If ever there was a time to get the most out of making movies by spending as little money as possible, it would be now. At right around a budget of about seven hundred thousand dollars (pretty modest for a feature length movie..) The Vast of Night is showing movie buffs and filmmakers how far one can stretch things when money is tight. Shot mostly in a small town in Texas, and another in Oklahoma, The Vast of Night is resourceful movie making at its best and not at all at the expense of the quality of the finished product.
The Vast of Night is showing movie buffs and filmmakers how far one can stretch things when money is tight.
In 1950s New Mexico, two friends are in for the night of their life and just don’t know it yet. Everett, who works at a radio station, and his friend Fay, who works nights as a telephone operator, have just left a basketball game in order to go to their night shifts. When they both experience an unusual audio signal that interrupts their work, they realize that something is amiss. Soon after their night consists of interviewing people who have called in that may know what the signal is. As they investigate in order to try and make sense of everything that is happening, and based on the information provided to them, they begin to believe that something other worldly could possibly be at play. Everything takes place in the span of one night as the two friends test their limits in the hopes of discovering the truth of what’s occurring.
Andrew Patterson makes his debut as a writer/director, with the creativity of the movie never in doubt and having completely principal photography in a matter of weeks. The cinematography is as though the movie was shot on a studio budget, with solid editing and with long still shots, occasionally giving the actor minutes at a time in one single frame with no cuts. The night shots were also not too dark so the viewer can see things clearly enough through the duration. Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz as ‘Fay’ and ‘Everett’ were reasonably cast, living genuinely in the moments of the sometimes lengthy shots. Their earliest time in the movie sees both of them as fairly light hearted before shifting into a tone of seriousness and sincerity as the stakes begin to rise. It’s an all-together complete movie with the acting, directing, writing, and technical aspects playing their part, one not standing out more than the other.
The Vast of Night is evidence that soon, anyone will be able to make a movie with the right network, resources, and material. These types of projects will have studio executives wondering if someday they’ll find themselves obsolete. Is that a bad thing? For aspiring movie makers, no not in the slightest. For studios? It certainly could be, and as one would expect with a movie like this, the distribution rights were grabbed pretty quick after its film festival release. Amazon picked up the tab, and it’s now streaming on Prime Video.
