Vimeo

Vimeo is a place for hot shots with HV30s, lots of money, and high end editing equipment. The thing with Vimeo or vime-oh, is that the damn server allows only 500mg worth of space allowed on each download, and 1.5Gb a week. anything above that and you have to pay $65 a year, where as youtube allows 2Gb per video and they allow you to download 10 videos at a time (assuming your video is 10 minutes or under) so having not to pay is a great way to put up your HD videos on the web, but if you have a vimeo account and you're paying cash to post high quality videos, that to me says something. There usually aren't bad videos on vimeo until I stumbled upon this 3 minute short film called "Time Travel Explained" now granted I have reviewed some vimeo films before and this might even be less that the 500mg standard but still I color correct, de-interlace, and add effects and filters to my movies so 3 minutes for 500mg is pretty hard for me to do. Now looking at this film it had a lot of cheesy slapped on stock footage (or whatever the hell you call it, I just saw computer made gunshots and weird wavy like lights.  I'll review that another time.

Owned- one shot short

Obviously someone who names their production company "Awesome" is extremely conceited; I saw one of your comments on "Abel's house" (More like; the hotel I spent a day at to make a stupid zombie movie but call it awesome house) you said to one comment "If you cant view this video, its probably because you're not awesome enough." That screams conceited to me, even if it is sarcasm. it wasn't talent that made the film one shot only, it was laziness. I would have enjoyed a film with more interesting angles. On top of that I saw your shadow at several occasions. Why didn't the police check the sticky notes? Especially "Where's the killer" "You're holding the gun" and "Owned your ass" obviously the real police would search and not make assumptions so quickly without even looking at the notes that are posted around the freaking house. No, no it wasn't awesome. It wasn't close to awesome. It was a waste of three whole minutes. Reasonable story you say? What's with all the holes then? Are you that thick headed that you can't spot the obvious flaws? Your editing skills really show in this film. Zero. All you did was slap text and music and posted it on the web. The sound was pretty bad, it is hard to hear what's going on. I did like how it was choreographed, how everything was set and how the villain moved about, even though I hated the movie. Yeah yeah.. the movie was shit.

Watch owned here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no1xDmYjvbw&eurl=http%3A%2F%2F

A Review on my own Short Films~

As an artist (fine arts such as drawing and painting) I've been growing up since the 7th grade to work on critiques in art pieces. I would say in my critiques "Well the only way to make this piece any better is if Jay made a time machine went back in time and slapped himself for making that terrible problem in his proportion." or "When in doubt don't use ink, you dolt." Of course my art wasn't any better in fact it was the worst in the class because I had a late start, I suppose I just enjoyed seeing the look on their faces, a look like "Your art is shit and you are being harsh with me?" Well I got into high school and my art greatly improved and then I would write even more bitter critiques on all the students bowing down to me with the exception of two who were much better than myself. Anyways I got into the film program and I loved everything about it. I made 2 films in the one year I was in the film program. The first film I made was called "Sitcom" it was about three boys who found themselves in a sitcom and they couldn't get out. The sitcom audience would laugh when something funny happened, cheer when a character appeared onscreen, and boo at several incidents. The film was so terrible we scrapped it before we could digitize it in post. And so my film teacher told me to come up with something new and something fast, it had to be one minute long and it had to be good. I quickly wrote a treatment and a script and Mr. Pike (my teacher) approved. And thus, Change was born. I still was the cold and bitter critic and so I had to make this film awesome.

Change Short Film Review~

Now seeing how it was supposed to be one minute long I wrote one page of script, but my partner and I couldn't help but make it 6 minutes longer and drag it out was much as possible, so we did. Although the film stood out in our class it wasn't good. It was just long and had a Splintercell/V for Vendetta soundtrack in black and white. We did it during the night and some of the scenes with light were absolutely terrible. So lets get cracking.

Original Story: Several kids want to steal piggybanks because people usually have piggybanks filled with loose change in their house doing nothing but sitting there, so the mint has to make more cash and making more money essentially causes inflation; so they will take the piggybanks and send the change back into circulation. Well there's a problem with that; they only stole one piggybank and stealing one piggybank will do veritably nothing to the economy, I was just obviously fascinated by heist films because it's usually ingenious but "Change" is about as ingenious as a parachute that opens up on impact. Really, it's just plain robbery and it's just break in and steal shit. Oh how on earth did I ever think this was a good story? It's like my Spider-Man 3 experience, I thought it was the best thing ever when I first saw it, and fuck me; I got the damn thing on DVD. I should use it now as a target on my toilet seat to see if I can get my piss through the hole of the DVD. Anyways the story was pure garbage and I just can't stand looking back at it in retrospect, it makes me want to peel the skin off my arms and shove it up my ass.

New Story: If anything, I tried to revise it. But again the way I did it was like one step forward and two steps back, more like one step to the side and another step back into a ditch of golden fire-breathing panthers. It had terrible one minute segment of my brother and I talking shit about some random "Boss" who wants a piggy bank for no reason other than to have it. It's like a boy wanting a roll of toilet paper in Disney World for no other reason but to have it. The new color I added to it was also terrible and took away the artsyness of the film, but anyways that's later.  But all in all, it was all boring dragging through muddy waters, and only if things can't get worse they do because you figure out that I'm dragging you through a sewer. The way I explain this is because the beginning the segment with the firearms is completely unnecessary to the story. We have several guns being showcased for no reason at all and on top of that it takes longer than anyone wants.

Performance: Well Jedhi, my partner was the main character if you can call him a main character; all he did was order people around in a ninja suit. Oh what's with that? Why hadn't I spotted that part before? These guys are ninjas in America, how much more fucked up is that? And ninjas with white tennis shoes! What on earth was I thinking allowing some of the actors have white shoes on in a clandestine film at night? Anyways I was proud that Jedhi was able to get things together, but all in all the body movements of Jedhi was slow. If you're robbing a house you're supposed to be thinking fast at situations like these and apparently giving character by slow mystical movements was more important than realism. Like I said the film dragged on for seven boring minutes, and thanks to the new video thats up on youtube, its there for eight! The supporting actors did as I told them to, and they didn't look half bad, but I couldn't tell Jedhi what to do seeing how he's also directing.

Production: We were here and there, breaking into other's property at night gave us an experience and even several good shots but the lighting for the first several shots that ended up on the final product was really eye-straining and about as fun as having my eyes set up for a dart board. 

Name: Rockstone is saying the same thing twice; Wood-tree, flower-plant, window-glass, the list goes on. Initially Rockstone Productions was a sort of humorous name because Jedhi's cousins used the phrase to express anger. What a way huh? Anyways in the end for a production company name it looks more epic than its supposed to. "Change" the name of the movie is supposed to have two meanings that no one really knows. "Loose change" that people have around in their house and "Change the way the economy is running." Of course since no one got it, the name could have been something like "Ninjas stealing stuff" and it would have made more sense. But since there's no turning back from the name I sulk in disgrace thinking how I could have made things better but its again like watching your dog getting road killed, there's nothing you can do about it but say "That is such a terrible name, it's like referring to Obama.." Still the name is about as good as a bucket of ticks.

Post: Well essentially Change is a retarded baby, the only thing I do to hide my baby's retiredness is to piss color correction all over it. It hides my terrible cinematography and shows a little of variety in colors than that of real life. But otherwise the cuts in the film were at the wrong times, like I wish I had more takes, I wish I had more shoot days, and I wish I wasn't so sloppy, but I was more sloppy on the project than I was on my ice cream when I was 2 years old.

More on my films later.

Hotel Horror Short Film~

Okay so the first thing I do when I look at a short film is look at the name. If it interests me then I watch it. When I saw the cheesy name "Hotel Horror" I thought to myself "If it's anything like what I have in mind then it's worth the watch." Hotels in general are creepy, hundreds if not thousands of people sleep in the bed that you had, and who knows what could have been going on there. Well actually we do, thats why everyone suggests me to get a room when I offend the rules of PDA with my girlfriend. So I saw the name and thought of zombies, ghosts, and ghouls with guns that shoot lightning bolts and sharp dangerous doses of awesomeness; with the main character, a muscular stud in his 30s with a 5 o'clock shadow, ridding an orange wolf in the halls of the hotel equipped with a gauntlet that shoots samurai swords like Wolverines claws, chopping up anything that gets in his way to some random screaming dame at the top floor in HD. Well of course I didn't get any of that, nothing remotely close. Instead we have a young little plump kid probably 13-14 years of age doing nothing for about 2 whole minutes, pretending that he has the money and the places to go that he must check into a hotel. Oh yeah and did I forget to say? It was shot on a freaking webcam. 

Name: A name like Hotel Horror, I would expect something more, not zombies and ghosts, but something essentially along the lines of the amazing film and book "1408" but no we have a terrible "no reason plot." The director also says that it was supposed to be cheesy, well he did a fine job at that aspect but he loses me at the horror aspect. There was no tension, there was no excitement or drama or whatever you can think of. You'd have a much better time attempting to hammer nails into your head for 6 minutes than watch "Hotel Horror." The name fundamentally does not fit the film. A better name for the film would be something like "I had nothing better to do with my day, so I made a shitty movie on a webcam" Well that or "Someone Jammed Lemon Juice in my Eyes."

Story: So this really doesn't have a story. Let's see here, we have a 13 year old boy checking into a hotel and someone tries to kill him. He then narrowly escapes and kills the masked murderer in a bathrobe. Well that sounds a lot like Black Bart (Or Charles Bolles, if you don't know who he is I suggest you look him up, he's very eccentric, with a bathrobe and a potato sack for a disguise.) Anyways there's a lot of holes in the story. For example, why did he come to the hotel in the first place?Why did he pick up the phone then try to go back to the phone when he was aware of the murderer? Why is the murderer in the bathrobe trying to kill the main character, and how did he get there? How did the murderer get up after he clearly stabbed him to death? I'm sure this kid is trying to act like an adult, and of course 13 year olds check in to hotels without parents regularly. If the quality wasn't shit it was like he took an enlarging ray gun or something and made the shit 100x larger with the story. 

Production: It was done by one person and one person alone. Shooting with a webcam, he set it up and poorly shot each scene with grotesque lighting. He was obviously both characters seeing how they never made a confrontation and both characters sound alike, and the entire film was very still seeing how it was made by a 13 year old while his parents were away.

Performance: One word: Terrible. A monkey with jock-itch could have played a better role. The only good expression that was shown was in the bathroom and he buried his head in his hands, that looked real enough given the situation. But if a real kid was put in that predicament he would cry. When he goes into small one liner "Hello? The phone-lines are dead."  That was about as good as any anime acting. 

Post: Music sucks, color sucks (major, too black and contrast-ee), the cuts are slow and also they suck, everything about the film sucks and these are the types of films I like to review because it doesn't suck just a little I mean everything sucks! And I like to rant about how much time I wasted watching the short film 5 times in order to get a clear understanding of my feelings although one time is enough because it just sucks so hard! I love that nothing is good to say about it, I didn't even like his hairstyle! Honestly the film had no good aspects to it, so there I'm happy because I hope I crushed a young filmmakers spirit. But actually he wanted criticism so I gave it to him, just the way he wanted. It sucked buddy. More than a black hole.

The Tech Files- a youtube short series~

You know, I try to be a douche regarding reviewing filmmaking. I honestly do; I shove hit down filmmaker's ears and force them to hear the squishy sound of my shit pounding their eardrum, but if someone asks you to do that that is quite strange and I'll have a hard time doing it without feeling guilty. But alright here we go.

Names: The Exploding Taco Productions has a strange title and even a stranger series at hand, but I want to talk about the names for a bit here. Exploding Tacos makes me wonder how he got the name, maybe he believes in something as silly as the random chance and a Taco exploded into his hand one day, well that never happened so lets say he wanted to be funny. If he wanted to be funny he did a poor job because the first episode (Including Episode 00 which I believe is a little important to introducing what the Epic Adventure is about, basically lots of shooting and killing) was highly epic although Joseph could have done more to produce more tension and making the fighting sequences more believable. When you stage fight you must be very far apart and swing your punch as hard as you can and as fast as you can, also you must time every thing perfectly which is the hardest part. The other actors reaction to the punch, that's really crucial . Bringing your actors too close makes them paranoid and think that they might actually hit their friend so their punch is thrown a whole lot slower. Joe failed to read tutorials on stage fighting. But then; at the end of the series the Dark Knight/Matrix/Brave Heart/Epicness died down to a comedy with terrible catch lines like "He can take more bullets than 50 cent" "What do you want? A get out-of-murder-free-pass?"and "It's David Blaine!" I... grew red in embarrassment.. if anyone caught me watching that, I would have stabbed myself with one of my large array of x-acto knives to ease the pain of chagrin. The name of the production company throws me off, even though I didn't know what the name of the production company's name was until Episode 1 B. But otherwise at the same time I can say that the name "Tech Files" fits the series well.

 

The series in itself was more or less really confusing. Instead of strapping their camera to one of those "Indy 500" cars Joseph strapped the story on to one of those "Indy 500" cars. The first episode which consists of 3 parts: A, B, and C (like all of their episodes except for the last one which is A and B; leaving me at a terrible open ending and a cliff hanger purely because the line was cut off) was probably the worst episode. Well no I can't really say that, he just failed to pull off the epic sequence I was looking forward to. It's all really confusing, even if I read the intro it was about as confusing as Alice in Wonderland. The fighting was, as I said before, more terrible than Hillary Clinton's ass. I was asked to review the series as a whole and this is proven to be more difficult than I imagined.

Story: What is the story? I must have watched it at least nine or ten times and still it makes as much sense to me as Robert Downey Jr. playing a black man. I was utterly confused sitting at my computer screen I feel like my mind had just been through a food processor, blended well and crushed to an oozy pulp. Who are the disciples? Where did these clones come from? Aren't the disciples the bad guys? Why is he helping out Joe Slayer after he killed one of them? Who's the dude with the cowboy hat? Why didn't the homeland security guy kill Joe Slayer when he had the chance, then tried to kill him when he didn't have the chance? The story in itself doesn't have a firm foundation and it crumbles on my confusion. It really does seem like a bunch of 19 year olds got together and wanted to play a game they invented called "Tech Files" in which Joe was the good guy and everyone else was switching sides, that's when one of Joe's friends said to him "Hey I have a great idea, lets document our game and burn the internet with it!" and Joe happily agreeing took their Canon Powershot camera and filmed the bloody thing on a 2GB SD card. I'll get onto the quality later. But anyways the story just seems like a juvenile game with a bunch of cheesy explosions slapped on by that site made famous by indy mogul; demolition whatever whatever dot com. The story really did pick me up, twirl me around by the leg like a cartoon character, and splatter me on my wall. My poor mother had to scrape me off with the kitchen spatula. The weird thing is, is that my eyeballs were replaced with kangaroo shit.

Production: I said several times that quality doesn't matter, but for some reason I can't help but say i would have rather watched the series on my cell phone than on my computer. It does look like the quality of the film could be better, and because color correction is so important these day it looked like any home movie with a bunch of cruddy effects. The cinematography was decent, I liked some interesting angles that he chose but honestly, there were cuts in the dialog and action that was totally unnecessary. He cut in the dialog like there was no tomorrow and by the end of the first conversation between Joe and the homeland security agent my eyeballs apparently switched places. Oh another thing, don't use real swords. They're nice to put up on display but they work as terrible props, because they are real your actions slow down dramatically. It just seems that all the guns no matter how real they look, it just looks too fake. There could be better ways to display the firearms. The main way to do that is proper attire. If you look professional your guns tend to look less plastic. Especially if you're kids with guns, that looks unrealistic by far but this wasn't the case, it was the clothing and the actor's performance that could have helped Joseph pull off the effect of actual real dangerous guns. Also I suppose this part was supposed to be funny, but why is it that the first disciple is carrying a rolling pin? Does he have like a rolling pin holster or something? He usually carries that around? Why didn't he use the shot gun when he took his time to put in down? And why did Joe Slayer take his time to put down his hand gun? Why did the Disciple run away if he could have just used the magical teleporting thing he first used to block the bullets? And speaking of which, WHY do they have the powers of teleportation?

Performance: It seems as though the adults in the film (Cowboy hat man, Nurse Lady) are the only good actors in the episodes. Everyone had extremely wooden acting and made it hard to believe any of the events that was going on was believably. And to make it worse he placed the series in 2018. With 2008 model cars and such. No new technology was introduced (Unless you want to call magical teleportation technology) the series might as well have been in 2009. The conversations (because of the constant cutting) seems to be unnatural and moves in a pace that replicates the way a retard walks over cracks so he won't break his mother's back. I kept wanting the conversations to end but they kept going and I thought to myself "It has to do something with the story." but in the end I sat confused... nine or ten times. Although I could have said "No I refuse to endure this platypus dung any longer." I sat there and said "ahHAHAHAHAHAHH....." my life is as you can tell really boring.

Post: It needs color. I do have to say, Joseph pulled off a really good night time scene, but there was only one problem. Seeing how the night scene was during the day and he had to use major color correction for that sequence (I really did admire how he pulled that off) but there was one nit picking portion to stab at it. I notice when I do film at night the sky is a powerful black, but when I focused on his sky and it was bright at day! He should have at least tried to avoid the skies if he knew that it causes a contrast between real night and fake night. But obviously its something he should learn. Color correction is what I think is the foundation of editing and making a film look essentially nice and pretty. Thats what I do with all of my retarded babies (AKA my films) pretty them up with color correction so at least I have that much to say. I did manage to look at his other films and I really enjoyed and laughed at the comedic side when he tried at this film "Physical Contact" (Familiar guns and attire I can say though). He really does need to hide his retard babies when it comes to covering up his movies to stand out from the other home movies. The music was also bad... I mean he cuts off music and switches to another song like there must be some sort of variety in the music but I was just starting to like the music in one of the fights (The one where with the Man in the Creepy White Mask, music switches rather quickly.) Music is used to create tension, and he succeeded in Episode 2 Part C, but then after Joe opens the garage... well if you've seen it you know the problem. Sound such as foot steps and gun cocking was way too emphasized, and the same goes to swinging and punching. Some times I didn't notice it but with further inspection I found it to be a terror to my ears. The sounds MUST be toned down, otherwise your audience can tell that the sounds of foley were added in post. 

All in all, I can say that the series gave me gas. Major gas, so much that I can't see my girlfriend for another month without shooting fart from my mouth and nipples.

Watch the series here  http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E2FE6C98A1B28C82

Immolate review~

To go around and call yourself "Ryan Amazing" shows a shit load of either confidence or a butt load of conceitedness and I'm placing all my bets that "Ryan Stupendous" is conceited because the production company is called "AmazingFilmsLTD" LTD is an abbreviation for limited according to Mac Dictionary, I could be wrong that LTD actually mean's limited in the production company's name but I like to poke fun at it and say "Ha ha ha, their amazing films are limited in only in the sense that they don't make any." Okay terrible joke, but not as terrible as their short film "Immolate" Now the word immolate means to kill in a sacrificial way especially through burning. Now if you've seen this short there is no burning and the kill defiantly is not a sacrificial murder per se, but let me get on to that right now later. 

Story: I believe a braindead-buttfucking-Tim Burton fan with sharpie markers for stilts walking on a sheet of paper could have done a better job at crafting a story than "Ryan the Great" could ever have. It seems like "Ryan the Genius" wrote a sentence for his writing class and looked at it and said, "Wow that sounds like a great idea for a movie." when in actuality the sentence involved a cow jumping over Evel Knievel jumping over a mile of retards with Poke'mon cards glued to their foreheads; and just like that "Immolate" was born. Now here's the story, in fact it's the entire story: a girl hitchhikes to go up one damn street to a party and the guy who picks her up kills her. That's it! End of story, isn't that great kids? Okay go to bed and don't forget the moral of the story! Don't talk to strangers. Now in the time you read the story section of this paragraph it took the filmmakers 2 minutes and 23 seconds to tell that. Now I can understand feature-length films with complex stories, even short films with not so complex stories to tell it, but for fucks sake man! That was way too long to get the point across. These days filmmakers don't have points to get across they just want to shoot disturbing images of men killing women, that's all. I'm just glad that the film didn't drag on any longer than it did or I would have ranted more on how badly I wanted to jump out of my eight story window as punishment for even thinking of watching something as pointless as that. Think of playing a video game, why do you do it? For fun of course, and why do you watch movies? For the entertainment of course!! Now imagine a video game where it wasn't fun, in fact you hate yourself for spending $60 on a game that was so stressful that you have to go to work to relax. That's what "Immolate" is, even though I didn't spend money on it I could have been doing something much more productive than watching that horse shit, like taking pictures of my feet or something. You just don't walk into a movie theatre and expect a bunch of pretty shots put together for 2 hours straight, if this were to be a trailer than a short film then yes this would be an excellent trailer but when the film ended I was asking myself, "That's it?"

The Name: Like I said the murder wasn't sacrificial in any way, and you just read the entire story. In fact watch the movie, there's a link at the bottom of this review, copy and paste cause I'm terrible with HTML. So the murder wasn't sacrificial, so a better name for the film that would make more sense is "Girl Killing" than it's antonym "Burning Sacrifice" It might as well been burning sacrifice, it makes as much sense as a title as "The Cow who Jumped over Evel Knievel" I don't know why I'm running into shorts with terrible names I just am.

Production: Okay, if this is the only thing I like about the film it can't be much else, I mean he got the music and sounds off of myspace. Freaking myspace! The shots were composed very well but it didn't get me as hyped up and excited as Collin B's "Decimation" I mean he had the equipment and the best HD has to offer, the composition and placement was really well. All the shots were pretty, light was superb, but still its a bunch of pretty shots put together with no story whatsoever. I would have been much more hyped and excited to see it if this was a trailer. Then the film could be like "American Psycho" where the story circulates on the murderer and the single murder preformed in the short was only one of the many that this is routine for him, do we get that amazing story in Immolate? Well sulk and turn around because we haven't the slightest clue why this guy is a murderer.

Performance: Eh it was good I guess.

Post: Font. Font font. For having a fiancee who's a talented graphics student; font has been bugging me recently especially in films. Trajan Pro is basically every single movie font thats on the big screen and when you have a certain font on a movie poster and it doesn't appear as the same font on the big screen it will bother me. Now in the case of production names in the beginning of a film if you have "In Association With Douchebag Studios" then it should all appear as one font, not "In Association With Douchbag Studios" but in "Immolate"s case it's worse because they used Helvetica with some distorted font. That's just one thing to rank on. The sound was terrible and as I said earlier the music is from myspace, but its only the good myspace music so I guess this works in a sick and mentally confusing way. Its sort of like Will trying to get recognition on youtube by posting his already good acting abilities on to show off, it doesn't make sense because its non-profit. Lightning Studios should go more professional although I suppose it was for "King Ryan" since he's such a butt sucker. Anyways the constant half second clip of weapons in this mentally disturbed monkey's torture chamber absolutely does not work! I sort of picked up what was going to happen in the name, you don't need to show me what's going to happen, all we need to do is literally wait for 18 more seconds to see that she's going to die. Random clips of impending death does not like 2 minute short films "Ryan the Best Fucking Filmmaker in the Seven Seas"

Watch Immolate here http://www.vimeo.com/2024642

Mr. Fox - quick review~

The only thing I like about experimental films are..... well actually I can't really say I in particular like the genre in the first place. There's absolutely no story and if there is I see more story in a shitty mainstream music video than any experimental film, they make no sense, shots are composed for hours and usually ends up to do nothing with what I'm watching. Its like reading a book about a ball that travels around the world and every time the ball goes passed something alive it focuses the story on the squirrel or bee and then it vaguely refers back to the ball but it doesn't. Just the fact that the ball can't move in the first place just makes it more fucked up than it already is. You show shots of a tea mug over flowing with diarrhea more times than we need to see about umpteen-billion times and "mr. fox" just standing there with ear bleeding music for the first whole 60 seconds getting nowhere, and somehow cards and moons and fencing and men holding a fox bust with one hand all is for some reason incorporated. I don't see how anyone can like experimental unless you're a braindead-ass-munching-monkey then I can see some potential. 

I can say for those of you who hate me at my first sentence, that I liked the use of color in the film, editing was nice and smooth at least I could follow along without wondering where on earth I am in real life, and I did enjoy the creepiness of mr. fox's marble eyes. It reminds me of my misanthrope mother who tore out my father's eyes jammed carrots into his sockets. Carrots are good for your eyes, why not have carrots for eyes?

You can watch the film here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RJOpSMvFfE