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TheIndependentCritic.com - B+ - Review by Richard Propes

MicroFilmmakerMagazine.com - 8.8 (out of 10) - Jeremy Hanke

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TheIndependentCritic.com - B+ - Review by Richard Propes

I still look back and smile.

It's a brief period of my life that not too many of my friends even know about. I was on the air at a local college radio station, serving primarily as their news announcer with occasional feature pieces.

I'd been reprimanded more than once...justifiably so. I had a tendency to stretch the news. Okay, I had a tendency to lie.

They were little lies. Fun lies. Still, they were lies.

Among those who listened to me, I will always be known as THAT guy...the guy who went TOO far before going too far was actually the norm. I'd begun a strange little feature that I would frequently throw in anytime a really dramatic killing occurred. It was called "Lifestyles of the Sick and Perverted."

I found it hilarious. Administration disagreed.

One day, I crossed the line. A nurse had been murdered and, well, I just couldn't stop myself. I spewed forth with "Lifestyles of the Sick and Perverted- An Exclusive Tour of Richard Speck's Closet."

That was my last day on the air.

So, I must confess that I found myself watching "White Out," written and directed by David B. Grelck, with a healthy mixture of schoolboy glee and sympathetic appreciation.

Nick Watson (Jonathan Legat) is in his final night of hosting "Reality," a four-year-old show on Norwalk University's WSKO. Nick is graduating mid-semester and, in a mere 19 days, scheduled to marry his longtime girlfriend, Michelle Fullmer (Stephanie Wyatt). While his show, once a controversial and timely staple of local radio, has largely become a tired series of not so intriguing "reality" topics, it has remained one of WSKO's most popular programs. His co-host, Andy Wolcienski (Eric Lipe), has carried the show's energy for the past couple years and is soon to be rewarded with the show itself. Nick's longtime producer, Hannah (Michelle Higgins), is an obvious mixture of emotions and there exists long unsubstantiated rumors of the undeniable sexual tension between Nick and Hannah.

When Nick receives a tip from an anonymous caller that his soon-to-be-wife has been cheating on him with Norwalk's star quarterback, the combination of his pending nuptials, stress over leaving his job for an unsure future in a new city and a raging blizzard that is paralyzing the city snowballs into one unforgettable final night on the air for Nick Watson and everyone who crosses his path.

It is up to Nick to rise above his rage, but there's not much more dangerous than a betrayed and angry man with a microphone. Thus, the journey begins.

The majority of "White Out" occurs within the span of a radio show that stretches from four to twelve hours as the perfect storm brews both outside and inside the studio. A drama mixed with cathartic touches of humor, "White Out" works because it blends just enough touches of reality with a theme that is likely to resonate with anyone who has ever experienced or actually been an unfaithful partner.

Nick vacillates between righteous rage, desires for humiliation, attempts at forgiveness and utter despair throughout this stormy night and, by night's end, truths have been spilled, secrets spoken and FCC rules have been shattered into tiny pieces.

As the devastated DJ, Jonathan Legat ("Fate Twisted Simply") manages to humanize Nick by blending together nicely his humanity with his rage even as he's completely humiliating his former wife-to-be on the air. While there were moments that cried out for a touch more vulnerability than he offered, Legat's controlled performance kept Nick from ever becoming such an over-the-top caricature that his behavior became unbelievable.

As the co-host relishing the opportunity to take over the show, Eric Lipe ("Drive Radio")proves to be a solid co-hort for Nick's more manic, pointed energy with a more grounded, intellectual and thoughtful style that, at times, provided "White Out" with just the right amount of sincerity and sarcasm.

With the manic, testosterone-driven energy offered by Legat and Lipe, Michelle Higgins'("Irving Renquist, Ghost Hunter") emotionally resonant take on Hannah adds just the perfect anchor for "White Out" to unfold as a richly compelling and resonant drama.

Credit goes to Grelck for staging "White Out" almost exclusively within the confines of a radio studio and, thus, giving the relationships a strong sense of intimacy that both enhances their connection and our connection to them. By film's end, it is nearly impossible to not care about the futures unfolding for Nick, Hannah, Andy and, yes, even Michelle.

Filmed on an ultra-indie budget under $10,000, "White Out" only occasionally suffers from the obvious limits of such a low budget. Outside scenes woven into the fabric of the film are a tad distracting, both because they distract from the film's humanity and because the scenes themselves don't reflect accurately the storm as it is described throughout the night.

Kudos to Grelck for a script that takes a very relatable human drama and maintaining its sense of authenticity. While I appreciated Grelck's addressing the FCC issue through Hannah's numerous interventions, the lack of resolution at film's end had me wondering if Nick himself would ever be allowed on the radio again after enough FCC violations to bankrupt Norwalk University.

While the ending feels a tad predictable and abrupt, the journey taken during "White Out" makes it all worthwhile.

The Independent Critic has long been dedicated to promoting student and independent filmmakers. I love the opportunity to view and review films from budding filmmakers and tomorrow's cinematic voices. Sometimes, it is immensely challenging to fairly review low-budget films from beginning filmmakers. Other times, I just sit back in awe at the cinematic miracles that can unfold on budgets that wouldn't pay for the toilet paper on a Peter Jackson film.

Behind strong performances from relative newcomers Michelle Higgins, Jonathan Legat and Eric Lipe, "White Out" is an emotionally satisfying and intellectually compelling film from first-time filmmaker David B. Grelck.

Now, then, let me get back to Richard Speck's closet.

 

Postscript. Richard Propes has mentioned "White Out" several times on his website, but most recently (and noticibly) in his review of the Kate Beckinsale film "Whiteout." Excerpts follow:

Do you remember how I proclaimed in my commentary "10 Fall Films That Are Really Gonna' Suck" that Kate Beckinsale's new flick "Whiteout" shouldn't be confused with what would likely be a vastly superior film, "White Out," directed by Dave Grelck.

I nailed it again.

With only a couple thousand bucks, Grelck managed to create a "White Out" that is intelligent, involving, entertaining, well acted and, considering the film's paltry budget, technically sound.

Millions of dollars, the backing of Warner Brothers and the presence of Kate Beckinsale can't salvage "Whiteout" from being a cinematically blinding, stupidly written, horrifically directed piece of Hollywood crap that only begs the question "Can't Kate Beckinsale read?

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Why am I so ruthlessly ticked off about this bottom of the heap action flick? There's no denying it's similarity in title to Grelck's superior film has something to do with it. While talented directors like Grelck struggle to survive outside Hollywood on sporadic theatrical showings, festival appearances and occasional competitions, hack directors like Sena manage to find work again and again despite never having created a single film worth watching.

Yes, it ticks me off.

Fortunately, Grelck's "White Out" did find a distribution deal and will be out on DVD on RSquared Films December 1st, but the gap in filmmaking opportunities is still rather irritating, at least for this critic who would rather see a well made $2,000 film over a multi-million dollar trash heap any day of the week.

Okay, I'm done ranting now.

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MicroFilmmakerMagazine.com - 8.8 (out of 10) - Jeremy Hanke

It’s the last night of the semester at a college radio station in a small college town in the midwest. Radio personality Nick Watson (Jonathan C. Legat), his co-host, Andy Wolcienski (Eric Lipe), and show producer, Hannah Lorenz (Michelle Higgins), strap themselves in for one last show of the aptly named series, “Reality.” After the show concludes, Nick will graduate and, shortly thereafter, marry his college sweetheart, Michelle (Stephanie Wyatt), and move up in the world, by relocating to Chicago.

Shortly into their last show two pivotal things occur. First, Nick gets a call from an anonymous caller stating that his fiancée is having an affair on him; second, the snowstorm that’s been brewing outside becomes a blizzard, dumping many feet of snow on them in a very short period of time, which prevents him or his co-workers from leaving the radio station. Trapped in the radio station with all his feelings of betrayal, Nick must attempt to work through his despair and fury, with no one to relieve his radio shift until they can be (eventually) dug out. Since he’s on the air on a show called “Reality”, he feels that the best course of action is to air his fiancée’s indiscretion publicly and work through the “reality” of what he’s going through in real-time.

Despite her private reservations, his producer allows him to do so, provided he can stay within FCC guidelines as far as language goes. He walks a fine line of exposition that often threatens to alienate everyone around him and nearly gets the cord pulled on his show by Hanna, and it slowly becomes apparent that Michelle isn’t the only one with secrets.

Content
The writing in this movie is pretty smart and tight, with Writer/Director David B. Grelck achieving a very Kevin-Smith style of pacing and feel that often reminds me of Clerks, if it had been set in a radio station and not at the QwikStop, that is. (Considering both White Out and Clerks dealing with dysfunctional relationships, betrayal, the perceived need to better ourselves for someone else, and a fear of embracing needed change, there are more than just surface similarities between the two films.)

Actor Jonathan C. Legat does an inspired job of animating the extremely agitated Nick, whose diatribes are constantly on the edge of soliloquy, yet rarely get too mired in this form of performance. (He reminded me quite a bit of a young, blonde-haired John Cusack in this role.) In one especially impressive sequence that Legat engages in, which is part acting and part camerawork/lighting, he goes through Gollum-like tirade in a bathroom. (The Gollum scene being referenced here is a scene in LOTR: The Two Towers where Gollum argues with Sméagol, his more innocent half, with the filmmakers/animators using different camera angles and cuts to make his two personalities seem like two different physical people.) In the sequence, two parts of Nick’s personality (the fair/balanced and the angry/self-righteous) argue with one another in a mirror, with different perspectives and lighting being used for each of his personality points. Cool blue lighting is chosen to complement the rational side of his personality while angry, festering green lighting is used to highlight the obsessed, jealous part of his personality.

Michelle Higgins, who took a little bit of heat for her often two-dimensional performance in last month’s Irving Renquist: Ghost Hunter, fully redeems herself as the strangely troubled, fully-fleshed out show producer, Hannah Lorenz. She manages to equally play the hard-nosed producer who is trying to keep Nick from bringing down FCC fines, and the old friend who is trying to keep him from doing something that could destroy his life. Her character’s private worries and concerns are stamped on her face through much of the film in a very authentic and realistic manner. And unlike in Irving Renquist, when she’s angry, it isn’t a uniform, melodramatic anger, but is instead the realistic mixture of emotions that happens to flow out as anger at times because of stress, fear, and concern.

The only onscreen actor who had believability issues was Eric Lipe, whose Andy Wolcienski character often seemed to be trying to get all the words of a particular verbal barrage out in a single breath. Fortunately, about a third of the way through the film, he was able to get his feet under him and come into his own in the part, presenting a believable foil to Watson. (While this covers the onscreen characters, there were a number of off-screen characters that have performance issues. I would say about half of the radio callers have believability problems, sounding entirely too much like they’re simply reading from a script, rather than actually asking a question or making a real point. Hopefully, now that the movie has been picked up by Boll AG for distribution, some of these callers could be re-recorded to have a more natural and believable performance.)

Spoiler Alert!
The overall story arch of this film works pretty well and arouses interest in where it is going and how it will all finally end. However, there is one element of pacing that needs to be brought up because it is the one thing that stops the movie cold: a love scene.

Towards the end of the film, we find out that Nick has his own affair-related secret, which is fully explained through dialogue, brief flashbacks, some more dialogue, a full flashback, and then still more dialogue. The problem with this is that love scenes are acts of passion, working best in some form of a linear storyline, where they naturally flow from a date or some other story event. White Out isn’t linear in that sense; rather it is about three people trapped in a limbo where they are talking out their problems from the past. The limbo in this case is the radio station, where the host makes a point of verbalizing everything that’s happening over the air. (In fact, the story structure is SO tied to the radio station and this show that the movie’s ending is simultaneous with the eventual end of Nick’s show.) As such, when he has a private flashback that goes on for a number of minutes, that shows all the specifics of how this love scene went down, it breaks the entire film’s structure of being in the here-and-now. While you can get away with a few mini-flashbacks without stopping a film like this and breaking the flow, even short flashbacks aren’t really necessary, as the acting in the here-and-now is more than sufficient to sell the gravity of the scene. Moreover, once it’s been revealed that Nick’s indiscretion has happened, the audience immediately ceases to care about exactly how it occurred, but instead wants to see how it affects his current situation and what the underlying reasons are—as he looks back on it now. As Nick’s partner in the flashback is an attractive person, I can understand why Grelck chose to originally include this scene, but, in my opinion, it really needs to get cut if the story’s pacing is to be as good as it can get.

The final ending of the film doesn’t need to be spoiled, as it works pretty well. The director mentioned that there used to be an extended ending, which I personally would have preferred, but the current one is still strong and leaves a few more questions than the other ending does, without being too ambiguous. (Hopefully the collector’s edition of the DVD will include some of these additional endings.)

Visual Look
The overall visual look of White Out is very impressive. Shot with the Indie-standard, the Panasonic AG-DVX100B, the film shows that you can get a very good look for a film without going into HD cameras. (And, in fact, since the DVX100B’s imaging sensors are much more sensitive to light than the HD HVX200, the dimmer environments of the radio station were able to be recorded well.) The costuming of the different characters was believable and the set really looked like they had commandeered a radio station for as long as they needed it. Camera shots were quite impressive, especially considering the close confines of a radio station, featuring lots of XCUs (extreme close ups), like an especially stylistic shot which frames part of Nick’s face right beside the on-air microphone. The lighting was nicely serviceable throughout the films, and the specialty lighting mentioned in the Content section for the Golem-scene was quite impressive.

The introductory credits were nicely put together, with simple, yet professional fly out animations that allow the credits to dissolve into space as they fly off the screen. The final credits were well designed and easy to read.

Use of Audio
The one area of this movie that sticks out like a sore thumb is the audio. Now, does it stick out like a sore thumb because it’s awful? No. Instead, it sticks out like a sore thumb because the rest of the production feels so professional that when the audio has issues, it tends to jar you out of the story. Audio issues were something that Grelck and the entire WDBG crew struggled with in Irving Renquist: Ghost Hunter and, while it’s not as problematic in this movie, as it was in IR: GH, it still is a problem that can only be prevented in future films by taking a close look at mic placement and realizing that audio on a film is fully 70% of what makes a film watchable to audiences. (Any doubt about the veracity of that claim can be answered by looking at the popularity of The Blair Witch Project and, more recently, the Bourne Supremacy, both of which had nausea-inducing visuals, but extremely polished audio.)

Where the audio issues arise is in the overall mixing of the film and in excess background noise recorded in certain scenes because the boom mic was too far from the talent (or because additional equipment was running in the background).

Currently, the vocal volume of the main actors is often so different, in volume levels, that the movie is all but unwatchable on a mono-audio TV, unless you are constantly riding the audio levels with a remote. You can watch the film and understand what’s being said in the soft parts, without blowing out your eardrums on the loud parts, if you watch it in a more 3D audio space, such as can be achieved through the stereo/surround speakers of a good home theater or a quality pair of headphones. To solve the volume issues would require tighter mixing of the dialogue on the center channel and bringing the volumes of the dialogue closer to –12 Db.

As to the second problem, the background noise isn’t so extreme as to require ADR, so it should be able to be dealt with via a number of noise removal software packages, most of which can be purchased in plug-in format, like Bias’ Sound Soap Pro or Sony Noise Removal. (Since this film was edited on Vegas, which originally started out as an audio editing program, there are actually greater numbers of audio plug-ins available for it than most other video editing programs.) For future films, the amount of unwanted background noise can be eliminated by (a) turning off all possible background machinery, including A/C, when shooting and (b) placing your shotgun mic’s business end between 1 ½ to 2 ½ feet from your talent’s lips. (For more on this, check out our article on the essential basics of audio production for no-budget films.)

As this film was recently purchased for distribution by Boll AG, hopefully they will pay for the noise removal and audio mixing so that White Out can be the best it possibly can be. (If so, then it will share another thing in common with Clerks, as much of the release budget for Clerks, once it was purchased, went into professional audio mixing.)

One area that was really quite impressive in the audio department was the lineup of independent music artists that were chosen for the soundtrack on this film. Since the film takes place in a radio station, it makes sense that a lot of music would be in the film, and the music chosen serves to build the quirky feel of the film and undergirds some of the more emotional sections. Most of the audio levels on the music are pretty good, although a few times the music gets a little loud when it’s supposed to be serving as a bed (underlying music that is played beneath dialogue). To fix this, mix music that serves as a bed to about –18 Db with the dialogue at –12 Db. If there is no dialogue, music is usually raised to –12 Db.

Use of Budget
Considering the actual film was shot for about $1,000, with the remaining $4,000 going to post expenses, like hard drives, better editing gear, festival submissions, and digibeta masters (for distribution with Boll AG), Grelck and company made great use of their money. Since most everyone worked for free, with the main actors signing backend deals if the film was purchased for distribution, the actual production budget went toward food, batteries, tapes, and the like. To further save money, they shot all of the radio station footage at the old Northwestern University radio station in just two days--a Friday and Saturday. (In that regard, it's nothing like Clerks, which took three weeks to shoot.)

Lasting Appeal
As White Out asks pretty deep questions about why we get into relationships, what lies we keep from ourselves, why we do the things we do, and what risks we’re unwilling to take, it is a movie that has a lot of lasting appeal. Fans of the irreverent musings of Kevin Smith will definitely enjoy Grelck’s work in this film, as will most people who’ve worked in a radio station or found out their fiancée was cheating on them. (Believe it or not, I actually have a friend who was a DJ at a country music station who got a call from his fiancée telling him that she was cheating on him right before he went on air. His response was not nearly as exciting as Nick’s in this film, but it just goes to show that these topics clearly deal with some common themes in our society.)

Overall Comment
White Out is a strong film from David B. Grelck and his little band of rebels from WDBG, with stand out performances from both Jonathan C. Legat and Michelle Higgins. While it struggles with a few audio difficulties and one pacing concern, if the distribution company is amenable, these problems can be fixed nicely in post. For filmmakers who want to see a very competent production on a very limited budget, this should be an inspiration to them. For film lovers who like Kevin Smith films or who like dynamic, exploratory comedies, White Out should be a no brainer to pick up.