John (Zach Hightower) is a stereotypical underpaid video store employee. He has zero motivation to do anything more than the minimum requirements, feels very inconvenienced by customers, and has a total disregard for the "Employee Handbook."
Enter Stuart (E. Russell Henninger.) A sheltered and overly enthusiastic new employee who is starting his first day at the video store. John is more than a little miffed at having such enthusiastic company, and even more so when he learns it will be his job to train Stuart. As expected, the "Employee Handbook" soon ends up in the trash - literally.
This film seems to spring from the same genre as Clerks; a film about an "everyman" who works a minimum-wage job and doesn't have a whole lot of dedication to it. The “Odd Couple”-esque pairing of John the slacker with Stuart the over-zealous newbie is a good setup for some funny moments, although not all of them end up playing out. A couple of customers come in trying to get out of paying their late fees – which perfect employee Stuart promptly denies. But when the customer is an attractive women, Stuart caves. It’s a funny moment, but up to that point every customer had been trying to get out of late fees – mixing it up would have been a better idea.
There is another character whom John clearly despises – a former classmate who supposedly made it big in security work. However, his hand-drawn business card seems to belie his fancy suit, leaving the audience to wonder what the back story is behind the two of them. Given John’s bitter and sarcastic manner of speech, it would be interesting to see him give a brief summary of their background. (As John’s character seems very much based on “Randall” from Clerks, this would fit perfectly.)
Pretty much the entire film took place inside an actual video store, which probably made lighting and shooting a lot easier. (Or perhaps harder, depending on how well kept up the video store’s lighting was.) I didn’t notice any lighting or white balance issues at all.
Perhaps my one concern would be that there were quite a few oddly-composed shots. Some images cut the subjects off at the neck – the general rule is never to cut a shot off at any part of the body that bends (neck, waist, knees, etc.) There were also a few images where the characters were crammed into corners or edges of the frame rather than at thirds. (The rule of thirds states that images are most interesting if focal points are placed a third of the way from either horizontal or lateral edges of the frame.) The most likely cause of these oddly-cropped shots was in effort to avoid any copyright imagery, as this particular store appeared to have quite a lot of it floating around. One way to create some more interest is by varying the shot angles – though be careful not to overdo it or you risk looking like Citizen Kane.
There was also a fight between John and a female customer which – although quite funny – did look a little fake. Staged fights are always very difficult because of the danger of possibly injuring a cast or crew member. Perhaps your best bet is to find a theatre nerd (and I’m allowed to call them that because I am one) who is trained in stage combat. Stage combat isn’t extremely common, but any theatre actor who’s spent a good deal of time in summer stock probably knows a few tricks. A scouring of the local colleges should turn up one or two. (Don’t forget to check their credentials – there are actual certifications available for different kinds of stage combat, and you don’t want someone just as inexperienced trying to teach your actors to fall and fight.)
Have your chosen professional choreograph the fight scene and make sure the actors practice it until they’ve got it down. If you have access to any kind of gymnastic mats, they will come in handy for any falls, which can be easily cheated using camera angles. If at all possible, try to have the choreographer on set during shooting, just in case anything needs to be changed. (For more information on fight choreography, I would also recommend picking up Fight Choreography: The Art of Non-Verbal Dialogue which I reviewed here. )
