July 27, 2003
MarkBernstein.org
 

Desktop Film For Pros

New term: a Bonifer is a film, produced with skeleton crew and miniscule budget, that seeks to show what the 'real' film will be. Both Mike Bonifer and J. Michael Straczinsky have argued, convincingly I think, that we're approaching the point where this is a sensible course for professional film makers who need to show their ideas convincingly to agents and studio executives.

An intriguing Bonifer is Hangar 7, a scene created by special effects artist Yannick Dussealt.

"On a Sunday afternoon," he writes, "a group of friends and I set out to shoot the test scene in one of the studio's car parks. Personally financed, this particular scene takes place in the early 1940s, on the German military base of Peenemuende. Using a standard digital video camera, the resulting footage was captured onto the computer, to be sorted and edited into a 3 minute format. "

If you've got the bandwidth for a big quicktime movie, take a look. It sure doesn't look like a guy and his friends in a parking lot. It looks like Hollywood. Thanks k10k.