I’ve been watching Fox’s new reality show “On The Lot” since it aired last week, and while I don’t think the show’s format is very good, I do love the concept (especially if they keep doing it until I get a shot at it).  For those of you who don’t know anything about the show you can check out the official On The Lot website to learn about it.

So far there have been 4 episodes, including two preliminary shows which narrowed the field from 50 to 18,  then the contestants all presented their comedy shorts and finally they had an elimination show where three filmmakers were given the boot.  The first three to go were Claudia La Bianca, Phil Hawkins and Carolina Zorilla de San Martin.  I didn’t really like their shorts that much, but I don’t think they should have been eliminated.  Phil is obviously really good, just maybe not so good with comedy.  But his short looked really cool, well shot.  Claudia also shoot a good looking short, a little weird and not really that funny, but it looked like a real movie.  Carolina also had a well shot short, but I didn’t think it was funny.

I absolutely thought that Kenny Luby should have been kicked off.  His short was stupid, not funny, and really didn’t look very good.  I get the feeling that he thinks the fact he didn’t go to film school makes him more original, but I’m just not sure yet that he can shoot a real film.  If he keeps this up he’ll be gone soon too.  My second least favourite short was Jess Brillhart’s short, so dumb, and no concept whatsoever.  I was shocked that she didn’t get cut.  She is quite pretty, but I would really hope that wouldn’t come into play for the voting.  Finally Hilary Weisman Graham’s short just wasn’t funny.  It looked much better than the other two I just mentioned though.

I really hope the show improves as it goes on, because I didn’t find it that entertaining, and few of the shorts were that good.  I think Adam Stein’s short film “Dance Man” was really funny, as was Sam Friedlander’s “Replication”.  The Canadian special effects wiz Zach Lipovsky is obviously an amazing talent, but my suggestion to him would be careful not to become gimmicky.  Every week people are going to be looking to him to provide a new special effects surprise, and it’s going to be hard to keep raising the bar.  Focusing on other elements of film making might not be a bad idea.  Finally I also thought Marty Martin made a great film, even if it was more of a trailer for a film than anything else.  It proved that he can make something that looks really cool.

Posted by Emmet Gibney on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 11:16 pm.