Micro-Budget Film "Defcon 2012" Becomes an International Hit

March 21, 2012 - PRLog -- Producer Brian Shotwell's micro-budget and experimental science fiction film "Defcon 2012" has become a surprise international hit because of foreign distribution and sales. The story about a film director, his cast and crew vanishing on the eve of armageddon has become a cult classic as it continues to climb the MOVIEmeter™ on IMDb.com, the standard of a film's popularity for any given week. For the week of March 19th, the film stands at an astonishing #225. "To be the 225th most popular film out of hundreds of thousands of movies is amazing to me!" says director R. Christian Anderson, "This picture was made on a tiny budget of only $36,000. It was just a fun little experimental film, but the quirky and semi-cryptic story has somehow generated a lot of buzz, mainly in places like Hong Kong, Germany, Thailand, and England".

The story was an idea from writer and producer Brian Shotwell, who wanted to write a science fiction take on the Mayan calendar prediction about the end of the world in December, 2012. He recruited colleagues in and around the Palm Springs area and they put the project together with Anderson as the director. "It was a labor of love for him and I'm grateful to him since this became my feature film directing debut. I also liked the cryptic nature of the story and that only a true devotee of that genre has the patience, attention span and fortitude to de-code the storyline. I just read another review who gave it a couple of stars, but admitted they fast-forwarded through the DVD. Unless you watch and pay attention, you're not going to get the hidden clues in the story. I love the idea the 'monster' of the story is really an analogy for a more complex entity. It's sort of a rubix cube wrapped up as a story." Anderson had to move onto other projects and was unavailable to return for the "wrap-around" story, thought up later. Executive producer Carolina Lichtenstein came in and, with Brian Shotwell, made the film a story-within-a-story when she directed an opening segment of an agent who seeks to find the mystery of a missing director and crew of an armageddon at the end of 2012. "It's was a clever way to suggest to the audience to look further into the film and seek out clues to the pieces. That's what the film is trying to get across in my opinion", Anderson explains. "Cult audiences are finally getting it and word on the film has hit science fiction blogs and social networks like wildfire. It's really been gratifying to see how they're beginning to understand it and having fun with it".

The film also features some dazzling special effects, especially those by artists Frank Panucci and Justin Doucette, respectively. Filming was done in a long closed and boarded-up shopping mall in downtown Palm Springs, which will soon be renovated. Upon completion, the film was seen at Cannes Film Festival's Le Marché du Film. A short time later it won "Best Science-Fiction Feature Film" at the "New York International Independent Film Festival" last year.

The film had a brief theatrical release in the United States, but ironically, it is the sub-titled and re-dubbed foreign versions that are making the film a mega-hit. The foreign market has embraced the film, story and narrative and it's skyrocketing on IMDb's popularity chart. Almost unheard of for a film with such a slight budget. A BluRay version was just released in the Germany and in the United Kingdom, the film was actually retitled "2012: Armageddon". Director R. Christian Anderson's newest film is "Unlimited", which is being shot this summer. It stars Taylor Negon, Rachel Alig, Cody Cowell, Gerry O'Brien, and Forbes Riley.