If there is one Independent film I've seen this year that looked like it was made in a Hollywood studio it would be "Broken". In a nutshell "Broken" puts most Independent films to shame. Made on only a budget of a mere eight thousand dollars, "Broken" looks like it's budget was a million dollars. I don't get it, I get sent indie film's that have budgets of over ten grand, and they look like complete crap. I honestly can't stress to my readers enough about how great this film looks.To get a sense of the plot, it has a scenario very similar to "Reservoir Dogs" and it has a Tarantino style to it. However the look of the film kind of reminds me of "Saw". However when I mention those films don't think that "Broken" is along the same storyline it does in fact hold it's own. But the situation's used are very similar to the films just mentioned. In a way I feel compelled not to give away the plot of this film, as I believe that every self proclaimed indie filmmaker out there should see this film and see what a real indie filmmaker can do with such a small budget.Now as far as directing, acting, and script go, for the most part everything was nothing but top notch. The Special Effects are probably the best effects ever used in a low budget short film ever. The production value is that of a Hollywood film and I can't stress that enough. Now getting back to the acting I did have one problem with it; towards the end of the film, their was one scene where I felt the acting was a bit flat, but it's nothing that I think most people would notice. I mean I notice these things, but hey, that's what I do.Overall "Broken" is a great achievement in Independent Cinema. It's not really a horror film however, more of an Action, Sci-fi. But it is probably the best short film I've ever seen. I see a great future ahead for Alex Ferrari and the cast and crew from "Broken".Horror Bob

Bored with Hollywood's standard methods of operation, Alex Ferrari took it upon himself to make a film on his own with a measly budget and see if he could pull it off just as well as the studios. Aside from the fact that it's only twenty minutes in length, I think he has succeeded. With only eight grand in his pocket, Ferrari found some really talented actors, a SFX team to marvel at and edited the film beautifully all with the helpful hand of his co-writer and producer Jorge F. Rodriguez. Oh, and I can't leave out the musical score. It really sounds professional and adds a lot of emotional depth to the story.A woman wakes up in the middle of the night to find an intruder in her house, she is tied up and taken to a base to meet her adversary and his cronies. But there's something more to this woman than meets the...eye. What is it? Maybe what lurks in the shadows has the answer. Is it something to fear, or something to hope for? Guns and weapons abound in this suspenseful and disturbing action/thriller. To say much more than that about the plot, would spoil things. But let's take this thing apart shall we?First off, the environment and effect shots. Wow! He did all this with $8000? Very impressive. The lighting is just sweet. For some reason it reminded me of places within The Matrix. Yet this setting has a feel all its own. Seriously, check out these locales. The gun fighting has a unique style and the people don't simply fall over dead when getting shot. There are interesting angles and camera movements as the bullets fly and hit their mark.Second, the characters and the actors who bring them to life. The evil Duncan is for sure the bright spot among the characters. Creepy and obviously disturbed, he really brings life to the film and is the character you really want to keep your eye on. The young girl who finds herself in this predicament is also pretty good in this role. With limited screen time (I say limited because of the length of the film), she makes the most of it and has us asking for more. There is obviously some interesting depth to her past. The one drawback to the film is the fact that there are all of these other interesting looking fellows standing around who are not explored thoroughly enough. For example, the tattooed Indian-looking fellow who gives up his guns for an obvious talent for throwing knives. Unfortunately he is dispatched before we get to see much of his talent. The same goes for a number of interesting looking "gangsters." I especially liked Marquez and her duel wielding fully automatic barettas.I wish there was more to the movie. It was really good but left me wanting more. More characterization, more back story and more explanation as it ultimately doesn't make much sense. However, the fact that it left me wanting more, proves its remarkability. Unanswered questions are sometimes what makes a movie worthy of seeing. It gives you something to talk about afterwards. Not the usual, "it was okay." There's really something to discuss while the credits role. What this movie really needs now, is a prequel. Anyone who sees this film, will pay extra for that.I've never before reviewed a short film. The only experience I have with them are the shorts before Pixar films and the few that I have caught while channel surfing past IFC. Oh, and "Bambi vs. Godzilla. But I digress; although most of what is seen in "Broken" is not really anything new, it is new if you consider the fact that it was done so quickly and cheaply and without the help from a major studio; and done just as well as Hollywood, if not better, in many respects. The action sequence was directed/edited so superbly and was so much fun that it reminded me a little of the bar fight in "Desperado." I hope that I explained it well enough to encourage everyone to check out this film if you can track it down. It takes less time than watching an episode of The Simpsons, but packs twice the punch.

Director Alex Ferrari and producer Jorge Rodriguez, a film-making duo that hails straight from Hollywood - Hollywood, Fla., that is - recently joined the wave of ultra-low-budget proto- Spielbergs with their short film Broken, an action/sci-fi piece complete with explosions, automatic weapons, and a stylish, neo-noir look that isn't all that far removed from its main stylistic inspiration, the Matrix trilogy. The pair sent a copy our way, and we were so impressed we had to chat with them about how their dark little tale came to light.Pre-productionBroken began as a story concept that Ferrari developed as a college student (these days, he runs a post-production facility called The Enigma Factory), which he pulled out of the drawer and brought to his partner Rodriguez in the hopes of collaborating on a complete short script. Ferrari says the project was sparked by a viewing of famously cost-conscious action filmmaker Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon a Time in Mexico - "He's one of my main inspirations, and when I saw what he did with that film - a fairly low-budget action movie that looked as good as one much more expensive - and I said, 'I could do that.'" As the pair began to further develop Broken, they tailored it specifically to allow for the best-looking special effects they could design and afford. "Through the entire process I was already thinking about the visual effects," Ferrari says, "I was writing around visual effects that I knew we could do."One early coup for the filmmakers was finding a location that not only suited the story Ferrari and Rodriguez already had, but also allowed them to develop some cool-looking scenes they hadn't originally envisioned. Broken was shot at the A.G. Holley Hospital in Lantana, Fla., the oldest continually-operating sanitarium in the country (it now serves as a tuberculosis hospital), where the film's crew was granted unlimited access to the expansive abandoned sections - a maze of frightening industrial corridors and open spaces perfectly suited for a sci-fi thriller. "We had free run of the place," Ferrari says of the hospital, which he discovered while scouting locations for an earlier project. ProductionKnowing they'd have limited time and resources to get the film done, the production team did extensive storyboarding and conceptual design, so they'd know exactly what was needed visually when shooting actually began.But, according to Rodriguez, not quite everything went according to plan. "The week before we were scheduled to shoot, we were hit by a series of hurricanes, and one of them went all the way up where we were shooting ... it was an old building to begin with, and the hurricane just tore the place up." And by the time they did finally win their prized location back, FEMA had set up shop there to provide aid for thousands of hurricane victims, and many of the areas they'd planned on shooting in were severely damaged - so they again made changes to the script to incorporate Mother Nature's impromptu "set design." Fortunately, when shooting finally got underway, things went much more smoothly. With Rodriguez handling the day-to-day minutia that are the producer's stock in trade, Ferrari says he and cinematographer Angel Barroeta were able to shoot a rocket-quick 125 to 130 camera setups per day for the 3.5-day shoot. And while many of the film's extensive visual effects shots were created in post-production, there were still quite a few practical effects that had to be done on-set. Post-production and beyondOnce shooting wrapped, the film was rushed into post-production, in the hopes that Ferrari and Rodriguez would be able to shop it around at the upcoming Sundance festival - though they'd missed the entry date, the filmmakers hoped to show their short to as many festival goers and vacationing Hollywood players on the fly as they could.As Ferrari put his post-production skills to the test editing and color-correcting his footage, visual effects supervisor Sean Falcon set about creating the film's plethora of digital effects. Ferrari and Rodriguez agree on what they think is Falcon's most impressive work - an outdoor shot in which a clear sky was digitally replaced with turbulent, explosive nightmare weather, with an indistinguishable digital tree composited in the foreground.Another complex digital effect was the film's realistic firearm muzzle flashes - although there's a copious amount of gunfire in the film, Ferrari says not a single shot was fired on- set. Instead, Falcon digitally animated each frame in which a weapon appeared to be firing - "I think what Sean did with the muzzle flashes was revolutionary," Ferrari says, "He created muzzle flashes that change in every single frame - he did it all dynamically.""Jorge is an amazing networker," Ferrari says, "We actually ended up on VIP lists... I was hanging out next to Paris Hilton and Elijah Wood. We carried a laptop around and showed the film to whoever wanted to watch it."He laughs, "We're just a couple regular guys who went out there and maxed out our credit cards. I had Alex as a good friend and a business partner, and we were just able to motivate each other enough to do this."Broken, the short, touches on that question and many others, and the mysterious, foreboding vibe it oozes throughout makes for a pretty captivating viewing experience - it packs a visual punch that really ups its value, too. Viewers won't feel cheated by its great-looking action shots and its fairly intriguing narrative development, but there are definitely a lot of questions about Broken's world and its characters that we'd really like to see answered... luckily, now that Ferrari and Rodriguez have a crack at spinning it into a feature, the film's fans will get to see exactly what the short's tantalizing 20 minutes are setting up.Nick R. Scalia - PLAY Magazine

I am not accustomed to watching every movie out there. My job, school and multitude of hobbies (sleeping counts damn it) prevent me from doing so–I mostly catch the big hitters and, ever and anon, the sleepers. However, I always welcome requests to critique independent film projects, and Alex Ferrari's Broken is a very pleasant surprise. It is one of the few short films that coerced me to repeatedly utter "Dude…""What is Broken?" is the flashing question of the day. It depends on whom you ask–from one perspective it is an eight-grand-a-pop 15-minute film featuring an abbreviated story, a band of unknowns and over 100 visual effects. From another, it is an attempt at an uppercut directed toward Hollywood to prove that no-budget films can pack enough juice and luster to rival the best of the best that money grubbers can squeeze out of the nonstop grinder.Assaulted by a nightmare, a girl wakes up in the darkness of her bedroom. As she steps toward the kitchen for a sip of something, her life turns upside down. She is abducted by a clownish fellow and his hell-bent subordinates. Restrained and oppressed, she does hold some unnatural power to push back. Is it a dream? Is it a manifestation? The ending gives several possible explanations.For a 15-minute picture, the story is more than decent. It does, in fact, fit the profile of a chunk taken from a longer film, with compressed events. Besides that of Samantha Jane Polay and Paul Gordon, the acting does leave a bit to be desired, more so in the inflexibly robotic action sequences. Also, a small number of the edits were awkward, but presumably necessary due to fixed resources.The major highlight of Broken is twofold–the amazing visual effects and the photography. The dark yet vibrant green-toned claustrophobic atmosphere reminded me of a mix between The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, and Sin City. Equally magnificent are the photography and camera angles. They were insanely aesthetic and captivating, throwing you right into the mix. These are what prompted me to go "Dude…" a number of times over the course of the short.In general, I do not expect average moviegoers to see Broken yet. However, true film fans, including new converts, will undoubtedly enjoy it and I suggest they get their hands on it ASAP. It underhandedly gives a quick overview of where the passionate are headed with respect to film-making and technology, and how much of a gap those talents can nowadays bridge between what's aspired to and what's ostensibly impossible.In spite of its few flaws, Broken is a major accomplishment in visual artistry. To the people behind the film: Kick-ass job!Cin3ma TV