I come to this film via Rockall-Schmidt's commentaries on YT about film, of which I've seen a number of. He's done some really good ones about the virtues of practical effects over CGI, about how franchises decay, about the complete mess of politically correct superhero movies.
He's been a interesting and intelligent film industry commentator on yt with ~.296k subs. He didn't do the usual dross, like 'WHAT THE LAST JEDI REALLY MEANT', but has had some quite smart ideas about film and film audiences and markets.
He's also been something of a social/political speaker - lamenting things like woke culture and corruption in business, but he tends to throw up some non-offensive faulty explanations for topics that get too hot for him.
At some point he announced he wanted to make a film himself and I was quite interested to see where this would go.
He asked for 33k to make it via kickstarter, which is quite a lot for a first indy movie. This project was sold entirely on his YT persona as a thoughtful and interesting movie commentator. And there were high expectations from that.
Perhaps unfair expectations.
Looking at his commentary about Collaborator he said he built the sets himself, shot and edited it himself, and I think he did the sound work himself. And of course casted his actors.
Ok great, and now he's presented the movie to the public.
So I started watching Collaborator. The first thing I was hit with is.... everything is rather plain in the opening scene. It's a white chipboard cubicle which is never a good look. Some shots were awkwardly framed.
And then I saw the acting didn't quite meet expectations in this first scene.
Acting is very hard. I've done it and been in a number of indy films myself, and it does take time to build experience. I could see the first actors were trying to do too much with their lines. Too much movement, too much expression. Which looks like inexperienced actors. One YT commenter noticed something I didn't, "0:36 actress looks straight down the barrel. Oh dear."
Another commenter said "Damn the actresses are so bad, have they ever taken an acting lesson?? I'm watching it but they are sooo distracting.". The actress herself responded to this comment.
Knowing how difficult it is I would be a bit more constructive, but it wasn't an ideal opening.
Then when the third character appears the camera loses focus. Maybe we just needed the mic coming into shot or its shadow for the full works.
So not a good start. We are always looking to start strong.
Then the opening titles appear in what looks like just Helvetica spaced out a bit. The music doesn't make sense. Then credits appear which are a mess and annoying. The way they are pointlessly animated looks stupid.
When that's done there's the obligatory drone shot to tell us where we are, which looks nice.
In his commentary about the film, he says he didn't light anything. It shows. Just using whatever lighting is around isn't usually enough to convey much on camera. It doesn't matter how sensitive your lenses are, stuff still needs to be lit for camera.
In one scene there is an attempt to use the light from the set but it doesn't quite deliver what's expected.
From bitter experience I know if you are shooting dark stuff you need to light it specifically even if it's dark or supposed to be night or it just looks unlit on camera.
Then there's a 4 minute shot of the backs of people's heads talking in a car with no light which is just crazy. By now I was skipping bits, and I skipped most of this.
Then more shots in silhouette for ages. This might be ok as a moment to convey mystery, but when we already know who is in the silhouette it makes no sense.
Much later on in the film there is an outdoors night scene that almost works, but it's still too dark, and it looks like he's tried to grade it up to make it look lighter but he hasn't picked the highlights or mids but ramped the shadows. Like most shots in this it goes on for 10 times too long.
But as the film progresses the lighting seems to improve. It's better in the panel scene at the end, although still underutilized. It's never really doing anything. So quite a lot of the film visually is simply thrown away.
Much of the first half of the film is a close up of some guy being interrogated under red lighting. I guess he's a 'perp' or accused by the system of some crime. The close ups are painful because they go on too long.
I kept skipping. But I could see it's a kind of 1984/Brave New World type thing going on with some tensions in the system.
Then boss of the system seems to end up with the same treatment as the perp who had the red lighting. I guess the message is power is corrupt.
This scene of the boss answering questions goes on for a million years and the questions don't seem to be carrying anything forward.
Then the no.2 woman boss gets the same treatment. She's more on point in this scene being emotional than she was with a less intense moment in the beginning. Actors often find the high intensity stuff easier. It's the low intensity stuff that's harder.
At some point there's a shot of a car pulling up that takes 45 seconds. 5 would have done.
The best bit of the film is when the black girl puts the stencil mask over the newspaper. It may be the only shot where something actually happens that moves the film along.
The film has many strange annotations. One appears saying 'THE NEXT MORNING 6.45 AM'. I'm not exactly sure why that was necessary, then 'eastern time', then 'America'. Hey it becomes a joke here I guess, but why ruin the film by making some statement about how dumb audiences are ? OR how dumb you think they are? If they are that dumb they won't get the joke anyway.
The film ends with the black girl pulling something out of a pond or river and the film goes grainy like poor quality video, but it's not clear why that effect was added.
And then there's a montage of shots with a red tint. The first are children, of different races, a time where everyone was nice to each other in I guess what is his primordial classical liberal world. But then Malcolm X, Vietnam, Hitler and what looks like a presidential address appear. I guess Trump is Hitler or something.
OMG WTF.
Although it was already clear in the first 5 mins that this film was DOA, it was a really an astounding move to try kill it a second time by putting that montage in. It's something I would expect from a 17 year old art student not a smart adult. A Yt commenter said "Really enjoyed it until the "You/Them" part, which was massive cringe."
By the time it got to the red montage it was clear he had taken a mind bending wrong turn. His brain had fallen out.
Talking of comments on YT, they only praise the sound design specifically. It's probably the best thing about this, but it's nothing that special. The sound seems reasonable throughout which is good.
It seems most of the money went into hiring a place to build the set which I really don't quite understand, as that set is mostly in the dark and unseen. That could have been shot anywhere as it's so dark. The rest of it you could have borrowed any office room for a day or 2 and shot all those scenes which look like they were shot in the chipboard cubicle. The built set, whatever it was, seemed to get fully lost in the final product.
As I found myself skipping so much the film clearly wasn't working. I wasn't interested in another lame retelling of 1984 or BNW. I wasn't engaged by what I was looking at on the screen. I wasn't enjoying the acting. There wasn't any kind of cinematography to look at it (silhouettes against glowing screens didn't do it for me, but look like an avoidance strategy from having to create interesting shots). The script did not inspire. The lonnnnnnnnnng lingering shots were too long. I was bored. And didn't care.
The bizarre comedic annotations appeared as a last minute attempt by the director to actually kill this monster he had created a third time, as it wasn't dead enough, and was still alive in post. He had lost control of it.
So what are the lessons from this ?
It's hard to imagine why anyone, let alone someone as movie-literate as Rockall-Schmidt would want to make this film at all, but it could have been shot for 1/5th or less the budget. It could have been told in 20 minutes not an hour. It didn't need tens of thousands of dollars poured down the toilet. Shots are way too long that are doing nothing. Expensive hand made sets are not present on camera. It's as if he's watched a million films but not watched how one of them are made.
But the main conclusion is you can be a smart guy, know a lot about film, have some really interesting views on film , you can have over a quarter of a million subs on yt, but the first film you make yourself will probably still be one hell of a steaming pile.
Another YT commenter said: "This is crap. American actors are really bad. What a waste of time other people money."
Perhaps they feel all his intelligent film criticism and complaints about what film has become went out of the window when he made a film himself. Perhaps they feel let down. Perhaps they assumed that they were watching someone with his finger on the ball, who really understood their frustrations as film fans only to spectacularly drop the ball.
He's been a interesting and intelligent film industry commentator on yt with ~.296k subs. He didn't do the usual dross, like 'WHAT THE LAST JEDI REALLY MEANT', but has had some quite smart ideas about film and film audiences and markets.
He's also been something of a social/political speaker - lamenting things like woke culture and corruption in business, but he tends to throw up some non-offensive faulty explanations for topics that get too hot for him.
At some point he announced he wanted to make a film himself and I was quite interested to see where this would go.
He asked for 33k to make it via kickstarter, which is quite a lot for a first indy movie. This project was sold entirely on his YT persona as a thoughtful and interesting movie commentator. And there were high expectations from that.
Perhaps unfair expectations.
Looking at his commentary about Collaborator he said he built the sets himself, shot and edited it himself, and I think he did the sound work himself. And of course casted his actors.
Ok great, and now he's presented the movie to the public.
So I started watching Collaborator. The first thing I was hit with is.... everything is rather plain in the opening scene. It's a white chipboard cubicle which is never a good look. Some shots were awkwardly framed.
And then I saw the acting didn't quite meet expectations in this first scene.
Acting is very hard. I've done it and been in a number of indy films myself, and it does take time to build experience. I could see the first actors were trying to do too much with their lines. Too much movement, too much expression. Which looks like inexperienced actors. One YT commenter noticed something I didn't, "0:36 actress looks straight down the barrel. Oh dear."
Another commenter said "Damn the actresses are so bad, have they ever taken an acting lesson?? I'm watching it but they are sooo distracting.". The actress herself responded to this comment.
Knowing how difficult it is I would be a bit more constructive, but it wasn't an ideal opening.
Then when the third character appears the camera loses focus. Maybe we just needed the mic coming into shot or its shadow for the full works.
So not a good start. We are always looking to start strong.
Then the opening titles appear in what looks like just Helvetica spaced out a bit. The music doesn't make sense. Then credits appear which are a mess and annoying. The way they are pointlessly animated looks stupid.
When that's done there's the obligatory drone shot to tell us where we are, which looks nice.
In his commentary about the film, he says he didn't light anything. It shows. Just using whatever lighting is around isn't usually enough to convey much on camera. It doesn't matter how sensitive your lenses are, stuff still needs to be lit for camera.
In one scene there is an attempt to use the light from the set but it doesn't quite deliver what's expected.
From bitter experience I know if you are shooting dark stuff you need to light it specifically even if it's dark or supposed to be night or it just looks unlit on camera.
Then there's a 4 minute shot of the backs of people's heads talking in a car with no light which is just crazy. By now I was skipping bits, and I skipped most of this.
Then more shots in silhouette for ages. This might be ok as a moment to convey mystery, but when we already know who is in the silhouette it makes no sense.
Much later on in the film there is an outdoors night scene that almost works, but it's still too dark, and it looks like he's tried to grade it up to make it look lighter but he hasn't picked the highlights or mids but ramped the shadows. Like most shots in this it goes on for 10 times too long.
But as the film progresses the lighting seems to improve. It's better in the panel scene at the end, although still underutilized. It's never really doing anything. So quite a lot of the film visually is simply thrown away.
Much of the first half of the film is a close up of some guy being interrogated under red lighting. I guess he's a 'perp' or accused by the system of some crime. The close ups are painful because they go on too long.
I kept skipping. But I could see it's a kind of 1984/Brave New World type thing going on with some tensions in the system.
Then boss of the system seems to end up with the same treatment as the perp who had the red lighting. I guess the message is power is corrupt.
This scene of the boss answering questions goes on for a million years and the questions don't seem to be carrying anything forward.
Then the no.2 woman boss gets the same treatment. She's more on point in this scene being emotional than she was with a less intense moment in the beginning. Actors often find the high intensity stuff easier. It's the low intensity stuff that's harder.
At some point there's a shot of a car pulling up that takes 45 seconds. 5 would have done.
The best bit of the film is when the black girl puts the stencil mask over the newspaper. It may be the only shot where something actually happens that moves the film along.
The film has many strange annotations. One appears saying 'THE NEXT MORNING 6.45 AM'. I'm not exactly sure why that was necessary, then 'eastern time', then 'America'. Hey it becomes a joke here I guess, but why ruin the film by making some statement about how dumb audiences are ? OR how dumb you think they are? If they are that dumb they won't get the joke anyway.
The film ends with the black girl pulling something out of a pond or river and the film goes grainy like poor quality video, but it's not clear why that effect was added.
And then there's a montage of shots with a red tint. The first are children, of different races, a time where everyone was nice to each other in I guess what is his primordial classical liberal world. But then Malcolm X, Vietnam, Hitler and what looks like a presidential address appear. I guess Trump is Hitler or something.
OMG WTF.
Although it was already clear in the first 5 mins that this film was DOA, it was a really an astounding move to try kill it a second time by putting that montage in. It's something I would expect from a 17 year old art student not a smart adult. A Yt commenter said "Really enjoyed it until the "You/Them" part, which was massive cringe."
By the time it got to the red montage it was clear he had taken a mind bending wrong turn. His brain had fallen out.
Talking of comments on YT, they only praise the sound design specifically. It's probably the best thing about this, but it's nothing that special. The sound seems reasonable throughout which is good.
It seems most of the money went into hiring a place to build the set which I really don't quite understand, as that set is mostly in the dark and unseen. That could have been shot anywhere as it's so dark. The rest of it you could have borrowed any office room for a day or 2 and shot all those scenes which look like they were shot in the chipboard cubicle. The built set, whatever it was, seemed to get fully lost in the final product.
As I found myself skipping so much the film clearly wasn't working. I wasn't interested in another lame retelling of 1984 or BNW. I wasn't engaged by what I was looking at on the screen. I wasn't enjoying the acting. There wasn't any kind of cinematography to look at it (silhouettes against glowing screens didn't do it for me, but look like an avoidance strategy from having to create interesting shots). The script did not inspire. The lonnnnnnnnnng lingering shots were too long. I was bored. And didn't care.
The bizarre comedic annotations appeared as a last minute attempt by the director to actually kill this monster he had created a third time, as it wasn't dead enough, and was still alive in post. He had lost control of it.
So what are the lessons from this ?
It's hard to imagine why anyone, let alone someone as movie-literate as Rockall-Schmidt would want to make this film at all, but it could have been shot for 1/5th or less the budget. It could have been told in 20 minutes not an hour. It didn't need tens of thousands of dollars poured down the toilet. Shots are way too long that are doing nothing. Expensive hand made sets are not present on camera. It's as if he's watched a million films but not watched how one of them are made.
But the main conclusion is you can be a smart guy, know a lot about film, have some really interesting views on film , you can have over a quarter of a million subs on yt, but the first film you make yourself will probably still be one hell of a steaming pile.
Another YT commenter said: "This is crap. American actors are really bad. What a waste of time other people money."
Perhaps they feel all his intelligent film criticism and complaints about what film has become went out of the window when he made a film himself. Perhaps they feel let down. Perhaps they assumed that they were watching someone with his finger on the ball, who really understood their frustrations as film fans only to spectacularly drop the ball.