The most interesting graph happens at roughly 4:38. 3.7 trillion dollars, made up of roughly 1/7th discretionary spending, 1/7th defense, and 5/7ths SS/Medi*/Interest.

The one philosophical holdout that I still appreciate about the GOP platform is generally smaller government. But for all they harp on that, they usually do jack shit to actually cut down on that total from the graph.

That huge 5/7ths portion is close to untouchable; or at least it would be political suicide to mess with any of that stuff. The only exception is the interest payments, which *do* have to be paid, but we could work to reduce the debt which would in turn reduce interest. How to do that? Raise taxes. And suddenly all the Republicans think it's a terrible idea.

That leaves the 1/5th from Defense and 1/5th from other Discretionary spending. To me, Defense is the obvious target. If you really want to tighten the belt and be fiscally conservative, do we actually NEED to spend all that on defense? Couldn't it be cut in half or even more drastically and we'd still easily be able to actually, you know, defend the country? But again, pretty much zero Republican interest in cutting Defense budget, unless you're a kooky fringe element like Ron Paul with zero intra-party backing.

So that leaves the 1/5th of Discretionary spending. And yeah, sometimes Republicans do actually make cuts here. At best, they cut "drop in the bucket" type stuff like mentioned in the video, with negligible effect on the budget and a loss of programs that are valued by some/many. At worst, you end up like KansasBrownbackistan, with zero budget for schools, etc.

That rift between party platform and actual action is the biggest reason that I tend to have *zero* interest in voting Republican for any national office, in spite of still being registered as a Republican. State offices (governor, state legislature, etc.) are slightly more palatable places to consider voting in an R, but not by much. I do think they tend to be good options for Local government offices, especially for more rural areas. On the other hand, D's tend to be much better at promoting things like Bond Issues for improving schools, maintaining infrastructure, etc.

7 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

Definitely not zero budget... but awesome none-the-less

>> ^Xax:

Looks familiar.

Because it is a *dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Half-Life-2-Ep3-teaser

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Amazing, zero, budget, half, life, inspired, short, film' to 'Amazing, zero budget, half life, inspired, short film' - edited by lucky760

Saw this a while ago and it was totally awesome then. But zero budget? I don't think so.

>> ^hertzollner:

Love the concept trailer. Great atmosphere. Great art-style. It's just that the zero budget claim is a lie. I see a lot of students make the same claim. And it's nice for them so many people on the internet believe it's true. But it's a myth. You use software in creating this stuff, which cost money. This software requires hardware, which cost money. Everybody working on this needs food, which costs money. People sleep in houses that cost money. And all the assets you borrowed from other movies/trailers costs LOADS OF MONEY. Everything costs money. Nothing is zero budget. I mean if you could do this trailer 200 times, you could end up with an Avatar movie that costs literally nothing, because 200 x 0 = zero.


Oh...let me follow you over here to Videosift and say the same thing again...

Wow, thanks for your comment Sir BUZZ KILL.

I'm pretty sure most people understand the statement "Zero Budget". The beauty of this is that this very polished and professional trailer was produced with no budget other than things in hand.

When a film is green lighted at a studio the budget they set doesn't include the price of cameras, computers and software either...

Love the concept trailer. Great atmosphere. Great art-style. It's just that the zero budget claim is a lie. I see a lot of students make the same claim. And it's nice for them so many people on the internet believe it's true. But it's a myth. You use software in creating this stuff, which cost money. This software requires hardware, which cost money. Everybody working on this needs food, which costs money. People sleep in houses that cost money. And all the assets you borrowed from other movies/trailers costs LOADS OF MONEY. Everything costs money. Nothing is zero budget. I mean if you could do this trailer 200 times, you could end up with an Avatar movie that costs literally nothing, because 200 x 0 = zero.

First I'd have to ask why you want to use a vector program if you're looking for 3D? If you're looking for 3D on a zero-budget, I have been toying with Google Sketchup + Kerkythea (http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/). Kerkythea is a renderer only, but has a plugin for Sketchup that will allow you to export. It's not particularly glorious, but it does the job.

I've only just tinkered with Inkscape but it's built-in help and tutorials seemed pretty solid. Nothing I've come across so far has baffled me.