STRANGER STRANGER

Can I review my own film? Well I'm going to... I have seen this film to many times and I can see everything wrong with it. The logline for STRANGER:STRANGER was: A strange loner paparazzo, must capture everything about Harper Harrison to find the secret to his success. If you didn't gleam any of that from watching our film I am not surprised. I have seen a lot of 48hour films and the general vibe I get from the collective films each year tends to be across the same spectrum. We wanted to make something a little bit different to stand out from the crowd. We wanted people to feel something from our film rather than think something. Wow this sounds pretentious. TLDR you were supposed to feel weird watching this movie. sorry. We start off the film following our (anti-hero?) paparazzo. As he is researching his (next?) target. With the help of a mysterious phone-booth he tracks down Harper Harrison to various locations and attempts, without success, to snap a picture of him. We see the game of cat and mouse play out but we gradually shift perspective to the point of view of our mouse: Harper. He is unable to avoid the paparazzo and when he finally thinks he's lost him, he appears once again. The film's closing scene, Harper is no where to be seem and we hear our anti-hero say "we don't need you anymore" The ending needed to be more suspenseful and provide more closure, maybe the paparazzo lifts up the camera and the lens is covered in blood (too obvious?) and then more black to separate the film from the ridiculous credits. Harper Harrison needed a scene to show how relieved he was to have lost the stalker. The film could have been longer, it kind of flashes past. the general vibe I got from the crowd was that people didn't like the movie because they didn't get it. They didn't hate it, they just didn't like it. I am really happy with how it's shot and edited and love our match-cut, it fits the feeling and genre of the film perfectly :) The performances from our actors were great too and most of it was improvised so props to them! Behind the scenes for those who care: This is our first year competing in Auckland having competed in Christchurch and Wellington for many years. I enjoyed the genre, Cat and Mouse Movie, but showing the chase around the city with multiple locations was time consuming. We originally wrote the film as a comedy, but quickly saw that having someone incessantly stalk you with a camera was way more creepy than funny. We came up with multiple endings, all late on Saturday night, such as Harper Harrison killing the stalker with his car. An alternative ending line was "We know what you look like on the outside, now lets see what you look like on the inside" we shot on the gh4 and edited on premiere pro and it didn't crash once all weekend except in the last 10mins of editing, not too bad! we handed our film in with 3 minutes to go and yes there is bread in our movie ;) We briefly showed Harper as thoughtless by having him push away the adoring fan in the night market scene. I wasn't planning on reviewing my own film but no one else has so I just wanted to bring up some talking points. I would rather people discuss the film negatively than not discuss it at all so if you've seen the film please give us some feedback on any part of it.

Well, that was definitely something. I don't think it was quite as crazy as last years film, but that's neither a good or bad thing. In general, it felt a bit too much like a slick music video than a short film, but the editing and shooting were very good (as was the music). I couldn't really follow the beats of the story, though. The whole stalker-killing angle and what appeared to be some kind of assimilation at the end came through, but it didn't really feel like it was going anywhere until the very end.

I honestly think that the plotline with the style really had the potential to be a really solid film. Unfortunately, much of the plot is missed by the speed and the style, which left me with an idea of what was happening but not the emotions you wanted with it. Still, solid acting, good cinematography and an engaging score redeemed some of the aforementioned.