Flimmaker Marcus Alqueres (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, 300) is skipping the festivals and releasing his latest work online. The Flying Man is a vigilante who gives a pair of weapons dealers second thoughts about about their occupation. Just like Jaws there are minimal special effects and the titular character makes only brief appearances. Your imagination does the rest.
“From the beginning I didn’t want the visual effects to be the centre of attention, I wanted to use it as a tool to help telling stories that can’t be told without it,” Alqueres told Short of the Week. “It can be a powerful resource if you use it correctly. Also being budget conscious makes you think about different solutions for sparing vfx shots. I love movies like the first Jurassic Park or Monsters where you don’t see much and when its done right it can be very effective for the story and budget. We tend to fill the gaps of what we don’t see. You can use sound and the right exposition to keep people caring. I opened the short with 1-min of intense exposition and that might have helped the next 7-min where you only hear the vigilante, it was a learning experience for me. The easy solution is always to add a huge shot for everything so I was constantly battling against that.”
The film’s Facebook page details how it was financed out-of-pocket by getting creative with location shots. For instance, Alqueres transformed his living room into a hospital room with just a $150 bed and permission from his wife to do a little redecorating.
