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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Chernobyl Diares looks awfully similar to my movie

imitation is the best form of flattery????

yikes that's pretty much a copy. they even got the doll in there.
 
Does look similar, but then if you shoot at that site, your shots are going to look similar because you are obviously going in a certain direction , ie: disaster, urban waste, nasty nuke defects/mutants, etc.
If there is an abandoned doll on the street, every photographer is going to shoot that shot, too 'juicy of a shot' to ignore. I'll bet such a doll has been in 100 photos if not more.
Stock footage sourced will be dups as well, obviously.
Does your story-line also share many points ? Intricate duplication of story/conflict and resolutions would be your fuel in a legal arena.
 
Neither of us shot in Pripyat. The graphic treatment, TV static from the intro is pretty obviously similar. There are story elements that are right out of our movie. The idiot that pitched our movie without us knowing about it went in with our trailer, our style book, and our outline. Ours looks better though ;-) Plus we shot the whole thing for $300 bucks in props.

Nick
 
Wow, those clips sure are similar. But ripping a trailer alone probably wouldn't get very far if you pushed a legal deal on them. I mean, commercials rip from movies ALL the time, shot for shot. However, does the plot seem the same as yours? If the story is similar, you may want to check with some lawyers. ;-)
 
To close to be just a coincidence, in my opinion. Whoever's using your work to get funding for their own movie has some bad karma coming their way. heheh

What stands out to me are the techniques like the helicopter shot, running through the hallway (in the third clip) or the TV-static transitions between shots. It's like they just thought "oh hey that'd be a good shot to get" and just copied it. My 2¢.
 
So, a guy really did steal your trailer, go pitch the movie, and then ended up getting it made?

Oh humanity.
 
I think Diaries is more supernatural, whereas Pripyat has a STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (game) vibe... In fact, it looks like you ripped the main antagonists (scavengers/military dudes in gas masks) directly from STALKER. Now, I'm not saying you did, just that there's only so much you can pull from the same source material (particularly when it's based off of an actual event). I dunno seems a little thin... I see the similarities, but without seeing the actual movies all that's the same is that they're both based in Chernobyl and have archival footage... Trailers/teasers are BS anyway; they can make crappy movies look great. Plus, everything is a remix.

I think you should go out and make Pripyat... do it on a skeleton budget/crew, and make it better than CD... I guess that's easier said than done, but if you're fairly sure this is a direct rip of your treatment, it should be easy enough to find out who it was actually pitched to (without your permission) and cross reference.
 
HEY NICK...not to pimp this thread...but I noticed on the trailer page that you worked on ROME: RISE AND FALL OF AN EMPIRE, for History?

Dude, I almost certainly worked on the promos for that...pretty funny...small world.
 
Damn sucks to hear that. some of these shots really are too similar to be coincidence. When i read Pripyat I got excited....always been a dream of mine to spend a few hours at that place with a camera (epic obviously).

I doubt there is much you can do from a legal point of view unless you can somehow proof that the assXXXe who stole your trailer material really had a meeting with the makers/ studio/ producers of the Chernobyl diaries.

anyone keen on a collective reduser trip ?? ^^
 
No. We were just about to go pitch a package of movies with Pripyat as our flagship project when we found out about Chernobyl Diaries. If it had been a big hit we might have caught a ride on their coattails, but since it's been getting such unbelievably shitty reviews I think it kind of poisoned the well so to speak. It's a shame because all the things people hated about CD we had awesome stuff for. What a waste of a great set up.

Nick
 
Nick, I'd still push it. Zombie movie plots can be pretty thin and very similar, and yet the bad ones don't stop the great demand. And so it goes for the lost in the woods, or hills, or haunted house, scenarios.... Kinda like sex: we've sold the same couple of body parts for the last million years. ( :
 
Sorry to hear we did this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPJKhWQXPCE

And tried to sell it just as "The Raven" was announced in the trades. Killed my deal flat dead. sad how the town is like that but that is how it goes.

Live and learn though, we got plenty of traction on that pitch in other ways so it was worth it,.
 
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