The Making of a Superhero Musical

Not a perfect film, but one of promise, seven out of ten is a given based not on the quality of the presentation alone but on the overall quality of the intention in addition to it's presentation. Many of the intrinsic issues with the film seem not to be a construct of poor film making but of non-ideal situations.

The story, however, is interesting and at a brisk 40 minutes it does not drag. The "mockumentary" style is fun and stays mostly on point. The film maker applies a nerdist sense of comedy likely to be found enjoyable by the comic book collecting ilk.

It is easily followed and there are several moments of inspired performance given by the films star. It is not the end all be all of mockumentary, but it it shows promise.

You know what's worse than a poorly made movie? A poorly made movie that tries to be more than it actually is.

A friend of mine who is in into obscure works came across this and knowing my tastes in bad cinema asked me to take a look at it. The word that came to mind when seeing this was "amateurish" in every sense of the word. The camera work was amateurish. The acting was amateurish. The editing was amateurish. The sound was amateurish. I could go on but I think you get the point.

The biggest issue with this is that it's filmed as a mockumentary. So you have people "acting" when they're supposed to be acting natural. Now this could be due to bad writing. A case could be made if the portions that are filmed commercially have terrible acting but when the camera is off and only the cameraman who's filming the behind the scenes portion captures what comes off as a natural interaction between the characters. But no, it's still as painfully stilted as it was before. There's literally no difference between when the actors are "acting" and when they're not. They're playing the same people and speaking the same lines.

In the end I feel this was sunk with it's own ambition. They tried something avant garde and came up with something that even a community theatre group couldn't be proud of. Next time, maybe aim a little lower and work on making your dialogue and acting feel more natural than it did.

This should be an example of how not to do a mockumentary. We're confronted by a group trying to put on a presentation of "Clockmen", an obvious parody of "Watchmen" and we have a behind the scenes crew filming this, hence the mockumentary.

Where a movie like "This is Spinal Tap" played this up, this movie doesn't seem to know how to actually make a mockumentary. The first problem you face is the announcer who I think is trying to do an Australian accent and failing terribly. In fact if you listen to him throughout the production his accent keeps changing. If you want somebody to do this either hire somebody that can do the accent you want or play it up later and find out he's actually just trying to put everybody on.

Then there's the actors. They can't act. Well maybe they can but they're not doing it here. When in an interview they're acting exactly the same way they are when they're on stage. There is literally no difference between these two things. IT could have been funny had maybe one, or both, of the actors explained they were heavy method actors and stayed in character for the entirety of the shoot. That at least would have explained it. It wouldn't have made it any better, but it would have helped.

All in all, it's a bad student film. I'd give it a pass unless you happen to like that kind of thing.