Another issue was the very common addiction to the zoom that most beginning filmmakers have. While all video cameras can zoom, most films are shot with little to no zooming. The reason that this is so is because zooming is so artificial that it seems out of place to the human eye in most but the most stylistic circumstances. (Additionally, many consumer cameras have a digital zoom feature that simply magnifies recorded pixels and result in increased noise and decreased image quality.) That’s why most films actually move the camera closer via a track called a dolly, rather than zooming.
Now, as this film is designed to be an homage to Hitchcock, I will mention that the most noticeable exception to this rule is something that Hitchcock did in fact become well known for which is known as a dolly-zoom. Often referred to by insiders as a Hitchcock-zoom or a Vertigo-Zoom, this involves dollying the camera into the actor while zooming out. The effect of this is to cause the actor’s face to stay roughly the same size, while having the scale of the background shift radically to show paranoia or danger. This move is extremely complex to get right on a consumer camcorder, as the zoom has to move at exactly the same rate as the dolly and most consumer camcorders don’t have variable speed zooms.
While the consumer Handycam
has issues with light flares outside...
...director Sam Sher managed to
get some nice noir lighting indoors.
Use of Audio
As I mentioned before, either to overcome the Handycam’s audio problems or simply because the script wasn’t written to require dialogue, Moonlight is a silent film. This allows the music to drive a lot of the action, which works pretty well. With music like Moonlight Sonata and Psycho Prelude, the overall mood of the film was set pretty well. However, there were some harsh cuts between some of the songs. These need to be smoothed by using gentle ramps in and out rather than cuts.
Additionally, I doubt that Mr. Sher had the rights to tracks like Psycho’s Prelude. As most festivals won’t accept films that include unlicensed music, I would suggest looking at our Music for No-Budget Films section to find alternate music that can be used legally. If that doesn’t work, then I would suggest looking into purchasing a customizable, royalty-free music program like Cinescore (PC only), SonicFire Pro 4.5, MusicBed DV (Mac only), or Adobe’s new Soundbooth.
Use of Budget
Considering this was made for the less than $20, which largely relates to the single special effects sequence and the DV tape, this was a great use of budget. While Mr. Sher could likely have included the cost or rental cost of the Handycam in this budget, $15 is the cost of the consumables in this film and is a fair way of reckoning it.
Creative XCUs are excellent
additions to the Hitchcock look...
...As are are wide longshots
of interesting locations.
Lasting Appeal
Quite honestly, there is a decent amount of lasting appeal in Moonlight. I would enjoy watching it again and showing it to friends, which is always the measure of Lasting Appeal.
Overall Comment
While Moonlight has a few issues due to a propensity of power zooms and consumer camcorder hiccups, the overall piece is well-created. Mr. Sher’s eye for recreating Hitchcock style shots and angles was really quite nice. I look forward to seeing his future films as I think that this shows that he’s off to a very solid start as a filmmaker.
The
director of two feature length films and half a dozen short films,
Jeremy Hanke
founded Microfilmmaker Magazine to help all no-budget filmmakers make
better films. His first book on low-budget special effects techniques, GreenScreen Made Easy, (which he co-wrote with Michele Yamazaki) was released by MWP to very favorable reviews. He's curently working on the sci-fi film franchise, World of Depleted through Depleted: Day 419 and the feature film, Depleted.
