Spin (2005) dir. Jamin Winans
Even the most agnostic of filmgoers have to acknowledge the presence of a all-powerful being in the movies. God thy name is screenwriter, and the more your presence is visible, the more your power is doubtful.
The early-to-mid 2000s were an exciting time for shorts and a harmful time for the eyes. Advances in digital cameras meant new options for filmmakers on a budget. You could make a film that didn’t require the purchase of raw film stock, lab fees or a working knowledge of a light meter to get proper exposure. Plus – this was the newest twist – you could shoot something that didn’t look like either a home movie or a PBS educational show. You had access to 24 frames per second, a realm previously only accessible to film cameras. Unfortunately, this was also an era before DSLRs like the Canon Mark I made other features like higher resolution, more color information, and interchangeable lenses affordable to the budget filmmaker. Low-budget shorts and features from this time period, when the only studio films being shot digitally were either Star Wars prequels or Once Upon A Time in Mexico, are as distinctive-looking as Poloroid photographs but without the benefit of nostalgia.
Still, it was a boon to a wave of new filmmakers like today’s clever auteur, Jamin Winans, a super-independent writer/director working out of Colorado. Winans is probably best known for his micro-budget sci-fi drama Ink, released four years after this short. Ink would retain and improve on a couple tricks from “Spin,” including the use of reversed clips in an action sequence. It would also, in one scene, recall his fondness for the type of belabored Rube Goldberg-esque action that reveals the hand of the Almighty Screenwriter.
Here we find strength in the short form, where an idea – that the roll of a basketball can lead to disaster, greater disaster, even greater disaster, or happiness for all – doesn’t overstay its welcome. The execution gets sloppy at times, relying on some goofy insert shots of objects flying across empty screen space to land in just the right (or wrong) place. And leaving aside the likelihood of these people occupying the same ten square meters, the only thematic connection between an elderly couple dancing and a rather unconvincing group of thugs making peace is pretty facile.
But it’s all over in the few flicks of the switch and scratches of the record (I love the Aronofsky-inspired assembly and disassembly of the turntables). A nice rhythm in the final moments leaves us on a high note. As a film, there’s plenty to improve. As a calling card, it shows a filmmaker who only needed the barest of digital resources to jump into the deep end of the pool. If Colin Trevarrow could get the keys to the Jurassic Park franchise after Safety Not Guaranteed, when does Winans’s phone get a ring?
