All Film Production Students - Watch and AVOID Same Mistakes

This film is a must see for film students. The sheer number of factual errors, dreadful dialogue, shoddy camera work, horrific audio and just silly acting creates a perfect roadmap of all the pitfalls that should be avoided when you try to make a film people will want to see.

It's clear the producers had severe cash problems from the beginning and had no problem going the Ed Wood route - make the film at any cost. What's ironic is, the end product was very much like an Ed Wood movie - very bad but slighly amusing. Honestly, this is the greatest pitfall any movie can run into and if you find yourself in the same boat (har har har), STOP and reevaluate whether this is the time, cast and crew for your movie, your "vision". No money means someone, somewhere knows something you don't and you simply may have to pick another project you want to work on.

Let's pretend they went way way way overbudget on special effects. I just can't see how that's possible but let's pretend anyway. Another pitfall is to go for eye candy instead of quality plot, acting and sound. You can have the most wonderful looking movie (Koyaanisqatsi for instance) but if there's nothing else to engage the audience, the film is doomed. Koyaanisqatsi was a rare exception to this rule, Glass's score and expert use of audio and visual tempo created the only film with 0 acting that I've ever loved. Just try recreating it..I dare you!

What "sank" this movie for me though (I can't stop with the puns!) was the audio. In an early scene when Lamas' crew has been taken captive, they're all in some kind of "green room" awaiting their introduction to Captain Nemos. The audio pickup in that scene is SO BAD it had to be the result of a single compressed mic, hung from the ceiling off center somewhere. The remainder of the film is as bad if not worse. With another $200 or so in the budget, they could have used off the shelf audio production software to DRAMATICALLY improve the audio in this film.

As for the remaining elements of the standard film, I'll leave you with the best review I've ever read of 30,000 Leagues. It's from an author who goes by jleonard201 on Rotten Tomatoes. He says: "Please, don't waste your time on this one. There is better acting in Porn movies." Agreed. In fact, I think I'll toss one one right now and actually enjoy myself. :)