“We were once guerilla filmmakers too—we created Gorilla for a reason.” So proclaims one of the banners on the website for Jungle Software, the creator of Gorilla. This team of erstwhile indie filmmakers saw the lack of a decent, affordable film production software while in the process of making a film of their own; so they did what any true indie filmmaker would… they made it themselves! The resulting Gorilla turned out to be extremely popular with filmmakers all over the world. And because it was made by indie filmmakers, this software is specifically (and realistically) targeted to the needs of the indie film producer.
Ease of Use
I was excited when I installed this new version of Gorilla on my computer; I really liked everything Jungle had done with Gorilla 3, so I was eager to see what they had done differently. Unfortunately, I found this version harder to navigate than its predecessor.
One of the things that I really liked about 3 was the 11-tab menu that was on the main screen. The new menu has just three tabs: Scheduling, Budgeting, and Post/Distribution. These tabs have drop-down menus that reveal their sub-categories. Several of these sub-categories (e.g. People and Locations, which are located under Scheduling for some reason) should really have their own tab in the main menu.
As I was first exploring the program, I found it very confusing to navigate through all of the menus and categories to find what I wanted. It was very difficult for me to keep track of exactly where I was in relation to the menu I had previously been in. For example, if I clicked on Scheduling on the main menu, it would take me to the appropriate page. However, at the top, it doesn’t say Scheduling, it says "SA- Phase" (and no, the SA doesn’t refer to anything about Scheduling). Below "SA- Phase", are several sub-category icons: Shoot Days, Breakdown, Categories, etc. However, there is NO sub-category icon that says Phase! Now I am terribly confused, with no idea of how I got where I am and no way to go back and figure it out. I check to see if any of the tabs or categories are highlighted…no. I search for any sign of hope that might light the way and give me direction, but no. It’s not until after a few frustrating hours of tinkering around that I see that the tabs and links that show where I am actually ARE highlighted… the active text is just slightly more gray than the inactive black text next to it. The color of the active and inactive text is so similar it is almost indiscernible! No wonder I couldn’t tell where I was!
The addition of at least two of the following three features would’ve helped tremendously:
- distinct coloration of active tabs and text!!!
- a Back button and/or
- some kind of category heading at the top of the page, such as: Scheduling> People> Actors> Representation.
Now, I will say that once I was able to see the (slight) difference in the active and inactive links, and after I had played around with the program for awhile, it was much easier for me to navigate it. So if you’re aware of these issues going into it, you’ll be able to learn the program a lot faster than I did.
One big thing that I really missed (and might have helped alleviate some of my problems) was the Help button that was present in the previous version (read our review of Gorilla 3 here). It pulled up a simple text guide that gave a brief explanation of the different buttons, menus, and options on each page. I like this feature, because it is incredibly helpful; I’d love to see the guys at Jungle put this back into play for the next version of Gorilla.
