The interrogation scenes are lit with one light from above that shine directly onto Blair. Sure, its clichéd, but it still looks good. It keeps Blair in the “hot seat,” all while keeping the detectives' faces dark – until they lean in, creating great menacing shadow. Additionally, there's some great shots around mirrors, which are usually a big micro-budget no-no as they can be a real nightmare due to what they reflect. In the final scene, after Blair is shot, Asta pulls out her gun and points it at her brother – who can be seen reflected in the bar mirror behind her. Its subtle, but great.
The problem with club scenes is finding the right balance of lighting. It can't be so dark that nothing is visible, nor can it be so light that it doesn't look like a club. In this case, the club was lit with red and green lights which provided a good deal of contrast. It did seem to me as though the lighting was a little bit too low, which led partly to the confusion of who the characters were. Furthermore, when the scene was re-created at the end of the film, while it did thankfully use different shots, the low lighting still made it a bit difficult to tell what was happening – even though the audience knew who the characters were. My other wish for this final scene would have been to make it more personal. The first version should use more wide shots to cement the layout and placement of characters in the audience's mind. In the first scene, it doesn't really matter so much exactly who gets shot so long as the audience knows that someone will – its even better if you can have them guessing who! The final scene should have more close-ups: the audience knows that someone will die, but now that they're emotionally invested in the characters, they want to know who it will be. The close-ups should portray the emotions more than the actions in this case.
There is a good balance of music within this movie. It begins with a sort of Rock/Ska song being played in the bar (incidentally, the song is “I Wish I Was Ace” from the group Speedball, the lead singer of which is the actor who played Blair). The song continues through most of the opening scene and makes its re-appearance at the end again. It does seem to go on for a bit too long at some point, as though the opening credits are being a bit stretched out, but its not at all unpleasant to listen to. The rest of the score follows the theme of the film; it is mostly a suspenseful underlying track. It isn't over or underpowering, and fits in great. Also, since the Speedball song is a feature of the movie, its much better to not overshadow it with any other notable pieces of music. The only problem with using this piece of music is the editing challenge – in a couple shots of the band, the singer's lips do not at all sync to the song, which is very off-putting.
The dialog in the film was mostly understandable; there were a few moments of slight low volume, and one scene with Nikki and Asta in a kitchen in which their voices have a bit of a pinging sound to them – though it sounds a lot better than the typical echo that seems to pop up in scenes with lots of hard surfaces.
The most obvious audio problem was the occasional rustling noise of clothes or other objects, as if the actors were mic'd with wireless lavs and they were rubbing against their clothing. Though this wasn't the case, its likely that the boom mike was just a bit too sensitive, or the boom pole had some sort of shuddering issue. A sound engineer might be able to tone down these noises a bit – they don't have to be eliminated completely, just made low enough that they aren't terribly obvious. The last resort is always ADR, though that's probably not necessary in this case.
Though this film's budget may seem quite high, in lieu of the fact that it was shot on 35mm film stock – which runs around a bare minimum of $80 for just 400 feet, not to mention processing charges, conservatively at $1 a foot – I'd say its pretty amazing what else the director was able to squeeze out of it. Apart from the aforementioned prices, the rest was spent on renting the production cameras (Arri 35BL4 and MovieCam), location fees, editing software, special effects, an armorer (for the shootout scenes), lighting rental, a generator, legal services, insurance and liability coverage, hiring a Director of Photography, and pay for the cast and crew.
Besides the challenge of working with 35mm film, this movie has the added headache of using firearms in actual shooting scenes. The complications from that fact extend far beyond merely getting proper guns; any film set with proper working guns must have an armorer on set to ensure safe use and handling, not to mention the steep insurance costs and requirements.
Though there may be some wrinkles in the finished product, I, for one, am quite impressed. Taking on 35mm film and real firearms deserves bonus points!