Visual Look
The visual aspect of this film was very good. The indoor scenes were very well-lit and properly exposed, and the few outdoor shots also looked good as well.
However, the sad irony is that one of this film’s strongest points also weakens it. WebcamMurder.com is meant to be shot entirely by webcam, yet it looks like very high-quality video. The only sequence that doesn’t look this good is Robert’s webcam – however even his looks like it was shot with the same camera, and then tweaked in post to look like a low-quality webcam that only captured a frame every other second. (The implication being that he was a newbie who had a lower-quality camera.) But even this footage didn’t look like a real webcam, and only looked tampered with.
Quite frankly, I think that the film would’ve looked better if it looked worse. Webcams have a very distinctive look to them, but they don’t have to look completely terrible either. (After all, watching webcam footage for any great length of time is enough to give anyone a headache!) A decent-quality digital camera hooked up to a computer can import video that can be edited directly, or stored on DVD-ROMs for future use. [Note to Director: Check out our critique of the short film Between You And Me to see how a similar technique was employed on the fly.] Incidentally, in the few shots in which we can see the cameras set up indicates that they aren’t webcams, but regular video cameras. Even given this fact, the video would still have to be uploaded to a website, and the quality would most likely be significantly reduced in that process, to avoid enormous file size. So it seems that the video itself still ought to be of lower quality.
Use of Audio
Perhaps this film’s strongest element was that of audio. I really liked the room tone and the background noises of birds chirping, dogs barking, and the inaudible conversations of neighbors. The only thing to consider is along the same lines as the above topic – whether a webcam or computer mike would be of high enough quality to pick up such good audio
There were a few instances where music played in the background, and it was quiet enough to provide a good background, without being overpowering. However, it seemed odd that there would be random music playing throughout, as if it had been edited in, when this video footage is supposed to be a live webcam feed. It might be more appropriate to limit the use of music only to moments where we can see a character turn on a radio or put in a CD.
Use of Budget
Sometimes one must make a film simply for the sake of being able to say that they made one, and learn their lessons through mistakes. This seems to be true of WebcamMurder.com. While the filmmakers do display a good knowledge of video and audio, there is also the factor of whether or not the choices made were appropriate. Although I think the concept is interesting, the visuals really are too good and detract from the idea that the entire movie is supposed to be shot on webcam.
Though seeing as how the film is being distributed on Amazon.com, it seems as though it might have already developed a cult following. In which case, the money spent wasn’t entirely put to waste.
