A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, big-screen success required multimillion-dollar budgets, truckloads of technology, and big-muscle marketing. Not anymore. Take Troops, this year's runaway underground video. The 10-minute, f/x-laden short is a hilarious send-up of Star Wars and Cops that cost a piddly US$1,200 to make and market.
Kevin Rubio, Troops's 30-year-old writer-director, dreamed up the parody after watching The Empire Strikes Back on the Fox lot, where he archives animation cels for the Fox Kids Network. Three days later, with a first-draft script in hand, Rubio recruited Babylon 5 effects wizards Shant Jordan and Patrick Perez to begin production. "The effects are what raise Troops to an entirely different level," says Rubio. "That's why it is as popular as it is."
The short's popularity began last summer, after Rubio screened it at Comic-Con, a science fiction trade show, but it wasn't until a Star Wars fan site, www.theforce.net, brought the video online in February that it approached hyperspeed. Distributed exclusively on the Net, it's now downloaded thousands of times daily.
Jordan and Perez rendered realistic sandcrawlers and explosions on a souped-up DEC Alpha computer. Thanks to faster processors and drives, the gap between high-end workstations and consumer-grade systems has virtually disappeared, Jordan says. "The fact that you can do this level of effects without spending massive amounts of money really excites the studios."
Troops has landed its creators on Hollywood's radar screen. William Morris signed Rubio, and Perez and Jordan are fielding inquiries from major studios. "Instead of getting their film into Sundance, they've done it themselves," effuses Gregory McKnight, Rubio's agent.
This article originally appeared in the June issue of Wired magazine.
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