Primer
Short description
Primer follows a small group of engineers who spend their nights tinkering in a garage on inventions they hope to sell. Two of them, Abe and Aaron, are working on a device meant to reduce the mass of objects when they realize it does something far stranger: time inside the box behaves differently from time outside it. They build a larger version and begin using what they have learned to make money on the stock market, until the consequences of their experiments begin to affect them and strain their friendship.
Shane Carruth wrote, directed and produced the film in addition to playing Aaron, with David Sullivan as Abe and Casey Gooden and Anand Upadhyaya among the credited cast of twenty. It was Carruth's first feature, released in 2004 and running 77 minutes, and he went on to direct Upstream Color in 2013.
Primer is a science fiction drama made in the United States. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.7/10 from around 121,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.8/10 from roughly 2,551 votes. A critics' rating of 6.6/10 from 130 reviews places critical and audience responses at a broadly similar level.
What's left behind the scenes
- In the scene where Abe-1 incapacitates Abe-2 with laughing gas, the container he is holding in his hand is a rice cooker.
- In an attempt to reduce costs, Shane Carruth filmed mostly only one take and worked with 16mm film. The footage was then transferred to a digital format, and Carruth handled the editing on his own computer. This led to some problems: editing software couldn't handle the audio, and synchronizing the picture and sound alone took two months. Worse still, Carruth usually shot only one take, so if something was wrong with it, there was nothing to replace it with.
- Shane Carruth served as the writer, producer, director, editor, and composer of the project, despite having no prior experience in these areas. Working on the film took him three years, including a year spent writing the script and working on the side to learn the various nuances of filmmaking. The actual filming took only a month, while post-production took almost two years – and all because of problems in editing. According to Carruth, three or four times during this period he almost abandoned the entire undertaking.
- Over a hundred people auditioned for the roles of the characters played by David Sullivan and Shane Carruth himself (Abe and Aaron, respectively). Sullivan was cast despite having no acting experience, and Carruth simply couldn't find anyone suitable for the role of Aaron.
- A significant portion of the money allocated for filming went towards purchasing film stock.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
