Im really mind boggled as to why this movie cost 5 Million as compared to the original Paranormal Activity (2007) costing only 15,000. That's like over 300 times the cost for almost identical production values. I don't mean that in a condescending way. Im an editor and want to foray into the land of indie film making myself and would love to know what this movie did that rose the production costs? What alternatives they could have done, etc?
shareMaybe the 5 million includes the marketing?
shareWho in the hell would market this P.O.S., they're all a bunch of B.S., they're boring as hell. Who would pay to see it after seeing the first one, and I'm sick and tired of these damn things showing up on my pay channels. 5 million ? Maybe it went for paying the great actors.
shareWhat an extremely stupid comment. Literally one of the dumbest I've read on imdb. "Who in the hell would market this P.O.S."??? How about the people who will make millions out of these movies? Isn't that obvious? People can be freaking stupid and I'm not talking about the fans of this franchise, I'm talking about you.
shareWell I think the expenditure on the fish tank was quite high. Did you see that thing!? it was totally possessed from the start. It just kept going up and down inside it like it had a heart beat. The special effects budget on that alone must have run out at a few million and that's without adding gold fish.
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Well obviously the original was an independent movie, compared to this which is produced by a studio. So when you compare the two it's easy to see why the first only cost 15,000 while this cost 5 million.
With the original, Oren Peli made it independently, he wrote it, directed it and edited it. So he didn't have to pay anybody in that respect. He used his own house as the location, so again he didn't have to pay anything, and he did all the special effects himself so he's not paying anyone to do that job. Then the actors, supposedly the two leads, Katie and Micah were only paid a couple of hundred dollars each, and there was only two other actors in the film besides them. So again he paid hardly anything for the actors. Also Micah operated the camera throughout so Peli didn't have to pay a camera crew, or hardly any crew for that matter, because it was just him these couple of actors and a couple of crew.
Now compare that to this film, and straight away you can see where the costs come from. Firstly this was produced by a studio, and they will have to hire a director, he has to be paid, a writer who also has to be paid. An editor, a cinematographer, a casting director, a makeup artist, stunt coordinator, sound designer, visual effects artist, location scout, set designer, costume designer etc etc. So straight away you have all this crew to pay which didn't happen in the first film because there wasn't anybody.
Then there's the actors, they will have been paid a bit more compared to the first film, plus there's a lot more in this film, including extras there's probably about 50.
Then it's things like, the location, they use a couple which they will have to pay to use, and things like the effects, there was a lot more in this film, which are a lot more complex than the first and will cost more to produce.
Then the marketing aswell, all in all there's many factors, probably many I've missed but i hope this helped
Yeah, guess that makes sense.... there's a hell of a lot of crew who worked on this one. But honestly, I would say that the production value of this one is only marginally better than the original.... In other words, Oren Peli did one hell of a job in the first one :)
shareYeah, he did a really good job for what needed to be done on the original. An indie film like that would have been a pretty large undertaking for one guy or a couple. It's doable which has been proven in other indies but it's not something you would want to do more than a few times. Even though the first movie was easy to edit (relatively speaking), a given being the whole thing was based on low end editing anyway, he worked his butt of getting it in at the original movies budget. The post above me is absolutely right, once you have a studio involved it's a million just to walk in the door. 5 million is a pretty cheap movie. They killed it in returns....
Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man....
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