the audience applauded

Don't Believe the Hype

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Blistering performances.

The idea for Timecode is an excellent idea and it seems like such a concept could have amazing potential. Sadly, it simply does not have the greatness to make it a memorable revolutionary film. Sure, this concept has never been done before, but it doesn't make up for the fact that the film tells a boring story and feels more like a video than a prestigious film.It is extremely difficult to follow all four screens throughout the duration of the film. Not all screens focus on a specific story, but certain stories are made less important than others which is disappointing with this film trying to be a good web-life film as well as the first to capture real time from four cameras.The audio mixing definitely manipulates the way the audience attempts to watch the film. Certain dialogue is tuned down so that only one or two screens can be heard and which have more "importance" than the others at certain times in the film. This may help to focus on what is essential in each moment, but overall all information within a story should be essential, so when some of that information is tuned out it can be an aggravating experience and not enjoyable.This is a failed experiment to change cinema forever.2.0/4.0

Man I am one that hates the modern day overuse of that word. But this ladies and gentleman is exactly that.Moreso than anything else this is on an entirely different level conceptually I've ever seen. This can be easily evidenced by the fact that there is no spawn of this movie. Someone's making blair witch project spawn right now as we speak.But its now 8 years later... no one's copying this for one reason. THEY COULDN'T IF THEY TRIED!!! Pick on Ms. Hayek all you want, but I enjoyed the acting. It just felt like I was watching people living their lives. Man that's all its about creating an reality on screen to tell your story. And this in fact wasn't that 3 act tale well all love, but equally brilliant.

Students of media should definitely take a look at Timecode.Is it great cinema according to conventional production values? Heck no. If you want a good story sumptuously told, go watch Gone with the Wind or something like that.Is it something new? Yes! It is a very interesting experiment that points to the future of movie-making / visual storytelling / video games with plots. I'm rating it 10 for this originality.There's a complex story -- many IMDb commentators have said there are four different stories, but I disagree -- that is performed and shot improvisationally. (The other big one-take real-time film, Russian Ark (2002), was not improvised, but carefully scripted.) There are four synchronized hand-held DV cameras following the characters around. We viewers get to see what all four camera operators saw, synchronized down to the frame, on a four-way split screen. We get to see all the nasty color-balance and focus glitches on the cameras as they move from indoors to out, and close shots to wide.We get to hear what the sound editor chose for us in post. However, the DVD has an extra feature letting the viewer choose which camera's sound to listen to.It points to the future of visual storytelling because it conceives of the film's story as unfolding continuously and unpredictably in a very large space in hard real time. The cameras roam around the space observing the story. They are very much like the over-the-shoulder viewpoint feature available in many first-person style video games. Both the camera shots and the actors' movements and speeches are improvised.It is all a bit self-referential, in the way that The Player (1992) was. Near the end of the movie the pretentious character called Ana does a pitch basically for this same movie. (Note that The Player itself begins with a very long take, rigorously scripted.) The film is named for the technology that permits the four-camera synchronization. In 50 years the name will seem as quaint as a film named "Sprocket-hole" might seem now.Timecode is worth watching for the amazing way it conceives of and presents its story. I know there will be more releases (with tighter stories about something other than the movie business) like this coming out, but I believe they will be packaged as video games rather than as cinema.

I began watching "Timecode" with a few friends; one bailed part way through, calling it a glorified soap opera. I stuck it out to the end, but even though some of it was not typical daytime fare, overall I thought the criticism was deserved. I found it difficult to identify with or feel empathy for the stock aspiring actress characters; the random masseuse was clearly the most enjoyable of an otherwise bland set of individuals. The interesting twist in filming with four simultaneous cameras was interesting, but the banality of the storyline- cheating lovers and the toll it takes, dreams of big screen success, inter-office tensions- detracted from the innovative idea. Trying to keep track of all four frames at once was a sort of mental aerobic, probably working those muscles you develop from listening to Mozart as a baby, but the plot just didn't seem worth it. The attempt at realism was checked by the fact that there was always only one frame in which important action was taking place; at times it seemed they might as well have just cut the superfluous cameras. Anyway, not sure if I'd recommend it; it's a challenge to keep track of, but not quite worth the extra effort over simply watching a movie.