Monsters Review

MONSTERS

the changing tide of feature films in the UK?...

Discuss

I recently went to the Stoke Film Theatre along College Road to view "Monsters" Not really knowing to much about it I happened to update my status on Facebook to ask people what they thought of it. I went and I must admit though it wasn't what I expected, I did enjoy the film! I was surprised though by the number of people who ripped into it for various reason and it is because of this I actually did some research, and thought I'd write a little bit of a Review. It is by no means suppose to be a definitive account of the film, but hopefully it will high light some areas where students graduating from Art Colleges and schools up and down the breadth of Britain may choose to seek employment. The first thing that it is worth to mention is that it was made on a budget. Wikipedia states $15,000 was spent on the filming equipmet with the overall cost being under $500,000, nothing as much as the giant movie makers work too! Lets put it this way James Cameron would only be able to shoot one scene of Avatar on this budget.

Gareth Edwards the British born director of the film quiet happily confesses in SFX Magazine #203  "Monsters"  definitely wouldn't have been bigger and better with an additional $300 million to spend" The other great thing about the film was the size of the crew and cast, with only 2 paid actors on the books the rest of the extras were locals of Belize, Guatemala Costa Rica and in Texas USA. 

The special effects were also added by the director Gareth Edwards back in the UK using nothing more than an above average PC and software that we are all familiar with...
"It was mainly all Adobe. So it was edited on Premiere, the visual effects were all composited on After Effects, and most of it was painted using Photoshop. But for the 3D, which is mainly the creature stuff, I mainly used 3DS Max." ScifiNow Nov 2010

So as I said at the start it wasn't a big review about evolving characters arches etc, it was more to point out what is happening in the world of entertainment and possible areas where you might want to get jobs in .