Visual
Look
There
some nice transitions in this film, including a segment
where they tie together a flashback and present moment by
having a character step through a door. On one side of the
door, it's a flashback, but on the other side of a different
door, it's the present. It's kind of hard to describe but
works really well. Visual references like this help make
it easy to follow an out-of-order storyline, despite the
fact that they don't change the footage for flashbacks and
the present.
The
director chose to go with a black and white noir look for
this film, which works pretty well, overall. Unfortunately,
the black and white is in fairly low contrast, however,
which makes it look decidedly unfilmic and more video-like.
If the director were shooting the film in nightvision on
the Sony VX-2000, that might explain some of these murky
contrast issues. However, in background stills he includes
in the DVD, we see that the director had a number of light
kits with him when shooting, so I'm not sure why there were
as many contrast issues as there were. Pushing the footage
through Nattress FilmEffects or Magic Bullet Editors could
help with giving the movie a more film-like contrast.
General
camera setups throughout the film were a bit problematic
in that we saw very few two-person shots in the entire film,
as though the actors could rarely be in place to be shot
together. As such, the film ended up cutting from single
shot to single shot of people that were talking with one
another, which made everyone feel very isolated. The other
issue it brought up was the fact that the human brain continually
tries to map out a film layout in one's mind. This is why
establishing shots are used, so that the viewer knows where
everyone is and doesn't have to try to work it all out in
their head all the time. Without establishing shots, a few
reviewers actually mentioned that they got headaches because
they were constantly trying to construct the scene layout
in their head.
There
were a couple of choices involving violence that had some
visual effects and choreography issues. For example, in
the initial beating which starts Cole's journey, there is
no blood on the bat or on the former employer he's beating
to death. While the first hit might not cause splatter,
the following hits would have undoubtedly done so. For good
blood in black and white, adding chocolate syrup to the
bat as it whips back up and then down would have given a
blood like look in this black and white film. (That's actually
what Hitchcock used for Psycho.)
As to
the issue with the choreography, the confrontation between
Cole and Ron was a little strange. Most rapists will flee
as soon as someone finds them, or, if they are the belligerent
type, will beat up the person who found them, and go back
to raping the woman. Ron tries to be belligerent but then
runs away when Cole makes a very awkward attempt to attack
him. Either Ron needs to run away immediately, as his character
seems like he would do, or there needs to be a better choreographed
fight. As it is right now, the use of the first person camera
obscures who the rapist is, but it also ends up having Cole
feel very non-threatening.
A final
thing that would help the film would be putting a widescreen
matte on it in Final Cut Pro, rather than leaving it in
a 4:3 ratio. It looks more professional and shows that you're
interested in projecting the film.
