What does it cost to do this calibre of work?

[femmefatalemovie.warnerbros.com]

What do you mean, the cost of the site in money or in work?

Rui Barros
Editor Colorist Trainer
Lisbon, Portugal
RTP Post-Production
Apple Certified Trainer FCP 7
Apple Certified Pro FCP 7

Budget. Years of experience. A full crew. Professional actors. Costly locations.

The script sucked, though.

Your question is really too broad to answer, Vic.


www.derekmok.com

I meant: the flash presentation -- just the opening page. I'm assuming it's flash.

What does it cost to do the motion, graphics, music, titles?

I'd like to have an opening page like that for my movie website.

I'm not talking about the web hosting, the DVD for sale, and certainly not the movie.

I know how to make the movie, LOL, what I want to know is how much a graphics guy is going to charge me for doing an opening page like that?

A good web person who knows Flash is very expensive. Might look around for one but prepare to spend big dollars

Michael Horton
-------------------

vic, i have to be honest with you. IMO, that flash intro presentation was pretty weak from both a creative and technical standpoint. it wouldnt have taken anyone even moderately well versed in flash much more than a day of work to actually produce it.

HOWEVER, take into account the typical design phase, client review and mods. youre probably looking at about 100 hours. id give it an approximate street cost of about 8 to 10 grand

It always surprises me to find out how much time is needed to produce animation like this. Ten grand is beyond my budget at this time, but I think that the opening is dynamite. It downloads instantaneously and the whole presentation never lags. I agree some of the effects weren't very clean, but it made a strong impression on me. I thought to myself, "this is how to sell a movie."

Thanks for the info.

ok, whatever floats your boat man...

but i really just have to ask, what is it exactly that you think is so great about this?

well, Wayne, post a URL of a better Flash presentation/trailer.

I'd love to study these more. I think Flash trailers are the best because of:

1. They play faster ... on almost all computers.
2. The graphics and animation are more exciting as trailers -- personal preference.
3. The quality of the image is much better than any other format. The images are bigger, sharper and the color is better.

Flash is deadly on a Mac. Smaller file sizes yes, but VERY processor intensive. Go to any web site with a lot of flash ads and you'll see. As an authoring program it has a deep learning curve. The fact it is so popular is because it is one of the only authoring programs out there for Mac and PC. Quality of flash video doesn't come close to Quicktime. Quicktime needs a killer authoring program.

Michael Horton
-------------------

interesting challenge you cast down vic. and its a good question.

to be dead honest with you there arent a lot of PURE flash runtime movie trailers like this, simply becasue the medium is NOT the best suited for the message. add to that the fact that flash now does full motion video playback, approaches like the femme fatale thing are kind of obsolete. now you can build a sexy flash interface and then play full motion video elements instead of just moving and fading jpegs... here are a couple of links to similar things i did back in like 2000 or so that kind of use the same approach as your femme fatale thing:

i dont consider either of them all that great, but id put them on the same technical level. and each of them went for about 6 to 8 grand back when they were produced

[understandinc.com]
[understandinc.com]

here are a few things ive come accross that id consider well done:

here is a really well done movie flash site:
[www.therundown.com]
click "enter site" to begin
----------------------
this is a pretty simple one and has pretty much the same quality as femme fatale but is a lot better designed.
[www.hillmancurtis.com]
----------------------
this third one is a bit hard to dig to (a typical pain of flash sites) click the button for "open the site" at the lower left and the rest is self explanatory.
[www.audi.com]
----------------------
here is another slick one:
[www.mgmgrand.com]
click enter maximum vegas to begin the you can navigate with the little round map

both of the last two are serious, SERIOUS bucks! id imagine approaching $100k or more. but the sad part is that though they are expoentially better done and designed than the femme fatale thing, they dont provide a good counterpoint. but it does illustrate my point that pure flash content aint really the best way to sell a movie...

heres an actual movie site. its exceptionally slick but not very intutive and a slow loader - but tim burton fans are so damned ravenous i bet they dont care:
[corpsebridemovie.warnerbros.com]

this post is getting a bit long winded. im just trying to make the pont and share with you that what youre considering brilliant is really more or less an outdated apporoach and not executed that well even for that... considering the starpower involved in the movie itself

First of all thanks a lot for taking the time to gather these samples for me to look at. I liked all of them and learned something of the different applications flash was put to. I remember I used to be very impressed with the websites that had the two examples of flash you did. I used to ask myself, "how do they do that?" I had Flash 5 at the time and I tried for a few days to seriously learn it but I gave up. Like Mike pointed out: too much of a learning curve.

Although I follow what you're saying about complexity and sophistication of some of these flash presentations, but still the femme fatale trailer-like opening was better in my opinion. Not because it was more slick than the Audi one for example, but because it did the job for me. This is personal, I understand. I think the De Palma movie is better than the other action movie also.

Also the Femme Fatale flash was more exciting. The shot content was better. And there was more violent motion in it. The music was better. The titles were executed better.

And now, as you indicated, live action shots can be incorporated into flash. To me this makes flash better for Internet trailers, as speed of download and streaming are more restrictive.

Flash allows a few well chosen glimpses of a movie to be mixed with graphics and titles to create an exciting way to promote a movie. I'd love to have a flash trailer for any of my movies. I think they are a great selling tool.

Too bad flash is hard to learn and that flash creators are so expensive. I understand the time involved. It took me so long to move a dot across the screen when I was trying to learn flash 5 several years ago.

Anyway, thanks for helping me understand the technology and its application better.

this is a pretty simple one and has pretty much the same quality as femme fatale but is a lot better designed.
[www.hillmancurtis.com]

here is another slick one:
[www.mgmgrand.com]
click enter maximum vegas to begin the you can navigate with the little round map


WAYNE!!!!!!!!!

these 2 was so darn hot. the mgm is the #1 for me.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

hey jeff, glad you liked them - but just wanted to make sure nobody thinks i did the audi and mgm sites. those were just examples of what id considered good flash work.

the only two i did personally were the wonky compaq and the kerrmcgee recruiting pieces