The Green Fog

It's incredibly hard to give this film a proper "review", considering it'd be a stretch to even consider this a proper "film" in the first place.

My initial impressions were that this was an amateur sort of "video collage" of random film clips in and around the San Francisco area in a neat-yet-uninteresting montage style. I wasn't impressed, and almost annoyed that I had invested my time in what seemed to essentially be a video collage of San Francisco movie clips.

But then, the intrigue kicked-in once I began to read between the lines and look at the framework. Like any good mystery, all it took was a little detective work to find the roots of a classic buried deep within this experimental little bugger.

In the long run, I find myself impressed by this film for the sheer power of editing, the commitment to creating a certain story from hundreds of clips to make something that felt even vaguely coherent, and additionally the amount of work it must have taken to gather all these clips together in the first place.

That said, I seriously do not recommend entering this expecting a "film". If anything, this is a glorified editing project that has admirable execution. It feels clunky as an experimental piece tends to feel, and for a film that brandishes a brisk run-time of barely over an hour, this still drags in places. Again, simply the pitfalls of this being an experimental art-piece, not really a feature-length film.

It isn't perfect, but as a video editor who admires editing challenges such as this, I can certainly appreciate the artistry that went into this.

Not a great film, but as an art project or exhibit? It's a fun little gem~