One Number 2 (2003)
Film:
DVD:

Written & Directed by Todd G. Bieber & Juliana Brafa
Starring Kyle Brosius, Stephen Brafa, Mat Shaffer, Lauren Kraus, Michael Leibel

Features:

• Making-of featurette: a how-to guide for no-budget films
  
• Slideshow commentary by writer/directors Bieber & Brafa
  
• Outtakes
  
• Trailer
  
• Deleted scenes
  
• Lewisberg, Pennsylvania "video postcard"
  
• Interview with Bieber & Brafa from "The Todd Bieber Show"
  
• Short film: "How a Girl Stepped On Her Own Butt"
  
• Commercial for Flexible Frame T-shirts
  
• Intro from the 2003 Flexible Frame Film Exhibition

Released by Flexible Frame
Rating: NR (suitable for all audiences)
Region: 1
Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format.

My Advice: Rent it if you want a decent student film.

An accident causes a pencil to roll out of a truck and off into its own adventure. Before it's through, it will help create a work of art, write a suicide note, and invade some random people's navels. Oh, and it'll have a part to play in the rescue of a white rabbit.

This film clocks in at around twenty minutes and was produced for eight hundred bucks. The fact that the filmmakers did this over a three month period while in school and working shows the level of testicular fortitude that they can muster: I mean, let's face it, they created a film. How many of us can say that? Fitts, sit down, I see you in back there. Jesus.

As a short film that covers, per the filmmakers' intent, many different types of scenes and multiple stories as the pencil makes its way through the narrative, some of the bits succeed...and some don't. Part of the problem is that sometimes the writing is just too "on the nose." An extended sequence in a library discussing books that are read or not read and why they're like people, is somewhere on the opposite side of subtle. However, some bits are excellent and intriguing. A young student who seems to really like her food, for one, and a fry cook who seems to have had just about enough of the world--these sequences work and work well. Some are just so bizarre that you can't help but laugh, like the idea that your girlfriend's father could find you at some random phone booth and send you on a quest to save a rabbit's life. Of course, that devolves into overstatement when they try to hammer home the rabbit's name. It's Harmony--get it? GET IT??? Still, like I said, there's some good stuff to be had here and the filmmakers show that they have some serious potential.

This DVD presentation takes some serious balls, though. To throw together a list of features and bonus stuff that rivals a lot of feature films? I respect that. Be warned, though, for these too are a mixed bag. On the extremely useful and clever side of the house is a featurette where Beiber tries to empower the viewer to go make their own damn movie. Any time somebody tries to arm somebody else with the knowledge that they too can produce art...hell, I like that. And I must say that the way they went about creating the camera crane they used in the movie...too damn cool. I don't even shoot films and I want to go make one. Also amusing is the commercial for their company's T-shirts, which promotes wearing the shirt over being naked and cold. No, I'm serious.

The directors' commentary slideshow isn't a bad idea--they didn't want to use up the space on the disc to record another audio track, they said, so they throw up slides while they're talking about the movie so that you can at least get a sense of where the hell they are. Better than nothing, right? Well, not exactly. The slides get ahead of the commentary so that you're completely out of sync with what Beiber and Brafa are watching, and some of the slides needed to be changed. For example, did we really need to be looking up Gary Grant's nostrils for that long?

The video postcard shows you locations from the shoot, and the short(er) film, "How A Girl..." is amusing, but it's really just to show you that A) One Number 2 originally started out as a smaller concept and 2) you really can shoot and edit movies quicker than hell. It's not bad, but it's a posterity thing--you've pretty much seen a very similar film already, so all that's left is a one-note gag.

The rest of the bonus features all strike me as juvenilia--film students goofing off and doing stuff that they think is hilarious. I'm sure that in context of what they were doing, it was. But for the average viewer, there's no benefit to them. Taken in that light, I can't smack it around too much--because this is what happens when people are young and in possession of a camera with intent to use it.

I know it seems like I'm beating this one with a crowbar, but not really. It's a cute film that needs polish, but it still has merit. The best thing about it is that it was made by some very earnest young folks who seem to want nothing more than to make films until their brains fall out. So I'm looking forward to see what comes next.