Bushwhacked

I loved this one and laughed at every misfortune. I just wish he got run over by the car in the end!

I think this might have had the best sound design out of any film in the Wellington heats, which was absolutely crucial as the team went small scale in terms of a tramperr going through horrific injury after horrific injury, and benefitted massively from the soundscape amplifying what it needed to.

Also, big props for taking on Ultra because a whole lot of teams chickened out this year. The headlamp was a really nice touch to cover this requirement, but also made perfect sense from a plot point of view. Minimal lighting, minimal sense of direction = setting the scene. Despite shooting in the dark everything was clearly shot with tight framing providing a tension to proceedings that allowed the laughs to hit hard given it meant you had the audience's attention focused and in the palm of your hand.

Really well done physical performance by your lead actor as well. He sold the frustration and agony very effectively. The gore FX were low budget but believable also.

All in all this was really well done, and I can only imagine didn't quite make the shortlist due to not having quite enough weight in terms of plot or character development. We were just thrown into things a little bit and a touch of adding who he was as a person rather than arguably simply a body for the splatstick would have potentially elevated this further.

Story: 2.5/5
Technical: 3.5/5
Elements: 4/5
Overall: 3.5/5

Cool sound design. Will hope to see you in finals with a nomination for that. Good plot, well written, great take on ultra!

Cool sound design. Will hope to see you in finals with a nomination for that. Good plot, well written, great take on ultra!