Golden Hour

After watching this miniseries multiple times over I can say that it's not perfect, but I really enjoyed it. I absolutely loved the visuals, the color grading, the lighting, the camera placement. The score is fantastic as per usual with Elías Ortega. The preferences are good as well, Ralph and Ardit give fun performances. The writing was one of the best parts. I loved the some the quippy sequences between Ralph and some of the other characters. The weakest part has to be the audio however. It's totally inconsistent in the recording and the mixing. It's less noticeable if you watch it with headphones on your phone, but watching it on a T.V. takes you out of the experience. Which is weird as when watching Lover, the audio inconsistencies weren't nearly as frequent, and Lover is 30 minutes longer than this series. However, Ralph really gives it his all in other departments, which makes this series really entertaining to watch. I'm glad I watched it and I can't wait to see what Ralph does next.

This was really good, but there were some problems that I'm sure fall into the fault of budgetary restrictions, like some of the ADR editing. These problems did take me out of the story, but everything else really saves the series. The cinematography is excellent and the writing is also very strong. The acting from the two leads, Ralph and Ardit, are very good as well. I highly recommend this mini-series.

Not a comedy. Maybe for stoners who don't care what they are viewing and just want to stare at the glare of the screen. With a budget of $7000 you can tell how much really went into this. Not much.

(This review is after 3 viewings) The strongest aspects of this series are the score and the visuals. It took a while to get going, Episode 1 is the weakest one of the 3. Episode 2 was very entertaining and funny, and 3 was actually remarkable. The series morphs into something else at that point and the "green powder" trip scenes and the climactic chase scene were awesome. For $7K this is pretty cool, but I'd like to see Ralph put his resources to make something way shorter, that's really great. If he can pull this off, then he do that. Not great, but unique and funny. This series should inspire his audience to make cool stuff and I think that's more the point of this show.

The dialogue during certain scenes tends to have pretty poor delivery and isn't very well written. The dubbing can be distracting at times as some of it is out of sync or the acting in the scene is different than what the dialogue conveys. Overall the dialogue could be a lot better but it's not terrible it's just mediocre. The acting is also pretty inconsistent. There are some fairly good performances in certain scenes but it's pretty mediocre overall and gets pretty bad at some points, especially from the side characters.

The editing is a little inconsistent. There are some of jarring cuts that don't flow well with the scene and become a little distracting. That being said, there are some pretty great transitions with some great editing in the second episode especially. The sound is fine. Considering the budget I'd say it's pretty good but it definitely has problems. The music's also pretty great for the budget I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the score. There is some visual effects work here that was also pretty good for the budget nothing really stood out or bothered me too much.

The cinematography is pretty fantastic in this. It's a bit of a step up from Lover in terms of consistent quality. I didn't notice as many poor shots as I did in Lover and I'm happy to see that, it's clearly where Ralph excels. I also personally found the lighting to be a bit better than what was in Lover but there are still problems that I'll attribute to the budget. Considering the budget, it is very impressively shot and very visually appealing.

The story is okay I found myself somewhat invested in what was going on and enjoyed it for the most part, but I wasn't the biggest fan of how it was handled. My main problems with the story and how it's told lie with the editing and the pacing. The pacing is a bit all over the place and undermines the show a fair bit. I also don't see why this was a 3 part miniseries it feels like it would've fit more as a short movie or even a full length movie if done properly. Overall the story wasn't very satisfying and left a lot to be desired and the ending kinda just fell flat I can't say I really enjoyed the story too much. King Candy handles this kind of story much better than this does.

In conclusion, this was okay. In some ways it's some of Ralph's best work but it suffers from a lot of issues that I would blame on the budget and the writing. The cinematography is arguably his best so far with some fantastic shots, surprisingly good lighting and fun visual moments. The story and dialogue are pretty week, the editing was a little janky at times and the acting was inconsistent, on top of the budget limitations, but it is very impressive for $7,000. I enjoyed it more than Lover and am very interested in what he could do with a bigger budget.