The
DVD for Broken is so dichotomous that it had to
be reviewed in two separate places. On one hand, it's
a very impressive first action/horror short film. On the
other hand, it's a very in-depth DVD manual on how to
make realistic special effects and gunfights with virtually
no money, with the final short working as an example of
all the different elements in the film. As these are so
different, we critiqued the actual film in our film critique
section (click
here to read it) and we reviewed the DVD set as a
training DVD here.
Broken
started out as a short film that was designed to really
show how director Alex Ferrari had learned to make the
most out of virtually no money. Ferrari decided to make
a horror/action short that looked like film despite the
fact that it was shot with a digital camera and which
utilized big-budget special effects despite the fact that
he could afford no real guns, no squibs, and no stunt
people.
With
his intense understanding of Final Cut Pro, Ferrari
got together with his friend, Jorge Rodriguez, to see
about finding an effects artist who would be willing to
collaborate with them. They ended up finding a professional
Shake compositor in Sean Falcon, who agreed to
come on board once he saw the scope of what Ferrari was
attempting. The final result is impressive enough to make
you wonder how on earth he shot a twenty minute action
movie for $8,000 that looked like it had been shot for
$10 million.
As
you watch this DVD and uncover the clever tricks they
pulled off, you can't help but have light bulbs go off
in your own head about how you could use the same ideas
in your own films.
Understandability
The Broken DVD is simple to watch and simple to
understand. With in-depth interviews with everyone from
the director/editor/color grader in Alex Ferrari, to the
producer in Jorge Rodriguez, to their special effects
designer, to their cinematographer, to their makeup artist,
you'll find it easy to understand most of what went into
the creation of this impressive short film!
Depth
of Information
There's a lot of information in this DVD that I found
very smart and very inspiring. Ferrari covers every element
of the filmmaking process he underwent from storyboarding,
to costuming, to lighting, to cinematography, to post
production effects, and color grading. While all of the
steps are touched on and explored in their
basic elements, there are two sections-special effects
and color grading-that I would have liked to have seen
in a more step-by-step approach due to the complexity
of these things. (Right now they show you some of the
composite screens from the programs and talk about what
they did, but it's a little too general to be easily understandable
if you're not very, very familiar with these programs.
Because of this fact, I am talking to both Mr. Ferrari
and his Special Effects designer, Sean Falcon, to see
if they will write some step-by-step articles for Microfilmmaker.)
Because of how much information they cover, it's difficult
to highlight just a few
things that are showcased on this DVD, but I will bring
up some information on a few of the coolest features.
Besides covering post-production effects like muzzle flashes
and color grading, they explain how to do some pretty
darn cool visual effects during filming. (The best special
effects are always a marriage of good physical effects
with good post-production effects.) One of the things
they bring up is how to purchase special guns for as little
as 20-30 dollars that look real and have realistic "blow-back"
action. Because these guns recoil when fired, compositing
effects over them looks 100 times more authentic.
Another
neat section is one on how to use and build a guacamole
gun. The guacamole gun is a special gun for firing blood
and bio-matter onto people. This can be used for pass
through effects (like in Pulp Fiction, where pieces of
brain get blown onto Vince and Julius when Vince's gun
goes off in the car) or it can be used to fake squib hits.
While it seems ludicrous to think that you can fool the
human eye by firing blood and guts onto a human body rather
than out of a human body, it actually works pretty darn
well, especially if you're creative. They used it to blow
a hole in one of the main female villains' head, which
was pretty cool. (Actually the master shot looked so real
that it could have been used in the film without the effects
pass that they chose to use instead!)
