OK so the Pollonia Brothers are the undisputed heavyweights of the D.I.Y./DVI aka DO IT YOURSELF SHOT IN DIGITAL VIDEO feature filmmakers. This feature like their others was filmed for maybe $5,000 in total -- if even -- by the two brothers, a couple of their friends and a bunch of hand made puppet dinosaurs, some cleverly (or, not) edited in stock footage from old dinosaur movies, and a track of land in the rural byways of Pennsylvania. The acting is wooden & amateurish, the direction pedestrian & lacking finesse, the special effects nonexistent (most of the post-production work looks to have been done on something like a Powermac G4 with Final Cut Pro and some digital video filtering), the script an outline and the plot beyond threadbare.
And yet, you have to sort of hand it to the guys: Where most of us talk about making movies here they are, or were, actually doing it. The end product is laughable by industry standards, but I still admire their gumption, stick-to-it-iveness, willingness to look absurd and determination to actually make a movie. Any one of us would probably have decided about halfway through the first day of shooting (I am estimating there were about 7 in total) that this was stupid. For some reason they didn't get discouraged, and if you click on their names you'll see that they have made about a dozen of these features, each probably even worse than the one before when elvaluated using those same industry standards mentioned above. As a matter of fact I'd say that what the Pollonia Bros. and their colleagues ("Billy D'amato"??) are doing is challenging those standards, and challenging viewers to get beyond the sort of amateur vs. professional quality value judgments that usually look upon D.I.Y. film-making as some sort of a joke.
The point being that THEY will be the ones laughing if/when some studio offers them a deal to make a more polished feature. It is obvious from watching a couple of their "films" that they absolutely loved making them -- even if they still had to keep their day jobs and shoot this on a vacation week -- and will not be stopped in their quest to keep making more. I say turn them loose, step back & let's see what they are capable of. If nothing else kids might enjoy this: It's about dinosaurs, is utterly harmless, has a couple good messages about friendship & sibling loyalty, and may inspire some other eternal 14 year old to try his hand at taking mom's digital camera out into the back yard with a friend or two and make a little movie.
That's how careers are started sometimes, and occasionally if you are persistent, lucky and talented enough it will all pay off. Most viewers should probably stick with JURASSIC PARK, but for Pete's sake don't diss the boys for trying.
3/10
