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First of YouTuber Joel Haver's "12 Feature-Length Films in 12 Months" released
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- Title
- One Movie Down, Eleven to Go!
- Authors
- Joel Talks About Movies
- Duration
- 8:24
- Published
- Jan 27 2024
YouTuber Joel Haver, instead of making short-form content, has committed to filming, editing, and releasing 1 feature-length film every month this year, as I previously mentioned in this thread.
After releasing each of the 12 films, he will also release a director's statement video (linked in this post), and a more technical breakdown video of how he made the movie.
The first film is a found footage mockumentary following one of the existing characters from his short films, but doesn't require you to have seen any of the short films to get the story.
The film: The Hero's Journey aka My Life aka The Caleb Johnston Story (I'm Caleb)
I first discovered Joel Haver's amazing work a couple years ago when he made Pretend That You Love Me in 2020, which remains one of my favorites.
Joel Haver is a Canadian filmmaker who released his films free on YouTube. His work is stark and iconoclastic, no-budget in the best possible way. It takes a bit of getting used to, but I was reminded of my own forays into filmmaking when I was in high school, and if you are a fan of spartan independent films (think: Ingmar Bergman's Scenes From A Marriage or Jon Jost's All The Vermeers in New York -- then you might just love Joel Haver's films. Another of of my personal favorite of Haver's films is We Have To Leave Here Together with its unique mixture of deadpan humor and bittersweet exploration of relationships. In my opinion, Haver is one of the most under-recognized filmmakers active today, continuing to make quirky yet remarkable films with excellent staging, storyboarding, cinematography, and editing on a shoestring budget.
His latest effort is to make a series of 12 feature length films in the next twelve months (a la Fassbinder), and I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes out of this!
Have you seen the one OP is talking about yet? Interested to hear what you think about it if you've been familiar with Joel's work for awhile. I'm not familiar myself so am debating whether or not to get into their work :)
If you want to get a feel for his style, he makes a ton of comedy sketches that are only a few minutes in length on his channel. I think there are even a few about the main character if this movie, but I can't remember any names off the top of my head.
If I'm remembering right, I think he first introduced his Caleb character through a gaming live stream where he (Joel as Caleb) was playing Dark Souls really badly, while also proclaiming how good he is at it. It's been a while so I don't remember exactly, but there was a rotating cast of friend/family characters who would join him or call on the phone and reveal a story over the 4 hour stream, in which I think Caleb's girlfriend had broken up with him, and he was still pining for her and thinking he could get her back. It was really funny, really well done, and unlike anything I'd ever seen before (I managed to catch most of it live).
Joel talks about his latest film in this video. This comedic film brings back many familiar faces in a film that re-visits a character from Joel's shorts. While I personally enjoyed the film, it has clear limitations, suffering from many of same troubles that any feature-length film based on characters from 30-minute TV series does. In addition, it goes without saying that the severe constraints of completing the entire production of the film within a month necessarily leave their mark on the finished product. I actually find it quire impressive that the structure of the film with its multiple story arcs, foreshadowing, and deus-ex-machina ending all with comedic overtones nevertheless yield an interesting if lighthearted character study.
In reference to Joel's other films, the basic structure and style is consistent with his other films, though many of his other feature length films are more profound and more satisfying to me. If you enjoy the films of Jon Jost or Aki Kaurismäki, you may find it worth your while to dig a bit deeper into Joel Haver's oeuvre.
If I had to describe this, it would be as a "cross between Napoleon Dynamite and Sideways done by an indie filmmaker" that is deceptively "heavy" in a way I wouldn't really expect from a comedy YouTuber. I started watching it with the intention of turning it off after 10 or 15 minutes, but I kept getting pulled further and further into the story.
As a trigger/content warning: This film gets very dark and deals with depression and estrangement in ways that are a little difficult to watch at points.
I was thinking of this other Tildes thread a lot while I watched it - especially the part in that about feeling like an "un-person" and how easily that happens now... how the bar for "being a person" (by some consensus-derived definition) just seems so much higher now and so much more exhausting than it ever was.
Watching the relentlessly hopeful and hapless Caleb go through his "hero's journey" was - by turns - excruciating and hilarious. Haver is not really the greatest actor to be sure... but in a way that almost adds a necessary flavor to the character who spends too much time posing for the cameras he surrounds himself with. And the other actors do such a great job of holding him down that it just ends up "working" somehow in the end.
I was genuinely surprised by this film. I was thinking this morning about the last scene of the film - and how very differently that would be parsed if it were the first scene in the film instead of the last.
I don't know what it is about his voice, but I just can't listen to him talk. It's physically painful.
I wanted to report back after watching 30 minutes of the first video, I can't watch this. Something about it feels forced and cringe. But maybe that is just me. I hope everyone enjoys these though, it's just not my cup of tea.