I know how bad this is going to be. There isn’t going to be specific wording or phrasing used to get around the fact that this didn’t turn out that well. But before we get into all that I have to get the full experience, I have to watch the finished product. I know it’s going to be tough, especially because I’m one of the ones who asked to watch themselves on screen. Even though I love acting I’m not the biggest fan of seeing myself in movies because I become highly self-conscious. That will be especially true when reviewing something of this calibre. But I digress. I will be back after the deed is done.

Ok…um…ok. Where was the disaster everyone was talking about? Was that it? WAS THAT WHAT ALL THE FUSS WAS ABOUT? It wasn’t even that bad! Sure there were flaws and some weird things, but with the knowledge of what was going on behind the scenes they are all due to time constraints. I mean people were beating themselves up over this and saying things like “this is worse than a student film” but student films are made by university film students with large amounts of dedicated time and resources. This was a high-school English class making a movie in two weeks with no budget and working around other commitments. Also, the argument that Blair Witch Project and Moonlight were made in less time is highly unjustified. The two weeks that Blair Witch was supposedly made in just included filming. Adding the pre and post-production it took a month and a half. They also forgot the fact it had a budget of $60,000. Moonlight has even less of an excuse because it had a budget of $4,000,000 and a play to base the script and storyboard on. But that doesn’t matter, what’s said is said and I can’t sway peoples dissatisfaction with the movie. I think the only person who comes close to being able to do that is Michael Sutherland. So, the only thing I can do is tell you what happened and let you formulate your own opinion.

This all started when we began our horror unit in October. A lot of people questioned if it actually pertained to English but that’s another debatable subject. I personally enjoyed learning about the different writing techniques and styles through an interesting medium. We explored classic literature like Frankenstein and watched film legends like The Exorcist. The scare factor didn’t hold up for me but I did enjoy the thoughtfulness of the pieces. This proceeded throughout the month and culminated in the project; There Will Be Blood. This was the pitch title for our now infamous movie. I personally liked the idea when it was told to us. I felt that our previous film project, MacBeth, had great elements to it and that we could have done a great job if given a second chance. I still feel that way but with the added fact of needing MORE TIME.

But back to the horror movie, the pre-production was a bit hasty. The time we had to work on it was cut down by about a week because we needed to finish other assignments. Even with these setbacks it still turned out ok. Some things in the script written by one of the writers were odd, but they were quickly retconned by the others. Everything was coming into place until filming.

Problems stared to arise when trying to transfer the script to film with our limited abilities. It slowly became more and more apparent that we weren’t going to get it done by the end of the timeline so we had to speed up some things. This effected parts of the movie like consistent lighting, audio, and transitions. It also didn’t help that roles got switched around. Although, some didn’t make sense in the first place. I mean I get what they were trying to do with the assigned roles but it seemed some people got put in the wrong place. I honestly feel bad for Cashel because he was just thrown in with the lions. When so many people in our class are experienced editors, why give such a daunting task to someone with no experience. But that all doesn’t really matter. Everyone know everyone else’s opinions. They’ve been stated pretty clearly. The best thing now is to throw it out into the world and see what happens. Maybe it will be the next “The Room” and James Franco will be making a film about our road to insanity. Anything is possible.