Between Classes - new IMS

[milowent]

basic comedy/drama based on the tried and true high school genre. definitely a low-budget production. three episodes up so far, it gave me a few chuckles even though there's much room for improvement.

www.between-classes.com/

www.myspace.com/betweenclasses

Appears to be filmed somewhere in New Jersey (all in the same hallway of the nondescript school, really), the actors and creator are all in their early 20s. so its like a nicer version of Clerks/Mallrats.

[hyemew]

Wow, the front page of their website is a PATHETIC immitation of the cover of the Breakfast club.
The kids at my school newspaper did the same thing back in December and it came out MUCH better. Then again, the graniness of the Between Classes one and the pathetic cutting job that was done sure doesn't help their case either. That only makes it look even worse than it already is, there's simply no grace to their picture.

EDIT: I watched episode two (but turned out to be the pilot). I liked "Jennifer"'s acting, brief though it was, but not anyone else's. The principal-type guy was especially bad. I enjoyed the cut scene with the power outtage.

Very odd how their opening credits appear literally halfway through the episode...

MORE EDIT: In fact, when you consider the end credits and ensuing black screen probably take up close to a minute and don't include them in the total runtime, the opening credits actually end somewhere near the 3/4th point through the show.

[milowent]

hye, i don't know that it a carbon copy of the breakfast club pose, the most obvious tribute to it is the fist placement mimicing emilio estevez.



it's not claiming to be a slick hollywood production. i mean, we give nikki bower and other poorly filmed lg15 fanfic some slack on this kind of stuff too, and still enjoy it.

when you cut out the opening little piece, and the "start credits" (which do fall about 1/2 way thru), and the end credits, each of these is probably 3-4 minutes long. they might up viewership if they ditch the extra stuff (keep it in the pilot) so people can watch the episodes faster without the fluff.

[hyemew]

Well we've got the Molly Ringwald lay across too. perhaps they aren't all attempting to mimic it, but two of them are. It would have turned out better keeping the background in to theirs, because the cutting around their heads and extremities isn't great and it's especially bad in the places that are holes in the middle.
I don't know, I don't hate this. I give them props especially for somehow commendeering a school not to mention the extras you see walking around in each scene, sometimes 4 or 5 which is quite a lot for something so ameteur. They definitely put a lot into it, though they should have invested in a better camera and perhaps found a way to not have it be so dark.

These episodes go fast, really fast. I just watched the B.F.F. one and it seemed like it was gone before it was over. Especially problematic with the whole entrance theme at the middle is you expect there to be a considerable amount of show left, but really by that point it's hit the climax and the resolution is what comes after the opening credits. Before you know it the end credits roll. Now that I've seen an episode with Ari, I find him to be an even worse actor than Mr McGinnis, and the lead guy I still haven't made up my mind on. Sometimes he's good, though there are a lot of cases where I think it could have been acted better.
Also in the B.F.F. episode when the teacher sits him down and has a talk about his problems (which was funny because he said "wait I think I can help you" before actually hearing what the problem was), the lead zones off and pays no attention to the advice. The voice-over in his head says "maybe I shouldn't give him such a hard time... nahh!"
While cliche, I think that could have worked well if his thinking self shook his head "nahh" along with the voice-over. That would be a little hard to synch up of course, but if you just recorded his daydreaming for a significantly more than needed time, overlaid the sound, and then started cutting off the beginning a few seconds at a time until the appropriate parts overlap it wouldn't have been hard to do. Instead, what we have is his internal self thinking "nahh!" but externally there is not even any sort of registering on his face that he's thinking anything like that. I think it would have been much more effective with something like that, even if in reality people might not always actually outwardly react to their inner thoughts, just seems appropriate.
Haha, random comments and criticisms. After all that, it does have me wanting to watch another, and while episodes 4 & 5 are listed, they aren't actually up for some reason. Also episode 2 is a broken link, so there are only two to actually watch.

[wixy15]

Not terrible, but it isn't great. Nothing of much ineterest really, a bit like Eastenders I guess. Production is sloppy, acting is poor, might watch it for a while but it seems fairly dull to me.