Fede Alvarez Talks Panic Attack!
FA: Of course, there was a lot of boujou for the tracking. It's very important in a short movie and what makes it look different and fresher. I mean the fact that all the cameras are totally free and hand-held and very amateur style. I tried to get that spirit of 9/11 so we needed to have three hand-held cameras, so, in that manner, we used the image tracker to track all the shots. We also used Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop and Glu3d.
BD: So given the wild success of Panic Attack!, how has this boosted your post company, Aparato?
FA: We've definitely gotten more work, but, in a way, I'm not going to be working there anymore. Now we have a big team -- probably 10 people with a lot of freelancers -- and we are beta testers for Autodesk for [3ds Max]. Of course, everything came after the success of the short and it's been great for the company. Regionally and locally it's been great (we always did a lot of stuff for Pepsi locally), and we hope to get more work from the States. I know they're bidding on some [commercial] projects. Hopefully, some of the CGI for the feature we're going to do at the company. We're going to try to open an office in the States later this year -- probably in L.A.
BD: And have you begun working with a production designer?
FA: No, it's too early. But I've begun working with my local concept artists, and I'm coming back to L.A. and I hope we get greenlit by the end of May [after the next draft]. You never know with these things -- sometimes you never get greenlit. I'm learning how this works day by day. I heard all these stories, how much time Neill Blomkamp worked on the Halo movie that never happened. I hope that's not going to be the case.
Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.
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A bit presumptive to assume he used pirated software, especially given that the article mentions he's affiliated with a post house -- the same post facility that's listed in the credits.
From your comment, it definitely sounds like you're in the Industry, and so, profits, what profits? We all know that there's no such thing as net. If the film gets the greenlight he'll make his money off of his fees/salary. And if the film opens strong and does a decent BO, he'll probably get the chance to helm another one. Good for him.
Couldnt agree more with the previous post. $300? Thats less than i spend getting to work each month. Of course made with all pirated software - but forgiven and pounced upon by hollywood and the software developers for practically free publicity and a large profit slice.
Quite why they picked this one out is a mystery. There is a huge talent pool out there online and there are so many superior ones to this one by students and geeks in their bedrooms.
This sequence is nothing more than an amalgation of some of the best shots from destruction movies from the past few years, recreated...badly - mainly independence day of course. Im confused somewhat also - because it looks bloody terrible - with terrible compositing and small scale fume simualtions.
No - dont go thinking 'sour grapes' - i wish them the best of luck. But i wouldnt see this as a particularly lucky break and wouldnt want to be in their shoes when they realised they missed the small print about profits....
How an overrated, poorly produced short like this got anyone's attention is the actual story here. He produced the short for $300? Either he is using pirated software, or the software costs alone ran well over $10k just for one seat of each product. And I'm assuming the people who helped him were employees or friends, who if paid even moderately would have run $20-40k for the low end work displayed in the short. How like Hollywood to latch on to sub par talent in favor of web publicity.
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