"We see the Universe as a machine."
April 1, 2015 2:04 PM Subscribe
Sundays is a beautiful science fiction short film by Dutch director Mischa Rozema of PostPanic Pictures for roughly $50000. The film was also intended to be a concept pitch for a feature, and it worked as intended, sparking a bidding war between Hollywood studios.
Looks sharp. Poses many questions and answers none, but I guess that's what a concept pitch is all about. I liked the score - very Hans Zimmer.
posted by dazed_one at 2:29 PM on April 1, 2015
posted by dazed_one at 2:29 PM on April 1, 2015
No need to get anything -- let's just string together some amazing visuals with exactly zero attention to story or character or anything even approaching narrative and assume that movie studios are dumb enough to forget that exactly the things which make for great movies are also exactly the things that these kinds of shorts have none of. Hollywood!
posted by incessant at 2:29 PM on April 1, 2015 [12 favorites]
posted by incessant at 2:29 PM on April 1, 2015 [12 favorites]
Oh good I thought it was just me. Pretty but empty. Reminds me of some of Neil Blomkanp's shorts that led to District 9, they hinted at a much more interesting movie than the one that ended up getting made. This strikes me as having the same potential. Hopefully I'm wrong.
posted by doctor_negative at 2:44 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by doctor_negative at 2:44 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well, for what it's worth, I think he's borrowing ideas from the right sources. Personally I was reminded of Dark City and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, more than anything else.
posted by Kattullus at 2:49 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Kattullus at 2:49 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
And The Matrix and Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:59 PM on April 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:59 PM on April 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
Really regretting buying a Lennox furnace right now.
posted by miyabo at 3:12 PM on April 1, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by miyabo at 3:12 PM on April 1, 2015 [7 favorites]
In a world desaturated by technodystopian control, one man dares to fight back the only way he knows how: with vague, sweaty existentialism.
posted by dephlogisticated at 3:17 PM on April 1, 2015 [16 favorites]
posted by dephlogisticated at 3:17 PM on April 1, 2015 [16 favorites]
> And The Matrix and Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.
And Inception and pretty much other hit sf movie of the last decade or so. Impressive visuals, but everything else is incoherent clichés; the voiceover is the ramblings of someone who's just done a drug they're not used to. (I'm channeling SNL's Jimmy Carter: "Alright, Peter, just listen. Everything is going to be fine. You're very high right now. You will probably be that way for five more hours. Try taking some Vitamin B complex, Vitamin C complex.. if you have beer, go ahead and drink it. ... Just remember you're a living organism on this planet, and you're very safe. You've just taken a heavy drug. Relax, stay inside, and listen to some music. Do you have any Allman Brothers?")
posted by languagehat at 3:19 PM on April 1, 2015 [7 favorites]
And Inception and pretty much other hit sf movie of the last decade or so. Impressive visuals, but everything else is incoherent clichés; the voiceover is the ramblings of someone who's just done a drug they're not used to. (I'm channeling SNL's Jimmy Carter: "Alright, Peter, just listen. Everything is going to be fine. You're very high right now. You will probably be that way for five more hours. Try taking some Vitamin B complex, Vitamin C complex.. if you have beer, go ahead and drink it. ... Just remember you're a living organism on this planet, and you're very safe. You've just taken a heavy drug. Relax, stay inside, and listen to some music. Do you have any Allman Brothers?")
posted by languagehat at 3:19 PM on April 1, 2015 [7 favorites]
I was reminded of dark city too, but i saw that as a bad thing because that movie is cheesy and terrible. And not even good cheesy like starship troopers, just eyeroll scary movie cheesy.
I am pretty impressed though. That's a lot of high quality VFX and just... everything, for $50000. Damn.
posted by emptythought at 3:26 PM on April 1, 2015
I am pretty impressed though. That's a lot of high quality VFX and just... everything, for $50000. Damn.
posted by emptythought at 3:26 PM on April 1, 2015
I am 4 minutes and 41 seconds into this and I am convinced it is a commercial for luxury watches.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 3:44 PM on April 1, 2015 [15 favorites]
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 3:44 PM on April 1, 2015 [15 favorites]
This child is about to be obliterated by a crashing plane... buy Omega.
posted by quin at 4:38 PM on April 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by quin at 4:38 PM on April 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
NuuooOOOOOOOUOO!
posted by howfar at 4:43 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by howfar at 4:43 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
I will say that the disaster porn portion was incredibly impressive for $50,000. It looked as good or better than many $200+ million tentpole films from the last few years.
The rest was pretty blah.
posted by lattiboy at 4:44 PM on April 1, 2015
The rest was pretty blah.
posted by lattiboy at 4:44 PM on April 1, 2015
The graphics were impressive but it went on for entirely too long. And as Incessant says above, there's no story there; barely even a hook for one. So we have ... a feeling of unreality, considerable evidence that reality is being tampered with, and a Significant Girlfriend. There are lots of directions you could take that and have a good story, but it would hardly be an original one.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:05 PM on April 1, 2015
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:05 PM on April 1, 2015
On watching the whole thing; I thought it as actually incredibly beautiful visually. Every penny of the cost of the film appeared to be up on the screen. I think it would have been neater if the video had no dialog at all, and was just the music, allowing the viewer to create their own narrative.
That being said, I thought the voice-over had a sort of neat, angsty sadness to it, this I would have put to a separate film starting with the shot of the sun, and slowly pulling out past the solar system, past the galaxy, to the entire universe to blackness. It would have been art-film nonsense, but I think it could work.
And having said that, my takeaway was that the film was about grieving. The part of the voice-over that is speaking about trusting the universe to continue as normal belied with the imagery of destruction suggests that the director was trying to articulate how people deal with horrible situations, something we would catastrophize, like the loss of a job, a death of a loved one, a wide ranging disaster. We deny, grow angry, bargain, sink into depression, and finally accept. I think it could be argued that all of these stages of grief are on display at some point in the short. It also seems to show that people go through these stages at different speeds and enact each one differently (I'm looking at you, depressed woman eating eggs).
The end, with the character switching seamlessly between his suit, and work clothes, turning him from an outsider to one of the people marching to the mountains is a compelling visual for acceptance to my eyes.
Of course, I'm probably reading too much into it, but if I had to explain it to someone, this is how I would describe what I saw.
posted by quin at 5:10 PM on April 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
That being said, I thought the voice-over had a sort of neat, angsty sadness to it, this I would have put to a separate film starting with the shot of the sun, and slowly pulling out past the solar system, past the galaxy, to the entire universe to blackness. It would have been art-film nonsense, but I think it could work.
And having said that, my takeaway was that the film was about grieving. The part of the voice-over that is speaking about trusting the universe to continue as normal belied with the imagery of destruction suggests that the director was trying to articulate how people deal with horrible situations, something we would catastrophize, like the loss of a job, a death of a loved one, a wide ranging disaster. We deny, grow angry, bargain, sink into depression, and finally accept. I think it could be argued that all of these stages of grief are on display at some point in the short. It also seems to show that people go through these stages at different speeds and enact each one differently (I'm looking at you, depressed woman eating eggs).
The end, with the character switching seamlessly between his suit, and work clothes, turning him from an outsider to one of the people marching to the mountains is a compelling visual for acceptance to my eyes.
Of course, I'm probably reading too much into it, but if I had to explain it to someone, this is how I would describe what I saw.
posted by quin at 5:10 PM on April 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
When you hear about the $50k price tag, keep in mind that the post house that made it probably didn't factor in a thousand costs that they would normally bill to a big studio -- I would be surprised if that price tag included labor or facilities at the VFX house, for instance, as well as any post costs - editing, sound, color. Probably the production days itself are what cost 50k, which, considering it's 14 minutes with unknown actors shot in Mexico City, actually feels expensive to me.
posted by incessant at 5:12 PM on April 1, 2015
posted by incessant at 5:12 PM on April 1, 2015
No story!? What!? Obviously at some point in the near future increased solar activity sends loads of Built Ford Tough satellites (including one far enough inside the orbit of Mercury that the Sun fills the field of view from directly behind the satellite - unless maybe the depth of field on the camera is, like, infinite) plummeting into the atmosphere. Along with a massive EMP released by the solar activity, this destroys most of civilization as we know it. Fortunately, in some gritty locale that's not South Africa and that could only exist outside of the United States and definitely not somewhere in the Rust Belt, an ominous corporation started by a power hungry Irish singer has menacingly started a series of public works projects, and our lone anti-hero, who has listened to way too much Radiohead and read way too much Rilke and Bly, can only figure it all out by staggering about and yelling at strangers. All this will change forever, though, when he figures out that The Matrix is actually for real this time and the mountains are made of the Monolith.
posted by johnnydummkopf at 5:26 PM on April 1, 2015 [19 favorites]
posted by johnnydummkopf at 5:26 PM on April 1, 2015 [19 favorites]
Ugh. It's like Neill Blomkamp remade Gattaca as a parody of Terrence Malick.
posted by octothorpe at 5:32 PM on April 1, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 5:32 PM on April 1, 2015 [3 favorites]
Very tired of grimdark. No rays of hope in this teaser, so why would I want to see it? I wouldn't mind watching those rocky mountainy things, but without the distracting voiceover.
posted by amtho at 5:43 PM on April 1, 2015
posted by amtho at 5:43 PM on April 1, 2015
at least he got to join the clone army at the end
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:47 PM on April 1, 2015
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:47 PM on April 1, 2015
Did anyone notice the sun spitting out a planet in the opening credits...an earthlike planet. It shows up again before the scene on the train, when the narrator says "Our world is not powered by oil, or money...or dreams...or God" then... "We see the universe as a machine"
There is a minefield of story there...in the details.
posted by Benway at 6:01 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
There is a minefield of story there...in the details.
posted by Benway at 6:01 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Solar disco.
posted by clavdivs at 6:23 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by clavdivs at 6:23 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Not sure what the concept was, but they proved the shit out of it.
posted by haricotvert at 6:49 PM on April 1, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by haricotvert at 6:49 PM on April 1, 2015 [4 favorites]
Let's just string together some amazing visuals with exactly zero attention to story or character or anything even approaching narrative. Hollywood!
I have edited this for brevity
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:51 PM on April 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
I have edited this for brevity
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:51 PM on April 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
String together amazing visuals Hollywood!
I have edited the edit for the American remake.
posted by happyroach at 7:25 PM on April 1, 2015 [4 favorites]
I have edited the edit for the American remake.
posted by happyroach at 7:25 PM on April 1, 2015 [4 favorites]
This is a weird combination of some stuff that works really well and some stuff that's not so great. The VFX are mostly good, but some fall flat (the kid at the beginning with the crashing plane in the background would be a great shot, were it not for the bad out of focus edges on the kid, which make him look like a cardboard cutout, for instance).
The ending beyond the wall and with the mountains was great, with really evocative images, as was the beginning, but the middle was just dumb pseudo-deep voiceover and regurgitated Matrix/Dark City stuff (there might be a little Solaris in this too, now that I think about it). Ersatz sweaty Crispin Glover doesn't work for me at all.
I know several people who worked on this (B camera operator is a friend of mine, and a good cinematographer, but I had no idea he'd done this), and it's kind of fun to see places you know reinterpreted (the super-scifi office building interior is actually real, it's the Mexican National Library, although they extended the set upwards), but I'm not sure this feels all that fresh or original, and I certainly don't see how it would spark a "bidding war". I suspect that might be slightly exaggerated.
Doing this for 50k dollars? Yeah, that's almost certainly only the cost of the shoot. To get 14 minutes (well, maybe 10 minutes live action) material, you'd probably want to shoot 4 days. 50k to shoot 4 days in Mexico City, given that they're renting equipment from a big rental house and seem to have a reasonably sized crew sounds about right, even a little cheap. Mexico City isn't some backwater, we have a big and professional movie industry, and while it's a lot cheaper to shoot here than in LA, it's not free.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:44 PM on April 1, 2015 [8 favorites]
The ending beyond the wall and with the mountains was great, with really evocative images, as was the beginning, but the middle was just dumb pseudo-deep voiceover and regurgitated Matrix/Dark City stuff (there might be a little Solaris in this too, now that I think about it). Ersatz sweaty Crispin Glover doesn't work for me at all.
I know several people who worked on this (B camera operator is a friend of mine, and a good cinematographer, but I had no idea he'd done this), and it's kind of fun to see places you know reinterpreted (the super-scifi office building interior is actually real, it's the Mexican National Library, although they extended the set upwards), but I'm not sure this feels all that fresh or original, and I certainly don't see how it would spark a "bidding war". I suspect that might be slightly exaggerated.
Doing this for 50k dollars? Yeah, that's almost certainly only the cost of the shoot. To get 14 minutes (well, maybe 10 minutes live action) material, you'd probably want to shoot 4 days. 50k to shoot 4 days in Mexico City, given that they're renting equipment from a big rental house and seem to have a reasonably sized crew sounds about right, even a little cheap. Mexico City isn't some backwater, we have a big and professional movie industry, and while it's a lot cheaper to shoot here than in LA, it's not free.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:44 PM on April 1, 2015 [8 favorites]
The director owns a production company that does commercials and they do their own post, by the way (he actually did color grading on this himself), so it's a sure bet there's close to zero post expenses included in those 50k.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:44 PM on April 1, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 7:44 PM on April 1, 2015 [5 favorites]
Editing brevity.
posted by clavdivs at 9:44 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by clavdivs at 9:44 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Octothorpe nailed it.
posted by benzenedream at 12:05 AM on April 2, 2015
posted by benzenedream at 12:05 AM on April 2, 2015
The director owns a production company that does commercials and they do their own post, by the way (he actually did color grading on this himself)
That actually explains a lot. Maybe i'm a dick, but the color grading pissed me off. It was partially the OMG BLUE AND ORANGE thing to an extent, partially just ridiculously blue like some instagram filter, and partially lots of fake "grit" effect which has a name but i'm forgetting it.
All the effects are like overdone shitty HDR. They're good to a certain extent, but every single shot has some oversaturated exaggerated effect on it with the coloration and just filtering of the image to try and achieve some type of... crappy knockoff of the gritty 70mm look of daredevil? I'm not even sure, but it feels really overdone and fakey. It kept pulling me out of it to notice the exaggerated colors and grit. It's the grading and the effects.
It doesn't surprise me the guy does commercials. I bet they're of the generic sports guy starting to run in slow motion with too much grit applied variety. Or car commercials. Or both.
posted by emptythought at 3:33 AM on April 2, 2015
That actually explains a lot. Maybe i'm a dick, but the color grading pissed me off. It was partially the OMG BLUE AND ORANGE thing to an extent, partially just ridiculously blue like some instagram filter, and partially lots of fake "grit" effect which has a name but i'm forgetting it.
All the effects are like overdone shitty HDR. They're good to a certain extent, but every single shot has some oversaturated exaggerated effect on it with the coloration and just filtering of the image to try and achieve some type of... crappy knockoff of the gritty 70mm look of daredevil? I'm not even sure, but it feels really overdone and fakey. It kept pulling me out of it to notice the exaggerated colors and grit. It's the grading and the effects.
It doesn't surprise me the guy does commercials. I bet they're of the generic sports guy starting to run in slow motion with too much grit applied variety. Or car commercials. Or both.
posted by emptythought at 3:33 AM on April 2, 2015
That was a really long trailer. I didn't realize it was 14 minutes and I kept expecting it to end.
At first I was really excited about a solar-flare induced apocalypse (everything falling out of orbit and out of the sky,) and an examination of that society. I was hoping it'd borrow a bit from Brazil
Then it got very Matrix/Inceptioney and uggh I was less interested.
Still very impressive for the money though.
posted by Theta States at 6:07 AM on April 2, 2015
At first I was really excited about a solar-flare induced apocalypse (everything falling out of orbit and out of the sky,) and an examination of that society. I was hoping it'd borrow a bit from Brazil
Then it got very Matrix/Inceptioney and uggh I was less interested.
Still very impressive for the money though.
posted by Theta States at 6:07 AM on April 2, 2015
Well, my interpretation is tha this is a post-apocalyptic world and that, for some reason, in this world these two people are either separated from the rest of humanity or the last two humans alive. It's interesting to me to find out why it apparently makes sense in that particular world to keep these two humans in a simulated reality. My guess is either aliens, AI or a generation ship escaping an unstable sun. Either way, it sparked my curiosity.
posted by Kattullus at 6:14 AM on April 2, 2015
posted by Kattullus at 6:14 AM on April 2, 2015
This started a Hollywood bidding war?
Hollywood is in big, big trouble. But then, I guess it'll fit in neatly with whatever mind-numbing lineup of action/comic book sequels/prequels they'll release whenever this gem will hit theaters.
What if... I'd actually had an original idea somewhere in that script?
Seriously.
posted by oxidizer at 7:21 AM on April 2, 2015
Hollywood is in big, big trouble. But then, I guess it'll fit in neatly with whatever mind-numbing lineup of action/comic book sequels/prequels they'll release whenever this gem will hit theaters.
What if... I'd actually had an original idea somewhere in that script?
Seriously.
posted by oxidizer at 7:21 AM on April 2, 2015
I shall drop this tidbit here; the universe cares not one whit for how we perceive it.
posted by Zangal at 9:58 AM on April 2, 2015
posted by Zangal at 9:58 AM on April 2, 2015
just saw this: "Steven Spielberg is set to direct the movie adaptation of Ready Player One next..." (maybe with an oculus release? 8)
posted by kliuless at 1:49 PM on April 5, 2015
posted by kliuless at 1:49 PM on April 5, 2015
The Ready Player One + Spielberg thing is FPP material on its own, honestly. Although there's barely any info out there right now...
posted by emptythought at 4:50 AM on April 6, 2015
posted by emptythought at 4:50 AM on April 6, 2015
Spielberg tends to announce a lot of movies that he ends up passing on to someone else. IMDB currently lists five upcoming projects for him, I doubt that he'll do all of them considering that it's been three years since he released anything.
posted by octothorpe at 6:26 AM on April 6, 2015
posted by octothorpe at 6:26 AM on April 6, 2015
« Older Fool me once, shame on ... oh, you know the rest. | "Even if you count doorways as holes, that would... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Pendragon at 2:20 PM on April 1, 2015 [3 favorites]