Video: Beyond Black Mesa

I was given a link to this fan film by a friend in IRC today: Beyond Black Mesa. If the name doesn't immediately hint what it is, it's a Half-Life fan film. It's about 12 minutes long and in my opinion, very much worth seeing at least once.

I'm not a real expert on acting, but honestly, watching this beats reading the majority of fanfics I've read in the past months. The ending is not as obvious as it could've been, and I'm quite happy that the only lines are spoken by the narrator, but no one on screen says a single line. I think this takes away a lot of chance for poor acting/ overacting.

The budget for it was $1200, which is definitely more than the budget of an average fanfic. I wonder, if writing fanfics cost more, would the fanfics that were actually written be on average of higher quality than they are now?

Seeing such a thing makes me wonder, if I could participate in doing something similar as well... the answer is mostly likely "Never in a hundred years." :-)