Who Has Seen "Primer"?

[Guest]

Any one else out here seen "Primer" by Shane Carruth?

 

Primer Official Site

 

Carruth is 31 and wrote, directed, starred in, edited, and scored this film for $7,000.00.

 

Incredible!

 

Here's what he says about choosing a shooting format. Another amazing insight for some one who taught him self film making, he did not go to film school, repeat>Did NOT go to film school. Also some thing to think about for those who choose DV. You would NEVER get the look he achieved shooting on video.

 

"The fact that he had very little money for his production might have prompted Carruth to follow the lead of cost-conscious independent filmmakers who economize by making digital films. But he had very definite ideas about the way he wanted PRIMER to look and knew he could not accomplish it by shooting digitally. ?I knew early on that I didn?t want to go digital,? he explains. ?It?s not something that, aesthetically, I think is there yet. It works for a lot of subjects, and perhaps it could have worked for PRIMER. But what I wanted, in terms of how the images looked, was pretty straightforward. Because the story gets so fantastical, I didn?t want to be experimental when it came to the medium itself.? Carruth shot PRIMER on Super 16mm, which was later blown up to 35mm. The finished film has a distinct visual style, a flat, contemporary, cold, and intentionally over-exposed look that pays homage to Carruth?s favorites from the 1970s."

[Alex Ellerman]

I had the good fortune of reading a post Carruth made about his trailer on a screenwriting message board, watched the trailer, and couldn't freaking believe how good it was. We exchanged some emails for a while, he was very cool, and later on he got accepted to Sundance.

 

I caught up with him at a Chicago screening of the film. He graciously did a Q&A question with the audience, who asked him a bunch of questions that had been answered many times online, mostly about time travel and if it was factually correct. Pretty boring questions for the guy. He was nice, fairly quiet, unassuming.

 

I think his success is quite amazing as well.

 

ae

[Mark Allen]

Normally I cringe when I read interviews with first time filmmakers - but I really enjoyed with the director had to say, his attitude, his approach. I look forward to seeing the film. Wish I had seen it in the theaters, it's on my Netflix for April 19th availability!

 

A DP who shot a third of the film is on this forum btw.

[Jeremy]

I saw Primer at Sundance, and it was by far my favorite of the festival. I walked out feeling dumb, because the film itself was so damn smart! One of my friends didn't like the look of the film, but I'm a big fan of dirty, gritty movie looks ( I also like high-production, glossy too... depends on the story), but the look of the film definitely fit the story.

 

It was an amazing feature, but an insanely difficult one to market, since NO ONE should tell anyone else what the film is about, or else it would ruin part of the fun. I hope it gains a huge cult following, ala Donnie Darko. I could see it taking off on DVD, and hopefully Shane Curruth will keep making amazing movies.

[Mark Allen]

Primer is now on DVD and I watched it today. Interesting film!

 

It's exactly the movie I expected from reading the website about it.

 

Considering the budget, it's just plain amazing. HOWEVER - there are definitely things about it I felt that maybe better coverage might have helped tell the story. In someways I think people are leaving a little bewildered by it and feeling dumb because the story wasn't told well enough visually. I'm not ragging on Shane because he did a champion's job on his budget. He's also the first one to admit that he probably should have spent a tiny bit more and made his life about a years' worth easier.

 

I like that the film was mature, it was about real people in an unusual circumstance - but it never got B-movie OR preachy OR melodramatic.

 

The use of 16mm vs. video is interesting. Definitely more grainy. Sometimes too much. It does have a more mature feel than most of the features I've been seeing on DV... BUT - is that because his entire approach is more mature? I don't know - a combination of both?

 

He uses very natural - mostly available or enhanced lights - lots of soft ligh sources. I think it worked most of the time.

 

If you're a new filmmaker and you rent this - listen to his commentary.

[Guest Charlie Seper]

An excellent film. I've never met anyone who figured it out entirely after one viewing.

 

As to the look, I was sure it was done on hi-def, would have sworn to it. I couldn't believe it when I saw that it was on 16mm. I've made that mistake before with 16mm. The more video is starting to look like film, the more the lines are becoming blurred to me. I couldn't care less really. A good story is what its all about and this was a fine one.

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

It was a good story but the execution wasn't the best. Some of the shots really do look like they lacked any kind of lighting which really doesn't look that good to me. Some of the stuff you could tell was shot wide open due to a lack of light and the focus was down right horrible. That being said, I would rather watch a Primer shot on 16mm than another boring digital horror/relationship film any day of the week.

[Patrick Neary]

true on the lighting, but i appreciated the thought that went into some of the compositions, surprisingly well-thought out, as opposed to a typical no-budget shotgun/spray-it/video approach-

[Michael Struthers]

Well, it was def better than another b-horror/slasher film, but it felt like he got to the last third of the movie and it collapsed. Threads went astray, feels like he tried to save it in the editing room, but realized he didn't have any coverage...

 

Hey I'm all for his success. He's getting every script in hollywood thrown at him. But I didn't think that much of the flick. I thought Pi was much smarter and held together better. <_<

[drew_town]

I watched Primer on DVD recently. The director's commentary on the film has some really useful advice and applications for the indie filmmakers. I would highly recommend watching the movie just to see how these guys pooled all their resources to make this movie. It wasn't about casting known actors, or breaking some new cinematography ground, or some other technique. It was about understanding what you have to work with and making a movie around your available resources. It's not the greatest movie ever made, but I definitely think you can learn from it.

[Josh Hill]

Michael,

 

Primer fell apart because it does what so many movies about that subject don't do: fall apart. I think the fact that it falls apart and doesn't wrap itself up in a nice neat little package is great, and one of the best parts of the movie. And it ends on such a sinister note that you can almost see what is going to happen and it doesn't need to continue.

 

Carruth does what no one else does with this sub-sub-genre and lets the strings unravel. He lets the concept of paradox seep in eventually and slowly until everything has been jolted apart at the seams.

 

I think it was brilliant (JUST got through watching it). I'll probably watch it twice or three times more today.

 

Later,

 

Josh

[Scott Larson]

I feel Carruth made a mistake of adding too many paradoxes and confusing elements to the story and his budget didn't allow him to give the audience a cinematic means of following them. I'm sure he couldn't resist because the layers of time-travel story are very clever (at least the ones I understood) but they only make a difficult movie all the more difficult to watch.

 

I've seen Primer six times (including the director's commentary and the actor's commentary) and I still don't have a clue which time frame any character belongs to in the second half of the movie. I was able to figure out Memento (more or less) after seeing it three times but I believe Christopher Nolan purposely threw in flashbacks/hallucinations that were intended to trick, confuse and mislead the audience and make the story impossible to understand (he denies it; I say he's lying!). I saw nothing in Primer that I felt was intended to make the story incomprehsible but the more complex parts of the story could have used some scenes to fill in the missing parts for us, or at least keep track of what time frame each character had come from. I'm sure that's what Carruth would have done if he could have spent another $7,000. :) And unlike Memento, I feel I could watch Primer six more times and not feel like I was hitting a dead end trying to make sense of it.

 

I'm glad I got to see on DVD. Carruth apologized many times for the awful sound which made much of the dialog hard to understand. The way the characters talk is unfortunately very realistic and typical of the engineering types I deal with -- mumbling half the words, skipping the other half as if they're talking more to themselves than to others. The subtitles were enormously helpful in understanding what they were saying. Oh how I wish the engineers around here had subtitles when they talk to me.