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David Dastmalchian may have played his part in Marvel, DC, and everything in between, but it is his latest horror flick –Late Night With the Devil– that has scratched an old itch concerning the ballooning budget of the CBM industry. The character actor, who has dipped his toes in numerous creative pools, has finally discovered a way for comic book films and television adaptations to retract their claws from sticking too far down Hollywood’s deep pockets.

Late Night With the Devil [Credit: Umbrella Entertainment]

Late Night With the Devil[Credit: Umbrella Entertainment]WithLate Night With the Devilusing innovative and ingenious techniques to bring the past alive, the film inadvertently teaches how to use a lower VFX budget without sacrificing the movie’s authenticity and focus instead on building the characters and their story.

Late Night With the DevilInspires New Form of Film Shooting

Late Night With the Devil[Credit: Umbrella Entertainment]David Dastmalchian‘s indie horror movie,Late Night With the Devil, accomplished many things that would have seemingly stumped other productions easily. The period-appropriate set designs, costumes, props, and other logistical basics had to be on point for the horror flick to feel authentic. To give the audience a full experience, the film’s prop and VFX team had to chip in in equal measure, although the practical effects took priority over computer-generated graphics or visual ones.

“We experimented with AI”: David Dastmalchian’s Late Night With the Devil Directors Confirm Using AI in the Movie Despite SAG-AFTRA Strikes Against Usage

Late Night With the Devil‘s director of photography Matthew Temple, an industry veteran, made sure to cash in his expertise from the ’60s and ’70s era of television. The crew soon took to reenacting the old ’80s format, replaying methods that Temple himself learned as a young camera operator in his trainee days. The film’s director, Colin Cairnes, revealed during an interview withVariety:

“[Matthew Temple] unearthed his old scrapbooks from the ’80s when he was a trainee camera operator. It was what all the old school guys from the ’60s and ’70s had taught him about how to shoot television. That became the Bible for his camera crew. It was wonderful to see them embrace a new style of shooting — they had to unlearn how to be cinematic to make an authentic television show. Even the lighting: It was a matter of going to all these old warehouses and dusting off all the old lights, things they hadn’t used in 30 years, and rigging those up. It was like that across all departments.”

Late Night With the Devil [Credit: Umbrella Entertainment]

With money as a doorstop and the period-appropriate props serving as a necessity,Late Night With the Deviltaught itself to get on board the MacGyver train by using the tools available to the crew to deliver the best result.

Marvel Should Take Notes fromLate Night With the Devil

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania[Credit: Marvel Studios]The pioneer of CBM filmmaking, Marvel Studios, has gone off the rails in recent years. The studio has become synonymous with bleeding its bank account dry to deliver passionless, nonartistic, and unoriginal films and episodes of television. On the other hand,Late Night With the Devildoes everything that Marvel should do by going back to the basics.

The David Dastmalchian film’s producer, Adam White reveals that their $150,000 VFX budget was spent on framing 300 visual effects – equating to $500 per effect. This in turn made the VFX department expend creativity to make up for the shortcomings of their limited budget. White says:

“We experimented with AI”: David Dastmalchian’s Late Night With the Devil Directors Confirm Using AI in the Movie Despite SAG-AFTRA Strikes Against Usage

“I come from low-budget filmmaking. You just make it happen. It’s just how it works. We would discover things along the way, even though we were trying to plan it, and sometimes you can have the best intentions of thinking you know exactly how it’s going to happen. But until you start building it, and with the limitations of our budget, it meant we had to find basic solutions.”

White’s outlook reflects one of the basic flaws that the CBM industry suffers from today. To keep up with the audience’s expectations, the films, Disney+ series, and special presentations that Marvel Studios has been churning out lately have all gone down thegutter of creative failure. Despite budgets crossing over into the $200+ million range, projects likeQuantumaniaandLove and Thundercontinue to tar and feather the reputation of Marvel Studios – a house that was once the pride and glory of billions of fans across the planet.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania [Credit: Marvel Studios]

“Cringe” Emilia Clarke Secret Invasion Drax Arm CGI Has Fans Convinced Marvel VFX Team is Stretched Too Thin: “Is this a PS3 game or PS4?”

Instead of trying to outdo itself using millions of unnecessary dollars, Marvel needs to unlearn its recent flaws and go back to its roots. The era of filmmaking that produced such classics asIron ManandCaptain America: The First Avengerare classic examples of how the studio can gain back its lost reputation by using some of the teachings from itsAnt-Manactor’s latest horror film.

Late Night With the Devilis now playing in theaters.

Diya Majumdar

Senior Writer

Articles Published :2409

Diya Majumdar is a Senior Content Writer at FandomWire with over 2000 published articles on the website. Since 2022, she has been working as an entertainment journalist with a special focus on films and pop culture.Among the countless genres and themes of Hollywood, the ones that particularly favor Diya’s tastes include Game of Thrones, DC, and well-aged thrillers and classics.

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David Dastmalchianlate night with the devilMarvel Studios

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