A dump truck full of bouncy balls sounds a lot easier.

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

only if you externalize all the costs

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

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

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)

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.’”