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