"One-Day Seminar" is the perfect example of grassroots filmmaking. Shot on an incredibly modest budget of $1,000, "One-Day Seminar" follows Benson Mountebank (Tommy Murray) as he teaches one of those semi-waste of time one-day seminars that all of us professionals use as an excuse to escape from the office for a day.

 

Some companies, especially retail stores, love to use these one-day seminars to provide pseudo training and inspiration to its underpaid, overworked managers. Clearly, Binder is trying to capture the self-inflated egos of those who teach these seminars and, yes, the quirky characters who attend them.

 

Writer/Director Martin Binder has a good idea, yet "One-Day Seminar" doesn't quite gel. This may in part be due to the film's largely novice cast, who seem to get that the film is a mockumentary but don't quite grasp how to sell the script. They "say" the lines, but they don't always "sell" the lines.

 

Despite the fact that "One-Day Seminar" doesn't quite gel, Binder clearly does display a comic sensibility and has a knack for comic visual presentation. "One-Day Seminar" is a promising effort from Martin Binder, and I look forward to seeing his work in the future.