I listened to an FX Guide podcast last week on the making of Monsters. (Listen to it here) A technical director, (Gareth Edwards) got a chance to make his own independent monster movie on the cheap. If your anything like me, hearing about a technical director that gets to make is own movie probably gets you pretty excited.
MONSTERS - A crashed space probe over Mexico changes life as we know it when giant aliens begin to appear. A couple must travel through the dangerous infected zone to get back to the US in this stunning sci-fi epic.
He apparently shot it in Mexico over 6 weeks and did all the effects himself over 5 months. He used 3ds max for his creatures and said that only 3 shots were 3d tracked. Everything was 2d tracked with Mocca.
He said something like 'Most movies paint a target on the wall and after production, they hope that the arrow hits that target. We shot the movie with the ending in mind, but we let the shooting wander. We shot the arrow first, then painted the target around it during editing.'
What's also cool is that you could get it before it was even out in the theaters. Check it out, even just to see how much effects one man can do over 5 months. It's available at Amazon.com Here
Listen to the podcast, then watch the movie. In my opinion it wasn't bad at all. Then again, I listened to the podcast, and maybe I am biased to the TD making a good movie.