Last week (November 9th), as a class, we went to the academic building theater for a movie screening “UFO Club” directed by Steven Tsapelas and produced by one of the CityTech professors Michael Cannetti.
The film was set in Long Island, in 1998.
The story is about a high-school student (main character), William, who previously participated in a UFO club. In that club, there was a guest “scientist” who brought VHS with a “irrefutable proof” of alien existence. That scientist was arrested, and in order to prove his innocence, William had to find that VHS. The problem is, VHS was played out among the students, and the one who won it was a girl, Alexandra, who Will had never encountered before. In order to get VHS, Will has to befriend Alex.
Generally, I liked the acting, especially the one did Eloise Gordon who played Alexandra.
I did not feel a lot that acting was bad. Yes, the movie is cheap, and you can see it, but the acting kind of saved it too. The main characters were believable, and I did not think that the actors are off the role.
The costumes were okay, appropriate to the time period (the 1990s); nothing special, nothing off.
Editing as a video was good, however, I was to talk about bit different things.
So, at the beginning of the film where we watched a TV show about UFOs (and the first part of the movie in general), the lip-sync was off: the mimic was 0.5-1 second slower that the sound. Maybe it is an error in playback (player or the Mac where the movie was booted on), but no one from the crew seemed to notice it and stopped playing.
Sometimes, some of the characters sounded quieter than others, which is definitely a production mistake.
After the screening, the Q/A session started. The people who participated, were the director and writer Steven Tsapelas, producers (one of them Michael Cannetti), and three actors – Josiah Schneider (Chris), Paolo Kossi (Johnny), and Spencer T. Gonzalez (William).
For the session, they basically talked about how they created the film, found the actors, and general experience of the production. One fact that I particularly remembered is that the story of the film is based on the real-life experience of the director of the movie. As I remember it, he said that when he was in high school there also was a UFO club with a guest speaker. And as well, there was a VHS played out among the students, and a girl classmate won it. However, in real life, the story stopped there, and no one knew what happened after.
Anyway, the “UFO Club” is a good simple movie. Maybe it is low-budget, and a bit of an art-house type, but it is fun to watch for one night. I liked it.
