I recently watched “Nothing, except everything” by Wesley Wang on Youtube- and it was a dreadful 13 minutes. In summary, the short film focuses on a high schooler as we go through his coming of age journey, from love, graduation, and heartbreak. One comment stated, “This feels like a genre with no story just trying to do all the tropes of a coming of age film.” And I fully agree.
Luckily I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Westfilms Co. created “This guy is making all movies worse,” talking about how Wesley Wang created a pointless short indie film that had a good budget yet no substance.
From the beginning of the film, he mimics his responses to the film when asked “pick a number from 1-10.” While including clips from the short film, he adds his own spice by overlapping clipart or texts to exaggerate how ridiculous their point is. But instead of continuing the introduction, he takes a step back and analyzes the filmmaker, Wesley Wang, instead. He pointed out this filmmaker has created numerous films before- all well-funded and mediocore- yet continues to have millions of views. He then dives into why this short film specifically is the worst through a series of chapters.
One chapter that I consider most significant was “TikTok.” Overall, he explained that the reason the film got such good reviews is because it was created as a trailer and made for people who indulge in a lot of social media. It involved every cliche possible and basically did a fast forward of this kid’s life, while including pointless montage shots or flashbacks. One technique I want to explore more because of this essay is including screen recordings of my in-depth research, comedic side clips that have no relation to the film, and alterting the clip beyond recognition. Overall, I really enjoyed how Westfilms Co. addressed this type of film in the most unserious way possible, it made “Nothing, except everything” a little more bearable.