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Production Methods and Budget

posted 17 years ago by samsloan-1
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Production Methods and Budget

What I find fascinating is that at the beginning it looks like this has been made with Trevor’s Canon xl-1 DV Camcorder, but later it seems that with all the actors, extras, sets, grips and other costs this must have been a typical multi-million production.

Is it really possible for a bunch of friends to get together and make a high quality production like this, or did this cost tens of millions of Canadian Dollars to make?

Also, what kind of editor did you use? Did you use AVID?

In short, how did you do this?

Sam Sloan

[–] brandiann 17 years ago

The film was made for roughly half a million dollars. We shot on 35mm and suffered greatly, both financially and psychologically to get it made. I am still paying for the film but I am proud of it. I am glad you think it costs millions, when in reality it costs only hudreds of thousands. It means we did our job well. We cut the entire film on Final Cut Pro and worked our assess off to get it done, I edited it with a friend. My wife and I did almost every job on set and had a very small crew to support us. A lot of the locations were from the goodwill of various friends, my wife designed the costumes, produced the film, and was madly driving around picking up film and equipment while we were shooting. In short we almost killed ourselves to make this movie because we didn't want to wait for years to get it made so we, perhaps foolishly, shot it with the resources we had and I am very proud considering how limited we were by budget and time. We shot the film in 19 days. Hope this answers your questions.

best,

Phil Price

[–] samsloan-1 17 years ago

I think you did a great and amazing job. I think you ought to seriously consider editing the movie to put in real chess moves. Most of the chessboard scenes to not have the actor's faces so you do not have to call them back. Also, you do not need to hire a chess consultant. Just to to the Internet and find some real chess games and use them. The Budapest Defense goes 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e5.

There are millions of chess buffs who will buy this movie if you have some real chess games in there. You might even get your money back. Also, you might have the actors playing the Fried Liver Attack and the Poison Pawn Variation. Those are the names of real chess openings.

The opening scene in the James Bond movie "From Russia with Love" used a real chess game played between Spassky and Bronstein. That alone has greatly increased the popularity and the longevity of that movie among chess players.

Sam Sloan

[–] brandiann 17 years ago

Hey Sam,

Thanks for the props. We won't be doing any reshooting whatsoever, this movie is done! Thanks for the sentiment and next time I make a movie featuring chess, I'll give you a call to come on aboard as a consultant!

Phil Price

[–] samsloan-1 17 years ago

I am a member of the Executive Board of the United States Chess Federation. At the latest meeting of the board, held in Stillwater, Oklahoma on May 19-20, 2007, I brought a DVD of your movie, Hatley High, and made a presentation to the board about it.

My main point was that your movie demonstrates that it is possible to make chess competition interesting to the general public. I would like to see the USCF do more to get chess out into the media.

Several members of the board expressed interest in seeing your movie. They were especially interested in learning how the chess games went, what openings were played and so on.

Alas, at that point I had to explain to the other board members that the chess moves played in your movie were nonsense, mostly illegal moves with the knight moving like a bishop for example.

On hearing that, they lost interest in seeing the movie.

That is why I feel that it would be worth the time and effort it would take just to do some editing to make the moves shown on the chess board legal. You could have a very big audience out there waiting to see your movie.

You should look at the Children's TV series in Japan, Hikaru No Go, about a ten year old boy inhabited by a go-playing ghost. Every move shown on the go board is checked out by one of the strongest woman go players in the world (who happens to be an old girlfriend of mine) and this greatly increases the interest in the TV Series.

Sam Sloan

[–] brandiann 17 years ago

If the Chess Federation is interested in investing 500K than I would reshoot all the chess scenes and make sure you served as the chess consultant.

Phil Price

[–] 17 years ago

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