The Rock and a Hard Place

While not Submission Impossible's finest Submission, it would be impossible for anyone to not submit to this film's charm. I loved a lot of what you guys did with the idea of a real time film. The tea kettle going off was a nice touch, and the ending was great too, though I think it would have been made stronger had the protagonist not already been asked to leave the house in the first place.

First up, I just want to say that Submission Impossible's 20 seconds of team intro was the best film of the heat. Audience favourite for me! But wait, there's more, cos they also made a *real* film as well, so I guess I had better talk about that too. Real-time is in some ways a gift, cos it forces you to focus on small moments and how they progress and escalate, rather than just lazily jumping forward to the Next Important Thing. But it can also be deceptively tricky - from my team's experiences with one-shot storytelling, what I can say is that it's very difficult to convey plausible story and character development in real-time. And while I think in places the story here strained credibility with its limited action time, overall I felt they really embraced the constraint handily. We begin by following our protagonist home from a run, and little domestic touches like putting the jug on did some good work in selling the real-time setup. We meet her creepily nice flatmate, a sort of yapping dog type character, a bundle of poorly calibrated excitement and affection. We meet the flatmate's girlfriend, very much his opposite. At separate points, both confide in our main character, of intending to propose marriage and to break-up, respectively. She eventually gets caught in the middle of them talking at each other, and she sees that what's coming won't be pretty. But just when we expect an intervention, she instead chooses to just walk away and leave them to their nonsense. As is often the case with this team, there is a really lovely warm palette to the film, with bright but still fairly natural use of colour. The overall tone has plenty of moments of goofiness, which was I think definitely a good choice to go for, given the rather unlikely premise. And all three actors are watchable and very well contrasted. The climax of the film is beautifully soundtracked with the steadily loudening whistle of the kettle, to mirror the frustration of the character. It's a simple idea that was executed just right, and along with the final punchline, it really made those final beats of story hit nicely. So yeah, not much negative to say here. Arguably a bit on the slight side, a bit on the implausible side. The flatmate and girlfriend are written as essentially cartoonish characters, but that's okay since it suits the feel, and probably helps us to relate to our main girl more anyway. All in all, really good fun.

A man plans to propose to his girlfriend but she has quite different ideas for their future. A classic piggy-in-the-middle film that is nicely shot and edited. There's plenty of good humour that is well-timed and acted by the cast of three. The continuity of real-time is maintained and as a result the film moves at a good pace. Another quality short from "Submission Impossible" that could pick up a final spot. They also continued their history of producing a quality team intro!

another solid entry by submission impossible, some great acting and well written further back story behind the characters relationship would have added to the tension but i guess that was the cost of the 5 minute time limit this year. Comedic and a city finalist for sure.

Submission Impossible have a real knack for doing real human drama and comedy. I enjoyed every second of the film but ultimately i felt the ending kind of fizzed out. I would have liked to see tem go big with your ending. (I guess sort of like last year) Somehow? I dono. Great work. See you all next year!

Another good short from you guys! Nice wee story that was carried by good acting and smart writing.