budget together.

Thanks go to Ted Newsome over at The Retromedia Forum for pointing out this footage.