Yep, I totally get it, and my initial observation was made when I was maybe 17 or so. Sometimes these topics do get put into movies, such as the sequence in Shazam where they test his newly-found powers -- but even that was played more for laughs and was really just an entertaining way to acknowledge that much of the audience probably never heard of Shazam.
Did that happen in the same universe as the Sinbad “Shazam” movie?
I keep getting all these multiverses mixed up. Here I thought in this universe he was only found liable in a civil suit about sexual harassment, not convicted in a criminal court for a sexual crime.
I love stories like this one because it is a good reminder you can just do. No permission needed, excuses be damned.
===
David F. Sandberg made fear go viral—with one light switch.
No film school. No connections. Just a Canon 7D, a hallway, and his wife. He uploaded a $0 short called Lights Out to YouTube—and Hollywood called back.
Fast forward: he’s directing Shazam! for DC.
While most people wait for permission to start, David just started. Shot horror shorts in his apartment. Taught himself VFX, editing, sound. Uploaded every test to YouTube. Treated DIY like a discipline.
Lights Out hit 18M views. Warner Bros came knocking. He stayed scrappy even on studio sets—previz in Blender, edits in Premiere, storyboards by hand.
He didn’t ask to be a filmmaker. He acted like one.
If you need a sign to just make the damn thing—this is it.
> 2023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster".
And rightly so. The so-called special effects in those superhero movies are really getting exhausting. What's the point of having superpower yet battling like a peasant in medieval times? What's the point of having super intelligence yet making so many illogical decisions? What's the point of having the best technologies on earth yet having your tribe living in dirt and fighting with rhinos and using duet to elect your leaders? I can even tolerate such plot holes if the movies have good stories or interesting characters, but do they?
2023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster".
On the other hand, aside from the massive big-budget hits of Barbie and Mario, there were also a number of mid-budget films that did very well: John Wick 4, Sound of Freedom, Five Nights at Freddy's, Cocaine Bear and M3GAN all exceeded expectations.
So it's hard to interpret this as the "middle class" of movies disappearing. I'd say it's the opposite, in fact. People have gotten sick of the big-budget crap that follows the same formula (note how most of those bombs are superhero movies). It's really the big-budget films that are falling apart.
Does programming attract a higher proportion of introverted or shy people? Are programmers more comfortable in front of a computer than in a room of people? I'm sure we all have anecdotal experiences that confirm or refute that stereotype.
(Note: the terms shyness and introversion are often used interchangeably, sometimes mistakenly, but they are also closely related for some individuals.)
In a different context, I've seen YouTubers (like the link posted here) confess on camera that they are introverts or shy, but still reveal about their lives and continue to talk confidently in front of the camera. Behaviour that might contradict our perception of introversion or shyness. (I presume an 'invisible' audience of thousands of viewers on a YouTube channel is much less daunting that talking to a real audience in front of you.)
If you find this topic interesting, here's another video: Can you be an introvert movie director? (it features the director David Sandberg who directed 'Lights Out', 'Annabelle Creation', and 'Shazam') https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEyFH-uzlGg (note: this features a very brief NSFW horror clip).
Being shy and being introverted are not always the same thing. For some people, being introverted and being shy are closely entwined. For others, being an introvert does not always mean being shy or anxious in social situations. For example, an introvert may find giving talks or presentations a stimulating activity. These activities are typically seen as extrovert activities.
On a somehwat related note, you can find introverted people in many professions, in roles which might be associated with being extroverted e.g. acting or a movie director.
An example: here's an informative video from introvert movie director David Sandberg (director of Shazam!, Lights Out and Annabelle Creation).
Can You Be An Introvert Director? Note: there's a very brief horror clip featuring a bit of gore in the following video:
Men In Black, Shazam, Charlie's Angels, Jumanji, Murder Mystery, Big Time Adolescence, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, Good Boys, Weathering With You, Doom Annihilation...
> Watching an unusually well-Foleyed action movie on a good sound system can probably fool any recognition system Google can jam into next year's $150 smart speaker.
Sure, but pair that with "Shazam!" style song recognition and now it knows you're watching a movie, and what movie it is, and can more easily filter for false positives there, no?
I do read books. Nowhere near as many as my wife, who's read 16 books already so far this year, but I do read books.
I've finished three books so far this year. The 3rd and 4th books in The Expanse series, and Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (which includes the short story that the Arrival movie was based on). I'm about 4 chapters into Don Quixote also, which I decided I'd finally read this year.
And that's with the following distractions:
* Letting myself enjoy and complete a 25 hour visual novel video game (AI: The Somnium Files, for anyone curious)
* 15 hours of training to be an ESL tutor
* Preparing lesson plans and meeting with my ESL Learner on a weekly basis
* Taking a 6 week travel writing course at my local library
* Polishing up 4 different board game prototypes, writing rules, filming videos and entering them into two different game design competitions
* Coding two different video games I'm hoping to release sometime this year
* Writing a first draft of a short story for an annual short story anthology that my local writing group does every year
* Hosting a monthly playtest night for local game designers
* Having a wife and two dogs that demand time and attention every day
* Working at a company that has 1-2 network outages each week (at least the past month and a half) that requires me to sit for hours after work coordinating with network and server teams to fix the issue
* Getting mentally prepared and brushing up technical knowledge for the inevitable interview gauntlet I'll need to undergo to find a new job.
I'm sure there's things I'm leaving out. This is all since January 1st this year, btw.
I also write novels off and on, I just don't have any finished yet. Lots of first drafts from participating in Nanowrimo for 10 years. It's a lot harder for me to revise and finish them, though, especially with juggling all my other interests (game design and development usually takes priority). Planning to attend a writer's retreat in two weeks to try to get one in a state that I don't mind other people reading it and giving feedback.
Also despite all this, I waste a ton of time on the internet and really need to nip it in the bud if I want to keep juggling so many balls in the air. And I do still see most Marvel movies. Not DC movies though, except Shazam!
What a shame this YouTube channel ended. The videos were insightful and so well put-together. Making a video that is both informative and entertaining at the same time is much harder than it seems.
Are there are other film-related YouTube channels people recommend?
Two I recently discovered:
Mystery Clock Cinema: Film director Alex Proyas ('Dark City', 'I, Robot') talks on camera about independent filmmaking
Ponysmasher: Film director David Sandberg ('Annabelle Creation', 'Shazam!') has a few behind-the-scenes videos and thoughts on filmmaking. The channel is not updated very often, but his most recent video 'Random Lessons Learned from Making Films' is very watchable and has a surprising (and very honest) revelation near the end of the video:
- National Comics (the predecessor to DC) made Superman comics
- Fawcett Comics made Captain Marvel comics, inspired by Superman
- Fawcett's Captain Marvel and spinoffs became more popular than Superman
- National sued Fawcett, and in the lawsuit it came out that some Captain Marvel stories were direct copies of Superman stories with the characters swapped
- Fawcett settled the lawsuit and shut down Captain Marvel production
- Over a decade later, Marvel Comics started publishing their own Captain Marvel (a different character aside from the name) and got the trademark on the name
- DC, as successor to National, licensed and later bought out the Fawcett Captain Marvel, then added him to their own universe alongside Superman
That's how you get to a Marvel movie titled "Captain Marvel" featuring Captain Marvel, and a DC movie titled "Shazam!" featuring the other Captain Marvel, even though the now-DC one came first.
I recently became a subscriber and even if it does not have the latest movies i dont care because like Pandora it learns what you like and thus the recommendations are great. Another thing I love about it is the random DC comic cartoon/movies Ive watched like Batman/Superman and Superman and Shazam.
Hacker Cinema
14 comments on Hacker News
Yep, I totally get it, and my initial observation was made when I was maybe 17 or so. Sometimes these topics do get put into movies, such as the sequence in Shazam where they test his newly-found powers -- but even that was played more for laughs and was really just an entertaining way to acknowledge that much of the audience probably never heard of Shazam.
Did that happen in the same universe as the Sinbad “Shazam” movie?
I keep getting all these multiverses mixed up. Here I thought in this universe he was only found liable in a civil suit about sexual harassment, not convicted in a criminal court for a sexual crime.
I love stories like this one because it is a good reminder you can just do. No permission needed, excuses be damned.
===
David F. Sandberg made fear go viral—with one light switch.
No film school. No connections. Just a Canon 7D, a hallway, and his wife. He uploaded a $0 short called Lights Out to YouTube—and Hollywood called back.
Fast forward: he’s directing Shazam! for DC.
While most people wait for permission to start, David just started. Shot horror shorts in his apartment. Taught himself VFX, editing, sound. Uploaded every test to YouTube. Treated DIY like a discipline.
Lights Out hit 18M views. Warner Bros came knocking. He stayed scrappy even on studio sets—previz in Blender, edits in Premiere, storyboards by hand.
He didn’t ask to be a filmmaker. He acted like one.
If you need a sign to just make the damn thing—this is it.
> 2023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster".
And rightly so. The so-called special effects in those superhero movies are really getting exhausting. What's the point of having superpower yet battling like a peasant in medieval times? What's the point of having super intelligence yet making so many illogical decisions? What's the point of having the best technologies on earth yet having your tribe living in dirt and fighting with rhinos and using duet to elect your leaders? I can even tolerate such plot holes if the movies have good stories or interesting characters, but do they?
2023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster".
On the other hand, aside from the massive big-budget hits of Barbie and Mario, there were also a number of mid-budget films that did very well: John Wick 4, Sound of Freedom, Five Nights at Freddy's, Cocaine Bear and M3GAN all exceeded expectations.
So it's hard to interpret this as the "middle class" of movies disappearing. I'd say it's the opposite, in fact. People have gotten sick of the big-budget crap that follows the same formula (note how most of those bombs are superhero movies). It's really the big-budget films that are falling apart.
Does programming attract a higher proportion of introverted or shy people? Are programmers more comfortable in front of a computer than in a room of people? I'm sure we all have anecdotal experiences that confirm or refute that stereotype.
(Note: the terms shyness and introversion are often used interchangeably, sometimes mistakenly, but they are also closely related for some individuals.)
In a different context, I've seen YouTubers (like the link posted here) confess on camera that they are introverts or shy, but still reveal about their lives and continue to talk confidently in front of the camera. Behaviour that might contradict our perception of introversion or shyness. (I presume an 'invisible' audience of thousands of viewers on a YouTube channel is much less daunting that talking to a real audience in front of you.)
If you find this topic interesting, here's another video: Can you be an introvert movie director? (it features the director David Sandberg who directed 'Lights Out', 'Annabelle Creation', and 'Shazam') https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEyFH-uzlGg (note: this features a very brief NSFW horror clip).
Being shy and being introverted are not always the same thing. For some people, being introverted and being shy are closely entwined. For others, being an introvert does not always mean being shy or anxious in social situations. For example, an introvert may find giving talks or presentations a stimulating activity. These activities are typically seen as extrovert activities.
On a somehwat related note, you can find introverted people in many professions, in roles which might be associated with being extroverted e.g. acting or a movie director.
An example: here's an informative video from introvert movie director David Sandberg (director of Shazam!, Lights Out and Annabelle Creation).
Can You Be An Introvert Director? Note: there's a very brief horror clip featuring a bit of gore in the following video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEyFH-uzlGg
2019 (pre-covid) movies:
Men In Black, Shazam, Charlie's Angels, Jumanji, Murder Mystery, Big Time Adolescence, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, Good Boys, Weathering With You, Doom Annihilation...
The guy who did Shazam and a few lessor known hollywood scary movies has a youtube channel where he talks about this stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzNS4U_aE28
> Watching an unusually well-Foleyed action movie on a good sound system can probably fool any recognition system Google can jam into next year's $150 smart speaker.
Sure, but pair that with "Shazam!" style song recognition and now it knows you're watching a movie, and what movie it is, and can more easily filter for false positives there, no?
I do read books. Nowhere near as many as my wife, who's read 16 books already so far this year, but I do read books.
I've finished three books so far this year. The 3rd and 4th books in The Expanse series, and Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (which includes the short story that the Arrival movie was based on). I'm about 4 chapters into Don Quixote also, which I decided I'd finally read this year.
And that's with the following distractions:
* Letting myself enjoy and complete a 25 hour visual novel video game (AI: The Somnium Files, for anyone curious)
* 15 hours of training to be an ESL tutor
* Preparing lesson plans and meeting with my ESL Learner on a weekly basis
* Taking a 6 week travel writing course at my local library
* Polishing up 4 different board game prototypes, writing rules, filming videos and entering them into two different game design competitions
* Coding two different video games I'm hoping to release sometime this year
* Writing a first draft of a short story for an annual short story anthology that my local writing group does every year
* Hosting a monthly playtest night for local game designers
* Having a wife and two dogs that demand time and attention every day
* Working at a company that has 1-2 network outages each week (at least the past month and a half) that requires me to sit for hours after work coordinating with network and server teams to fix the issue
* Getting mentally prepared and brushing up technical knowledge for the inevitable interview gauntlet I'll need to undergo to find a new job.
I'm sure there's things I'm leaving out. This is all since January 1st this year, btw.
I also write novels off and on, I just don't have any finished yet. Lots of first drafts from participating in Nanowrimo for 10 years. It's a lot harder for me to revise and finish them, though, especially with juggling all my other interests (game design and development usually takes priority). Planning to attend a writer's retreat in two weeks to try to get one in a state that I don't mind other people reading it and giving feedback.
Also despite all this, I waste a ton of time on the internet and really need to nip it in the bud if I want to keep juggling so many balls in the air. And I do still see most Marvel movies. Not DC movies though, except Shazam!
What a shame this YouTube channel ended. The videos were insightful and so well put-together. Making a video that is both informative and entertaining at the same time is much harder than it seems.
Are there are other film-related YouTube channels people recommend?
Two I recently discovered:
Mystery Clock Cinema: Film director Alex Proyas ('Dark City', 'I, Robot') talks on camera about independent filmmaking
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO7h2SOZjRah8bhyOXtGHw/videos
Ponysmasher: Film director David Sandberg ('Annabelle Creation', 'Shazam!') has a few behind-the-scenes videos and thoughts on filmmaking. The channel is not updated very often, but his most recent video 'Random Lessons Learned from Making Films' is very watchable and has a surprising (and very honest) revelation near the end of the video:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ponysmasher/videos
The order of events is roughly:
- National Comics (the predecessor to DC) made Superman comics
- Fawcett Comics made Captain Marvel comics, inspired by Superman
- Fawcett's Captain Marvel and spinoffs became more popular than Superman
- National sued Fawcett, and in the lawsuit it came out that some Captain Marvel stories were direct copies of Superman stories with the characters swapped
- Fawcett settled the lawsuit and shut down Captain Marvel production
- Over a decade later, Marvel Comics started publishing their own Captain Marvel (a different character aside from the name) and got the trademark on the name
- DC, as successor to National, licensed and later bought out the Fawcett Captain Marvel, then added him to their own universe alongside Superman
That's how you get to a Marvel movie titled "Captain Marvel" featuring Captain Marvel, and a DC movie titled "Shazam!" featuring the other Captain Marvel, even though the now-DC one came first.
I recently became a subscriber and even if it does not have the latest movies i dont care because like Pandora it learns what you like and thus the recommendations are great. Another thing I love about it is the random DC comic cartoon/movies Ive watched like Batman/Superman and Superman and Shazam.