I expressed no small amount of doubt when word escaped that Ben Affleck was contemplating signing on to direct an action thriller that would be shot entirely in point-of-view perspective, like a 1st-person shoot video game (or the recent Spider-Man teaser sequence). I listed plenty of reason in that piece for my skepticism, and I remain anxious about all of them, but I have to say I’m now a little more hopeful about the project all because of a small independent action short sent to me by a CHUD reader.
His name is Ilya Naishuller and he directed this piece, which is a high-concept, high-octane short film that is seen entirely from the view of a gentleman escaping from an office building while pursued by faceless, suited-agent types. It’s shot entirely with a shallow, bordering-on-fisheye lens and it has been pieced together very convincingly. Take a look, it’s short and extremely exhilarating…
Color me impressed. I can only imagine the amount of work that went in to blocking out this sequence, and making this such a convincing POV piece. That’s it’s also clever and funny is a bonus. What really shocked me though, was that I found myself fully immersed in the action here, and actually held my breath at a few key moments. That’s not something that happens with any random web short.
In any event, if this really does shed any light on how a feature-length film in this style could be accomplished or not, I’m proud to count Ilya among CHUD’s reader. Clearly he’s a talented guy, and I can’t wait to see what he does next. Make sure you spread the video around if you dig it.
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13 comments
I counted at least 5 sequences that are BLATANT rip-offs from Mirror’s Edge.
As in, identical, if “retextured”.
Seems to be all the rage these days.
Stow it dank. That was bad ass. What’s wrong with people on the Internet?
Like watching an episode of Peep Show but nobody ate a dog.
Cool gimmick for a short, but an hour and a half of that will give me motion sickness.
Can someone please give me a current definition of “viral” when it comes to videos? I think my definition is a couple of years old because I see it more and more referring to videos like this (cool short films that happen to be on the internet), not videos that are specifically engineered to catch on to the largest audience possible and be shared at high rates.
Re: The Ending – Tits or it didn’t happen.
Super cool. I have faith in affleck’s pov flick. If nothing else, he can say he’s doing something that’s really never been done…can’t say that about too many movies these days.
Ripped off or not, this was pretty well-done, in my completely unexpert opinion. Making stunts look cool is hard enough in general, let alone when confined to first-person.
A bit too fish-eyed and coulda used some blurring in the corner, imo, but still damned good. Especially at around 2:00 when Christopher Mintz-Plasse saves his ass.
I don’t know.
The idea is pretty cool, but is executed better in every Ego-Shooter out there right now.
The fish-eye perspective makes it look total artificial.
Unless though Affleck chose Jon Cryer in Hot Shots as the main character…
The filmmakers here have lots of energy and gusto but the POV angle gets pretty old pretty fast. Lots of swirling, jerky camera movement and shots of guys attacking the camera. Next!
Not exactly “never been done before”. I can recall at least one noir thriller which did it back in, what the 40s? Can’t recall the name though…
We could have used GoPro’s 1080p mode (instead of the 720p)and lost some of the extreme fisheye but we figured we needed the effect to be fully ‘in’ character rather than have the illusion of arms stuck to the camera like the Guy Ritchie Nike ad. Also, we tried the blurring but it looked way too evident, even on the slightest settings. We figured that with the 720p, losing the rest of the hardly visible details wouldn’t do us any good. Thanks for all your guy’s opinions.
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