I'm sure I do not need to say it, but just in case, I have no technical or creative skills whatsoever but yet I do particularly appreciate some aspects of filmmaking. One of these is stop-motion animation, which regularly blows me away when I see it done well in short films, but the other main one is very long single takes. It is not an unpopular opinion since it is so frequent to be seen – from Russian Ark to the thrilling undercover operation of True Detective.
This film may not have the scale of either of those but it uses one continuous take to move us round the set of a commercial. Technically it does this pretty well – there are no specific "wow" moments but it manages the movement from indoors to outdoors and many cast members being in the right spot at the right time – which is not easy when you consider that the film is on a busy set. The problem with the film is that the material will probably work best if you have direct experience of this world, and perhaps even then it may not be fantastic.
The jokes are basically the walking clichés that inhabit our set; the guys who talk like expert cinematographers but are really just runners; the fed-up and uninspired crew; the self-important 'talent', the direct and unhelpful director and so on. They are all clichés and even without experience myself, they do have the ring of truth to their delivery, but the problem is that because all the characters are broad, and the characters are the joke, then the film too becomes broad in its content. As such it produces a few chuckles but not too much more than that and, the technical aspect, while impressive, is not so spectacular a single take that it makes the film soar on that alone. Worth a look for what it does well, but it is broader than it can sustain.
