Cool Things: YouTube Sensation Gets Big Movie Deal

A professor of mine once asked the question, “When does a medium become capable of producing art?” Whether that medium is television, music or good old pen and paper, his theory was that you can only start producing art once nearly everyone has access to the technology to create it as opposed to, say, a few fat cats with the money to produce them. Something like fielding a team of professional baseball players, for example, would not be considered art no matter how gorgeous they are.

Books, however, can be considered capable of producing art because nearly everyone has access to a pen and some paper. Same goes for painting and sculpting. Music has been becoming cheaper and cheaper to produce and distribute — so cheap, in fact, that the music industry is taking a tumble when it comes to sales — to the point where nearly anyone can make an album or song if they had a very small amount of money. Therefore: Music is now art-capable. But now, as this latest news contends, movies are at the point of being art-capable, seeing as everyone can make a viable product for a very small amount of money. This guy made a short 5-minute piece about giant robots attacking Uruguay for about $300. And now he’s getting a $30 million dollar deal because of it:

A producer from Uruguay who uploaded a short film to YouTube in November 2009 has been offered a $30m (?18.6m) contract to make a Hollywood film.

The movie will be sponsored by director Sam Raimi, whose credits include the Spiderman and Evil Dead films.

Fede Alvarez’s short film “Ataque de Panico!” (Panic Attack!) featured giant robots invading and destroying Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

It is 4 mins 48 seconds long and was made on a budget of $300 (?186).

So far it has had more than 1.5 million views on YouTube.

“I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios,” he told the BBC’s Latin American service BBC Mundo.

“It was amazing, we were all shocked.”

The biggest problem is that, with so many different people making so many different things (music, movies, books, art, etc.) there’s going to be so many shitty things being created that will need to be sifted through. But, as is the case with any kind of free market, you just have to believe the cream will rise to the top.

Here’s the video, by the way: