The University venue was great. Great image quality, great seating, great sound. Now all we need is an audience to go with it. Thanks to everyone who put it on out there. One issue with the Silverbow segment of the festival was that the top of the screen was projected on the curtain. So this time if you weren’t sitting in the front row, you missed both the top and the bottom of the screen.
I would like to see the cool Juneau Arts and Humanities Council dancing lead the show again. I love that segment. It really sets the mood.
Aurora Projek
Beautiful, very hard to capture images. It made me feel glad to be an Alaskan but made me feel like I need to get out there and do more stuff – but I’m definitely not going to snowboard on slopes so steep that I need to outrun avalanches! This piece felt very professional. No apologies needed for production value or musical backdrop. I really loved the fast motion shot of the cruiseship pulling out of town at dusk. Still for everything it had going for it, I still wanted a little interaction with the people who were risking their lives to have fun.
The Evil – A Cautionary Tale
Basically a fun short in the JUMP tradition. I think the “clock combat” scene could have been a little shorter and I really wanted to see the clock get smashed with the axe even though it didn’t fit the script.
Morning Cup
This was a good idea but I didn’t feel it lived up to it’s potential. The beginning sequence was very cinematic and it was extremely polished compared to the rest of the movie. Once the film shifted to live action, the production value dropped a couple of notches but the real issue was that the main character didn’t appear sleepy. Then during the coffee shop scene, it appeared that they were selling half full or empty cups. The cups didn’t seem to be full of hot coffee since they didn’t have much weight and no one was handling them gingerly. I was guessing that there wasn’t time or budget to use real coffee in this scene but unfortunately this pulled me out of the movie. At the ending once again the main character didn’t seem sleepy but the miniature cup was a good ending.
Rawhide
This was the most successful in meeting the axiom “Leave ‘em wanting more.”
What’s Really in you Cell Phone
This was visually arresting but, they needed a little more content to persuade me to look into the issue further. I wasn’t sure I really understood the problem but I do remember the image of the bleeding phone so I guess it worked.
Queen Salmon
Since this was my entry, I can’t be objective. The biggest thing that worked for me was that I was actually able to film the project as it progressed. This was very different than the “Mendenhall Towers” doc that I did where it was mostly retrospective and photos. The down side of filming this was the lighting varied wildly. One minute I’m under medium fluorescent, then dim incandescent, then bright sunlight. I had my hands full fighting with the light settings while trying to capture what was going on.
Tight Rope
Once again, it was nice to have stop motion in the show. Very reflective. The motion followed the music. Since there wasn’t a storyline, it was more of a background piece than something that really held my attention.
The Most Ferocious Dance Group Ever
Too short. It wasn’t long enough for anything to really happen. At least it met the old adage “Leave ‘em wanting more.”
Garbage Man
Clever. It was fun to see Jeff Brown younger than he is today. Nicely edited and fun to watch. Is there more of this stuff out there?
Custer
I loved the fact that these were Native Americans talking about Custer’s Last Stand from their point of view. Unfortunately, I was confused and distracted by what was being said because I remembered that in the years following the battle, there were several published accounts from Indian warriors gave first hand accounts of what happened. None of these first hand accounts matched with what these elders were saying on the video. It’s one thing for them to contradict what was published by the U.S. media but I wanted an explanation for why their stories contradicted the recorded statements of what the Indians said who were in the battle.
Intermission
Nice to have some more animation in the festival. This was a fun throw away gag but 3 ducks would have been enough.
You Don’t Lose Your Girl Just Your Turn
Wow, how about that dialog delivery? Sounded like the actors were reading their lines. Maybe that was a comic intent, if so it worked. I like this one up until the guy shot his gun. I wanted the cheating guy to jump out the window or something. Shooting the gun made the whole thing too serious. To match the rest of the mood it needed to end on a funny image.
Brown Snow Teaser
Another great snowboard video but once again, nothing from the people who are ready to die for another great run.
Vote Here
This movie seemed really uneven. The guy in the car seemed pretty realistic and together. It was also neat that he was having an unintentional conversation with the radio. This sort of thing is really hard to pull off but it worked. When he got to the polling place, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. A bunch of growling, jumping, running and tackling. Funny but completely baffling. Why? Were these people zombies or republicans who were mad because the election results were announced before the polls closed? It was fun physical humor but it didn’t really fit with the dialog driven humor in the car. A little more plot development in the JAHC would have helped.
Now Wear This
I’m a little uncomfortable with using lots of copyrighted material. But the fact that you can makes JUMP an underground film festival.
Bag 9
Funny but ended abruptly. I wanted more. Maybe an hand reaching in to get???
The Unfortunate
I’ve spent the most time thinking about this movie of all the entries. It was very ambitious and it was a good attempt to tell a historic story with images. No clear dialog was used to propel the story. Dark. I bet this was challenging to shoot. So I loved that, but I felt it fell a little short of it’s incredible potential.
The transition from historical footage to the modern footage was jarring. It would have been better if the new shots looked more like the original. I think this would have been better in black and white. If color was needed for the blood scenes and the green of the four leaf clover, a little color could have been blended in. In any event the blood seemed over done when compared to the rest of the film. Also, it appeared that this was shot in video at 24p because the images flickered. It’s difficult to get video to look like film but I really don’t like the look of 24p. Very nice soundtrack. Sound editing really punched this up a few notches. I’m curious how much of the soundtrack was original and how much was Foley or purchased sound effects.
For all of this, I had a very hard time relating to the main character. He seemed like a robot or a zombie fighting for no reason and without much of a survival instinct. Based on the leading text, I expected him to be trying to escape back to his lines. Taking a prisoner in his situation seemed crazy. I related to the prisoner but I couldn’t understand why he was coldly executed.
All in all a great attempt at telling a difficult story with images but it left me wanting a more compelling main character.
Buy Back America
A fun ending to the festival. Too bad I wasn’t around when they were filming their dance footage.