Feature Film Made In GTA IV

Nearly a decade ago, we talked about how the concept of machinima was becoming more mainstream, and plenty has happened since then. People have made all sorts of cool stuff within video games. Slashdot points us to a short blog post by someone pointing out how it's becoming cheaper than ever to make movies these days, and points out a few great examples. The first one is a feature-length film made entirely in GTA IV. Stupidly, we can't embed it here, because apparently there's a Universal Music song in there, and Universal is requiring that the video only be shown on YouTube, so that it can monetize it. It seems pretty ridiculous that Universal would get the only money from YouTube on a 90-minute film.

Separately, that original blog post has a short film made for $300 that has pretty damn impressive special effects for that little money: Of course, we've seen cheap movies made with great special effects before, but every year the quality gets better and better and better. Remember a similar story from a little over a year ago? We're going to be seeing more and more and more like this. We've talked a lot lately, wondering when the first feature film will be made with a smartphone, but it's not just the camera equipment. What's fascinating is that so many aspects of filmmaking are becoming cheaper and reaching a much larger community of people. Yes, this will mean plenty of "crappy" movies are made, but it also opens up the possibility that a fantastically great movie can come from totally unexpected places, with incredibly low budgets. Those who don't realize just how disruptive this can be aren't paying close enough attention.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Tricia Helfer Elena Lyons Brooke Burns Lena Headey Ali Larter