405
By Karen Feigenbaum
[*** out of *****]
As a short, this piece is somewhat entertaining. It's basically about
a plane that randomly has to perform an emergency touch down on the
405 freeway in Los Angeles (the movie is shown from the perspective
of an SUV driver caught underneath). The most amusing bit has to do
with a little old lady and…naturally…her desire to drive
far below the speed limit. Also of note is how special the special
effects are; the filmmakers obviously didn't use a real plane and
land it on the freeway, but it certainly looks like convincing footage.
Considering the quality of most content distributed on the Internet,
I think that this is of pretty decent caliber. It has also received
enough acclaim to become fairly visible.
But when you bring into the equation that the producers are using
the Internet as its distribution vehicle, things start to fall apart
a little. The viewer's best bet for instant gratification is streaming
video, and the site is equipped to cope with all sorts of connection
speeds. I myself have a mere 56K modem, but I'm hardly in a minority
with it and feel I'm a fair representative of an "everyman."
But the 56K modem and its streaming video options tend not to afford
good resolution quality. The download option seems to offer the promise
of finer quality viewing, but time is required to download, and I
said I was looking for instant gratification. So that option was not
so viable when I had the lure of streaming video beckoning to me.
So I streamed it. It looked like a compilation of large squares and
the guy's face was a giant blur I could barely make out. Any nuances
of expression were lost on me. After a somewhat unsatisfactory viewing
experience, I thought about downloading it, but then I thought why
bother? I just watched it!
I think that the lesson learned is that the Internet has a wonderfully
auspicious future as a mass-distributor of such content…but it
will probably need to wait until DSL and cable modems are more the
rule than the exception.