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Shot with the REDOne camera, the visual look of this film is very impressive. (For those unfamiliar with the REDOne, it is Oakley-founder Jim Jannard’s brain child that’s designed to do battle with both traditional film cameras and high-end Hollywood digital cameras. It’s capable of 4K footage that’s about as close as you can currently get to film-specs in a digital format. Because Jim Jannard priced his cameras amazingly low for the quality they bring to the table, their rental rates are also much lower than other professional cameras like the Grass Valley Viper or the Panasonic Varicam. As such, more and more micro-budget filmmakers are choosing to rent these cameras to shoot their films.)
Scott Uhlfelder did a great job as the Director of Photography on this film. While his basic coverage of the different scenes in the film was well-composed and well-implemented, his shots really shone in a number of “race” sequences in the film. Utilizing XCUs of the Bullitt dash, a foot stomping the gas pedal, and a hand whipping back the gear shift (along with a number of car “POV” shots mounted to the vehicle’s frame), he allowed editor Tim Novotney to craft scenes that came pretty darn close to some of the race sequences in movies like The Transporter and The Fast and The Furious. (They may not have had the budget to damage any of their vehicles, but the sequences are still pretty impressive.)
The overall dialogue audio in this film was clean and easy to understand. They used a number of sound effects in the film to add emotional impact or energy. Most of these worked fairly well, although the sound of a gunshot as Paul races out of a red light might have been a bit excessive.
The scoring of the film by David Shaw, Andrew Holtzman, Peter Bateman, and David Johnson was excellent. Their skills became especially noticeable when they were cutting the race sequence score together to work as a counterpoint to a beeping countdown clock Paul sticks to the windshield of his borrowed ride.
While $25,000 for a 21 minute film may seem like a lot, the RED isn’t dirt cheap to rent (even if it is finally affordable for low-budget renters) and Jim and his team rented a total of two during this nine day shoot (one for nine days and the second for two of those nine, undoubtedly for the car race scenes). Combine that with the costs of producers, crew, additional camera equipment, car rentals, permits, and post production (all of which was done in LA, where everything is more costly) and I’m quite impressed with the overall use of budget in this film.
Despite the fact that some of the other actors aren’t as believable as Jim is, this is still a very rewatchable film. The driving sequence is easily the best I’ve ever seen on a truly low-budget film and should be watched as an inspiration to other low-budget filmmakers who want to do Hollywood-quality action work. I will definitely watch it again myself and show it to a number of people at the magazine.
Jim Rothman does an impressive job on this film. It’s amusing, has a few tender moments along the way, and has a pretty darn cool car race scene that rivals what Hollywood produces. With this short under his belt, I can’t wait to see what the next film Mr. Rothman sets his hands to will be.
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Content |
8.0 |
Visual
Look |
9.5 |
Use
of Audio |
9.2 |
Use
of Budget |
9.5 |
Lasting
Appeal |
9.3 |
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9.1 |
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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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