A feature length student film. How will it turn out?
If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?...why pokematic "hi."
I just was at the world premier of "The Day Job," a student made full length movie. If you haven't read the blog post about the fun I had going to see it, go read it now, because that came before the movie. Before I start reviewing, let me clarify a few things. I am in the Western Film Makers Association, a student fill club. The guys who made this movie are the founders of this club. All money we make on the tickets from this film will go into funding future projects in the WFA. With all that in mind, I had no part in the making of this film and therefor will review it like I would any other film. Now lets begin.
Before the film starts, there is a little back story message. It read something to the extent of, "we filmed this on an almost non-existing budget. The actors received almost no pay for being in this film." Being that I knew it was a student film and have seen multiple pieces of the work print, I had a bit of an idea of what to expect. But I'm glad that they included that to warn people of the...lets just say, "low budget aspects." I'll cover those later.
The main premise of the film is these bank robbers are going to rob this bank, and to do this they had to all simultaneously apply for jobs there. During the heist they find out that their real names were put on the applications instead of fake ones, so now they have to abort. There were lots of blame going back and forth, but it ends up that it's not all bad, because they all end up getting jobs at the bank. Soon after they get jobs, we find out that their old boss, Chuck Salvage, was just released from prison. The new employees at the bank now have to do all that goes on with dealing with customers, but more annoying co-workers and incompetent management. We find out that Chuck was arrested at a previous heist that was part of a 3 part job, and the 3rd and final heist was the one that they got hired at. There's much more, but to go any further would be spoiling this great movie.
With the writing, everything was great. This movie was serious when it needed to be and hilarious everywhere else. The main 4 protagonists were relatable and genuine, while the other characters were more caricatures meant to work against the interest of the 4 mains. Chuck was well casted, having this larger completely bald man with a goatee who played an evil ex-boss so well he could have come right out of a comic book. The main bank manager was whimsically incompetent, with his office full of nick-knacks, his desk name plate in his pocket ready to show off to people when introducing himself, always doing something unproductive on his computer, and absolutely no people skills. There was one scene from the work print that I hope gets put into the DVD as a deleted scene that perfectly showcased his lack of management skills. Parts of it were in the final cut to showcase his inabilities as manager when one guy is offered his job, but it wasn't the same. Then there was the annoying co-worker who wouldn't shut up and no one liked. He did help out in the end, but I can't go into details on that. There was also the owner of the "fortune," but I feel like people might hate me for trying to describe him.
Earlier I mentioned "low budget aspects." The closest thing I can think to compare it to is Clerks. Clerks was shot as cheaply as possible, using the convenience store that Kevin Smith worked for as their set. Many things point to the fact that this was a low budget film, like how everything was shot somewhere on campus. I'm sitting there and thinking, "hey that's this building." They made it work with camera angles and such, but it was still present, like that the entrance to the auditorium this was shown in was the same entrance to the bank in a few scenes. There was also a scene with an "explosion" from demolitions. It was a fire cracker. They did make joke of that in the film which was some nice comic relief from this otherwise serious scene. It was 4:3 standard definition. My guess is that that was the cheapest way to shoot it, must similarly to Clerks being shot in black and white because that was the cheapest way to shoot for Smith.
I can't give a completely fair review without pointing out these flaws. Don't think that they ruined the movie by any means, but I can't make a proper review without pointing out some negative aspects video wise. There was not the best lighting for night scenes. The characters kind of had floating heads syndrome at multiple instances. At one point Chuck was holding a gun to one of the characters and I couldn't see it until the camera angle changed because it blended in with the night sky. At the beginning there was some dirty tape recording issues, where the objects in motion kind of split into pieces. I've had it happen with some projects I made using digital Hi8 video recording. It actually might be present in the teen nature preserve.
Teen Nature Preserve by ccpandhgviolatecopyright
If you are unable to watch I apologise. For some reason Dailymotion thinks there's "explicit content" where the entire thing is very G/PG
This is such a clever movie and just goes to show what broke college kids with a dream are capable of. Currently it's available for free here. I'll keep you posted when it becomes available on Hulu/Netflix/DVD.
Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.
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