Wednesday 1 January 2014

My Little Dashie - The Mini Movie review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiBohDujLPs#t=1570
It happened. It finally happened.


I've been waiting for the right moment to discuss My Little Dashie, and now I have the chance. Here we have a fan film that is as much a diamond in the rough as the fanfiction that it's based on. Here, I'll take the chance to discuss all of my thoughts about My Little Dashie as a whole.

On an audio level, the "mini-movie" is basically a reading of the story with accompanying visuals. One of the main issues here is that the narrator they chose is not good at narration. As he flatly reads the inner monologue, he keeps this warm monotone. That's not the big issue, however-that comes when he uses the same voice for his dialogue. He doesn't change emotions. The other voice actors all do a good job, but the main guy really messes up at some parts because of his monotonous reading.

The film only has one human actor, not counting the voices of the animated characters, and his motions aren't entirely convincing. We never see his face, which I found a bit distracting. Shots of the actor's torso got a bit tiring after several minutes. But I suppose that might have something to do with the budget constraints, as they couldn't do many interesting things with the cameras they had. The film is still decently lit and clearly shot, so on that front it gets a pass. More pleasant is that the director had a good idea of where to point said camera whenever it wasn't pointed at the protagonist, which made the film nice to look at.

The real star here is the ponies that are edited in with film footage. It's seamless. The ponies are animated extremely well, lit in ways that work with their surroundings, and generally pasted in a way that works with their surroundings. It looks fantastic. Sure, they're still animated, so you don't believe that they're actually there, but it's as close as it could be.

Now, being a VERY faithful adaptation, it keeps the many, many flaws of My Little Dashie. It's quite apparent that the person who wrote the story is not a talented writer. His style includes a number of awkward, cringe-inducing lines that occasionally threatened to take me out of the story, and his stream-of-consciousness, monologue-heavy style results in Rainbow being severely underdeveloped, which, coupled with the brutal sentimentality, may cause some to find disturbing implications in the story. Personally, I didn't find too many. I found the core of the story genuinely touching, and the sentimentality had a feeling of sincerity to it that made it work despite its excesses. I understand some may not like the story, or even be a little disturbed by it, but I genuinely do enjoy it, despite its many issues.

As an adaptation, My Little Dashe - The Mini Film works. It has its own flaws, but they can be overlooked considering the amount of effort that went into its best elements. If you like the story, you'll like the film. If you don't, the film probably won't be to your tastes. For me, it worked. I like the story, even if it is bogged down by poor writing, and so I found this film enjoyable. With this, the new year is off to a great start.

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