in an interview a few years before his 2002 death. "My kids were my critics, they'd tell me what was good and what just fell flat". Pink gave his treatment to Melchior after meeting him at a party. Melchior believed the project had potential, so he offered to help write the screenplay if Pink allowed him to direct the film. While Melchior worked on establishing a working script, Pink met Maurer, who was developing CineMagic, a "revolutionary" filming process for creating special effects by combining hand-drawn images with live action. However, it soon became apparent the process would not be able to deliver what had been promised with respect to the quality of its effects. "The damn Cinemagic didn't work like it should", Pink recalled. "It was supposed to be sort of a 3-D effect. What we came up with was great anyway". The production budget for The Angry Red Planet may have actually been significantly higher than the $200,000 cited by most film and press references. In its online catalog, the American Film Institute refers to a contemporary report in The Hollywood Reporter that announced an increase in allotted funding for the project more than double the frequently given figure. AFI states, "As noted in a HR news item, just prior to the start of production, the film's budget was raised from $250,000 to $500,000". Comments made by Pink on the eve of filming provide some evidence regarding how little money was spent to design and build sets for the production. In an interview for a September 7, 1959 news item by Associated Press reporter and writer James Bacon, Pink is quoted about the extreme cost-cutting effectiveness of using the new CineMagic process: "Our set for the planet Mars cost us a couple of hundred dollars instead of the thousands we had estimated". Pink also estimates in that interview that the movie "will be made at half the original cost", confirming that Invasion of Mars (the film's working title before its release) was a low-budget project. The "meager" $200,000 production budget cited for The Angry Red Planet may therefore be a credible ballpark figure. Filming for The Angry Red Planet began on September 9, 1959 at Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, California, only a month after Melchior and Pink completed their final draft of the screenplay. CineMagic The CineMagic process was used to cast a red glow over