Alex Ferrari’s excellent Broken

I received an email from Alex Ferrari and Jorge Flores Rodriguez about a short film they’d been working on called Broken. They’d worked to produce this $8,000 movie with all the passion and input of a full Hollywood movie, even down to effects. To give you an idea they boast over 100 visual effects throughout the short. So I visited the trailer and was well surprised.

It’s slick with fast paced editing and plenty of style to boot. To be honest it looks far removed from a Hollywood film, and more at place in foreign cinema, and that is indeed a good thing to say. I would love to see the full film as the trailer flies by and leaves you thirsty for more. Go see it.

There’s also an extensive site to give you more about the movie and the team behind it, this too is as well produced as the site of a Hollywood movie. There’s stills, production art, behind the scenes footage and even short documentaries on some of the scenes to show how effects were created or parts of the movie produced. Very interesting stuff indeed.

The Q&A section gives some good insight into the process and how they managed to produce the movie on such a small budget:

The obstacle of practical visual effects was one that I collaborated on with Special Effects Make-Up Artist Megan Graham. No pyrotechnic bullet hits or squibs were used. Instead we built a “Guacamole Gun” with $1.84 worth of PVC pipe and coupling to get a more realistic effect.

…what were a couple of effects shots on the page turned into over
100 visual effects by the time we were done with post! To put it into perspective, Terminator 2, only had 41 visual effects in the entire feature

Well worth a look. Alex did offer me a full DVD to review, but I’m reluctant since it’s their own money! Go check out the trailer and come back to tell us what you think.