Money laundering and the movie industry - $50 million for an animated movie!??

a reply to: mtnshredder

Here's a good challenge that gets your point across. People should try to create an original 1 minute live action video clip and then try to create an original 1 minute animated clip in a program like Blender. The amount of work just to create a single minute of original content is drastically different.

Anyone can put a smartphone on a tripod, film 3 minutes of blabbing or scenery, import it into a laptop, and make a presentable 1 minute clip from that in a very short time. But it's a completely different ballgame to create original animated models, backgrounds, and voiceovers, and then animate them into something that's even slightly presentable.

ETA: I'm admittedly a noob with animation as it was too time consuming to keep my interest. But I expect there to be a lot of plugins that can help speed up the work. But the point still stands about the difference of time needed for creating live action vs animated content.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

that compartmentalization is not to hide paper trail like the government

its needed because in an animation pipeline, one maybe working with as many as 10 smaller studios in 6/7 different countries.

there are studios that specialize in just the pre visualization animation of shots before any actual movie animation content is keyed.

a 7 minutes independent short film done with free available software can take as long as 10 months to finalize. (the elephants dream, done in blender, a free full animation software yet costs over 150k$ to make).

en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: odzeandennz

hope they don't try jumping to another industry where they'd be fired in a week for that level of nonproductivity and cost overruns.

Making a movie ain't cheap.

Animated movies are not something you can make on your Mac Laptop either.

My wife spends a lot of time at the editor's studio, just for a commercial.

Lots of people on a live movie need to get paid, locations, licences, permits, vehicles, hell, lights, cameras, wardrobe, animals, etc all have a price.

Animated movies for $50 mil? Sure.

List of most expensive animated films
Rank Title Cost (est.) (millions)
1 Tangled $260
2 Toy Story 3 $200
Cars 2 $200
Monsters University $200

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: odzeandennz

hope they don't try jumping to another industry where they'd be fired in a week for that level of nonproductivity and cost overruns.

Wow, the ignorance of some posters here is astounding. You have no clue what it actually takes to make them, but are sure that it is too expensive. LMAO.

So please go ahead and produce an animated movie with 1/3 of the typical budget.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

$50 million?

$10 million went into production, the remaining $40 million was spent on advertising.

Case closed.

If they wanted to launder money they wouldn't do it through their production studio that has it's paper trail with IRS.

No, I think they like to launder their money through family themed pizzerias.

a reply to: moebius

I have friends that do work on them in various departments. I know what's involved. it can be done a lot cheaper.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: moebius

I have friends that do work on them in various departments. I know what's involved. it can be done a lot cheaper.

You cant compare someone animating something on a desk top to Pixar movies. First there is no short cuts animators have to set up data points on each frame deciding whats moving and whats not! A single frame of an animation film can have millions of moving parts. For the Sully character in Monsters, Inc., there were 2,320,413 individually named hairs on his body. When he moves, the animators have to animate each hair in the body to create a highly realistic effect.

An animation movie might have no human actors, but it does have human story creators, screenplay writers, art directors, and sound effect people. It takes a lot of effort (and wages) to create the smooth story that will capture the audience.Studios such as Pixar have 600 or more creative people working on a movie for three to four years. They need to be housed and provided a creative environment and tools to do their creation. And this isn't done on a laptop rendering frame by frame is a highly computing-intensive task. Each individual frame has to be rendered to integrate all the moving parts. To do this you need a server farm with 5,000 or more machines running all year. That is a lot of computing power, support personnel and energy.

I watch a lot of crap movie reviews on youtube. Surprises me how some people don't understand the purpose of these obviously slapped together sub-porno quality movies. Like The Room, for example. I bet it cost a billion dollars and they sold a zillion copies out of a van, on the books.

In the 90s a bunch of small time dope dealers in Northern Cali started making cds, and they got an investigation. Funny how some groups are always in the cross hairs...

I know from my wife who is an AML professional that the movie industry as whole is rife with money laundering and is classed as a very high risk industry.

originally posted by: odzeandennz
a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

that compartmentalization is not to hide paper trail like the government

I'm not saying it is. I'm merely daring you to imagine the money laundering backdoor scheme potential for the elitist types all into that industry inside and out, alongside the rest of the rackets that all eventually apex together with it given the media + government + corruption machination model They've built post 1996 Telecommunications Act.

How many digits could be pigeonholed away to 'Acme The Other Studio' for "consulting fees" a year down in Hollyweird, no questions asked, sort of thing we're talking here?

What more perfect scene could facilitate such activity??

Could make a good movie script, potentially.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: odzeandennz

hope they don't try jumping to another industry where they'd be fired in a week for that level of nonproductivity and cost overruns.

You mean like the defense industry? lol

originally posted by: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

originally posted by: odzeandennz
a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

that compartmentalization is not to hide paper trail like the government

I'm not saying it is. I'm merely daring you to imagine the money laundering backdoor scheme potential for the elitist types all into that industry inside and out, alongside the rest of the rackets that all eventually apex together with it given the media + government + corruption machination model They've built post 1996 Telecommunications Act.

How many digits could be pigeonholed away to 'Acme The Other Studio' for "consulting fees" a year down in Hollyweird, no questions asked, sort of thing we're talking here?

What more perfect scene could facilitate such activity??

Could make a good movie script, potentially.

I have an idea. An animated movie about the making of an animated movie where the main character is exposed to an industry rife with shady dealings, being introduced to the intricacies of union work and rules, getting billed for work that isn't done - only really starting the work when over-time pay is approved, etc.. All the while trying to figure out where 80% of the budget money is really going.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

What do you people think? Are these costs of movies legit and if so, please explain the breakdown of the production costs because when I did it, I found a massive amount left to be explained.

watch the credits of any movie.


This will give you an idea of how many people are involved.

All the people involved are doing their job, this requires payment.

Some of the services required to create and promote movies costs quite a bit as the technology is always evolving.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

As much as I hate the movie industry and their creative book keeping.

You have to remember that there's money going to pay the talent. And Also in animated film. There is a crew of animators plus people running the server farm that renders the film. Which is not cheap. For Big Hero 6 they used a 55,000 core super computer to render it. IT is not cheap.

a reply to: Krakatoa

Agreed-CAD and audio software ain't cheap.

originally posted by: InhaleExhale

What do you people think? Are these costs of movies legit and if so, please explain the breakdown of the production costs because when I did it, I found a massive amount left to be explained.

watch the credits of any movie.
This will give you an idea of how many people are involved.
All the people involved are doing their job, this requires payment.

Exactly,
It used to be the credits only gave the main actors, producers, locations, and so on, but for a long time now they must list everybody that had any input to the film, all the subcontractors, all the singers/writers of recorded music used, all the original music scores, credits to the various locations used including location teams....everything. Such organisation for just one film is a big enterprise, and not even surprising that many individuals never even meet.

As for detail the BR20149 clips below give some idea, although not mentioned is there were often two different takes of scenes, with different interpretations.

I agree some thing is off.
the fans of star trek made there own Great films
verry cheaply.
star trek dose not like this.
and wants then to stop.

and after the last star trek serice
you can see why.

go look up fan films on youtube.

originally posted by: buddha
I agree some thing is off.
the fans of star trek made there own Great films
verry cheaply.
star trek dose not like this.
and wants then to stop.

and after the last star trek serice
you can see why.

go look up fan films on youtube.

I just looked up one of these fan films and the difference definitely justifies the increase in cost.

a reply to: Atsbhct

To be fair, a lot of people still get duped by seemingly obvious hoaxes like the video clips from SecureTeam with UFOs & dimensional portals. That means that cheap and/or badly done cgi isn't necessarily a deal breaker for a lot of people.