Whiplash

This room lets in too much sunshine and rainbows, amazing what a simple room setting change can do. They could have put JK Simmons in a Chuck E Cheese band and it would still work however.

Surprising how the far-lighter practise room - complete with sunbeams radiating through those long, light windows - makes this come across as rather less intense than its feature-length successor. Interesting stuff, and although Miles Teller is the stronger Andrew Neiman, Johnny Simmons is no slouch either.

Three cheers for same scene! Hip hip--ooh, look, a Mars bar!

This short film demonstrates just how much J.K. Simmons is the main driving force behind Whiplash. It obviously misses the deeper exploration of its themes - something the feature-length did have, but the atmosphere and intensity here are pretty much spot-on.

Feels like a storyboard for a scene. Hard to rate this since I saw the feature first.

The original short lacks the tightness in just about every regard, and it's the tightness that holds the feature length on a knife-edge... without that it's just a guy yelling at a kid. And there are loads of problems: the drums are sometimes out of sync with the image; the room has terrible acoustics and is way too bright; Johnny Simmons isn't a *patch* on Miles Teller. Plus, of course, it doesn't have the payoff. But hey, it helped get a great film made, so it did its job.

Want a great movie about an S&M that isn't 50 Shades of Grey? This is it.

Solid proof-of-concept

A solid foundation for the feature film.