[Cthulhu_]

Good TV shows don't need big budgets. A show like House of Cards does without special effects or CGI, whilst still being a highly popular show.

Another factor is that Netflix is a multinational; if a (cheap?) show doesn't work in one country, it might work very well in another one. (see the Warcraft movie as a movie example; did okayish in the west, was a huge hit in China).

[noibl]

Heh, probably not the best example of cheap TV. $3.8m wouldn't even pay for a single House of Cards episode.[1]

But it still works as a good example of the economics: "With Netflix spending a reported $100 million to produce two 13-episode seasons of House of Cards, they need 520,834 people to sign up for a $7.99 subscription for two years to break even. ... That sounds daunting, but at the moment, Netflix has 33.3 million subscribers, so this is an increase of less than 10 percent on their current customer base."[2]

[1] http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/caa-agent-discloses-net... [2] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/econom...

[matwood]

Those numbers recoup their original investment, but also remember that they now have created an asset (HoC) which itself has value.

[mseebach]

> they need 520,834 people to sign up [..] Netflix has 33.3 million subscribers, so this is an increase of less than 10 percent on their current customer base.

Yes, it's less than 10% -- but it's also less than 2% (33.3m * 2% = 666k)? Or what am I not seeing?

[deadbunny]

Or just stop 10% of people from leaving.

[dredmorbius]

Whilst I can't speak to HoC, my understanding is that CGI is frequently used because it is cheaper than constructing large sets or shooting outdoor scenes, or is used to add small elements to a scene.

The BBC drama Poldark makes use of CGI to nail some of its historical elements, for example: https://www.latitude50.co.uk/journal/on-the-set-of-bbcs-pold...

Both Battlestart Galactica (the remake) and Firefly were fairly low-budget productions which made extensive use of CGI.

[ascagnel_]

Indeed, this is a poor example specifically because House of Cards makes heavy use of digital backlot.

> Steve: We have a visual effects supervisor on the show who’s been working with Fincher for around 20 years. Let’s say we’re shooting on stage, and out the window we want to see the Washington monument, we’ll shoot green screen out of the set window. Then we’ll coordinate with the VFX department, telling them that we need to add a certain image out the window, and then we will go back-and-forth on how much expense it will require and how best to accomplish it.

> We actually do a fair amount of digital work in post on the show. All the driving in the show, anything inside the vehicle is done on stage, in a room that is a big three-sided green screen space. The car does not move, the actors are in the car, and the cameras are set up around them. We have very long strips of LED monitors hung above the car. We had a camera crew go to Washington, D.C. to drive around and shoot plates for what you see outside when you’re driving. And that is fed into the LED screens above the car. So as the scene is progressing, the LED screens are synched up to emit interactive light to match the light conditions you see in the scenery you’re driving past (that will be added in post). All the reflections on the car windows, the window frames and door jambs is being shot while we’re shooting the actors in the car. Then in post the green screens are replaced with the synced up driving plates, and it works really well. It gives you the sense of light passing over the actors’ faces, matching the lighting that is in the image of the plate.

> And as you mentioned, one of the bigger computer-generated things that we did in the first season was the VFX extension of the exterior of The Francis J. Underwood Library. That was a one-story building on location, which was not very modern. We added some elements to it when we shot it, then in post the top of the building was extended per the design that we did in the Art Department to create the modernist look of that building. There were a few other spots where we did visual effects work to enhance things on the show.

From http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2013/12/29/production-design-o...

[woobar]

Here is an interesting video from 2010(!). Green screen was already routinely used for regular outdoor shoots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCXE9cNzcgI

[dredmorbius]

I've seen similar, including a few scenes shown tthere. Good CGI is invisible CGI.

[sprafa]

Working in the film industry and this is both true and untrue, depending on the situation. It's very hard to estimate. But yes CGI can make certain productions a lot cheaper, while a lot of films also have a ton of CGI work for superfluous reasons. Retouching the actor's faces for instace is more common than you would imagine, in the industry it's called "beauty work" and it's widespread.

[dredmorbius]

Reemphasising: CGI can be used to reduce costs. Hence, relying on "uses CGI" as a sign of either a high-budget or low-budget production isn't valid.

If you want to assess the budget, look at the budget.