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Final Critique: The Beautiful Lie, Pg. 2

The actual wording of Claire’s lie is ambiguous enough that perhaps it was intended to be something other than the interpretation that I saw. Perhaps the ending was intended to imply that the guy raped her, which would be the only way a boyfriend wouldn’t be mad at his girlfriend, but the ending doesn’t support this in any way, shape or form. Perhaps she’s trying to make Ryan think that she didn’t sleep with the guy, but, if that’s the case, then that doesn’t explain why she ran out of the bar crying. Perhaps the beautiful lie is Claire’s life with Ryan in general, which she is never fully happy in but is unwilling to break off. We actually came up with nearly twenty possible interpretations for the film, which are just too many.

In the end, the confusion surrounding "What is The Beautiful Lie?” weakens the movie.

I think a good way to leave the audience with the actual intent of the director would be to include a little narration. The cerebral feel of the piece would be perfect for the use of a little opening and concluding narration and really is necessary to prevent this beautiful film from becoming a beautiful jumble. The beginning could just be something as simple as, “I couldn’t get Thursday night out of my head…” which simply sets up the framework for her confusion and also provides a bookend for the concluding narration. The final narration could then go something like, “The lie was so beautiful because it capitalized on Ryan’s fear that his absence made me unfaithful. In his mind, it was his fault…and he would never blame me for my actions.” Or whatever the final intent of the film in fact was.

Visual Look
There are two levels of visual imagery in this film: the present day and the remembered past. Showing clearly how the present day can be overshadowed by guilty memories of the past, Mr. Caldwell chose to use blue-tinged, cool lighting for much of the present, whereas he made use of vivid, warm lighting and saturation for the memory sequences. This is a nice touch.

Similarly, there are two styles of shooting for this film: the stabilized and the hand-held. The stabilized shots which utilized tripods, steadibags, and whatnot were used to show objective elements to the story, whereas hand-held shots were used to really push in on Claire and show her inner turmoil and her memories of the other night. While this works fairly well throughout the film, there is one conversation that’s shot in hand-held between Claire, Ryan, and two of Claire’s girlfriends that has too much shake and movement, causing it to become distracting. Additionally, this scene, while indicative of Claire’s state of mind, isn’t nearly as intimate nor subjective as most of the hand-held shots and the majority of the conversation should probably have been shot from the stabilized, objective perspective. Hand-held close-ups of Claire’s face and reactions could then have been inserted to show her increased agitation and would have further separated the objective elements of the conversation from her subjective interpretation of it.

Easily one of the best looking films that has been submitted since we opened, Mr. Caldwell, who shot the film as well as wrote and directed it, paired the Canon XL2 with the P+S Technik Mini35. The Mini35 is a special adapter that allows a DV camcorder like the XL2 to use 35mm SLR and pro lenses with all the depth of field benefits that one is able to obtain in 35mm film. Because of this adapter, he was able to use a very shallow depth of field and rack focus from background to foreground beautifully.

The shallow depth of field in this
short gives it a beautiful film feel...
...but shots that were too dark for the
Mini35 stood out like a sore thumb.

Despite how amazing a look can be achieved with one of these 35mm adapters, there were a few issues that arose because of its use. As the adapter and lenses provide a softer, more film-like image in general, there were a few shots that were just a little too soft--due to the difficulty in getting precise focus with a moving subject.

Another issue arose because the adapter tends to lose one to two f-stops worth of light sensitivity, so the filmmaker wasn’t able to use it during external night shots, where Claire is walking to the bar with first her girlfriends and then with Ryan. Unfortunately, the adapter gives the rest of the piece such a filmic look, that going back to the XL2 lens for these night shots feels very much like going back to video, even though the frame rate didn’t appear to change. (Folks that read our critique of Limbo, recall the issue that rendering a film at different frame rates causes another type of film vs. video feel.)

Finally, if any filmmakers reading this decide to use the Mini35 or the much more affordable M2 from Redrock Micro, do make sure that you do a test record ahead of time. The reason for this is because it can be very easy to miss one of the internal glass surfaces of the 35mm lenses or the ground glass interface in the adapter and not notice a smudge until after you’ve shot your piece. There’s a small smudge on the right side of the screen that is in most of ‘The Beautiful Lie’ due to this reason. While it’s not a huge issue, it is something that’s best avoided if possible.

To further enhance the film-like feel he created using the Mini35, Mr. Caldwell shot at 1.78:1 (16:9) aspect ratio and cropped for 2.35:1, which really looked quite polished.

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