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FADE TO BLACK 6
Made by and staring:
Jason Santo, CC Chapman, Joe Vaccariello, Steve Sherrick, Dan GorgoneAt this point I’ve seen two other entries into Random Foo’s series of short films, FADE TO BLACK volumes 3 and 5. Both were exceptional in execution and originality. For their cost, little more than the price of the tape and shipping, the value is priceless if you want to see how quality short films are made. But with the good comes the bad, or in this case the middle of the road. The two shorts, "Hell Awaits" and "The Addict", aren’t really bad, they just seem uninspired. And compared to the volumes I’ve seen, that’s a real let down.
"Hell Awaits" is a tale about the impending apocalypse, minus the blow-the-hell-out-of-everything pyrotechnics of similar Hollywood films. Jason Santo pulls double duty and the director and star. To his credit as an actor, there are times when he honestly seems to believe the words coming out of his mouth, no matter how overly melodramatic they might sound. To top it off, Santo puts himself through the emotional wringer as a man who looses his family and is cursed with a psychic connection to the devil.
The film starts out promising, but once the set-up is finished the rest of the movie feels unfinished. The script could have been expanded to feature length and benefited from having the story and secondary characters fleshed out a bit more.
Next up is "The Addict," an O’Henry-like tale about 4 roommates, each coming to grips with their own addiction. No drugs or booze, these are more common everyday addictions: talking on the phone, surfing the Internet, playing video games, etc. The kind of addictions that plague suburban teenagers.
Like some of the other Random Foo shorts, this one seems ad-libbed, but it lacks the spontaneity that makes some of the other films so much fun. A bit more subtlety might have helped too; the irony is driven home like Sammy Sosa on number 68.
Again, let me reiterate that these shorts are not bad. Hell, they are better anything I’ve seen lately. But when a filmmaker raises the bar for himself and others, like Random Foo has done with past efforts, it’s hard to measure up. The best thing to do is not even try and just keep doing what you were doing before. Without even trying, you would be surprised at how much you can grow as a filmmaker.