In their frantic grabs for your attention and spending money, movie studios have been putting more and more elaborate extras on the DVD editions of their product. This is an idea for a new one that you would optionally select when viewing the film ala commentary tracks.
Particularly on big-budget blockbusters, the studio PR machine often talks about how much was spent on this or that in the making of the film, to impress a would be viewer. For instance, one of the action sequences in the new Matrix flick supposedly cost $10 Million just for that one scene.
Instead of these little PR dribs and drabs, lets take this to its logical conclusion. Put the entire budget of the film up on the screen as an optional DVD extra, in graphical form.
I envision a "thermometer" off to one side of the screen, with zero at the bottom, and the total cost of the movie at the top. As the movie progresses, a line slides up the scale showing how the budget was spent scene by scene.
To make it a bit more interesting, when particular costly items first appear onscreen, a text balloon will briefly appear pointing at the item and showing its cost. "This custom car cost us $52,345 to build." "The set Keanu Reeves is walking into took 8 weeks and $1.2 million to build." "The costume Audrey Hepburn is wearing in this scene was made by Chanel and cost $11,000 in 1961"
I'd really like to see details on each star's salary as well, but I imagine you'd run afoul of confidentiality agreements in some cases if you tried to do that in detail.-- krelnik, Jun 02 2003 DVD Cost http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/DVD_20Costrelated idea that prodded me into posting this one, which has been in my slush pile for a while [krelnik, Oct 04 2004] Okay, but only as DVD commentary, please. Your title makes it sound like you want the release version to do this.-- phoenix, Jun 02 2003 so much for escapism.-- po, Jun 02 2003 Don't be silly, phoenix. Of course this is only as an option on the DVD.-- krelnik, Jun 02 2003 Hunt For Red October: Sean Connery's hairpiece: US$20,000.00-- thumbwax, Jun 02 2003 The thermometer could dip into the negatives as a star produced a can of Pepsi, or demonstrated their Lee Jeans.-- bungston, Jun 02 2003 Hah! Hadn't thought of that. I remember reading that the most recent Bond flick had scored some ridiculous amount of money for product tie-ins (like USD $70 Million) before any work on the film had been done.-- krelnik, Jun 02 2003 just saw the Italian Job, had many shameless plugs. (but go, Mini!)-- igirl, Jun 02 2003 I like the idea of the text balloons - DVD extras like VH1's popup video.-- shortstop, Jun 02 2003 I've actually seen the text balloons part (but not with budget items) done on DVD....on the disc of "Not Another Teen Movie". Since it is an "Airplane!"-style spoof of teen movies, they explain what each element is a spoof of, and so on; along with other tidbits about the production. Quite interesting.-- krelnik, Jun 03 2003 Good idea but neither the film making or the film funding process tends to be linear. The recent Pianist film was shot in reverse, for example, so the star could fatten himself up rather than progressively starve himself. Other film shoots often demand that all the scenes in one location, or that feature an expensive actor, are shot together but out of sequence. Often scenes need to be reshot even after filming has closed down for one reason or other.-- Aristotle, Jun 03 2003 I want to watch “Waterworld” with this feature. The scale would change multiple times during the movie.-- Shz, Jun 03 2003 I like this,for the graphic I suggest a cash register so when the expensive scenes are running there'll be an almighty "Kerrrr- ching!".
This might end up like a credit card advertisement: "Suped-up stunt car: $45,000;Pyrotechnics: $30,000;Designer leather jacket: $4000;The sheer 'cool' of Samuel L. Jackson: priceless."-- Jinbish, Jun 03 2003 You said you want to know how much the stars make. Personally when I'm watching a movie (or especially a TV show) I wonder how much the minor actors make. Like the waiter in the restaurant who says the specials or the 10 second "isn't he/she cute" love interest that doesn't have a line, or even the strategically placed attractive people in the background. At the very least they have to navigate the LA freeways and wait a few hours for the scene to shoot. What do you pay for that? Reoccurring small-role characters in TV shows are especially interesting (to me) because they really tie episodes together and are an important element, but how much can you really pay someone for doing a line every couple of weeks?-- zone, Nov 07 2003 random, halfbakery