Thinking Sci-Fi? Think Lo-Fi!
From Taste Of Cinema: 21 Great Lo-Fi Sci-Fi Films You Need To Watch:
Lo-Fi Sci-Fi is an emerging genre of the last decade or so inspired by Mumblecore and budgetary constraints. The name is derived from ‘Low Fidelity’ and ‘Science Fiction’, seemingly meant to convey the low budget, amateur approach of filming a Science Fiction movie. This is not to dumb down the genre at all but portray its indie status devoid of any Hollywood blockbuster characteristics that many contemporary Science Fiction films have. New Sci-Fi cinema has unfortunately began to suffer in thematic substance and has been generally made for commercial mass audiences with an ‘artistic’ endeavor to make it big at the box office.
The films of this emanating underground genre have similar, but at the same time, completely disparate themes and elements, which can make this genre hard to exactly pin down. As there is no definitive manifesto written on Lo-Fi Sci-Fi, characteristics such as a shoestring budget or outer space themes do not necessarily have to be abided by.
The list of Lo-Fi Sci-Fi includes Her, Computer Chess, Upstream Color, Another Earth, Primer and Moon.
If science fiction is your thing and you’re working up story concepts for your next spec script, I would strongly encourage you to develop some Lo-Fi Sci-Fi storylines.
Why?
Let’s say you write a spec script that’s a full-blown epic: alien planets, massive number of spaceships, visual effects out the ass, something with a budget north of $100M, it can be totally great, however there are only six possible buyers: 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warners. If, on the other hand, you go out with a science fiction spec script with a budget of $20M, $10M or $5M, your reps can take that script out to dozens of potential buyers, from the mini-majors to any number of financiers around town.
This is not to say a new screenwriter can’t write and sell a big budget science fiction script. If it’s a great story, it can happen. However your odds for success go up exponentially when your script can go out to dozens of buyers instead of just six.
Moreover the conventional wisdom around Hollywood is that science fiction is a really tough genre to crack, oftentimes complicated stories with loads of world-building involved. Buyers will tend to have more confidence in established writers in the genre like David Goyer, Jon Spaihts, Damon Lindelof, especially with a project costing $100M+.
So if you’re thinking Sci-Fi… it may very well pay off for you if you also think Lo-Fi.
What are your favorite low budget science fiction movies? Hit Reply and let me know your thoughts in comments.
UPDATE: A Hat Tip to swinefever for this in comments:
If you’d been in the UK over the last 10 days you could have paid a visit to SCI-FI-LONDON, the capital’s only dedicated SF film festival, and seen a whole bunch of lo-budget (or lo-fi) science fiction films from around the globe. In fact, over the last 13 years they’ve shown all kinds of lo-budget SF that you probably wouldn’t see anywhere else, including a fair few of those featured on that list. Ask Gareth Edwards. He got the funding for ‘Monsters’ off the back of winning the SCI-FI-LONDON 48hr Film Challenge and the short he made features on the ‘Monsters’ Blu-Ray. Catch it here.
Anything like this going on in the States? I would assume so.
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