Review of Broken

Introduction

When I placed Broken into my player and glanced at the run time, I rubbed my hands with glee at the 19½ minutes ahead, looking forward to a swift review and an early night. It was over 3 hours later when I ejected the disc, 3 hours in which I was informed, educated, occasionally astounded and surprised. As for entertained…

Bonnie is an apparently normal girl who lives a normal life, until one night when a stranger confronts her in her kitchen. She wakes in a basement somewhere, tied to a wheelchair and surrounded by a bunch of nefarious characters. As the flamboyant, scarred stranger interrogates and torments her, Bonnie begins to suspect that her life may never have really existed…

Video

A 1.85:1 letterbox transfer of a digital source, the NTSC image is a little disappointing. The overall softness isn`t too problematic, but there is artefacting and speckle present around sharp and bright edges. One scene where you can see a fluorescent light behind a chain link fence illustrates this, as the light smears and speckles over the edge of the wire. Naturally an anamorphic transfer would have been preferable, but the transfer on this disc is adequate, if unremarkable.

Audio

You get a choice of DD 2.0 Surround and DD 5.1, lacking any subtitles however. It`s a nice surround track, giving an effective immersion into the film and with some decent placement of effects.

Features

And here is where the extra effort comes in on the part of your humble reviewer. When it comes to extra features, Broken rivals the Lord Of The Rings Extended Editions in terms of ratio. For a film that comes in under 20 minutes, there are almost 3 hours of featurettes and documentaries, and that doesn`t include six, count them, six audio commentaries.

In the first commentary, director Alex Ferrari goes into detail about making a film for the princely sum of $8000. Producer Jorge F. Rodriguez gets a track where he discusses the production difficulties and how they were overcome, Visual Effects Artists Sean Falcon, Dan Cregan and Ken Robkin take a track to discuss the obvious, there is a light-hearted amiable commentary from some of the cast members. The Sound Designer Mark Roumelis spends 19½ minutes talking about the music and sound effects, and finally in Film Geeks Unite, Alex Ferrari and Jorge F. Rodriguez team up to have more of a laugh as they discuss the inspiration of the film.

The rest of the extras are split into chronological sections.

Pre-Production

Rehearsals contains 4 featurettes running to a total of 20 minutes, which look at a comparison between rehearsal and the final scene, blocking action in a scene, evolving an action sequence through rehearsal and finding interesting shots in the rehearsal process.

In Storyboards, you`ll find a comparison with the opening scene, as well as discrete storyboard slideshows for 9 other scenes. The only problem is that the storyboards are shown in 4 board blocks rendering them indistinct. It would have been better to see each board individually.

Concept Art is a brief 90-second featurette where Dan Cregan introduces some of his conceptual paintings.

Costume Design is a similar 4½-minute featurette, which looks at design sketches and stills for some of the more flamboyant characters in the film.

Production

The Guacamole Gun lasts 2½ minutes and showcases the homemade device they used for blood splatters and brain fragments, useful when you can`t afford the equipment or insurance for squibs and pyrotechnics. It`s no surprise that there are a few pages of text detailing the construction of such a device for budding gore-mongers.

The Technical Advisor also lasts 2½ minutes and Tony Gomez talks about his role as such on the picture.

Special Effects Make-up Breakdown lasts 3 minutes and the make-up artist speaks about how she achieved certain looks and effects.

Anatomy Of A Stunt lasts 90 seconds

Guns, Guns, Guns lasts 3 minutes, and introduces a relatively safe alternative for firearms on a shoot, the venerable air pistol/rifle/rocket launcher, and how realistic replicas coupled with post-production can give you a realistic look.

Tips On Producing an Indie Film at 7½ minutes is a useful guide on how to get a movie made on the cheap.

Being There: The On Set Experience is the inevitable b-roll footage; there are 12 scenes here and they last a total of 16 minutes. That`s practically the whole film from behind the scenes.

Post Production

Colour Correction Lab lasts 13 minutes, and Alex Ferrari takes us step by step through how he applied filters and effects to the raw footage to get the cinematic quality of the final product. This is followed by Colour Correction Comparison that shows some of the test footage they worked on during the rehearsals for the film.

Making Mini DV look like film lasts 6 minutes and is a brief testament to the advances in technology that allow for cinema quality images to come from cameras that can be bought over the counter.

Visual Effects Breakdown lasts 5½ minutes and shows how some of the effects in the film were accomplished in postproduction, adding to practical effects shot live.

Title Sequence Breakdown lasts 3 minutes and does the same thing for the credit sequence.

Visual Effects In Indie film is a more substantial 18 minutes and the Visual Effects Team discuss the challenge of creating effects on the cheap, working with digital technology and how they had to innovate.

Cinematography in Indie Film lasts 6 minutes and the DP talks about his role on the film and working with the director.

Finally Sound Design is an interview with Mark Roumelis. (7 minutes)

After The Short

The Making Of Broken comprises 6 soundbite featurettes where the crew and cast try to sell the movie over a total of 10 minutes.

Marketing A Short last 5 minutes and the producer Jorge F. Rodriguez talks about how unique it is for people to actively promote short independent films.

Poster Gallery is a 1-minute slideshow.

Alternate Ending is a 2 minute coda to the film, that wasn`t felt good enough to be added on.

The Art Of Broken is a 6-minute slideshow of Photographer Nick Monaco`s Work. He took these photos on the set, and some of them made it into the Poster artwork.

The Broken Shoot Gag Reel is a 3½-minute adventure into goofs and goofing around, no DVD would be complete without this.

To round it all off, About The Creators is 4 pages of text biographies about the director, producer and visual effects team.

While there is a lot to gain from the extra features, they are hampered by their piecemeal nature and soundbite format. There is also a significant bit of repetition too.

Conclusion

Broken is an interesting little showpiece, blockbuster style action on a budget that wouldn`t even break the bank, let alone bust any blocks. For what it is, a brief exploration of an idea, it accomplishes its aims well. The characters are interesting, the story premise is intriguing and the execution is professional in feel and look. It`s just that it is all a tad mundane for a short subject. I recently had the chance to view a Korean short film, Coming Out that went somewhere new, and told a different story. It`s interesting to see the outlook of Broken`s creators, who in a way eschew what is the traditional perception of short films to attempt something different, emulating a Hollywood movie in 20 minutes, which results in something that lacks substance. This is a short film that screams "Look at me, I can do what the big boys do!" And indeed it can, as it shares the same vapid story execution, the lack of emotional depth, and the creaky and tiresome dialogue that I have come to expect from the mid-range Hollywood output that verges on the straight to video status. Obviously the studios liked what they saw, as a feature length Broken is evidently in production. Broken is mildly entertaining, but its primary purpose is sell the filmmakers abilities, and in that respect it is wholly successful.

This DVD continues that, by not only presenting the film, but also packaging it with a relatively massive set of extras, taking the viewer from beginning to end of the film making process. It`s almost a how to guide, a budget handbook for budding filmmakers, as Alex Ferrari and his production team discuss the process of turning $8000 into a professional looking end product. I`m not all that convinced that watching the extras on this film would turn Joe Bloggs into Cecil B. DeMille however. While it is packed full of great advice such as the benefits of extensive pre-planning and rehearsal to the simple necessity of keeping your cast and crew fed, it also becomes clear that Ferrari et al are not your simple students with a camera. These are seasoned professionals, who have had experience in the field of advertising and music videos who want to break into feature films. They have the know-how to get them a few rungs up the ladder, they have the contacts and friends in the business from whom they can blag free work or equipment, and they can make the necessary promises based on their own considerable skills to barter when they can`t blag. It is very much the Bowfinger School of filmmaking, and it gives hope for the little guy when faced with multi-million dollar multiplex behemoths every summer. All that Ferrari needed to do was to stalk Tom Cruise with a digital camera to really sell this picture, but apparently Michael Mann got there first.

As entertainment, Broken is the mildly entertaining fare of the sort that has you scratching your head and wondering just how many times you have seen it all before. But the wealth of this disc is in the extras, and I never thought I`d be recommending a disc just for the extra features. Alex Ferrari and his crew give some invaluable advice for budding filmmakers here, naturally they don`t give all the tricks of the trade away, but it is enough to inspire any budding filmmaker. Just remember that watching this disc is only a fraction of the work, the talent and the ideas you`ll have to come up with on your own, and experience is something only time will grant.

Note: Apparently at this time, the DVD is only available from the website, www.whatisbroken.com