a5c7b9f00b A gun blast, a flash of light, and a young woman awakens to the comfort of her own bed. Bonnie Clayton has it all, a great relationship, a challenging career, and the burden of a dream that grows more vivid and disturbing with each passing night. But when Bonnie is abducted by a sadistic stranger and his colorful entourage, she discovers that the key to her survival lies within the familiar realms of her recurring dream. &quot;Broken&quot; is a great &quot;how to&quot; disc. While the short film is cool, it really works better in conjunction with the DVD that offers great insight into how to make your own action/thriller on a small budget. Made for reportedly $8,000.00, director Alex Ferrari has crammed in some 100 special visual effects shots. And it looks terrific leaving you wanting more.<br/><br/>The story involves Bonnie who wakes up in her darkened apartment to be abducted by strange and dangerous folks. Skip forward to a warehouse or secret facility of some sort where Bonnie is strapped to an antique wheelchair surrounded by even more dangerous killers all of whom want a piece of her. But she doesn&#39;t know why. And neither do we. In time, she will be killed but the sadistic bastards want to have fun with her first.<br/><br/>More of a teaching film, &quot;Broken&quot; servesthe platform for special effects talent, director, and co-writer Ferrari to educate us on how everything is done. The amazingly power packed DVD is extremely instructive and even fascinating. Use of split screen showing the rehearsal and the finished scene is interesting and Ferrari humbly provides insight into the workings of making a action/thriller with little money.<br/><br/>I especially liked the recipe offered for making your own &quot;guacamole gun.&quot; For those of you not familiar with this gun, it&#39;s a device that simulates what happens when a person is shot by a gun. It&#39;s gross and funny to see the experimentation process for the creation of this useful device.<br/><br/>Anyone who is thinking about making an action/thriller ought to have the &quot;Broken&quot; DVD in their library.<br/><br/>The Disc A must for anyone intending to make their own low budget action/thriller or anyone whose just curious about the subject.<br/><br/>Picture Quality: 10/10 The transfer is crisp and the picture lush. There is a portion of the DVD devoted to making DV look like film.<br/><br/>Sound Quality: 10/10 Sound was even good on extras shot during rehearsals. Of course, there is a portion of the disc devoted to sound and syncing.<br/><br/>Extra Features: 10/10 A teaching disc that includes fantastic extras.<br/><br/>The Final Word:<br/><br/>I liked the short movie fine, but when combined with a dynamite DVD loaded with extras that are content rich, this should be a essential part of any independent filmmaker&#39;s library.<br/><br/>Jonathan W. Hickman - http://www.einsiders.com Wow– now allow me to introduce you to the truth. I don&#39;t know if the guy that posted the last comment is related to this Alex Ferarri hack, or maybe is the hack himself, whatever. It wasif he was reading the press sound-bytes off the back of the DVD–- all bull$#!t if you ask me, and a few others on this board with any common sense will agree.<br/><br/>Broken does not look like Sin City. I don&#39;t know where that vicious rumor started up, but it is nothing more than that– a hyped up rumor probably brought about by the film-makers themselves.<br/><br/>As an indy filmmaker, I have seen countless short films that cost far less than this and looked far better. Of course– Broken did get a fairly wide DVD distribution deal here, which I will take my hat off to. These guys are great business men, I&#39;ll give them that. They got lucky. VERY LUCKY!! But they should take this and run the other way with it, never rearing their ugly wannabe-film-making head again.<br/><br/>Lets start with the image quality, of what some have compared to HD. It looks like garbage!! I have shot with the Panasonic DVX myself and managed to produce a far better result with a much more film-like look to it on the 24p setting. I don&#39;t know if they forgot to turn this feature on or what– but to me, it looks like 30fps dv. The cinematography itself is formula and gets old quick. There is nothing new here in terms of image.<br/><br/>I don&#39;t know where all this Sixth Sense….Sin City….Matrix crap is coming from. I&#39;m not crazy about either of the three, but the opening credit sequence of either of them is far better than this 20 minutes of bland, constipation inducing torture.<br/><br/>I&#39;m tired of the hype folks. The stupid muzzle flash gunshot effects look so damn hokey– my seven year old son pointed them out to me and asked if they were real shots. I said no, just very very bad store-bought animation. And that explosion effect when the girl is thrown back!! Holy God!! Who would put that into a final film?! I would&#39;ve reshot it and just done the effect practical with a little smoke and fake debris. The animation was on par with first year students at art school.<br/><br/>I would not have so many complaints if these guys were a bit younger. If some 18-19-20 year old showed me this film, I would say, &quot;Oh cool. Good job.&quot; But not these 30+ year olds, smacking their faces all over the special features just to go on and on and on about how great they are. And 8,000.00?!!! Where the hell did that go?! I hope they had really good catering or something.<br/><br/>My point is, this film is not great. It is actually on the verge of being horrible. There are so many short indy films out there miles ahead of this. Maybe not packed with all the visual effects and corny tension music– maybe something with an actual story, some depth to the characters, something to like?!! Is that asking too much. This Ferrari guy has seen his 15 minutes of fame smolder into muddy ash. I just want him to go away and shut up, and I want to urge people to stop buying this movie and contributing to bad independent film. By all means!! Rent it first!! PLEASE!!!
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356 weeks ago