Harper's Curiosity

Location not great we tend to see a lot of shorts filmed at a school when a better location would be more beneficial to the short. Sound levels were all over the place, and this is distracting to the short. Funny use of prop, and the audience enjoyed it. Some nice shots at times. Music was too loud and drowned out the dialogue at times. Some amusing moments with the pile up of bodies. Good camera work in the chase scene, that was well done. Funny match cut made me laugh.

Poor sound and music mix made this a bit tricky to follow, but your action sequence was excellent and exciting to watch. Although I couldn't follow the story, I still loved the punchline in a groan-out-loud-I-really-shouldn't-be-laughing-at-this-but-I-can't-help-it kinda way!

This film was absolutely awful, until the final 30 seconds or so came along and saved it!

So, I guy gets ready for his day, lots of bread shots. He goes to school and runs into a conflict between two girls. Soon after a body turns up and suspicion falls on one of the girls. Seen "Brick" lately? It seems this, in part, was an attempt to follow the lead of that awesome film. The positives, their were some nice shots, the chase was good, some effective acting and the credit sequence was very cute. The downsides; not really a clear enough story, (a big question I had was why no-one called the cops?) the music drowned out the dialogue and the audio itself was inconsistent. A couple of unintended funny bits: the body moving a little and the match dissolve where our lead clearly breaks the fourth wall! A twist in the tail caused some laughs and rightly so! See you next year!

You had an interesting twist so you were thinking about your story so kudos here. You are on the correct path when it comes to filming a chase sequence Audio was variable, something to work on for next year. We have found that its works easier to do purposely funny films rather than awkwardly funny films such as this. Also try and avoid filming in the place that you edit (e.g. in this instance a school) it does tend to drop production value.

Harper Harrison prepares lunch (lots of morning routines in the Chch films I watched this year, for some reason), then heads to school and witnesses a confrontation between two girls, in which one suggests the other "go die in a hole". Things escalate quickly to muuuuuurder, with one girl dead and her enemy a prime suspect. But the bodies just keep stacking up! Fortunately Harper and his friend/girfriend (it was hard to tell as at points the sound rode up over the dialogue making a lot of it hard to hear) are on the case as amateur teen sleuths, Hardy Boys style - just as well as by the third body, "the police are starting to get involved". At this point Harper embarks on a great foot chase of a suspect which was definitely the highlight of the film, beating out the sort of pseudo-amazing green screen match cut. Despite being hot on the trail of the killer, the thoughtless Harper can't put the clues together but then OF COURSE, THE BREAD – a realisation that leads to a decidedly unexpected ending. Looks like you guys had lots of fun making the film (I hope no-one fell over with the camera during the chase scene) and the ending scored big points with the audience. If I had just one single to suggest working on for next year it would be sound, sound, sound – if we can't hear the dialogue in the theatre, much of your hard work is undone and it makes things tough to follow. Every team struggles with sound quality at some point though, so I'm sure it's all experience under the belt towards improvement!