Content
The
concept of this movie is interesting. It's a very short
film with no dialogue, only one location, minimal camera
movement, and a very simple concept. Though this type
of film usually costs next to nothing to make, it's also
difficult to actually make it look like more than a couple
of kids playing around with mom and dad's DV camera on
the weekend.
It
also gets tricky to get a message across using only visual
images without dialogue, and I think that some people
might not get the full extent of the message that these
filmmakers are trying to get across. For example, one
of our reviewers who watched the film thought it was more
along the lines of a warning to people who watched too
much TV--beware lest you lose yourself in the world of
fantasy. Whereas I thought it was more of a cynical view
of a culture absorbed with themselves and with reality
TV. Neither one of us really caught on to the 1984,
Orwell-ish indictment of excessive surveillance. But considering
that all three of these subjects can tend to run together,
and that the director mentioned a couple different end
goals in making this film, I wouldn't consider it such
a big deal that viewers take different messages from this
movie. After all, that's one of the perks of putting your
message onto the medium of film.
Visual
Look
This
movie has a very interesting look--one that I'm sure that
most people will recognize. Anyone who's ever experimented
with a video camera has doubtless discovered what happens
when you hook up a video camera to the TV and record a
continuous image that looks like something out of a funhouse.
It's interesting that this trick is common among amateur
filmmakers, yet it's almost never used even in indie filmmaking.
I really liked that the director chose to employ that
visual trick, as it really helped to get his message across.
The
coloring of the film was quite interesting - the images
all had a blueish tint to them, and were grainy and slightly
out of focus. One of my favorite shots were when the camera
zoomed in to an extreme close-up of the main character's
face as he continued to stare straight ahead at the TV.
