Parc Entertainment - A Video Production Company

If you happen to be graphic designer, a fan of fonts, or just a fan of movies, you will appreciate the following video. It’s amazing how pervasive one font can actually be and how overused it can become. There’s a lesson for the kids out there. Be willing to do something different to help you or your client stand out.

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• Font Squabble: Why So Hot Over Comic Sans (cehwiedel.com)

In the Birmingham film & video production market you can find several independent professionals working away at their craft, creating a wide variety of content - wedding videos, promotional videos, short films, etc. Often they work alone, or at smaller production houses, because of the affordability of production equipment and editing software. This means that one individual sometimes must take on several responsibilities - writer, producer, director, DP, and editor. Some people prefer working solo, but the production industry is all about creative collaboration. Improving the quality of your work is often the result of someone else critiquing you and challenging you to try new things. So, on your next video project, let me encourage you to bring someone else on board who has a stake in the final product. You might shoot while the other person edits. You might like to edit, so let your colleague shoot. The point is to create an atmosphere where different creative voices are allowed to voice their opinions. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Find someone with whom you feel free to voice your opinion, but one who ultimately has a different approach than your own.
• Recognize the differences you have with your colleague and use that to your advantage. An editor I like to work with has a very strong sense of story and structure. He’s extremely talented at seeing the entire arc from the raw footage as it comes in. Me? I like to insert the artistic flourishes in the final edit; the little details picked up in the b-roll that really add a nice element to the finished product.
• Remember that you both want what’s best for the project. If you work with someone who has a different style and/or philosophy, you will disagree from time to time, but realize that you both share the same goal.
• It’s give-and-take. Don’t be stubborn. Be willing to concede to your colleague when he/she is right about a particular segment of the video. For example, for one recent video project, I had a vision for how I wanted a certain portion edited. I shot footage that could only be used for this one purpose . However, when I saw the first cut with my editor, that segment wasn’t in the video. We discussed my vision and I fought to have that section in the final video, but in watching the entire video in context I soon realized that he was right. My scene just didn’t work like I wanted it to.

It can be difficult to hear someone else critique our work. That’s why it’s so tempting to go it alone and do everything yourself. But that approach will ultimately hinder you from taking your craft to the next level.

Guest Review By Troy Wagner

Sometimes movies completely surprise you. They leave an impact that you never saw coming. Perhaps it’s because you go in with lowered expectations, believing that what’s to be on the screen will be nothing more than a formulaic summer movie with some explosions and, get this, aliens. While District 9 has both of those things, there’s no way you will be calling it formulaic, and is likely to be one of the best movies you see all year.

Okay so, movies about aliens. That should seem pretty familiar to most people up to this point. We’ve seen them terrorize countless space crews, attack arctic research labs, and outright invade on plenty of occasions, be it on patriotic national holidays or not. The main problem with these, however, is the fact that they’re not all that rooted in reality. What would realistically happen if aliens were to come to Earth? District 9 has a pretty good guess.

The aliens, later known as the “prawns”, have arrived. Their enormous mothership comes to a stop over Johannesburg, South Africa. Once the millions (yeah, MILLIONS) of prawns are taken off the ship, they are placed in holding areas sectioned off by the government, the eponymous district 9. Time passes and these areas soon become slums, occupied by the prawns, who have now become dirty, diseased foragers. The government decides to rellocate them to a more isolated area to appease the paranoid public. A beaurocratic pencil-pusher named Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copely) is appointed to lead the massive undertaking.

In all honesty, that’s all you should know when going into the theater to see District 9. It is made all the more fantastic the less you know beforehand. This could be said for any given movie, but it really needs to be emphasised in this case. It’s inspiring to see how the filmmakers turn such a simple premise into something pretty remarkable.

Essentially every aspect of District 9 is masterfully executed. It’s director Neill Blomkamp’s first feature, yet it easily excells above other, more well-established films of the genre. However, while nearly all of it deserves praise, lead actor Sharlto Copely is the centerpiece that holds everything together and makes it work so well. He’s the lead amongst very few flesh-and-blood counterparts, and plenty of CGI prawns (not to mention the fact that many of his scenes are improvised AND District 9 is Copely’s acting debut). Wikus is a very complex character to watch on screen. He goes from being despised, to tolerated, to loved, and back again multiple times. It’s just staggering to realize that Sharlto Copely had never truly acted for the camera before until District 9. His performance is incredibly powerful at points. It really just blows you away.

District 9 is right on the verge of being revolutionary. But it’s not flat out perfect. Jumps from the documentary style to being behind the fouth wall can be jarring, and the CGI is dodgy in rare instances. But those are relatively small blemishes on an otherwise amazing film. As long as you’re not squeamish about intense violence, of which there is only a handful, District 9 is a fresh and exciting film that absolutely deserves to be seen.

9 1/2 out of 10

There’s no doubt that Will Smith has impressive range as an actor. His emotional performance in The Pursuit of Happyness is one to be remembered, and I suppose he was hoping to capture lightning twice with last year’s Seven Pounds. However, Smith’s performance alone couldn’t prop up a film with very little in the way of story and execution.

The film is a very weighty drama, in which Smith plays Ben Thomas, a broken man seeking redemption for a past mistake. The ideas explored in the film (redemption, goodness, selflessness, sacrifice) are all valid and the story does a good job of promoting all that is good with humankind. However, the biggest failure with Seven Pounds is that it gives away too much too soon, and it’s attempt at a foreceful one-two emotional punch falls flat.

The ending is given away at the onset of the film and then quickly we are rushed back to the beginning to see all the events in chronologcal order. The hope is that viewers will sit on the edge of their seats, waiting to see why Smith’s character made that phone call in the first scene. However, because of what we know in that opening moment, Ben Thomas’ ultimate plan is known a little less than half-way through the movie. We are left to watch as Ben goes around meeting a host of characters upon whom he can impart his goodness, in an ongoing effort to ease his own guilt.

Seven Pounds is certainly an emotional film, but one that lacks any serious impact.

4 out of 10

Guest Review By Troy Wagner

The Taking of Pelham 123 is a wrong-place-wrong-time hostage thriller involving public transportation. Think Speed mixed with Inside Man. It’s a formula that, for most, should be familiar. And that’s the movie’s biggest problem - it all feels familiar.

Remakes have been the Hollywood house special for a while now. This isn’t news to anyone. The Taking of Pelham 123 follows the trend. It’s based on the 1974 movie of the same name,which in turn, was based on a novel published in 1973. And in 1998 we were treated to a made-for-TV-movie version.

It exclusively tells the story of New York City subway dispatcher Walter Garber (Denzel Washington), whose normal day at work is made a little more complicated when a subway train, Pelham 123, is hijacked by four men. The head man, Ryder (John Travolta), demands ten million dollars in one hour, after which he will, surprise surprise, start killing hostages. Garber becomes the middleman between the gunmen and authorities, of which include a hostage negotiator named Camonetti (John Turturro) and the conveniently unnamed mayor of New York himself (played by Tony Soprano…no wait, I mean James Gandolfini).

The pacing of the story can best be described as “boiling water.” From the get-go, the tension steadily increases, leading to the inevitable confrontation. The film is most enjoyable during these tense moments of conflict and violence, but these moments do little to balance out the overall slow pacing of the film.

The performances are competent, with Denzel Washington doing the most with what he is given, becoming the likable, flawed everyman stuck in a hostage stand-off. John Travolta, unfortunately, seems to have lost his action movie edge. I felt as though I should feel sympathy for his character, but Travolta’s performace made it difficult. He hams up the “tough guy” routine so much that I could have served it for Christmas dinner. There’s an inconsistency in his portrayal, shifting quickly from the smooth criminal to the F-bomb-laden frenziness of a guy on the edge. The supporting cast is solid, but ultimately forgettable.

Pelham 123 also seems to have a bit of an identity crisis. Mix equal parts drama, action, and comedy, let bake for 106 minutes, and you get one confusing little package. The banter between Garber and Ryder becomes outright philosophical at points, questioning religion and morals, which feels about as out of place as it sounds. This is made all the more disorienting when the comically inept police force join in the fray. They’re on screen for no other reason than to offer director Tony Scott more ways to insert outrageous and unrealistic car wrecks and carnage.

The Taking of Pelham 123 isn’t awful, but it’s not particularly engaging either. There are scenes when I felt completely in the moment, but there were simply too many flaws to overlook. This movie doesn’t rank at the top of the “Worst Remakes” list, but don’t expect any Oscar material.

You can follow Troy Wagner on Twitter at Twitter.com/WhatATroy

How one goes through life depends entirely on his or her perspective. One individual might see the tragedy inherent in a specific event, and yet someone else might perceive the same event to be a positive. Is the event itself tragic or comic, or does it depend solely upon your point of view?

Summary

This philosophical merry-go-round is the foundation for Woody Allen’s 2004 film, Melinda and Melinda. The film opens at a restaurant where four friends are in the middle of a conversation about life and relationships. Two of the friends are playwrights. One friend says that life is inherently tragic, but the other claims that life is inherently comic. A third friend sets the plot in motion when he asks the two playwrights to listen to a story and then comment on whether the tale is best viewed as a tragedy or comedy.

From that point, the film follows two parallel stories, centering on Melinda, a young woman trying to get her life back together after a series of bad relationships and self-destructive behavior. One story follows a dramatic interpretation, and one follows the conventions of a romantic comedy.

Commentary: The Premise

The premise of following parallel stories is engaging, although cliched and formulaic. This movie would not seem quite so original had it been produced as a stand-alone tragedy or comedy. But because both story arcs are shown side by side, the film is much more interesting. I think most people enjoy contemplating how life’s course can be set in one direction or another by events outside their control. It’s fun to imagine what if? scenarios, thinking how things could have been different, if only…

Commentary: The Dialogue

The dialogue in the film is a number of things - snappy, clever, poetic, and philosophical. Allen allows his characters to speak what many of us only think. The danger of doing so, however, is that a lot of the dialogue is too on-the-nose and expository. It doesn’t ring true for real life. Characters (Melinda especially) engage in reflective and introspective monologues that are often tedious. At times it feels more like a stage play than a film, but perhaps that’s the intent, considering that we are seeing this story through the eyes of two playwrights.

Commentary: The Comedic Interpretation

Of the two “Melinda” stories, the light-hearted, comedic tale is much more interesting, due to the talents of the actors on screen. Will Ferrell plays Hobie, a struggling actor married to an up-and-coming director played by Amanda Peet. Ferrell’s Hobie is charming and innocent, and he falls for Melinda (played by Radha Mitchell) when he realizes his marriage is going nowhere. Peet is equally likeable as the ambitious work-aholic filmmaker, striving to lock in the extra money to get her first feature into production. The dynamic between Ferrell and Mitchell is fun to watch, and the dialogue between the two rings truer than the dramatic counterpart of the film.

Commentary: The Dramatic Interpretation

The weaker of the two stories is the dramatic interpretation. Here, the characters are far less interesting, the dialogue far too stilted, and the acting too melodramatic. Aside from Mitchell’s performance, the ensemble around her was flat, stiff, and too over-the-top. Mitchell’s portrayal as the emotionally disturbed and suicidal Melinda really carried this portion of the film.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Melinda and Melinda explores some very human themes in very conventional ways, but presents them in a unique way.

5 1/2 out of 10

Recently I watched the film The Prime Gig
on IFC - a story centered on Pendelton “Penny” Wise (Vince Vaughn), a smooth-talking small-time phone scam artist who wants to score some big money. As the film opens, Penny is working in a low-level telemarketing office with other sales people who are trying to scrape by. It’s obvious from the start that Penny is a big fish in a little pond and he knows it. He wants more. He wants a bigger challenge with a bigger payoff. Through his connections, Penny hears about an opportunity with Kelly Grant (Ed Harris), a well-known figure within their world. Penny knows that if he can get on board with Grant that he will earn more in one week than most people do in six months.

The Prime Gig follows other grifter and con-artist films and I fully expected the plot to be a tangled web of double-crosses, leaving me guessing until the very end. However, the difference with The Prime Gig is the fact that it’s focused more on the Penny character, not an ensemble cast or a multi-layered plot. I don’t mind the strong focus on character, but this premise lent itself beautifully to the type of plot one comes to expect from this genre and it didn’t capitalize on the opportunity.

The first act of the film was very promising, but there was nothing in subsequent acts to really heighten the tension and propel the story to a new level. After hooking the audience, the story seemed to level off. And the subplot between Penny and his good-for-nothing bum of a friend went nowhere.

Julia Ormond did a wonderful job as Caitlin Carlson, a sexy and strong love interest for Penny. The script developed her character really well. The same can’t be said however for the mysterious Kelly Grant. Ed Harris did what he could with what was given to him, but I really wanted more from this character. Grant was set up early on as an antagonist for Penny’s character, but the conflict never did build.

Overall, The Prime Gig is a film with great promise that goes flat less than half way through.

3 1/2 out of 10