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Hi. I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
and this is Frame By Frame. And I want to speak for a moment about the "Paranormal Activity" franchise.
Orin Peli, who directed the first "Paranormal Activity," made it for a cost of $11,000 dollars.
Then you have to add in $12 million in prints and advertising, so don't get too excited.
Then the film opens everywhere at once with a very interesting viral Twitter campaign,
getting audiences to demand it comes to their theater and they get to see it.
"Paranormal Activity 2" did alright. But "Paranormal Activity 3," which cost $5 million,
made back its entire negative cost in one midnight screening... $8 million.
Now it's grossed $15 million, and it's still going strong.
It's almost the #1 motion picture in the U.S. right now, as we speak.
CHILD: "He's my friend."
MOTHER: "I don't see him."
CHILD: "He's standing right next to you."
MOTHER: "Honey, he's not there." SCREAM
This is an interesting new development in motion pictures.
These are films that are genre films. They are not "star-based."
They have minimal production values and not that many special effects.
And there's a whole wave of films that are coming in other genres in the wake of this film...
Films like "Area 51," by Orin Peli, which is a science fiction film about flying saucers,
and the supposed government cover up of them.
And there's also "mumblecore" films... films that are made on minimal budgets,
which are often romantic comedies.
WOMAN: "Moo. Moo. Moo."
MAN: "What is that?"
WOMAN: "A cow."
Hollywood is looking for a way to make films that are more inexpensive,
and will earn their negative cost back quickly.
And films like this that are shot digitally, presented digitally,
and don't demand much from the "star power" aspect of it, but more from the genre in which their made,
which is something that audiences are pre-sold on... may be the wave of the future.