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Use of Budget
Many of our readers are going to look at $20,000 for a 20-minute short and be a little blown away by the fact that this is an impressively good use of budget. (For those readers who are new, our top budget for all official critique films, including features, is $30,000.) However, considering this was shot on 35mm with all the necessary lighting, camera, and location rentals, this is amazing. Especially since they also had a huge number of props, both those in the “real world” and those in the “Treasure Trove” world.
Not to mention the amount of moving shots used in this short film required a greater number of setups than many feature length films, which means they had to rent all this gear for a longer period of time than shorts that use more traditional, locked-down shots. In addition to the cost of the 35mm film stock, they had to pay for processing and telecining, so the footage could be edited in their Avid editing system.
This short film is easily the quality of many Hollywood films which speaks highly as to how well they managed to achieve an impressive look on a very low budget, especially considering the type of equipment they used.
Lasting Appeal
As soon as I watched this the first time I wanted to watch it again. After watching it the second time, I wanted to show it to the other people at our magazine. This is truly the measure of rewatchability. Plus, its somewhat open-ended conclusion makes it additionally fun to rewatch, because the film makes a number of points which you might miss the first couple of times.
Overall Comment
I didn’t know if anyone would ever unseat Mike Flanagan’s critically acclaimed Oculus for highest-rated, short film of all time here at MFM; however, The Shadow Effect has managed to do so with creativity and panache. I’m always painfully hesitant to even consider giving a film a perfect 10; but after showing this to my staff and watching it for a third time, this is the first film that I have been unable to find a single thing wrong with. As such, it fully deserved the 10 it received. If this is what the Varava brothers can do with a short film, I can only imagine what they can do with a feature. I really hope to see them try their hand at such a venture, because with this type of skill, I think they could create something really impressive in a feature length film.
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Content |
10.0 |
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Visual
Look |
10.0 |
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Use
of Audio |
10.0 |
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Use
of Budget |
10.0 |
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Lasting
Appeal |
10.0 |
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Overall
Score |
10.0 |
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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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