Brian_Rice
Carbonite Member
Just watched on Netflix streaming. Good effort overall.
Knowing Collora's background (Winston studios) and remembering an article I read on this film about a year ago regarding him using a friend's Red cam, the "budget", similar to Ink's is probably largely inflated with "billed" time by the filmmaker and volunteers. The easiest place to notice this is in the CGI. 5K would have gotten him a decent 3ds max/AE work for a couple shots in the film. It's unfortunate because while these kinds of films can inspire the micro-budget indie filmmaker, it's disconcerting when claims of half and quarter million dollar budgets are proported for tax/write-off/saleability reasons. Films like Monsters (15K), My Freakin Step Dad is a Vampire (65K) and Zombie Diaries (10K) who actually utilize their budget as an aspect of the film's "wow factor", is IMO, the better route to go, long term.
Beyond questionable budget claims, though, the film overall was watchable. It had the feel of Enemy Mine and more than one nod to the first Star Wars. It seemed to try and pull some things from Predator, but the utter absence of mood in the film (31 hours of daylight) put the kabosh on that. What I found most interesting, though, is while they could have paid some 20 year old kid 5K to make a couple of decent AE/MAX shots, they went the miniature route for the final spaceship shot in the film and it was absolutey epic, marvelous and beautiful -- those shots, along with the costumes (and to a lesser extent the make-up) and a capable use of the Red came gave it the feel of a multi-million dollar pic.
I thought it was interesting too that while spots of acting left something to be desired, the fact that the characters had helmets on for the first 20 minutes really assisted the less-than-stellar cast. Maybe that's why the Storm Trooper fan films always seem to have an edge on their competition.
While not a great flick (and if you go in assuming that this film in reality probably cost the filmmaker around 80K to make), the costumes, props, make-up and a couple really exceptional shots near the end (inside and out of the spaceship) make this good enough for an Insta-watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp4DzRFSeq8
Knowing Collora's background (Winston studios) and remembering an article I read on this film about a year ago regarding him using a friend's Red cam, the "budget", similar to Ink's is probably largely inflated with "billed" time by the filmmaker and volunteers. The easiest place to notice this is in the CGI. 5K would have gotten him a decent 3ds max/AE work for a couple shots in the film. It's unfortunate because while these kinds of films can inspire the micro-budget indie filmmaker, it's disconcerting when claims of half and quarter million dollar budgets are proported for tax/write-off/saleability reasons. Films like Monsters (15K), My Freakin Step Dad is a Vampire (65K) and Zombie Diaries (10K) who actually utilize their budget as an aspect of the film's "wow factor", is IMO, the better route to go, long term.
Beyond questionable budget claims, though, the film overall was watchable. It had the feel of Enemy Mine and more than one nod to the first Star Wars. It seemed to try and pull some things from Predator, but the utter absence of mood in the film (31 hours of daylight) put the kabosh on that. What I found most interesting, though, is while they could have paid some 20 year old kid 5K to make a couple of decent AE/MAX shots, they went the miniature route for the final spaceship shot in the film and it was absolutey epic, marvelous and beautiful -- those shots, along with the costumes (and to a lesser extent the make-up) and a capable use of the Red came gave it the feel of a multi-million dollar pic.
I thought it was interesting too that while spots of acting left something to be desired, the fact that the characters had helmets on for the first 20 minutes really assisted the less-than-stellar cast. Maybe that's why the Storm Trooper fan films always seem to have an edge on their competition.
While not a great flick (and if you go in assuming that this film in reality probably cost the filmmaker around 80K to make), the costumes, props, make-up and a couple really exceptional shots near the end (inside and out of the spaceship) make this good enough for an Insta-watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp4DzRFSeq8
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