Birdemic: A Filmmaker's Guide On How Not To Make a Movie ...

Excuse me for a being a little late to the game here, but a recent Cracked article opened my eyes to a little film called Birdemic: Shock and Terror, a film too good to pass up, a film that made such an impression on me that I had no choice but to revisit it two years after its official release. Every once in a while a cinematic experience comes along that redefines everything you know about the art form, a watershed moment in film history that breaks all the rules and forever alters the way directors visualize storytelling. Birdemic is that film.

Written and directed by maverick filmmaker James Nguyen, his renegade approach to direction appears to be assembled from a working knowledge of the run-and-gun aesthetic of hardcore pornography and randomness of amateur home videos. These two often overlooked genres of filmmaking are in full bloom here, showcasing Nguyen?s penchant for awkward conversations that go nowhere, action sequences devoid of tension and endless, tedious driving sequences. Nguyen loves him some driving sequences. In fact, in one intense scene he actually has a character take a detour from his destination to gas up his vehicle in real time! How often do you see that kind of attention to detail in your big budget Hollywood blockbusters?

In case you didn?t know, Birdemic is an ?homage? to Alfred Hitchcock?s classic The Birds, and I can understand why Nguyen took on such a bold venture with such limited resources. I mean, how else do you pay tribute to the brilliance of that movie other than showing how the same material in the hands of an incompetent ass could go so horribly awry? But if there?s one issue I always had with that film, it?s that Hitchcock?s characterization wasn?t in peak form in it. Nguyen corrects this weakness by putting special emphasis on his characters. And I?m talking excruciating emphasis somewhere in the vicinity of 45 minutes of tedious character building that puts Hitchcock?s wooden dialogue to shame. Also, Hitchcock didn?t have the balls to shoot a scene like this.

So, who are our fearless heroes? Well, meet Rod. Rod works in sales in an office that looks suspiciously like one reserved for telemarketers. He closes million-dollar deals over the phone, then pumps his fists in celebration to a seemingly empty office. Now, I?m no expert in sales, but Rod seals the deal by offering his client a 50% markdown. That doesn?t seem like good business practice, unless his initial offer took into account a 200% markup. Also, he says he works for a software company, but his big business pitch later in the film involves solar panels. Correct me if I?m wrong, but that seems like a different market entirely, unless Rod is seriously considering marketing solar-powered software. So anyway, how charismatic is Rod? Well, let?s put it this way, if you were to reanimate the syphilitic-crazed corpse of Friedrich Nietzsche and pit him against Rod in a battle of romantic wits, Nietzsche probably stands a better chance at charming the pants off his conquest.

So what woman is worthy of bedding this anthropomorphic colonoscopy? None other than model and part-time traffic signal Nathalie (spelled with an ?h? because fuck you). Nathalie is a model who stages her photo shoots at a swanky one hour photo studio located in a strip mall drug store, but somehow leverages this dead-end career into a job offer as a Victoria?s Secret cover model. How? Because she?s beautiful, duh. And who hasn?t heard of My Studio 1 Hour Photo (whose placement of a tilde over the ?y? in their name is so unorthodox that my computer keyboard won?t even let me do it)? That?s where most supermodel?s careers started out. Like Mr. Nguyen, I don?t have the time nor inclination to check my facts on that one, but it feels like how this sort of thing would work, so we?ll leave it at that.

Rod and Nathalie have a meet-cute so lacking in charm that it probably warrants a police report. He stares at her from across a restaurant and then instead of chatting her up there, he opts to skip out on his bill without consequence and chases her down outside the diner to regale her with some rambling story about how they were in a high school English class together, presumably where he also stared lecherously at her. Actually, I take that back, I don?t think Rod is capable of staring in any other way than blankly. Anyway, they fall in love because that?s what happens when creepy sex perverts hunt you down. Love happens. Deal with it.

This all plays out in some of the most cringe-inducing acting scenes I?ve ever witnessed. Now, I don?t want to shamelessly self-promote here, but I acted in my own films from time to time. I have no acting experience whatsoever. But what I apparently have going for me is that I don?t possess the personality of time-lapsed moss growing near a rocky stream. There are moments in?Birdemic where I have to wonder why Nguyen didn?t just throw his hands up in exasperation and allow his actors to hold the script visibly in their hands. Even the slightest amount of intervention from the director could have vastly improved any number of scenes. Failing that, a director has at his or her disposal such things as editing, shot selection and sound design all of which can be effectively utilized to mask amateur acting. But let?s not get ahead of ourselves here.

James Nguyen has about as much grasp on the facets of filmmaking as prehistoric man did with the written word, so highlighting a particular aspect of his style that deserves extra attention regarding its ineptitude is a dicey proposition, but I?m going to go with sound design. Point-of-audition sound, ADR, ambiance, cross-fading, mixing ? these words aren?t in Nguyen?s vocabulary and fuck you for even bringing them to his attention. Room tone? Please! Mr. Nguyen will be damned if he?s going to bother recording any fucking room tone; that?s for those highfalutin directors with their fancy equipment and foley artists. When a character stops talking, you?re going to know they?ve stopped talking, because the audio will drop out entirely creating an aural vacuum in the track that slips by the audiences? senses in the same way a jackhammer might soothe someone to sleep. So, yeah, it creates a noticeable glitch in the diegetic sound, but fuck it, that?s how Nguyen rolls! And if you don?t like it, go take your fancy film degrees and snobby tastes elsewhere!

I?ll admit, for a film called Birdemic, it?s a little odd that I haven?t even bothered to bring up any talk of birds yet. Well, you want birds!? You got birds! All the birds your cold, dead heart desires! Personally, I think these images speak for themselves and offering up any sort of in-depth examination of them would be doing a great disservice to James Nguyen?s cinematic vision. All I can say for certain is that the endlessly looped squall of his fearsome predators is the same sound I imagine I?ll one day be hearing while writhing in the pit of eternal damnation.

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Source: http://boxinguweboll.com/2012/08/17/birdemic-review/

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