Kudos to all of the people involved in making this film. Given the limited budgets and technical resources available to student filmmakers in the early 1980s, it's truly impressive to see the talents of these young filmmakers on display. Each scene is well performed, well directed, well photographed and clearly well thought out. Obviously, its intent is not to tell the entire story, but to give the viewer a sense of the tale and how the "finished" feature film would look and feel. It makes me wish they'd had the resources to make that feature a reality.
Director of Photography Frank Prinzi (now Frank Prinzi, ASC – Emmy-winning cinematographer and director of both films and television) did a superb job lighting and photographing the entire film, capturing the mood of each scene perfectly. Other student crew members also moved on to bigger things as well – notably Paul Ziller (key grip/dolly grip), who went on to direct more than a dozen features, Li-Shin Yu (assistant director) became a award-winning documentary film editor and Maryann Brandon (production assistant) was film editor on J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek", "Super 8", "Star Trek Into Darkness" and the upcoming "Star Wars: Episode VII".
The most important thing I took away from watching Four Episodes from 1984 is how well Peterson captures the vision of a world without personal freedom. It is truly frightening to realize how close we are to living in this Orwellian world where our every movement is recorded and even our thoughts aren't our own - all justified as a necessary sacrifice in wartime. Sound familiar? Of special note are the strong performances by John Nowak and Jayne Bentzen, who portrayed Winston Smith and his lover/co-conspirator Julia. Even knowing the ending, I found myself hoping they would somehow escape arrest and torture. Even more impressive was Alan Leach, coolly efficient and despicable as O'Brien, the Inner Party mentor/torturer assigned to "cure" Winston of his "mental derangement".
I've heard that Marshall Peterson, after a career producing commercials and corporate projects, is returning to independent filmmaking with The Heisenberg Effect, a feature being filmed later this year. I look forward to seeing it.