Heartless

I really like seeing teams shoot in scope in this competition. It is often a more naturally cinematic approach to film-making, and with a nice opening tracking shot across a desk full of crumpled paper about ancient relics this team set the scene well. Having recently lost her brother and not accepting his fate, her attempt to resurrect him then provided the plot device for the film.

Her quest to find the heart made this more of a RAIDERS OF THE LOST HEART in my book, with the mysterious heart box drawing clear inspiration from the ark in the Spielberg film.

There were a couple of nice moments of costume design, but I was overall left scratching my head at the muddied plot on display here. Overall it made sense; issue, goal, conclusion. But the steps along the way were very confusing for me. A car boot. The death of the relic expert. The funeral card. The gas mask. I just struggled to understand what was happening throughout. I'm not going to go into great detail about technical things I noticed but whilst some framing was nice, lighting had issues as did sound.

Story: 1/5
Technical: 2/5
Elements: 2/5
Overall: 1.5/5

Some really cool ideas and imagery in this film, and a clear passion bubbling below the surface from the team.

I found the story a little hard to grasp - a girl's brother has died and she's on a mission to resurrect him? I liked a lot of what I saw - the blue heart springs to mind as does some very slick cinematography, I just don't understand why I was seeing everything.

I think storywise this film might be a little to big for its britches - very heavy topics and very intense acting - and since I know this team personally and what they're capable of, I can say I think you could have dialed back the drama and gone for something a little more lighthearted or silly - not just because comedy is easier to pull off in 48Hours, but also because the idea you landed on feels much more like a feature film shrunk down and crammed into 5 minutes, than a 5 minute short film.

Things you got right: Technically proficient, some really cool ideas and imagery

Things you can work on for next time: Making a film which plays more within the parameters of the competition - not necessarily a comedy, but something that focuses in and feels self contained instead of something as wide-scope as this.

Some cool shots in there, cool score that came through as well - cool performance by our lead actress too - well done.

I felt the story lacked depth, I get what you were trying to achieve here but I think the idea needed more time, more narrative, more dialogue and as mentioned before, more depth. The audio needed tending to also - but meh.
The ending fell flat - but meh... again.

Regardless, well done team. Good effort.