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This month our panel discuss Richard Linklater's innovative adaptation of the Philip K Dick novel, A Scanner Darkly
CR: What were your initial impressions of the film?
Philip: I think the film started really, really well - the opening scene with the bugs. It set up something which never really developed. The film really became about conversations and paranoia. I'd like to read the book. The film had, I thought, a certain quietness and steadiness to it that was interesting but would perhaps have been more interesting had they not drawn all over it. There is a cheap joke that the technique probably added more to Keanu Reeves' performance than was originally there on film.
Fred: It's a good joke! It's interesting that the cast, they're all big names - but they're all slightly past their prime. They're all playing teenagers - or early 20-somethings for sure - yet they're probably all in their 40s so I'm sure the technique was a plus here.
CR: Does the Rotoscoping technique work for you? Was it done well/ convincingly?
FD: I felt very comforted by watching this multi-million pound Hollywood blockbuster. Having made lots of Rotoscoped motion image myself I know that it's a fucker getting perspective right during a camera pan - and they couldn't solve it either. Parts of it look pretty amateurish really, very clunky. And the scramble suits were not very convincing either.
PH: Visually the effect of the scramble suits felt really annoying because you stop believing that anyone would be able to cope with this without the entire office going insane - if everyone you're talking to looks like that then I don't know how you'd get through the day! There were scenes where they'd rendered the backgrounds in 3D and it held true, and others where it was like watching Mr Ben.
One of the most annoying things to me was the feeling that someone was just sitting there desperately going through available filters and that weird posterising thing going on - which sometimes bugged the hell out of me. I...