Trust the Process

Tempo is a key ingredient for a short film, and Dunce Media got this one right from top to bottom with an eye catching jazzily edited portrait of a life modeling session.

Immeditately my curiousity was piqued when the black and white nature of the short was clearly shown to be a strength with a well dressed set and strong vision for contrast. Little touches such as artistic paintings in the background and the hint of a canvas meant the knock knock early on provided a trepidation of excitement for who the model would be coming through the door.

Percussion and wind instruments were used to excellent effect, evoking a sophisticated air of fliration to proceedings in combination with creative camera techniques such as deep focuses on eyes, tightly laced boots, muscular parts of the body, and mouths showing the slightest hint of movement as though inhaling the excitement.

I was genuinely surprised that this was done with royalty-free music because the edit matched to the beats was close to perfect.

Whilst this could have got lost in the crowd of artsy farty jazz films shot without colour, narration was used to excellent effect, a rarity in 48 Hours, as our lead actress drew lyrics in her head of art being her way of communicating with nature. That her life had a lack of meaning without art and love.

Having established a sense of depth to the characters through our artist seeming sophisticated and our model a straightlaced professional who is there for the money from the job first and foremost, I was utterly impressed by how well you hit the mark with your ending. Some may say it was bait and switch with the tone you had, but to me it matched the quirky nature of the short.

In terms of where I would drop slight marks from my arbitrary ratings, whilst the narration was well done, it felt a little bit jumbled at times compared to the visuals we were presented on screen. In particular for example where we had splitscreen or quickfire edits. The music and visuals always matched so well that the third element of narration could have been perhaps toned down a little, but on the other hand it matched the excitement in the room.

I am also slightly unsure if the dramatic urgency was significant enough to elevate the films to contend simply having seen other top quality films. What I mean by this is that we established she was there to draw and then had your visual treat of the life drawing followed by the satisfying conclusion. But was there enough depth to proceedings? Was the story arc strong enough or could it be viewed to be too much of a slice of life? However the fact it was tonally consistent, took some chances and was so good technically were massive pluses in my book so we will see come finals time.

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