The Flash (CW) Season 7 March 2, 2021

[Nekonaruto]

Just out of pure curiosity...since everybody keeps mentioning the budget. What do you think IS the budget of a typical The Flash episode? Because I keep asking myself the same question: how are they pulling off all these special effects on a weekly basis?

[arus2001]

Given the popularity of Arrow and basically everything superhero at the moment, I imagine they're taking a risk in spending more than they normally would. Realistically, I would suspect something like like the speed streaking they do for Flash running and such is a sort of CGI fractal pattern that they can subtly manipulate in color and position to fit it into frames as needed without artists manually drawing the stuff. Other stuff like explosions is just obviously good pyro, possibly downscaled via camera trickery. And I think overall, tech is just improving in the field to both minimize cost and time. Conservative guess, though, would be about $3.5m per episode, give or take more dialogue heavy/less action/few guest star ones.

[Kaslo]

I gotta say, it is good to see DC learning to embrace the "zaniness" that is superheroes.

[Katlan]

I think the "speed/zoom" effects took a good budget to create, but I doubt it costs them much anymore on a episode per episode basis. If anything its more time/money spent on all those extra cuts they have to do to make sure the stop/start animations and placement are perfect. I have nothing to base it on, but I would just assume that its to the point where they just click on the frames/footage and select where to insert "X" effect. On the other hand, all the firestorm stuff had to of cost a good chunk as well as the mini Grodd Scenes.

Keep in mind they still have not shown Grodd (I think) in the same frame as an actual person. The last episode came the closest to doing so, but even then it was just Grodd's arm and if you watch how Eiling is picked up, based on Grodd's placement, it is a little bit off (but not nitpicking at all).

[Vaspinne]

The CGI is probably the most demanding thing they're using cost wise. But I would imagine that using the CGI now-a-days is not only more cost effective but also more time efficient compared to even 5 years go when they were doing Smallville. They also reuse the fuck out of a lot of clips, like whenever Barry is running through the city. And add in that like 75% of each episode is set in the same spots (the Lab, the police department, the cafe, and the detective's house), they save money there too.

Also, it's shot in Vancouver and they have plenty of cheap Vancouver actors at their disposal lol. If hypothetically they spend like $3.5mil per episode, less than 10% of that is covering the actors. The guy who plays Barry is relatively a nobody. He probably makes around $10~20k an episode

[nicholai]

I think even 3/4mil may be a bit high for CW honestly. I'd guess the average is closer to 1.5/2m. I know Arrow at least still mentions semi often how amazed they are to pull off the show they have on their budget. I can't imagine Flash is too much higher budget if any than Arrow. But like Katlan said a decent chunk is of the effects are reusable which is the genius of having villains escape so you can use them again without punching out new effects every week for new people.

[Buffy]

Flash renewed for season 2, not sure if already mentioned, article is 5 weeks old.

http://www.tvguide.com/news/cw-renew...beast-1091649/

[Buffy]

Also some budget related talk:

http://moviepilot.com/posts/2014/09/...xternal,manual

[Buffy]

So I fell down the google hole trying to figure out TV budgets to see where Flash might land, and found this gem.

#34

Star Trek: Voyager's Series Premier Cost 23 Million.

[macross]

jeez just how many people know his identity already.

[SamanosukeShiva]

^those tv budget probably doesnt include actors salary though, since some people are getting paid like $3m+/episodes and shit.

[Vaspinne]

Barely any actors on TV make $1mil per episode let alone over like $500k. Charlie Sheen was making the most in television history on 2 and a half men and he was making $1.25mil per episode at his peak. Even when Ashton Kutcher took over, he was labeled as the highest paid actor on TV at the time and he was getting $800k per episode.

I think the Big Bang cast all got pay-raises around $1mil per episode recently no? And before that, the 6 cast members of Friends were making $1mil per episode in the last season, and the same goes for the 4some in Seinfeld in their last season too.

So yeah, $3mil/episode is quite extreme and just unrealistic really. $3mil/season (translating to $125k in a 24 episode season) makes way more sense.

Edit: Yeah, the Big Bang trio of actors who play Sheldon, Penny and Leonard are signed on to 3 year contracts that'll eventually make them $1mil per episode. But again, that's still less than what Sheen was making

[arus2001]

I feel like you guys are underestimating a lot of behind the scenes stuff, too. Make-up, catering, building/maintaining sets, prop masters, travel costs, renting locations, stunt people, choreographers, camera crews, sound guys, extras, etc.. And most probably unionized. For every main actor on screen, there's probably 15-20 people behind they gotta pay, too.

[Adajer]

Finally caught up with the past 3 episodes.
Man this show is great.

There are quite a few things still not really explained, like how they found 2 different blood samples in the home and one was barry's and the other was unmatched and left alone and completely ignored. was cisco lying about it being unmatched?
There is also the early on episodes showing dr wells had purposely caused the explosion with the intent to give barry allen the powers of the flash. and remember when he was looking at the future newspaper front page articles? like he was trying to preserve the flash and mold him for a future event.

I think Dr wells is an older barry allen, doing the time travel mambo. He could be the yellow flash, or he could also be barry allen still trying to prepare himself to defeat the yellow flash.

I also believe when barry goes back in time, he will still fail to save his mother. If he did save his mother, he would probably cease to be the flash.

There were also references to a quantum device, which sounds like time travel to me, before wells made the device to save firestorm. And it seems like he was using that device to give himself flash powers. so many crop circles.

[Katlan]

Barely any actors on TV make $1mil per episode let alone over like $500k. Charlie Sheen was making the most in television history on 2 and a half men and he was making $1.25mil per episode at his peak. Even when Ashton Kutcher took over, he was labeled as the highest paid actor on TV at the time and he was getting $800k per episode.

I think the Big Bang cast all got pay-raises around $1mil per episode recently no? And before that, the 6 cast members of Friends were making $1mil per episode in the last season, and the same goes for the 4some in Seinfeld in their last season too.

So yeah, $3mil/episode is quite extreme and just unrealistic really. $3mil/season (translating to $125k in a 24 episode season) makes way more sense.

Edit: Yeah, the Big Bang trio of actors who play Sheldon, Penny and Leonard are signed on to 3 year contracts that'll eventually make them $1mil per episode. But again, that's still less than what Sheen was making

One thing about actor salaries is that this is why its very rare for a series to go longer than 7 seasons. A series only goes longer than 7 years if its making the studio an insane amount of money. This is because its industry standard for actor contracts to last for 7 seasons, so any series that goes longer then has to re-negotiate actor contracts (hence big bang just entered its 8th season and its why the 3 main starting characters were able to re-negotiate while the other 2 weren't taken on as full cast members until the 2nd season)

[Arcana]

Finally caught up with the past 3 episodes.
Man this show is great.

There are quite a few things still not really explained, like how they found 2 different blood samples in the home and one was barry's and the other was unmatched and left alone and completely ignored. was cisco lying about it being unmatched?
There is also the early on episodes showing dr wells had purposely caused the explosion with the intent to give barry allen the powers of the flash. and remember when he was looking at the future newspaper front page articles? like he was trying to preserve the flash and mold him for a future event.

I think Dr wells is an older barry allen, doing the time travel mambo. He could be the yellow flash, or he could also be barry allen still trying to prepare himself to defeat the yellow flash.

I also believe when barry goes back in time, he will still fail to save his mother. If he did save his mother, he would probably cease to be the flash.

There were also references to a quantum device, which sounds like time travel to me, before wells made the device to save firestorm. And it seems like he was using that device to give himself flash powers. so many crop circles.

They've already stated that wells is Zoom, hes unlikely to be a future barry mainly because of the lightning, when he runs at super speed he produces red lightning instead of the yellow that the flash produces.

I think we'll see in time that the particle accelerator explosion turns out to be that highway on/off ramp that stein was talking about, an event which barry can identify as must happen to cement his position as the flash. Barry's mother will still likely die but what i do think will happen is that we'll get the DNA from the second speedster identified.

I believe that the tachyon prototype that was turned into the splicer was just charging wells' suit. while wells can move at super speed its only for a short while but as we know from the comics Zooms original suit was what gave him the super speed.#



then again, it could just all be down to aliens.

[Myrrh_Quetz]

From what I gathered, using a part of the Quantum device only "Slowed" down the charging or w/e it was doing. The computer voice, Giddeon, stated so, I believe.


I don't know much of the Flash or any of his villains or backstory but if Wells was a future Barry, then when the paper changed from the article about the Flash disappearing to something else, then Wells, by all accounts should have disappeared due to that paradox. But everyone does Time Travel their own way so I could be wrong on that. Also, I don't think that a Future Barry, a massive HERO. Would ever kill people the way Wells has. Unless we're dealing with a Alternate time line barry where he became a Villain but then that news article wouldn't mean anything because the news articles Flash would be from a completely different dimension and shouldn't know or would care about Good Barry.

I don't completely know how Wells is involved with everything but it should be really good when we figure it all out.

[Krandor]

Wait, how would anyone come to the conclusion that Wells = Future Barry?

[Kaslo]

From what I gathered, using a part of the Quantum device only "Slowed" down the charging or w/e it was doing. The computer voice, Giddeon, stated so, I believe.


I don't know much of the Flash or any of his villains or backstory but if Wells was a future Barry, then when the paper changed from the article about the Flash disappearing to something else, then Wells, by all accounts should have disappeared due to that paradox. But everyone does Time Travel their own way so I could be wrong on that. Also, I don't think that a Future Barry, a massive HERO. Would ever kill people the way Wells has. Unless we're dealing with a Alternate time line barry where he became a Villain but then that news article wouldn't mean anything because the news articles Flash would be from a completely different dimension and shouldn't know or would care about Good Barry.

I don't completely know how Wells is involved with everything but it should be really good when we figure it all out.

Maybe his foot was slowly fading away offscreen? #backtothefuture

[Qalbert]

http://www.people.com/article/the-fl...promo-cw-video