[Dark_4ce]

Oki doki folks. Heres a short film I made two years ago. Dunno why it took me this long to show it to you guys, but I guess its primarily because people want me to take it to a small film festival starting on friday. So, I thought I'd give it to you guys to watch first and see what other people think about it. Mind you, it wasn't my script, and I only had 1 week to complete it. We hijacked the schools studio for a day, trashed it, filmed at a prison, stole students out of classes for actors, and used copious amounts of royalty laden music along with news broadcasts.

Thankfully the festival isn't for "proffessional" films. Its a festival to show films that people make just for fun. Anyway... Be gentle... And hopefully enjoy.

*Crosses fingers*

Its a divx file of about 30mb. 8 minutes long.


The film

P.S Yes, Decipher is spelled wrong.

[Corsair]

I'm not sure I really understood it at all...

[Dark_4ce]

Yeah... I was afraid of that. The writer was a bit... Odd. I tried to do the best I could with what I had. But heres the plot anyway.

Spoiler:

The basic plot is that he's a conspiracy nut. Seeing patterns of conspiracy every where. Then he realises that today he has to go to the "kutsunnat". Which where you go for your psyche evaluation among other things before doing your mandatory military service. So he doesen't want to go. Being a bit of an odd ball, since his favorite show is on at the same time, he decides to play it as a psycho and dress up from A clockwork Orange and weasel his way out of military service. While he takes his mini tv along to watch. (I had a longer edit of it which explained all this more clearly, but I was forced to edit it down to 8 minutes.) He manages to get himself out of the army when he freaks the psychologist out. So when he gets home, he calls the american recruitment service. Why? Well, since he was a conspiracy and media nut, he decided to skip the finnish army so he can join up with the states to invade Iraq. Partly because he thinks he's found where Saddam is hiding, but mostly because the media brainwashed him into thinking that it was his duty to go and that Iraq posed a threat to all of man kind... The news articles in the end loosly explain his escapades in Iraq before he gets shot in the end. Oh well....

[WMCoolmon]

Hmm...I think it could use a lot more exposition-stuff. Some sort of signs of the thinking he's doing. Some ideas:

• Some sort of rules and regulations for the Finnish military, saying that mentally unfit persons are not eligible.
• A map of Iraq, with some sort of list of sources...you could tie this in at the end with him seeing a news program, and that gives 'im the vital piece of 'evidence' as to where Saddam is hiding.
• Some sort of book people would instantly associate with 'conspiracy' shown lying on the table.

[Dark_4ce]

Very good points. Yes, I actually did have a map of Iraq though and went pritty close in to explain his final decision. But the producer at the time wanted me to cut it out, saying the last shot was enough. So if you look closely you'll see the map on the wall and a big picture of saddam where in finnish it says "Where is Saddam?" and in red pen "Here! (and some co-ordinates) I tried to convey the conspiracy idea with all the newspaper clippings ala A Beautiful Mind, with all the red pen markings. As well as on the news paper he picks up the program he circled read "Warnings from the World". Its all in finnish, so I guess its mainly geared at a finnish audience, cause we all hear the stories of people trying to weasel themselves out of the army. But yeah. You're right. I should at least tried to convey those points more.

But the Title has two meanings. He is trying to decipher stuff from the media to see hidden meanings. As well as being more of a challenge to the audience to try and figure the film out.

[WMCoolmon]

Well, I don't know Finnish - so I was completely dependant on the subtitles. I completely missed the whole recruitment thing, probably because I couldn't read the signs.

[Dark_4ce]

Yeah... My bad. Perhaps I can make a version with more subtitles. I'll see what I can do tommorow.

[Ransom]

I liked it. I understood the thing about acting insane to avoid service, and conspiracy nut part - didn't get the last bit though. Seemed fairly clear to me that he was a conspiracy nut, since he conformed to pretty much all the conspiracy nut stereotypes. And I thought it was fairly well known that you could avoid military service if you were confirmed as insane.

[Mongoose]

Since I've never seen A Clockwork Orange, I had absolutely no idea what was going on there.  Werid hat...sumo diaper...cane?

[Liberator]

That was...odd.

[Jetmech Jr.]

Do you have a copy of the music played during the credits?

BTW, funny movie.

[Gortef]

Haha, not a bad one

[Jetmech Jr.]

So can no one tell me where I can find that music?

[Dark_4ce]

Yeah, E.S Posthumus is the band. Or group.

www.esposthumus.com

I bought their CD and I swear some of the best music ever made.

[Jetmech Jr.]

Oh, thanks so much. Gotta say, I love this music.

What type of music would this be considered as, BTW?

[Dark_4ce]

Hmm dunno really. Thats partially the reason I love it so much. Its like a cross between Rock, Classical and rythm. The whole cd sounds like a film soundtrack. You can hear half their songs being played in Trailers nowadays as well. Thats how I found em. Apart from the Pompeii Track which I used in my film, my 2nd favorite is Nara. Its being used in as the main tune for a tv series now as well.

[Jetmech Jr.]

Funny thing is, I despise most music. There are few exceptions (Endgame cutscene tune from FS2 and pompei, for example). That's why I was curious. People ask me what kinda music I like, and I don't know what to say...

[vyper]

I finally got around to watching this film (been sitting in my download folder for over a week). Frankly, I'm impressed. It's actually really good, especially the Clockwork Orange references. I wish you could have had the full version released because from what you've said, it would have really made more of an impact.