White Rock Lake Productions recently released a short film known as Archetype. It’s only six minutes long, but manages to be powerful and interesting, if not a little trite.
The most impressive aspect of the film? Its fidelity to budget ratio. The fact that effects and talent at this skill level can be found for the tiny budget of an independent studio is outstanding, and makes one wonder why Hollywood is still spending hundreds of millions of dollars per film.
Of course, the director here, Aaron Sims, who also owns the new production company isn’t your average indie filmmaker. With 25 years of experience in the industry, working on concept art and special effects design, he’s got quite a bit of hard won expertise, and a lot of friends who were willing to help out with time and equipment.
We haven’t quite reached the age where any kid with a great idea could make a great film on a shoestring, but we’re definitely getting closer. Even this short production would not have been possible without a huge budget, even ten years ago, no matter how many friends you had in the industry.
The objective of the fun little film is to serve as a teaser to show what the full feature would be like, if funded. He already has a feature length story worked out, based on the this character – you can see the concept art for the film in the credits for the short.
Sims has even put together a short synopsis for the potential film:
RL7 is an eight-foot tall combat robot that goes on the run after malfunctioning with vivid memories of once being human. As its creators and the military close in, RL7 battles its way to uncovering the shocking truth behind its mysterious visions and past.
“Please tell everyone you know to watch the short,” Sims wrote in the description field for the YouTube entry. “The more people and positive responses we receive (and even likes on the YouTube page that we get) make a difference. With your help, we can hopefully get the feature version made – so Tweet, Facebook…get the word out!”
It seems like a pipe dream, but this isn’t a process without precedence. In fact, just a couple months ago, the short film ROSA – this one entirely digital, so with no need for live talent – was picked up by 20th Century Fox to be developed into a feature film, after being created by a very small team with a very small budget – and without all the Hollywood connections of Sims.
You can see more about Archetype and White Rock Lake Productions on the official website.
