The IAC's London International Film & Video Festival - 1993
Awarded the Bronze Seal & Best Youth Action Movie of the Year
Comments
The amount of work that went into this video was amazing, well done for even attempting it.
On the whole most your hard work paid off well. The complicated story flowed well and it was clear what was happening throughout. The special effects were really excellent and you were all incredibly brave to have all those explosions going on around you. The computer work of the building was superb.
Technically it was fairly good considering how long the movie was. I'd love to see you get a better camera such as a Hi8 or S-VHS and get a decent gun microphone!
The editing flowed fairly well but again you could do with cutting bits out as this movie shouldn't be any longer than about 30 minutes if you are to retain most peoples interest. The flash back sequence did not work and was unnecessary and your end title sequence spoilt the mood you had created, you needed just plain titles.
There were some very good portions in the movie. The locations, in general, were good, the acting was good, the action was well done and the effects were good. I liked the special effects from the Genoshan guns but thought that their construction looked too flimsy. The computer drawn Genoshan control unit and its destruction were very well done.
Items that distracted me and therefore stopped or disturbed the flow of the movie. The intro: I found the detail unnecessary and distracting. First, a personal point. I kept expecting the Genoshans to relate to the Genoshans in the X-Men comics. Perhaps the name choice was just a coincidence and you have never seen the X-Men. Second, I don't see how the information related to the characters in the story. There seemed to be nothing about the Genoshans to indicate that they were mutated in any way and nothing about the rest to indicate why they should be called after a location that had no relevance to the location of the story.
The Flashback. The intro seemed to indicate that a long time had passed from today, but the characters in the flashback seemed to be no younger than in the main story and the location was in today's universe, which seemed to mean that the story took place not very far in the future. I found the discrepancy worrying. I am also not sure that the flashback added anything to the story and it also seemed to spend a long time doing nothing.
The Genoshan control unit. If it is going to relate to the computer drawn location then you have to be very careful with your camera angles and what you are going to show of the real location. I am sorry but, to me, it was always a carpark. I could never see it as a radar control post and this disturbed the whole end of the film.
You may feel that i am being much too harsh but i think you have a film there. I also think you are not strong enough on your editing (a comment you will receive about other movies). You see in you movies what you know is there and what you know should be there. Anyone else sees only what is on the screen. You have started by telling him everything he knows about is gone and that we have two new races battling for supremacy. Either everything you show must relate to this background or you must change the background you postulated so some aspects of the story need changing. I also think that the story given was not strong enough to sustain a 50 minute movie and you could tighten it by 15 to 20 minutes.
There is a lot of talent on show here. The director shows that he can handle a good story and a full range of filming techniques. The pyrotechnics were generally good, the back lighting on smoky shots was really effective and the computer drawing of the headquarters that were blown up at the end was terrific. He also controlled the use of the violence in that it added to the atmostphere of the movie rather than be violence for the sake of it. Most of the locations were good, although I thought that a few well placed props in the Multi-story car park would have helped disguise it. The acting was up to standard and I thought the casting of the thinner of the two Antarticans was excellent. The other lad looked a bit heavy when trying to rush about and I think the cameraman should have looked for different angles to give him more speed and validity.
Having said all that, I thought the explanations of the war between the Genoshans and the Antarcticans at the start was very tedious and did little to pinpoint each side for me. I felt a short voice-over on action shots of each side would have been better. It was sometimes difficult to know which side was which. The editing in some parts was slow and spoiled the overall pace. The parts in the forest where the Antarcticans and Genoshans were hunting each other didn't have enough creeping and grovelling for me! With action movies it is sometimes the slow bits that make the fast parts seem faster. It's the way that tension is built up that makes these sequences successful.
The end credits went on for ever and the out cuts, although very funny, completely destoryed the atmostphere of the movie. Out cuts should be just that!
In essence, I would like to congratulate the makers of this movie. The action award is well-deserved. As to the movie as a whole... there is a very good movie in there... but at the moment there are parts which do no credit to the rest of the movie. The key to future success is in better scripting or tightening up at the editing stage.