
Uganda’s Tarantino and his $200 action movies (2015) - smacktoward
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32531558
======
krapp
The thing about movies like this is, as low budget and low quality as they
are, effects wise, they're consistently so. The result is almost a comic-book
aesthetic, and something like a helicopter pasted in to the scene doesn't seem
out of place, because everything is ridiculous.

Bigger budget movies, meanwhile, can spend millions of dollars on CG and break
immersion entirely.

------
duncanawoods
I wish there were a lot more movies like Primer.

$7k budget. I'm not so interested in time travel but I have an unlimited
appetite for normal people inventing things in garages. I don't need super-
stars, exotic locations or special effects, just good ideas and good dialogue.

~~~
goto11
Everybody knows about the big blockbuster movies because half the budget is
marketing. There a _lots_ and independent movies getting produces all around
the world. But you will have to seek them out yourself to some extent.

~~~
ada1981
Could you imagine a Hollywood film where the marketing scheme was “all the
actors work for free but get to keep half the money they make selling copies
of the film”.

~~~
coldtea
There are things like actors working for free with a percentage of the box
office profit. Some top actors made more this way than if they actually got a
salary.

~~~
gamblor956
SAGAFTRA rules do not permit actors to work for free, even if they get a
percentage. (Despite claims that actors worked on the re-shoots for _All the
Money in the World_ for free, all of them except Mark Wahlberg were
contractually obligated to participate in re-shoots, so they were already paid
for their work. Marky Mark was not contractually obligated to participate in
re-shoots, and collected roughly $5 million for his...efforts.)

They can work for minimum scale, and get a percentage of profits (Sandra
Bullock and _Gravity_ ). The trick with Hollywood accounting is to know to ask
for a percentage of the rights-owning entity, since the production entity is a
loss vehicle that earns no income, and the licensing entity only earns a small
markup for its "work" licensing the movie.

The distribution entity is frequently a third-party company or parent company.
Distribution entities might get paid a % of revenue (most common if third-
party distributor), a fixed or calculated fee for distributing the movie
(i.e., Fox and Star Wars), or it might effectively own the rights altogether
and get all of the revenues (Disney and other parent-company distributors,
otherwise unncommon). In rare situations, the rights-holding entity is the
distribution entity (i.e. Blumhouse).

~~~
coldtea
Contrary to popular belief, not all actors work in the USA, and are under
SAGAFTRA.

And even for those, working for a minimum fee, non representative of their
actual asking price, for indy productions or movies they believe in and want a
share of profits, is common, and is more or less the same.

(If you get normally $5 million per movie, doing one for e.g. $200k plus part
of profits is not that different from doing it for profits only).

------
mrob
"Who Killed Captain Alex?" exceeded my expectations more than any other movie
I've watched. I got the impression that everyone involved was genuinely
passionate about making the best movie they could, which more than made up for
the budget limitations. I'd rather watch something like this than a >$100M
movie where it's all designed by committee for the broadest appeal possible.
Even the VJ commentary, which I at first thought would be annoying, turned out
to be entertaining.

------
donretag
"As one of the few white men around, he's in demand as an actor."

A few years ago, I traveled around Africa, including Uganda, using public
buses (an adventure in itself) and they would frequently show movies or music
videos. Many of the music videos were local hip hop artists, rap music often
blended with local traditions. The music videos were no different form the
bling-bling videos in the US and you can tell they all needed at least one
white girl. Obviously, there were must not have been many options, so for the
majority it was some girl that I would not label as "music video" attractive.
My assumption was that they must have been the local Peace Core volunteer.

Kampala, like most African cities, is incredibly hectic. Not sure how he found
someone randomly.

------
brianprovost
This sounds fun:

"Watching a movie can be a raucous affair - films are translated into local
languages such as Luganda by VJs, or video jokers, who add their own jokes and
improvised commentary, live."

~~~
alxlaz
It really is, and it's a very enriching way of experiencing art. For a long
time, this is how stories propagated -- they were told and retold by various
people, who sometimes added details or even entire story twists of their own.
Improvisation was a natural part of storytelling which movies rendered
somewhat unnecessary, but to which they do lend themselves to some degree.

~~~
nvader
This explains the appeal of RiffTrax and collaborative cult films like the
Room.

------
lb1lf
Speaking of Tarantino and low budgets, Tarantino apprentice (I say this
tongue-in-cheek) Robert Rodriguez did his first feature film El Mariachi on a
$10k budget.

I distinctly recall that he for instance had only one guitar case on hand, so
if you pay close attention, you'll notice that our protagonist (an innocent
mariachi with a guitar in his case) and the bad guys chasing him (sporting
lots of guns in their case) use the same guitar case! Now that's props on the
cheap...

~~~
pjc50
The director's commentary on the DVD is amazing, because it's mostly about all
the shortcuts taken to get the film made. Most of the extras are people who
provided locations in exchange for appearing in the film. There are short
loops of frames of gunfire because they didn't have the right kind guns to
film automatic fire with blanks. And so on.

~~~
foobar1962
The prison guards early in the movie are the real guards in the real prison.

------
bitL
I remember when I first saw Peter Jackson's Braindead - from the first 5
minutes I wasn't sure if it was an amateur movie or a total parody. Glad I
kept watching. Some of the scenes were templates for some LOTR scenes,
polished to perfection there.

This strikingly resembles it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJmyhrnLYBU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJmyhrnLYBU)

------
MordodeMaru
Another good example of good stuff from Wakaliwood, Cuchillo de Fuego’s
Nocturno clip:

[https://youtu.be/grOK2PdDAow](https://youtu.be/grOK2PdDAow)

~~~
freakynit
Damn man!!! I loved it

~~~
MordodeMaru
Y'all should listen to Cuchillo de Fuego, btw.

------
subjectHarold
Link to trailer (I think) mentioned in article -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZXqkgFegLQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZXqkgFegLQ)

Lalalala....ACTION! Supa Kicker!

The passion is inspiring.

EDIT: Vice also did something on these guys (it seems all the BBC does these
days is recycle content) -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy0OOVTmsJI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy0OOVTmsJI)

~~~
smacktoward
Forget the trailer, you can watch _Who Killed Captain Alex?_ in its entirety
on the official Wakaliwood YouTube channel, complete with hilarious running
commentary by VJ Emmie:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEoGrbKAyKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEoGrbKAyKE)

------
yters
Why have I been wasting my life?

~~~
muzani
Same thoughts here. This just looks fun! It reminds me of when I started
programming. I had a cheap laptop that took half an hour just to start. There
were few co-working spaces, so I just camped out on the stairs of a goverment
building for free internet.

But it was a productive, fun time. Now with all the high end resources and
tools I have, it's not as fun and surprisingly, less productive.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
Why is it less productive now? Doesn't make any sense. Even just the available
tools and libraries today make every thinkable workflow orders of magnitude
more productive.

~~~
jacquesm
One factor likely is the fact that to produce a working website to today's
standards is a team effort when a few years ago you could hack out something
that worked in a day or two by yourself. Team communications add overhead and
that in turn slows you down.

A similar thing has happened to game development, it is rare to see a
monetizable game made by a single individual.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
This is not about productivity, this is just about quality of content. You can
still make a game of the same standard as way back, by one person. It's just
that games of today are objectively so much better and more complex and
intricate.

~~~
muzani
Arguably, games like Fallout 4 have a huge world but it's not complex at all.
It _looks_ more realistic, but the storyline is simpler and far less memorable
than Fallout 2.

I'd also argue the most complex games are something like Dwarf Fortress or
Ultima Ratio Regum. Both of which were made by 1-2 people.

The way of writing "use cases" for dwarf fortress is also a lot of fun and
probably doesn't scale up with a large insustrial team:
[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_story.html](http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_story.html)

There are games like Rimworld which try to imitate DF's charm, but go further
with a team, professionalism, and better funding. But while it's more polished
and "balanced", it doesn't come to the same level of craftsmanship. You also
don't get the same goofiness as a necromancer who slices off your finger,
animates it, then pokes you in the eye with your undead finger.

~~~
hutzlibu
"You also don't get the same goofiness as a necromancer who slices off your
finger, animates it, then pokes you in the eye with your undead finger."

Where does that happen? Ultima ratio regum?

~~~
muzani
Dwarf Fortress.

It's full of crazy details, like falling down the stairs, cracking a rib, and
dying when something pushes the rib through a heart. Or that time when someone
found out mermaid bones were valuable and set up structures to trap, breed and
"harvest" mermaids.

Even the 'bug' list is a fun read:
[https://m.imgur.com/gallery/ROa2C](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/ROa2C)

------
daniel_iversen
This is a link to the guy's first movie:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEoGrbKAyKE&t=145s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEoGrbKAyKE&t=145s)
... simply awesome! :)

------
damontal
Relevant Reply All episode: [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-
all/114-apocalypse-soon](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/114-apocalypse-
soon)

------
xorand
Not Tarantino, more like Peter Jackson Bad Taste
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgCnCri2cTU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgCnCri2cTU)

------
ada1981
This is awesome.

Netflix ought to give these guys a budget and let them run wild.

------
smnscu
Well known in the YouTube community
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUtiVL6z8wE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUtiVL6z8wE)

~~~
Flow
The package he got was very funny.

PR material for the movie "Cannibal mama - I hope to meat you" cracked me up.
:-D I feel this is a subculture that could be interesting and funny.

------
kgwxd
I hope at least $1 from Vim donations somehow made it's way to supporting this
directly. And I hope that snake lady doesn't suffer the same fate as the
original Tin Man.

~~~
smacktoward
If anyone wants to support them directly, they have a Patreon here:
[https://www.patreon.com/wakaliwood](https://www.patreon.com/wakaliwood)

------
zokier
The one thing that annoys me in these sorts of articles/titles is that they do
not really reflect the true costs of production (be it games or film or
anything else). Sure it is easy to make a movie with no budget if you don't
pay anything for peoples time, equipment, locations, or any other resources.
But that does not mean that those are free, or without value.

------
glangdale
Well worth checking out. "Bad Black" looks like a ton of fun.
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6044414/?ref_=nv_sr_2](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6044414/?ref_=nv_sr_2)

Trailer here: [https://vimeo.com/120747455](https://vimeo.com/120747455)

------
hutzlibu
"He then taught himself how to use editing packages such as Premiere Pro and
After Effects, and borrowed a camera from a neighbour. "And with that I
started""

But how was he able to afford the expensive adobe products?

Joking ... probably the same way most of his audience sees his work.

------
m0zg
Even this is better than Netflix shows. At least you don't expect much, so it
exceeds expectations.

------
golemotron
Reminds of the movie 'Be Kind Rewind.' Low budget film making is great fun.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Kind_Rewind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Kind_Rewind)

------
drinkcrudeoil
Back in a day ZF Skurcz from Poland made a few great amateur kung-fu comedies
[https://youtu.be/EyumZCv1vD8](https://youtu.be/EyumZCv1vD8) Unfortunately
there are no subtitles

------
DesiLurker
reminds me of the jack black movie called 'Be Kind Rewind'!

------
starpilot
(2015)

~~~
dang
Added. Thanks!

