Reviews from Taylor Gordon, Philip (whom I finally got to meet, albeit briefly) and Ariel.

The reviews are fairly mixed. Without getting into too much detail, since I’m not a critic, the consensus was that the film had good moments, not-so-good moments, and room for improvement. From what I’ve read, there’s nothing with which I disagree, and nothing which has a sniff of being “unfair”. Still, a bit of background and context may be warranted.

Taylor nailed it on the head with this comment -  “From the first glance it appeared the film was made in iMovie with maybe a handheld digital camera. It had a very homemade feel, which was charming at points and something like nails on a chalkboard at others (performance footage was jarred and unfocused, interviews had noisy party clatter in the background).”

Two factors at play here. First, Mr. Eckstein was a first-time filmmaker with no experience. When the project began, it was intended as Taylor described: a home movie, and all of the filmmaking technique and skill was acquired on the fly. No excuses either, as Eckstein says on the film’s website: “It’s pretty much just one man with a Camcorder”. But to give credit where credit is due: Eckstein gets a big tip-of-the-hat for taking this single-camera amateur project as far as he did and getting it seen.

Second, Philip commented on the disorganization of the theater, and I believe this disorganization was also a contributing factor to the video clarity issues that impacted the film. The theater was clearly playing the film on a computer that was attached to the projector and unfortunately, they failed to properly set the deinterlace setting. Thus the entire film was projected with interlacing errors intact, and whomever is at fault deserves a good flogging (I previously posted about the visual impact of interlacing errors in October).

Bottom line: the film, and the attention its received, represents a fairly significant coup for Take and his young company. Although most people won’t see it, they’ll still talk about it, and hopefully (and deservedly) this will lead to brisk ticket sales for Take’s upcoming DTW season July 30th to August 2nd.

Tagged with: a year with take dance , damian eckstein , deinterlacing , oberon , taylor gordon , TenduTV , the arts et al