Monsters - Film Notes

'Monsters' is a film which was made with a cast/crew of about 7 people and on a very low budget. The film was created and directed by Gareth Edwards who was also the visual effects artist. The filming equipment cost around $15,000 and the whole film's budget was approximately $500,000.
The main intention of the film was to produce a good quality movie with easily accessible technology
that they could take around from location to location and use from just their bedrooms.

The director originally had an idea of what the film was going to be about but as they explored the 6 different countries they went to, he just shot any scenes that he thought would fit into the film. If the director saw any settings in which he thought would go well in the film, then he would literally go out and shoot it there and then, most times without any permission asked for in advance. There was no script for the actors and so they would just improvise throughout the whole film. Any extras used in the film were just locals who were there at the time of shooting. As they were just randomly shooting scenes, they managed to film 100 hours of footage which had to be cut down into 94 minutes.

The main creature of the film, which the whole movie was based about, was not actually thought of before the crew started shooting so the actors had no idea to what they were meant to be reacting to or looking at. They were just told where to look and to pretend as if they could see something there. The director would just randomly doodle possible images of the creature and would put any that he thought were good into a bag. When the time came to decide what the creature would look like, he had 2000 possible images and had to cut these down to only the really good ones which came up to about 40 drawings. He then showed these to the producers to finally pick out one that would stand out and hold all the different qualities which were scary but fragile, out of this world but also similar to some creatures from this world, like a crab and octopus at the same time etc.

The 3D visual effects were all done on a low budget as the producers wanted to know how well this would turn out without having to spend a lot because the director could make this possible. The amount of equipment they had was limited and all the shots were filmed on a small camera rather than a bigger one that would be used by professionals with a higher budget.

All the signs in the different countries in the film were all changed on a computer rather than having to carry round signs to put up at each locations. The director said he found this easier because it was less hassle and a lot quicker. The director also said that CGI (Computer - Generated Imagery) was not as easy as it seems.