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Spencer
is an artistic young man fascinated by people, and especially
by human interaction. One day, he comes to the realization
that the "friends" he's had over the years are
shallow, fickle, and fake, and decides that he can no
longer tolerate such deceit in others; he then takes Reggie,
a complete stranger, hostage in his own house and forces
him to confront the fact that things (and people) are
not always what they first appear to be.
Content
First of all, I will say that this movie is very deep.
This is the type of film where you go to a coffee shop
or Waffle House after watching it and sit around discussing
it with your friends. It gets you talking; it gets you
thinking. This movie brings up many issues, blatant and
suggested. Are people really genuine? Can anyone truly
be genuine, both to themselves and to others? What is
the point of life? Where do we fit in, you and I? Basically,
it comes down to Spencer's conclusion that "everything
means nothing." How and why he reaches this point
is the crux of the film and the impetus for post-movie
discussions.
The
interaction between the two characters flows well, each
one realistically portraying his own fear, insecurities,
anger, and frustration. And while the main character might
appear to be a typical angst-ridden, pissed-at-the-world,
what-is-real-anyway, everybody's-fake-but-me, whiny psycho,
he's not the point of the movie; it's his questioning
of people and society that is the point.
Visual
Look
Everything Means Nothing has a very interesting visual
look to it; there's a lot of "eye candy." Hendricks
uses very creative shots and blocking techniques throughout
the movie, making excellent use of perspective, close-ups,
overall layout, etc. The movie itself is in color, with
flashbacks occurring in a couple color schemes with lots
of post-production filters on them. Almost all of the
film takes place in Reggie's small apartment kitchen.
The color is usually very saturated, which works well
with the sometimes-stark lighting. There are several scenes
where lights were used to create dual-tinted atmosphere.
(For example, Spencer and Reggie are facing each other
in conversation, one person in the foreground, one in
the background; the one in the foreground has a red cast
to him, whereas the one in the background is green.) Such
uses of lighting and color help to heighten the almost
frenetic intensity of the situation.
However,
there becomes a point where visual intensity can overload
and be extremely distracting; this is what happened with
almost all of the transitions, opening titles, and other
(visual) special effects. There are a lot of "feedback
loops" in the scenes, where you'll see a character
do or say something (e.g. roll their eyes and say, "He's
such a jerk") and the exact same action is edited
so that it will repeat itself three or four times in a
row within the span of a few seconds. This is usually
done to show paranoia, guilt, fear, etc. While this effect
is not inappropriate to this movie, it was used far too
much. Rather, it would have been much more effective to
use it one or two times in places that were crucial to
the story. Additionally, repetitive effects (such as shaking,
jump cuts, blurs, etc.) and over-extended transitions
were alternately dizzying and dragging, making it a visual
roller-coaster.
The
other big issue is the fact that all the flashback sections
that used post-production filters really looked cheap
and like they came out of a $20 editing program. The two
flashback styles that were used were a more recent flashback
which was a heavily posterized black-and-white that had
so much grain added to it that it looked like it was about
to shatter into a million pieces and an extreme flashback
that was a posterized pseudo-color with lots of film grain,
micro-scratches, and gate-weave. Like certain other elements
in the film, even if Mr. Hendricks had only had a $20
editing program instead of Final Cut Pro, the problems
with this scene are about degree of extravagance. Just
because you can max out the degree of a filter and add
additional filters to it, doesn't mean that you should.
When you do that, you usually end up coming out with a
very low-quality looking outcome.
[Note
to the Director: For the overly posterized black and
white flashbacks, I would recommend simply using your
original footage and desaturating it. For the old school
flashbacks that are meant to resemble 8 mm film, actually
watch some 8 mm film before adding in the effects, as
it's real easy to go overboard on effects. I would recommend
Nattress Film Effects 2.5 to add the effects, as that
is pretty inexpensive, streamlined for Final Cut Pro,
and gives you lots of subtle choices for making your film
look like 8 mm. Plus, it'll even conform your film to
24 fps if you want, which is nice. With filters, try to
do the bare minimum required to get a look rather than
overwhelming the viewer with all the options.]
Additionally,
when camera shake effects were applied to the film in
certain scenes, they were applied over top of the letterbox
bars. This means that the letterbox bars began to shake
whenever the footage shook. [Note to the Director: This
is a common error that can be fixed by rendering the footage
that has the shake filter applied to it to a separate
quicktime file. When you re-import that file into Final
Cut Pro, you will be able to place your letterbox bars
over that without having them shake with your original
footage.]
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