$300 Video Gets $30 Million Hollywood Deal

When I saw this in Yahoo, I could not believe it.  I just had to blog about it!

A guy from Uruguay named Fede Alvarez made a $300 4-minute sci-fi video on giant Robots and spaceships invading Montevideo (Uruguay's Capital) and uploaded it on YouTube Thursday and by Monday, his emailbox was loaded with bonafide Hollywood offers. A bidding war ensued and Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures signed him on with a $30 million deal.

After seeing the video, I myself would have offered the same amount if I had it.  This guy is talented.  I was already impressed with "Paranormal Activity" which was done for just around $15,000.  This guy is just blew them out of the water with what he has achieved for just $300.  This story is a great testament to talent over raw budget!  -- as technology starts to equalize the playing field, talent will become king.

 Here is the video titled "Ataque de Panico (Panic Attack)."  The craftsmanship is just amazing:

Invisible Self-Portraits by Liu Bolin

Liu Bolin is a Beijing based artist/photographer, from the Shandong Art College with an MFA in Central Academy of Fine Arts.  He started his "camouflage series" as a protest against the government when it teared down his art cooperative building to make way for the Olympic edifices in 2005.  He says that his work is a statement about how ordinary people do not fit in modern chinese society and as a protest for the government's persecution of artists.  The pictures are straight photographs and does not involve photoshop or manipulations of any sort (Liu is literally painted into the background).  This series has since been exhibited at Paris' galerie Bertin Toublanc, at Eli Klein Fine Art in New York and at a gallery in Maimi.

Here are some examples of his work through the years...


--Pictures by Liu Bolin. Video from YouTube.com by Reuters and bteikoh.