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   Rough Film Critique: 
   Everything Means Nothing

   Director:
Chad Hendricks
   Expected Rating: R due to language and                                disturbing behavior
   Distribution: No Exclusive Distribution
   Budget: $10,000
   Genre: Suspense/Thriller

   Running Time: 93 minutes

   Release Dates:
   Website: http://www.Indiepimp.com
   Trailer: Click Here

   Review Date:
February 15, 2006
   Reviewed By: Kari Ann Morgan

Spencer is an artistic young man fascinated by people, and especially by human interaction. One day, he comes to the realization that the "friends" he's had over the years are shallow, fickle, and fake, and decides that he can no longer tolerate such deceit in others; he then takes Reggie, a complete stranger, hostage in his own house and forces him to confront the fact that things (and people) are not always what they first appear to be.

Content
First of all, I will say that this movie is very deep. This is the type of film where you go to a coffee shop or Waffle House after watching it and sit around discussing it with your friends. It gets you talking; it gets you thinking. This movie brings up many issues, blatant and suggested. Are people really genuine? Can anyone truly be genuine, both to themselves and to others? What is the point of life? Where do we fit in, you and I? Basically, it comes down to Spencer's conclusion that "everything means nothing." How and why he reaches this point is the crux of the film and the impetus for post-movie discussions.

The interaction between the two characters flows well, each one realistically portraying his own fear, insecurities, anger, and frustration. And while the main character might appear to be a typical angst-ridden, pissed-at-the-world, what-is-real-anyway, everybody's-fake-but-me, whiny psycho, he's not the point of the movie; it's his questioning of people and society that is the point.

Visual Look
Everything Means Nothing has a very interesting visual look to it; there's a lot of "eye candy." Hendricks uses very creative shots and blocking techniques throughout the movie, making excellent use of perspective, close-ups, overall layout, etc. The movie itself is in color, with flashbacks occurring in a couple color schemes with lots of post-production filters on them. Almost all of the film takes place in Reggie's small apartment kitchen. The color is usually very saturated, which works well with the sometimes-stark lighting. There are several scenes where lights were used to create dual-tinted atmosphere. (For example, Spencer and Reggie are facing each other in conversation, one person in the foreground, one in the background; the one in the foreground has a red cast to him, whereas the one in the background is green.) Such uses of lighting and color help to heighten the almost frenetic intensity of the situation.

Spencer is an angry man
who finds life to be fickle...
...Reggie just wants to wake
up from this bad dream.

However, there becomes a point where visual intensity can overload and be extremely distracting; this is what happened with almost all of the transitions, opening titles, and other (visual) special effects. There are a lot of "feedback loops" in the scenes, where you'll see a character do or say something (e.g. roll their eyes and say, "He's such a jerk") and the exact same action is edited so that it will repeat itself three or four times in a row within the span of a few seconds. This is usually done to show paranoia, guilt, fear, etc. While this effect is not inappropriate to this movie, it was used far too much. Rather, it would have been much more effective to use it one or two times in places that were crucial to the story. Additionally, repetitive effects (such as shaking, jump cuts, blurs, etc.) and over-extended transitions were alternately dizzying and dragging, making it a visual roller-coaster.

The other big issue is the fact that all the flashback sections that used post-production filters really looked cheap and like they came out of a $20 editing program. The two flashback styles that were used were a more recent flashback which was a heavily posterized black-and-white that had so much grain added to it that it looked like it was about to shatter into a million pieces and an extreme flashback that was a posterized pseudo-color with lots of film grain, micro-scratches, and gate-weave. Like certain other elements in the film, even if Mr. Hendricks had only had a $20 editing program instead of Final Cut Pro, the problems with this scene are about degree of extravagance. Just because you can max out the degree of a filter and add additional filters to it, doesn't mean that you should. When you do that, you usually end up coming out with a very low-quality looking outcome.

[Note to the Director: For the overly posterized black and white flashbacks, I would recommend simply using your original footage and desaturating it. For the old school flashbacks that are meant to resemble 8 mm film, actually watch some 8 mm film before adding in the effects, as it's real easy to go overboard on effects. I would recommend Nattress Film Effects 2.5 to add the effects, as that is pretty inexpensive, streamlined for Final Cut Pro, and gives you lots of subtle choices for making your film look like 8 mm. Plus, it'll even conform your film to 24 fps if you want, which is nice. With filters, try to do the bare minimum required to get a look rather than overwhelming the viewer with all the options.]

Additionally, when camera shake effects were applied to the film in certain scenes, they were applied over top of the letterbox bars. This means that the letterbox bars began to shake whenever the footage shook. [Note to the Director: This is a common error that can be fixed by rendering the footage that has the shake filter applied to it to a separate quicktime file. When you re-import that file into Final Cut Pro, you will be able to place your letterbox bars over that without having them shake with your original footage.]

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