An anonymous emergency call in the night drags an ambulance crew into the arcane matrix of Good and Evil. Are we really the masters of our own destiny?

The Ambulance is Giacomo Sardelli‘s first attempt at directing a short film. With it, he decides to take on the ambitious topic of fate and destiny, and the fact that it’s impossible for us to have full control on our lives. You can say that this has been done hundreds, maybe thousands of times, but I believe that it is such a complex subject that every time a story is told by a different person we learn a new perspective on it.

The film focuses on entities who have full control on our destiny: the Good Man, the Evil Man and the Balance Man. In The Ambulance it is the life of a doctor that’s been taking control of.

Those three characters are the personalities of a single supernatural Being: the Evil’s mission is to put an end to everybody’s life in the most subtle way, while the Good’s purpose is to keep the Evil away from the people he planned to kill. The Balance, the one sitting on the bench, makes sure that the struggle between Good and Evil is always fair, keeping track of what they do and updating them.

-Director Giacomo Sardelli

Considering this was their first film, I believe the crew did a pretty good job at making the film look as professional as it can be. Using borrowed equipment and online tutorials to teach each team members on their respective jobs, going up to building a DIY track dolly. Even the ambulance was offered by an ambulance association that Giacomo is part of, an asset essential for the film’s credibility.

With good technical aspects throughout the film and significantly smooth shots, the film lacks somewhat in other aspects. Besides the Ying Yang Good/Evil tattoos, some character development is lacking to distinguish the different personalities. The scenes also tempt to extend more than they should, this time could have been used for more development on the characters and story, or simply cut shorter to make the film more dynamic.

But still what impresses me the most and the reason why we featured this short is the overall image and production quality for a film with no budget, a true inspiration to all other filmmakers! They also found all their music and sound effects on sites like Jamendo and Freesound thanks to the many artists who chose to share their music under Creative Commons Licenses.

Artist like Josh Woodward, MisterM and Felixjd made the short movie come to life with their talent, I wouldn’t have been able to release “The Ambulance” if they hadn’t decided to share their talent on these useful websites.

Read more about The Ambulance and filmmaking on Giacomo’s blog giacomo.sardelli.name/blog
or visit his Vimeo channel vimeo.com/giacomosardelli