Mis-Drop - A short movie by Ferand Peek

Sci-fi shorts are often a proving ground for a CGI oriented crowd, but this film presents something really different. At first, I was doubtful about its length (13 minutes for a short piece is a lot of time) and its ability to hold my attention. But, only after the first two minutes I was hooked. Mis-Drop uses the well known "planetary drop" scenario, which is a staple of the military science fiction genre, and does it with a twist that involves a clever new perspective point. Thanks to good writing, the thing which impressed me the most was the fact that the background chatter provided an awesome reference frame for the entire piece by setting the atmosphere as well as the dynamic moments in the plot. Ferand Peek did a great job with this piece.

Film Review: A Public Ransom

Copyright: apublicransom.wordpress.com

Movies have this distinct problem that the need to be visual. Even if your entire film takes place in one large hall, and all buildings are drawn out on the floor, you have to show all of this. Talking about a movie isn’t the same as creating it, and here lies the crucial problem with A Public Ransom.

If you turn off the video part of this film, and just listen to the audio track, you would probably get the same experience as anyone who watched it. It seems to me that it was conceptualized without making the distinction between a radio drama and a motion picture. Here, there is no motion, except in the narrative sense. Its actors stand around and seem as if awkwardly positioned laptop cameras filmed them.

And, of course, they talk. In A Public Ransom, the talking doesn’t end, and serves the purpose of transmitting information in and continues stream, interrupted on several occasions by music tracks. The entirety of the film is in dialogs, and they don’t hold up.

The story is set around Steven, a writer, who sees a poster depicting a missing child and a telephone number. He meets up with a character named Bryan, who claims that he kidnapped the kid, and will release its captor if Steven produces 2000 dollars.