As the article explains, that’s because the truck of balls is the easy part.

only if you externalize all the costs

Does it? Think about the permits, cleanup cost, ball cost (lol)

A million dollars of CGI didn’t go as far in 2005 as it does now!

In 2025 this is something a casual YouTuber could do, or could be assigned as a school project. All the pieces are there now. You wouldn't even need to pay for anything, I don't think. Blender should be able to do everything you need, quite comfortably. Getting data from the world back into the special effects software has gotten magnitudes easier since then.

> Blender should be able to do everything you need, quite comfortably.

Hell, Blender just made a movie that won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film)

And we wouldn't be talking about it 20 years later :)

You can avoid two of those easily if you’re a bit sneaky. And naughty.

Nothing says sneaky like hilltop mortars firing 25,000-bouncey-ball loads a hundred feet in the air…

> ”[The film commissioner] goes, ‘Here’s two things I never want to see in San Francisco again — air mortars and Barry Conner.’”