canadamus_prime said:
Lightknight said:
$2 million for 3 episodes? Is crow literally made of gold?
I imagine most of that money is going to go towards securing the licensing rights to the films they'd be riffing on.
Oh yeah? And you think the films they were using would charge $100k or more? Come on, they were bottom barrel shit. Maybe a few $100k if the goal is to get new movies but I seriously doubt it. They can probably get decent b-level stuff for seriously cheap. I mean, most of those were films that were maybe raking in a couple hundred per year at best. If someone comes and offers you 5 years of income to use your property and it may also advertise your property then you'd be silly not to take it. Take the movie Trolls for example. It being on the show made it popular and even made way for Trolls 2. As long as the film maker isn't prideful, this can be pitched as a mutually beneficial arrangement.
We're throwing stones in the dark here. Unless he outlines the anticipated costs here, we really don't know where he's coming from. I know people are talking about electronics being expensive, but it isn't $100k expensive. I don't think they would ever use a professional sound studio or even need to but sure, that could become expensive. But they even do live shows so I know they aren't going out and renting a $5k/day sound studio. EDIT: In fact, it looks like they're going to do this performance live... So maybe they're thinking expense of venue here? But I assume tickets would cover that and alleviate set rental costs.
The entire premise of the show was that it was extremely cheap. $750k per episode is not that. The shows that are most expensive to make are ones that have a large list of actors. At its cheapest, this show just needs three actors as long as two of them can double as puppeteers. You could even get away with just one person with a green screen as long as they never have to touch each other on screen and you make damn sure the camera doesn't get moved between shots. But that would increase the editing time and the number of shots that have to be redone after the editing process reveals problems. Still, no way that amount of time would ever end up being as expensive as another actor's salary.
Compare it to a primetime pilot show for a sitcom. I'm talking about the initial episode where you've got all the actors together and have all the sets and wardrobe and everything in place. The thing where everyone is learning their role and everything takes longer. That's usually around $1.3 million to make. It can go upwards of $3million but that fluctuation depends on the "talent" deals. None of the people involved in these shows are what we'd call "talent". But take a show like Louie, that pilot was $250k and still had 9 actors (one of whom is Chelsea Peretti who is an actual actress), 5 producers (excluding Louie himself), 33 other cast members and multiple sets with all the lighting, sound equipment and everything else.
Does anyone actually know how much it costs to license a B-movie? Maybe he's anticipating a million for licensing and the rest for the show? That would explain why the number of episodes go up quickly while the increase in costs drop.
I mean, it looks like this kickstarter is definitely going to succeed. I'm going to enjoy buying whatever they product. But if I'm going to back a campaign in which $35 only gets me 1 episode then I want to know it isn't a flagrant abuse of the kickstarter system.
EDIT: He addresses why he's asking for so much: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mst3k/bringbackmst3k/posts/1413188 (discussing this more in the post below)
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