What bad filmmaking looks like

Digital cameras allow just about anyone to make a documentary, and, sadly, they are. This trailer is wrong on just about every level. Badly edited. Badly shot. Cliched choice of music. The sound is even bad. First image has us looking up a character's nose as he struggles to articulate a point. Absolutely no sense of rhythm in the cutting. At 00:36 we get a shot of Hitchen's nose as he speaks, with blank, generic crowd reaction shots that for some reason have been distressed and de-saturated. There is no dramatic structure here. There are any number of ways by which an editor can, using the formal elements of film - screen direction, cross-cutting, etc... - create dramatic tension that anticipates a confrontation - or a collision, if you will. This filmmaker seems completely unaware of what it is that an editor does.

Comments

  1. Holy crap, the director has no idea how to frame a shot. And, wow, the person who edited the trailer needs some more practice.

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