Rob

Rob was one of my favourites from this heat. The chemistry your actors had was great, and the humour really worked for it. It was clever to shoot it via security footage but I think the limited shot options and numerous high angles started working against at after a while; once inside the house, using only security cameras took away from the performance of the two actors (who were great). But a very funny film overall.

Agree with the above, once inside the house I don’t think you would have broken the immersion to jump into regular camera angles. I think because the of the single angle and lack of editing (forgive me if I’m misremembering) it was hard to get behind the characters at the end. I hope they took the PS3, 4 and 5 with them though. Screw the groom.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, and after being butthurt at being left out in the cold of the wedding of a supposed best mate, our protagonist decides to get even by inviting himself into the groom to be's house in order to make it a special day for himself.

I thought that the buildup to the house entry was well done, with bumbling and down to earth comic humour such as the phone call to mum and things going wrong with the key. Your lead actor's performance was excellent in the first part of the film. Once inside the initial chemistry between the two uninvited guests was well presented with some unexpected story beats.

However, and yes I get you were going for a unique presentation with the security cameras, the approach of sticking to the security cameras once inside the house meant that the money content of the film felt distant and to me hard to engage with. With most of the shots being high angles and wide, there were instances where we had things like characters talking with their backs to the audience.

Again, I appreciate that is what you were going for, sticking to your guns for the payoff, but I felt like I was simply observing rather than engaging with these characters when push came to shove.

Editing was good for what you shot despite the camera choices not being my cut of tea, sound was clean, and I do give you props for the well done genre subversion.

My last nitpick is the use of character. An anti-'hero'/reluctant 'hero'/unlikely 'hero'? just for getting revenge on a non-wedding invite was a very big stretch in my book.

Story: 2.5/5
Technical: 3/5
Elements: 1.5/5
Overall: 2.5/5

Dragon V Mouse (out of Auckland but entered in CHCH this year) always manage to produce a creative, imaginative and ultimately city finals worthy short. Their take on invitation as the consequence of a non-initiation exemplifies this.

Everything looks great and the humour is suitably well-timed. I was glad that after the opening line the main character stopped talking to himself in order to set things up for the audience - the conversation was his mum is a much better way to handle this sort of thing. I can't help but agree with other reviewers that while the camera footage look was a good way to go initially, once inside the house it just stopped making sense. The other thing that fell flat for me was the conversation between the two would-be burglars. I get it was setting up the bromance to follow but for me, it went on a bit too long, the dialogue became redundant and again, the camera angle didn't really help us engage as we were too distant from them.

So, creative, well-constructed and a fan favourite. Just not strong on the replay value for me.

Congrats on your awards at the CHCH finals!

This was such a joy to watch for the first time. Because of a somewhat unusual order in which we vetted the films this year, this was one of the first strong films we saw after wading through some weaker entries, and it played just as well with audiences as it did with us in my lounge.

Dragon V Mouse have never been the most technically proficient team, but with this comes an upping of creativity in their camerawork, and using security cameras to tell this story is not only a super creative way to work around limitations, but also became imperative to the story.

A few of the other reviews on here are saying the camera work should have ceased once Rob enters the house, and god, I could not disagree with this more, what a fundamental misunderstanding of this film's visual language and narrative device, which would not only feel like a betrayal of the film's gimmick, but also would fuck up the award winning ending which relies entirely on the hidden camera concept.

If anything I'd say the only thing missing here is maybe the indoor cameras could have used the same digital timecodes/framing as the outdoor ones, just to drive home the idea further.

The ending is so good as well, it's one thing for it to conclude with the burglars noticing the camera, but for "Hope there's only one" to be the final sting (with Rob's hand blacking out the screen) was such a celebration, a fantastic moment for this story to end on and one that made me want to cheer.

So many good moments in this film that it would be tedious for me to list them all. But I thought it was so good and I had such a great time watching.

While Richard is my pal and I am more aware than anyone how suspicious this team's award sweep was on the finals night, I'm genuinely glad to see the judges felt the same about this film as I did and I stand by every award it won.

Things you got right: A solid little comedy with some super creative storytelling techniques and a fantastic ending.

Things to work on for next time: DvM are one of those teams that don't really need my advice at this stage, especially because what they're doing looks to be consistently working.