monster roll

In this post I am reviewing the short film monster roll by Dan Blank

      

Monster roll

 

 The really attention grabbing thing in the first part of the film for me was the huge knife. paired with the line " big fish big knife" it set up foreshadowing for what would happen later in the film( or more accuratley immediatly afterward with the rude guy getting chocked by a huge tentacle). kinda like a checkovs gun situation, if you have a big knife onscreen you have to use it by the end of the film. the realisim of the tentacle and the way it interacted with the environment around it(chocking a guy, smashing up the kitchen) despite being cgi was fantastic and really helped attract my attention

The scene where the tentacle chokes the rude sushi patron is the first one to use cgi. First it is used mildly to make the water in the sink liik more suspicious an then much more impressively with the tentacle choing the guyand wreaking havoc on the kitchen. to do this they used a number of real life stand ins for the tentacle such as tubing wire and fake plastic tentacles to do all of the physical interaction with the set and actors. they put tape x's and dots in the places that the tentacle was supposed to be on actors bodies or the scenery. The tentacl was then edited in after the inital filming.

the secon really impressive cgi bit was when they chased the tentacles down and the giant octopus revealed itself. they 3d modeled the drain and part of the surrouning city as well as the octopus. the actors parts where filmes in front of a green screen and aded in along with the octopus later. doing that without making any of it look too hokey or obviously fake was very impressive. in the run up to the octopus reveal they also added drains and bits of side walk to the street they where running down.

Monster roll had an over the top 80's or 90's action fill mood. just eccentric and wacky enough to not ruin the seriousness but make it fun. the designs of the monsters and snappy dialouge really add to this.

this was a very good short film and i hope it gets made into a real movie one day. even with a higer budget i think they should keep the effects and cgi similar because it gives it a sor of unreal air thats cool and elevates the over the top nature of the film