Broken. USA 2005. Directed by Alex Ferrari

Alex Ferrari probably has given an enormous amount of hope to aspiring, young filmmakers with his short film Broken. Broken is a great example of pushing the borders of shoestring budget filmmaking, when it comes to looks of the film. Ferrari used a digital video camera which shoots with 24 frames per second, and in case you don't know, it's the same speed with normal, real film. But that is not all you should do for making digital video look like film, as Ferrari tells in one of the many (there are lots of them!) highly interesting extras on this DVD.

Broken itself, is also rather interesting piece of short cinema - although every now and then, one can only pay attention to camerawork and astonishing visual imagery. The plot contains a few quirky characters but all in all it's very simple story: the woman is kidnapped by a stranger and next we know, she is awaken in the dark basement with violent criminals. But there is also another man, coming to rescue her.

There isn't actually much of an originality in the movie itself, but everything is very well done - even the actors and actresses don't give embarrassing moments but do their job actually well here. Ferrari, screenwriter Jorge Rodriguez and other crew members have done tremendous service for other young filmmakers, when the amount of extras first knock you down and then you can learn more from the DVD, than many lectures on the subject of digital moviemaking. I mean, there are pre-production, production, post-production and also subjects of promoting and marketing the film comprehensively covered. Particurarly showing the examples of tricks and effects are highly valuable.

Great fun, and one can learn a lot from it too.

And don't forget to check out the website WhatIsBroken.com.