In April 2017, Liliana Partenava invested round $2,000 in some pals’ Ether mining enterprise. Having no earlier information of cryptocurrency, she then needed to be taught extra about blockchain know-how and its purposes.
Discovering little on-line content material explaining how blockchain and cryptocurrency work in easy phrases, she determined to create her personal documentary. The movie follows her on a road-trip throughout three continents as she talks with over 30 gamers within the blockchain house.
Partenava additionally needed to focus on the tales of feminine CEOs, buyers, and trade professionals, to indicate that girls are essential within the subject too.
Noble goals certainly… so why did ‘Crypto Rush’ find yourself leaving me so chilly?
Not essentially the most skilled piece of filmmaking
The very first thing that hits you’re the sloppy manufacturing values. The disclaimer proven earlier than the movie even begins has a spelling mistake, and it isn’t the one one. At one level we see “$20 000 000” displayed on display, because the voiceover says “twenty billion {dollars}.”
Eleven minutes in, anyone is talking German with no subtitles. In a while, non-English audio system do get subtitles, however provided that you flip them on for the English audio system too. Partenava is supposedly a former TV reporter and producer, however reveals no proof that she is aware of tips on how to put collectively high quality programming.
This might, and will, have been mounted earlier than launch, however there are extra terminal points afoot. The digital camera operator appears perpetually uncertain the place to focus, and even level the digital camera. A fundamental steadicam rig wouldn’t have gone amiss right here.
The worst downside although is the audio. Interview high quality ranges from nearly bearable, to compressed to the purpose of sounding virtually robotic. Once more, investing in an honest microphone would have finished wonders.
Moreover, the one authentic music monitor is nearly painful to hearken to after some time, and you may be listening to it so much. Apparently that is deliberate, to convey “the discomfort and uncertainty of the heroine.”
An entry level to the world of crypto?
Sadly, even when you may get previous these points, you’re prone to be upset. The “uncertainty of the heroine” appears to have prolonged to precisely what story she was attempting to inform.
The movie paperwork the interval round cryptocurrency’s ‘gold rush’ from 2017 to mid 2018, however there isn’t a sense of the FOMO or investor craziness which occurred at the moment. We get a short clarification of cryptocurrency and the way it works, however from there we simply traipse from nation to nation interviewing an attention-grabbing, however disparate, group of trade gamers.
Within the quest to make this a ‘feature-length’ 90 minutes lengthy, the editor has needed to embrace an terrible lot of filler. From the overly-long photographs of interview topics wanting awkward, to at one stage, over a minute of footage of individuals simply dancing in a nightclub. No dialogue. No crypto. No clarification.
It isn’t apparent that there was any pre-existing plan earlier than setting off around the globe to movie.
We contact upon Bitcoin for retail funds. A South Korean trade govt explains that she is sad about being valued for her appears to be like over her brains. We even get a short perception into what a decentralized web is likely to be like, though Partenava herself admits that she doesn’t actually perceive this… so how does she anticipate her potential viewers to grasp it?
The documentary may need labored content-wise, if any certainly one of these angles turned the main focus of the entire movie… and the working time was minimize in half.
As an alternative, the viewer is left feeling none the wiser about something, and the movie ends with Partenava promoting her mining rig for a similar $2,000 she purchased it for, in opposition to a backdrop of 2018’s worth crash, noting that she looks like she was a part of a ‘second’.
Regardless of its lofty intentions to doc crypto’s gold rush, being half travelogue, half crypto 101, and champion of ladies within the trade, it in the end fails to attain any of this. Sadly, as a lot as I wish to suggest a movie bringing cryptocurrency to the plenty, for me this isn’t it.
For many who want to make up their very own minds, the movie is accessible to stream by way of Vimeo On Demand, the place the worth for a 48 hour rental is $2.99.
