Criminal Wanted

This film was shot very well. The Cinematography stood out for me. It felt like a high budjet film. Also the editing and general quality of the film was outstanding. It looked like it had been well worked on and was thought out thoroughly. It did not seem like a film shot in 48 hours. The acting was pretty solid, with the main characters and the side characters holding up quite nicely. I loved the look of the film also. The sound design is also top notch. I loved the music as it followed a theme throughout the film. There weren't any blaring technical issues that stood out either. Just stayed solid throughout. Just when you thought the film looked great. the substance of the story was well received with the added foreshadowing just rounding the film off nicely.

Overall 9/10

I thought the set-up for this was good - a botched robbery results in our hero criminal deciding he needs to find a new partner. Plenty of scope there to go in interesting directions. For me, a montage that showed our criminal actually trying to work with each of those who were trying out would have been more interesting than the very trite "failed auditions/next!" sequence that we've seen many times before. The film also lurches hard into being a rom-com complete with a "getting to know you" montage. I think for the ending to really pay off we needed to feel more for the lead character. He's a bit of jerk and that's all we really see until the end when he suddenly has an epiphany about what he's putting his new partner through. This was a thoughtful bit of writing but I just don't know if it was fully earnt.

The film-making tech was pretty slick - camera, sound, and editing all done with a degree of confidence. Nice job making the shortlist.

Gonna echo a lot of Mista Teas's great review here - very nicely shot, very technically proficient from a team which shows a lot of promise.

The premise of your story is great, though the audio mix made it a little tricky to figure out what was going on when Yellow entered the bar - I gleaned he was shot and killed, but it would have been nice to hear this a little more clearly. I also think a scene missing here - one which you could have done instead of the slightly aimless joke about the rain/sprinkler, would be the main character running away from the crime scene, escaping the sound of sirens.

I think Mista Teas brings up a great point that the auditions montage, while a great direction to take the story in, feels a little undercooked, and a more fleshed out sequence in which we see how these potential new partners in crime carry out (and fail) various minor robberies, would have been a lot more engaging to watch as an audience, and probably a lot more engaging to make as filmmakers. Instead of a "NEXT!" scene in an empty room, you could have had a great time dipping in and out of different locations, showing different small scale crimes gone wrong.

This would have also made the ending, where he decided to not attempt the same larger crime which had his previous partner killed, hit a little harder.

None of this is to say there was anything wrong with your story structure - in fact the ending as it is is already quite sweet, I guess this is more me punching up your script to demonstrate areas in which you just fell short of graduating the shortlist.

Challenge for next year: I don't think you need much advice from me, I'd say just keep practicing your various filmmaking disciplines. Maybe after writing your script next year, think of some areas before you film which could be enhanced, giving your film an X factor.