Sahara budget revealed

The LA Times has managed to obtain details of the budget for the movie Sahara. If you don't remember, Sahara was an action-adventure movie that came out in 2005, starring Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz. It lost $105 million at the box office and is regarded as one of the biggest flops in Hollywood's history.

The production costs came to $160 million but the producers managed to save a lot of money by shooting abroad. Some of their Moroccan crew were paid the same amount for a week's work as their US counterparts would be paid for a day. They were also given tax breaks and financial incentives by foreign governments.

But some of the other costs were shocking. They spent $105,556 on bottled water in Morocco alone. How many bottles does it take to spend that amount of money? I did a Google product search and found a site offering 24 bottles for $7.13, equaling about $0.30 per bottle. So, at that price you would need at least 355,307 bottles of water! The actual amount would probably be much higher because they would most likely buy wholesale in bulk, which would cost even less per bottle. Remember that this is only in Morocco and doesn't include any water costs in any of the other locations. Crazy.

Even this was a small cost compared to some of the other things in the budget. The strangest thing is that the "usual suspects" - special effects, post production, actors' wages - were the smallest items on the balance sheet. The main problem was that they would shoot complex sequences costing millions of dollars that ended up being cut from the final movie. The film also suffered because the high production costs meant that creative control became a secondary consideration in scenes with product placement.

A very interesting read. I'd recommend checking it out sooner rather than later, as Paramount are very angry that the budget was leaked and it may end up being taken down.

New site design

We just launched our new site design. The old design was variable-width which meant that sometimes it looked a little strange when viewed on very large monitors. Our new design maintains the same width, solving the issue and looking more attractive at the same time.

We also have a brand new home page which is designed to give you quick access to the most popular pages on the site. In addition, we have split our service section into individual pages, allowing us to fill them with a lot more information than before. The purpose of the new design was to make the site more professional and increase its usefulness and we think this was achieved. Help us improve it even further by telling us what you think of it, either in the comments section of this post or on the feedback link at the bottom of every page.

Please note that there may be some issues over the next few days as a result of the upgrade and we appreciate your patience as we attempt to fix them, but overall the transition has been very smooth.

Tool bug fixes - improved browser support

I made a few bug fixes today to the web tools we offer. I had had a couple of reports of them not working at all for some people but I couldn't work out why that would be. Turns out that MS Internet Explorer differs slightly to Firefox and Safari on how it processes certain aspects of Javascript code. These issues are now fixed and the tools will work for Internet Explorer users now.

I also improved the XML validity of the mobile versions so these should be a little less browser-fussy now.

I owe it all to a little tool called ie4osx that allows you to run Internet Explorer 5 and up on an Intel Mac through Darwine. It's really useful for me because you don't have to install an entire operating system just to use one program. It comes highly recommended

The tools are located in the Resources section of the site.

New FXFactory patch fixes Final Cut Pro P2 import bug

Noise Industries has released FXFactory 2.0.1 to fix the P2 import bug with the new Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 patch, as reported earlier.

The patch also introduces some new features including three new plug-ins for FXFactory Pro.

Apple now has a support document acknowledging the issue, and revealing that it only applies to FXFactory and is not an issue with the overall FXPlug framework.

[via Little Frog in High Def]

Scorsese creates "The Key to Reserva"

This is a really great Hitchcock tribute by Martin Scorsese. He supposedly found a 3 1/2 page lost script by Hitchcock with a page missing and wanted to create a movie from the script as a tribute. It's fake obviously - it's actually a wine commercial - but it's still a pretty good short film and very enjoyable to watch.

The Key to Reserva

[via HDForIndies]

Academy offers matte painting exhibition and panel discussion

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is opening a matte painting exhibition in the foyer of the Linwood Dunn Theater, celebrating the works of such artists as Peter Ellenshaw, Albert Whitlock, and Matthew Yuricich.

For the uninitiated, matte painting is the process of painting a background to be inserted into a shot via the matte process. This allows filmmakers to create vast, expansive backdrops without having to physically build a massive set. Originally performed with oil paints on glass, nowadays it is generally performed inside a computer but some artists prefer to paint on canvas and then scan it into a computer. I have used it myself on several occasions for replacing blown-out skies and can boost production values considerably.

There is also a panel discussion with prestigious matte painters and camera operators, hosted by Academy governor Craig Barron.

The Linwood Dunn Theater is located at 1313 Vine Street in Hollywood. The exhibition is free and the panel is $5 for the public and $3 for Academy members and students. Both events open on Monday December 10th 2007.

Read more about the exhibition
Read more about the panel

Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 P2 import issue solved?

I posted a thread last week about some of the issues being experienced with the new Final Cut Pro patch.

Well, Shane Ross was one of those people experiencing problems. He did a complete reinstall and managed to narrow down the problem (at least on his system) to FX Factory plugins. This is probably not an issue with the plugins themselves but with Apple's FXPlug plugin system.

It is recommended that you temporarily disable all custom FXPlug plugins until a patch is released to fix the issues.

Shane's complete blog post is here.

Steps for disabling the plugins:

1. Click on Effects in the top menu and scroll down to Effect Availability. Select All Effects.
2. Go to the Effects tab in the browser.
3. Scroll sideways to the column marked Effect Class. There you will see the type of effect it is. If this column is not visible, control-click on the column bar and select Show Effect Class.
4. You will then need to go to the Finder and browse to /Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins and remove the FXPlug plugins that you identified via the Browser in step 3.
Note: for safety, you are recommended to move them to another folder instead of completely removing them.
5. If you are going to remove them, try checking for an uninstaller program before you do so. Also make sure that you have the necessary installation discs and serial numbers to successfully install them again.
6. If this is too complicated or risky, or you can't do without a particular plugin, just downgrade to 6.0.1 until a fix is issued by Apple. Apparently they are aware of the problem and are fixing the issue.

Harry Potter HD DVD contains "Community Screening" feature

High-Def Digest has an article about a new feature on the Order of the Phoenix HD DVD (not the Blu-ray version).

Live Community Screening allows you to play the movie at the same time as other people with the disc and talk to them about it via the text-based chat room.

One user starts the session and invites the other viewers to it. This user can control playback (play, pause, etc); no-one else can. It is unclear at this stage how you invite other people - presumably they must register with a central database.

I think this is an experiment more than anything else, which is why Warner released it without much fanfare. Voice-based interaction might make it more viable but it's simply more enjoyable to watch a movie with other people in the room.

However, with that said, it might be useful for people who are separated by long distances.

Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 issues

I personally haven't experienced any issues but some people have reported the following bugs with the latest 6.0.2 patch:

* P2 import function not working
* Significantly increased render times
* Unable to open 6.0.1 projects in 6.0.2

Couple that with a list of 6.0.1 bugs here and there are some serious problems.

The 6.0.2 patch is worth it for the Color fixes alone and the Color patch can in fact be applied independently of the others, but if you like an easy life I wouldn't recommend it.

I'm sure these issues will be fixed in the next patch or two but they are a little annoying in the meantime. It feels like Final Cut Studio 2 was rushed out a little early.

Better bookmark the Final Cut Studio Feedback page. Apple never replies to feedback, but by all accounts they do listen.

A quick note on Feedback

We've been getting a lot of feedback recently about the site which has enabled us to improve it significantly based on your suggestions.

The feedback form at the bottom of every page is intended to be anonymous. The only thing we log is your IP address in order to prevent abuse, but this cannot be directly linked to a person (well, it can but only to law enforcement officials and not mere mortals). So if you report a problem or ask a question, there is no possible way for us to reply or assist you directly, as we have no way of contacting you. If you have a question or problem that would require a reply, please include your email address in the message so that we can contact you.

I'm writing this post because this has happened a LOT and I don't want to give the impression that we have poor customer support - it's just that we physically have no way of getting back to you unless you specifically provide it.

Thanks to everyone who submitted feedback.