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Now with that said there were some issues with the visual look. The color temperatures and exposure could vary quite a bit in different scenes which implies that a little more time was needed to properly balance and tint the lighting. While this would be a major issue in a feature film, it is not nearly as big an issue in a documentary. Be that as it may, the shots’ lighting and coloration should have been a little closer in look, even though it was a documentary. (As I found out later, this was the director’s first shoot with Super16mm, which he chose over the 35mm he used on The Fourth and The Shadow Effect in order to give the film a more gritty, documentary feel. To further get a gritty feel, they chose to use lower quality film and unprocessed end pieces. Unfortunately, considering these inconsistency issues, they might have overshot their intent a bit.)
Use of Audio
They did an amazingly good job on audio, quite frankly. Because film doesn’t have an audio channel when it’s recorded, they had to record the audio from their shotgun microphone separately onto a DAT recorder. They did a nice job of getting clean audio and synching it very professionally. As to the scoring, the music was lively and quirky, fitting the overall piece quite nicely.
Use of Budget
While $10,000 is a decent sum for a 17 minute short, the fact that it was shot documentary-style on 16mm film justifies much of that cost immediately. As Super16mm film can run in excess of $100 per 10 minutes and documentary style shooting is often 20-to-1, $3400 could easily be eaten up in unexposed film cost alone. Camera, lighting and location rental, combined with film processing , telecine scanning, as well as food and wardrobe, easily takes up the rest of the cost. All told, this was a pretty good value for a film that was shot on film.
Lasting Appeal
This quirky film definitely has some lasting appeal. While its final point is not quite as clear as we might like, its “equal opportunity” jabs on both sides of the porn debate make it an interesting watch and re-watch. I will enjoy watching it again and showing it to friends of mine.
Overall Comment
A nice stab at the mockumentary genre, Bicentennial Curious is an entertaining and amusing look at people, their choices, and their perceptions. With creativity like this, the Varava brothers definitely seem to have an interesting career ahead of them. Hopefully, we’ll see more interesting pursuits from them as they continue to hone their skills as filmmakers.
(For folks who want to see more about these impressive filmmakers, check out our critiques of their first film, The Fourth, and our “Best of Show” winner, The Shadow Effect.)
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Content |
8.5 |
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Visual
Look |
8.0 |
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Use
of Audio |
9.5 |
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Use
of Budget |
8.5 |
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Lasting
Appeal |
9.0 |
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Overall
Score |
8.7 |
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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. |
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