Editorial Comments made in the 2 July 2000 issue:
Ever since I saw Tron [*] in 1982, I wondered how long it would be before computer power would allow anyone with talent to become a “real” filmmaker.
By that I mean they wouldn’t even need financing because they had everything they needed in the computer on their desktop (plus a nice camcorder; the new digital models work nicely).
The day is here.
I’m sure 405 is not the first well-done independent movie made without a budget, but this is one incredible 3-minute movie, and specifically made for online consumption.
It was “released” (on the movie’s web site, of course — this is the 2000s, yaknow!) on June 5th. It created so much buzz, and displayed so much talent, that it took only three weeks for the two filmmakers, Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt, to be signed up by a major Hollywood agent.
It’s offered in MPEG 4 (which may require you to update your movie viewer; a codec for the Windows Media Player is available for download on their site; it’s a bit of a pain to install it, but it’s worth it so you can get incredibly clear video from a mere 7.72 MB file). [Update: not needed in modern computers! They already have it all.]
Watch the movie, and then read the “Making Of” pages on the web site (link moved: now only found on the Internet Archive): you’ll probably be very amazed about what it is that you saw!
And, as someone who used to commute in L.A., yes: the traffic is really just like that! 🙂
2017 Update
From the issue of 22 October 2017:
The movie’s web site noted that the computers used to create it only had 256-512MB of RAM. With those Pentium-class systems, it took them 3-1/2 months to pull this off. The software used was LightWave 3D, Digital Fusion, and Adobe Premiere.
So did Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt do it without “financing”? You bet: their total budget was just $300. (Plus, of course, a lot of unpaid time!) The most amusing part of their budget: $140 to pay for the citations from the California Highway Patrol gave them for walking on the shoulder of the 405 freeway during filming; CHP Officer Dana Anderson is listed in the “Special Thanks” section of the credits! I assume the rest of the budget went for software; they apparently already had the consumer grade camcorder, a Canon Optura, and the computers.
Both of the film’s creators had a head start: they worked together on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, so they at least had a professional level of understanding of visual effects before they started the project. Still, I consider it absolutely true that “computer power allow[ed] anyone with talent to become a ‘real’ filmmaker,” as I said in 2000.
And now look at Youtube! It serves 5 billion video downloads per day, and 300 more hours of video are uploaded to the site …per minute. It’s the second-most-visited web site on the Internet, after Google itself (then Facebook, Baidu, Wikipedia, and Yahoo). Google paid $1.6 billion for it 21 months after launch? Imagine what it’s worth today.
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And 5 years after 405 was released, online video took off as Youtube was born. Which, on the 10-year anniversary update for this page, made it easy for me to embed the movie right here:
One Amusing Bit for Me, looking back when updating this page in March 2025: I checked my hard drive and still have the version I downloaded way back in the year 2000. The file name I gave it: 405the.mov (snerk!) Surprising: the resolution of that old file shows as 360×272 pixels. The resolution of the Youtube version above, uploaded 14 March 2009: just 320×240 pixels. Go figure. It “only” has 455,000 views: ironically, it really never went viral on Youtube.
The only thing I wish today, looking back? It would be awesome if they re-rendered it for much higher resolution …but they probably can’t, since the they probably no longer have a computer that the software would run on …if they still have the old software and files.
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Related Post: Animusic: a Pipe Dream
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And the website’s link to Amazon is still, 10 years later, for the 11 minute VHS tape.
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I guess the guys have moved on from this project. -rc
Wow, I clicked on the link to 405themovie and my company web filter flagged it as Porno!!! Now that will take some explaining.
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There’s certainly no porn in it. -rc
I guess there’s something ironic about the fact that the hi-res version of “405” is currently “404”. 🙂
Oh, Randy, totally worth the three minutes to watch this. Thanks for the link.