The wife and I went to see a film that played only in Boulder & Chicago for a week & then will go direct to video -- "Subject Two" -- It was shot in Aspen, Colorado, by a bunch of acting geeks for around $30,000 --
The director & sound & makeup people were all there in the theatre the night we went. It's already won a Best Of award at the London Sci-Fi festival & an audience award at Sundance. It looks really good & the amazing thing -- to me -- was that it was all shot, edited, and projected from a computer chip. Now, I'd seen Digital/computer movies before on a big screen & whatever the hell they looked like, it sure wasn't film. Bad videotape would be the best I would say --
This thing was visually indistinguishable from 35mm or Super-16mm.
At the very end of the movie, when the Frankenstein creation is trudging of into the snow to who knows where -- sort of like in the Mary Shelly original -- very briefly before the screen goes dark this little computer thing pops up/"Film over/off" -- Just like in Windows or something. I was floored.
Never mind that the movie is pretty good & has a good story & lots of "in" horror-movie references to other films -- Nosferatu, Dracula, all the Hammer Frankensteins, Motel Hell --, the degree to which non-film "film" has risen technically is nothing short of astounding. These people made a film that looks like at least 3 or 4 million was spent & their outlay was about a 10th of that.
Go to the website at
www.subjecttwomovie.com and/or wait for the coming issue of Fangoria, where they're getting a 4 page spread in the middle --
Anyway, really creative stuff by local yokels doing very well -- there is hope for us all --
peter johnson/denny crane
