Nugget From The Net: Incredible Modern Warfare 2 Fanfilm

DennisScimeca

There's no way this movie was made for $209.42, and I really wish the gaming press would stop passing along the illusion and instead remember a little English film called "Colin" that made headlines at Cannes for being shot for "only 45 pounds sterling," or $70.

That turned out to be totally untrue, of course. It was just a marketing hook to draw attention to the film, which in the end wasn't very good. Not saying this MW2 fanfilm is correspondingly not good, I found it entertaining enough, but it certainly was not shot for the advertised price.

With "Colin," it turned out that a lot of the stuff was "donated." Those are artificial conditions placed upon the shoot. To really figure out how much it cost, you need to factor all those costs in. Someone paid them, just not the filmmaker - so the actual cost of Colin was much, much higher.

Same with this MW2 film. Just the squibs alone must have cost more than $209.42. What about the computers used to process the effects - how much did they cost? How about the time of the programmers? The electricity you used while running those computers? A line producer would have to factor all of that stuff in on a shoot.

Can't we just say "This is a neat fan film," and leave it at that? If it's not good enough to get media attention without the hook, is it really that good?