The German: Teaching Hollywood a Lesson on CGI Budgets

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Hollywood can produce some pretty amazing visual effects as long as the money is there to fund the effort. Nick Ryan shows the establishment what can be done with six months of time, lots of talent and no money to work with. The end product is The German, a short film about a British-German dogfight. It was created several years ago and just made its way to Vimeo several months ago. The CGI effects work is just this side of fantastic and well worth a look. :cool:
 
so-called UFO footage speaks pretty well to what can be done on a miserly budget
 
lol, the story here isn't just the CGI ... this short film was better then the majority of every Hollywood films I have seen in the last few years and it was only a few minutes long.
 
Not bad, although the reason CGI in most movies cost so much is because the people doing the CGI don't work for free as this person did. :D
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Not bad, although the reason CGI in most movies cost so much is because the people doing the CGI don't work for free as this person did. :D
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One guy spent 6 months doing it. Assume an annual salary of $200K for a high quality cgi artist.

That'd still put the 10 min short at a $200K production budget.
 
Good story, and good effects. It had me interested for the whole 9+ minutes.
 
CGI costs are pretty ludicrous, some production companies can charge over $1,000 per frame of post production CGI. And then addon costs for object rendering and more detailed work. Fuck game design, if you can model then movie production is where the big bucks are.
 
CGI production costs in America are jacked up and unrealistic. In other words, doing CGI production shouldn't cost as much as it does for the awful quality we get from Hollywood movies. America sux.
 
It probably would've cost less to recreate Pandora for Avatar than it did for them to CGI the entire movie :D
 
dexvx said:
One guy spent 6 months doing it. Assume an annual salary of $200K for a high quality cgi artist.

That'd still put the 10 min short at a $200K production budget.
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Some other things to consider though -

It isn't 10 minutes (frames worth) of CG, or anymore close that.

Equipment (hardware and software) costs.

The modeling was outsourced for this (it notes this on the Vimeo page).

Larger commercial projects also face additional indirect costs such as legal, accounting, licensing, royalties, etc.

Comparing this to a movie such as "Red Tails" (since the content depicted is similar) you can readily notice two things, that would balloon costs (and work required) for the latter. Just using the trailer as a comparison (haven't seen the film) you will notice the CG used is much more expansive, with much more CG objects in a given scene (such as dozens of planes of different types). The scenes are also much more animation and effects heavy, with multiple objects on screen at once versus two.
 
The German was debuted back in 2008 I think. I was really interested in it because I thought the premise of Irish neutrality that some of the allies used and ended up being irish citizens was intriguing at the time and that it would expand into a full length motion picture. Oh well. Still awesome though. Toby Kebbell is a great actor and is very underrated. I wish Guy Richtie would get off his ass and make Rock n' Rolla 2.
 
Time = money.

He did it in 6 months. If you want it done in 6 days, it costs more. If you want it done in 6 hours, you'll pay Hollywood rates. That's how they operate there; a wall that would cost you $500 to build a few weeks from now will cost you $20,000 to be done by tomorrow morning.
 
limitedaccess said:
Some other things to consider though -

It isn't 10 minutes (frames worth) of CG, or anymore close that.

Equipment (hardware and software) costs.

The modeling was outsourced for this (it notes this on the Vimeo page).

Larger commercial projects also face additional indirect costs such as legal, accounting, licensing, royalties, etc.

Comparing this to a movie such as "Red Tails" (since the content depicted is similar) you can readily notice two things, that would balloon costs (and work required) for the latter. Just using the trailer as a comparison (haven't seen the film) you will notice the CG used is much more expansive, with much more CG objects in a given scene (such as dozens of planes of different types). The scenes are also much more animation and effects heavy, with multiple objects on screen at once versus two.
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Exactly, also let's not forget that most CGI is farmed out various companies made specifically to do this task. They have the hardware, software and talent needed to do the tasks and as such can charge whatever they please for it since it would be impracticle for most studios to put together everything and everyone needed to do the CGI.
 
Great story and excellent footage for such a small production. Had me stuck to my seat for 9 minutes
 
I personally don't like the way Hollywood uses CGI for everything. I can understand using CGI for certain situations, but they abuse it.

Take Short Circuit the movie for example. The majority of the films budget went into the robot, which BTW is still the most advanced robot ever built for a movie. The movie blew my mind as a child, and may have started my interest in electronics.

For those of you too young to know what I'm talking about, check out a scene from Short Circuit 2. This scene probably gave Radio Shack huge fame.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyWDs9_f--o

Now compare that to Transformers. Yea the visuals are amazing and lots of eye candy, but everyone knows it's CG and it's nothing you wouldn't expect. It's as unrealistic as it can get.
 
That's why Peter Jackson uses his own CGI house to do all his special effects for his movies.
Also why George Lucas uses his own CGI house to all the special effects for his movies.

But if you just have 10 minutes you need in a movie/show, it's probably cheaper to contract out.

Honestly, the History Channel has used Video Game Engines to do CGI and it's probably a lot cheaper than custom Frame by Frame raytracing. http://pc.ign.com/articles/532/532411p1.html
 
If that was BF3, the German pilot would have thrown an absolute fit to the admin about being rammed.

Impressive work though. Definitely could get that guy a job with that in his portfolio.
 
while the cgi was pretty good, it was pretty much all planes flying. That kind of CGI is fairly easy compared to doing environments and people. I don't care how much they spend. No movie I've seen can do a cgi person or animal that is indistinguishable from the real thing when you're actually paying attention. For example Avatar was pretty good, but I could tell the people were CGI as soon as I saw them in the first scene.
 
wtiger said:
while the cgi was pretty good, it was pretty much all planes flying. That kind of CGI is fairly easy compared to doing environments and people. I don't care how much they spend. No movie I've seen can do a cgi person or animal that is indistinguishable from the real thing when you're actually paying attention. For example Avatar was pretty good, but I could tell the people were CGI as soon as I saw them in the first scene.
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Not to diss on the film but that's pretty much why 3d tutorials are mostly airplane and planet rendering. It lets you focus on the environmental effects rather than have to handle multiple articulation along with the environmentals.

That said, it's just one of the tools for storytelling and this one was very well done.
 
Very good aerial action. Funny how €70,000 or $92,000 gets you only 9 minutes of film without special effects. Perhaps most of the $ was spent on the boatload of people listed in the credits. If this movie was 90 minutes long it would have cost nearly a million dollars. And if there were some CGI and other special effects scattered throughout this theoretical 90 minute movie then it would have really jumped up the price.

cgi.jpg
 
Bad CGI makes me think about In Time. I almost walked away when the car ran off the road.
 
Man, once you are familiar with Two Steps from Hell's...thing...it's really hard not to hear how often their music is used.

Like...

ALL

THE

TIME

Seriously.
 
-- Nice dog fight scenes...

Any info on what 3d software and hardware those guys used in making this Film? Its kinda intriguing how they managed to finish this
project with that time span and with that budget, though im not questioning the capabilities of those 3D and digital effects artists
involved as far as CG is concerned but rendering those dog fight scenes must have taken a lot of time and i know these because im
also into 3d design / animation and digital effects creation though im not in the 'professional scene" and more like doing it as a hobby.
IMO there's a high probability they must've signed up for an online render farm service like those offered by RebusFarm or
Render Rocket to render their 3d animations.
 
NickJames said:
CGI costs are pretty ludicrous, some production companies can charge over $1,000 per frame of post production CGI. And then addon costs for object rendering and more detailed work. Fuck game design, if you can model then movie production is where the big bucks are.
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Just to clarify. The artists are not the ones making the real money. I have friends working with CGI for movies. Their salaries are fine, but the talent and IQ involved in doing top tier 3D is not reflected in their pay day. The big pay checks goes to owners and execs, not the content creators. This line of work was actually my career goal, but I got bored on the way making architectural visualizations and now make far more money as a Registered Nurse.


That bullet drop looks a little exaggerated to me. I wonder what kind of caliber they used back then and how slow that muzzle velocity was. Can anyone pitch in on this? I admit to only being a virtual gun nut hehe :)
 
nakedhand said:
That bullet drop looks a little exaggerated to me. I wonder what kind of caliber they used back then and how slow that muzzle velocity was. Can anyone pitch in on this? I admit to only being a virtual gun nut hehe :)
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Looked it up. The spitfire used 56mm rounds from 4 M1919s with a muzzle velocity of 850m/s. Or later the Hispano Mk.V which fired 20mm bullets at 840 m/s.

But it was pretty windy! :D
 
Visuals were amazing, but the audio and acting needed work.

Would have been more suspenseful to hear him breathing heavy in his mask for the in cockpit scenes and faking straining under G-forces of his extreme turns for example.
 
Taldren said:
lol, the story here isn't just the CGI ... this short film was better then the majority of every Hollywood films I have seen in the last few years and it was only a few minutes long.
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Isn't that the truth! This little flick is awesome!
 
Pretty decent, overall.
However, the stereotypical Hollywoodish parts made me roll my eyes. eg, broken plane wing flies into the camera, bullet impact path slowly works its way into the pilot, looking at the mirror just before one single shot breaks it, losing part of a wing yet both planes land without the pilots dying or getting injured, also they can easily jump out of their crashed plane, also their plane didn't suffer enough damage to catch on fire, somehow the German shot his pistol through a hill into the ground causing the Brit to dance, the German decides to fire his pistol while mounted on top of a fence instead of taking cover, etc, etc.
 
MajorDomo said:
what can be done with six months of time, lots of talent and no money to work with
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average monthly salary for talent * lots of talent * time = big budget
$10,000 * 50 * 6 = $3,000,000

Sure, 3M is less than the 30M (or more) Hollywood spends on movies, but saying that it's a lesson on budgets is misguided at best.
 
Thuleman said:
average monthly salary for talent * lots of talent * time = big budget
$10,000 * 50 * 6 = $3,000,000

Sure, 3M is less than the 30M (or more) Hollywood spends on movies, but saying that it's a lesson on budgets is misguided at best.
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So reducing your special effects budget by 90% or $27,000,000 isn't a lesson on budgets.
 
bh192012 said:
So reducing your special effects budget by 90% or $27,000,000 isn't a lesson on budgets.
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Not really, not even if we overlook sweeping generalizations.

Let's look at The Grey (plenty of CGI in there), which just opened and according to the Internet cost $34 million to make. That 34M already includes the pay for the big name actor and literally hundreds of other people who worked on the physical set, the marketing, the distribution, and so on.

The 30M number I gave is the production cost of a feature length movie with AAA actors, not just the special effect budget.

If anything the Nick Ryan is an attention whore who is either too stupid to realize that "zero budget" doesn't equal zero cost since there's opportunity cost involved, or worse he thinks that the audience is too stupid to realize that just because he didn't pay the people doesn't mean that the product didn't incur any creation cost.
 
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