Hannah Repus

In this one-shot, a couple celebrate in the spa pool of their piano ridden backyard. The man, Nicky, laments the fact that he's not much of a superhero. His wife, puts it down to his costume (a suit of bricks) not being that practical. The wife goes inside to collect dinner (distracting us with her bikini) and as we stay with Nicky, nothing mush seems to happen - that is until we actually see what the wife has been up to. This is a well-planned one-shot that seems to be meandering along until we discover what has been playing out, outside our current field of vision. It makes use of various fast-forwards and rewinds which result in some funny action scenes. The change of perspective/alternate viewpoint was a clever plan and while this Outwits offering was pretty low frills, it was still technically strong. Enjoyable and intriguing even if it was a little slow-paced. Outwits usually equals finalist so don't be surprised if it happens again.

Up until the middle of the film, I thought this was a mediocre film compared to your previous outings. Maybe worth a six out of ten. But once it got to the reverse motion superhero section, my jaw hit the floor! The whole second half was so well done that I forgot it was filmed in reverse at times. I also liked how it tied in perfectly with the first half, and enjoyed your use of fast-forward and rewind techniques. Overall a fantastic, innovative, technical achievement, with good acting, although I found it a little weak on the story side.

What an amazing short, on so many different levels. Coming off their amazing "Grindin'" from last year, I had high hopes going into this, and I wasn't disappointed. The first half of the movie was interesting, and the "fast forward/rewind" gimmick worked really well, but it felt a little off, and there were a couple parts that weren't entirely clear. However, that all cleared up once the second half kicked in, which resulted in an absolutely mind-blowing sequence of backwards-acting played in such a way that it attempted to look normal. It wasn't perfect, but it was sooooo good that it didn't need to be, and I especially liked when they didn't try to do it on the sly (the pasta back into the plate, for example). All the eating and drinking backwards was weird to consider, and I was blown away by the backwards music playing. I still can't come to grips with it. The butler was fantastic and the brick costume was brilliant (probably made easier by Christchurch's state!). Exceptional acting all-around. Superbly brilliant production start to finish. Things to work on: The only gripe I have is that the footage wasn't as "rich" as the rest of the production was. Not really a legitimate gripe, but it was kind of like listening to an awesome song through laptop speakers. I feel bad mentioning it, but it's the only thing I could think to improve.

So amazing that I accidentally double-tapped on the "Save" button and gave you two for the price of one!

So, you’ve drawn the One Shot genre, but you also want to tell a story where the camera follows two different storylines which are happening at the same time. Can’t be done, right? Well, turns out that it can, with the minor caveat that you might just need to PEFORM IN REVERSE. Like, wow, that’s high-concept. So we have, er, Brick-man (The Masonry Marauder?) relaxing with his girlfriend after a hard day at the superhero equivalent of an office. Early on we’re introduced to the device of rewind and fast-forward, somewhat reminiscent of Green Wing, which is a neat way of skipping past the boring bits. They’re in the hot tub drinking wine, then she hops out of the tub and heads off into the house, but we stay with him reclining in his spa. Fast forward to a nice romantic candlelight dinner, some small talk. Then back we go, rewind, let’s have a look at that hot tub scene again, hmm, it’s the same thing, but something seems slightly different. Then she hops out of the tub and heads off into the house, and the camera follows her and- Hey, wait a minute, this obviously isn’t one shot, what’s are they playing at? Except that it is, because this is backwards acting played in reverse, brilliant. It turns out that she’s the real superhero of the pair, putting him more in the classic Green Hornet / Inspector Gadget role. The rest of the film is done in the backwards way, with some fun and occasionally ridiculous things going on. It was especially neat when they could trickily take advantage of the reverse filming to do superhuman things, such as flinging a baddie up onto a fence. And to cap it off, we had a repeat of the required line of dialogue and the string quartet playing Mozart, but again done backwards (in reverse). The viewing experience of this one was very odd actually, because at the time there were moments that underwhelmed. But then, as the film wore on, and even in the foyer after the heat had concluded, I found myself thinking about and realising new things about it, and the whole enterprise got more and more impressive. I guess the only problem with the whole thing was that it was ultimately a cerebral masterpiece only, and there wasn’t really any emotional element to get invested in. But that can’t take away from what an achievement it was. (Cute title too – took me a while to figure that one out.)