Well, if you've seen the movie you'll also notice that a lot of stuff seems explicitly, intentionally changed - objects grow or shrink, perspective is skewed, etc. That was surely all done with the guidance of an art director or perhaps even the director himself at times. So yes beaurocracy or who knows what could be factored in. But I tend to agree with f0dder - generally speaking if an "amateur", fairly simple and *freely available* filter can get results that immediately close to the movie, surely with some tuning it would require very little human intervention. In other words I find myself wondering if a coder couldn't just take that existing filter, tune it a bit more, and then work on a low budget film project and whether the audience could really tell the difference.
What's particularly interesting about that is the processing would tend to reduce or all but eliminate the traditional cues that something is shot on film vs. DV/digital or even traditional video or hell a frickin digital camera movie capture. If that's true and the audience accepts this as a valid visual style for mainstream work, or at least with particular thematic qualities, it might be a very interesting option for lower-budget film makers...
- Oshyan