Crimson Snow

Well done! Awesome location and the escalating tension was there.

This was a beautiful film to look at! From the amazing cinematography, stunning location, cool shootout and finally to that poor guy (if you know, you know).

I do wish the film answered the biggest question that primarily drives the whole story and each character's motive but I was left questioning myself, "Did the main character manage to find the girl?" up until the next day.

I would definitely watch a sequel or a more developed version of 'Crimson Sow' in a heartbeat as I enjoyed this very much! Well done to the Sons of the Broad Meadow!

A fantastic snow-covered location is used in this short about a bounty hunter on the search for a missing young girl. The location certainly adds to the scale, drama and nailing the western "sell" of the film. The story itself is pretty basic and follows all the tropes. We've got a guy doing it all for money who eventually does it for other more noble reasons. I think to answer izadecastro's question above - he does indeed find the girl when he finds what I believed was a dress next to a suspicious-looking mound of snow. This motivates his character into pursuing the "Man in Black".

Really well shot with great use of angles that add further to the grand scale of the film. The final shoot-out is well executed by the actors but I did feel a little disorientated as to where the characters were on the screen - they seemed to change sides. I'm not sure the body falling was that successful as it looked a bit comical but also not an easy thing to pull off.

So, an impressive film just not super original in its storyline. 100% ticks a number of boxes for making finals though.

Beautiful looking film. That location was just breathtaking.

Cowboy hats off to your camerman for getting the exposure right. I would have run screaming having to film that in a hurry!

Stunningly shot film with epic scenery. As mentioned above, no easy feat to do with exposing for snow and faces making it all the more impressive. I have to agree with Mista Teas. I felt the fall was a little misplaced, and possibly could have been shot in a simpler way to give more dramatic feel over comical. Still, an impressive attempt using 3d (?) considering the time restraints.

In response to the actors changing sides, I think that he had used his hat and cloak on the rock as a decoy to mislead the villain into his trap. A classic of the genre.

Overall a great submission from Sons of the Broad Meadow. Well done, team.

One of the best looking films in Chch this year, I imagine Castle Hill was always on the cards for a potential location, choosing to go out in the snow certainly makes this western quite 'pavlova', so well done.

The story itself falls flat a bit for me. The revelation of the girl being the characters granddaughter did not raise the stakes much higher, particularly as we never get to see this child character, that revelation is not resolved. A sweet connection between stranger and child at the end could have been a slam dunk, so was a shame to not have that resolution.

Still, even with my story gripes, it's an overall mastery in film making, with all other technical elements (bar maybe that fun CGI rag doll fall that put the Little Andromeda audience into hysteria) was completely on point, and for that alone I imagine it will be a hot contender for finals, and there will probably be judges that back it to place, so well done!

Lets be honest, this is the most beautiful film to watch. The cinematography is just stunning.
I was loving everything about it until... the dummy over the cliff. Prior to that, it was epic and gorgeous and that moment cheapened the film and played for laughs rather than adding to the scope of the film.
It felt unfinished as the girl was never found (we assume with the antagonist out of the way our hero was able to go on and do so) but overall, definitely deserved city finalist.

Hard to judge this movie purely on story or plot, when the main meat of this film for me was the location. Absolutely stunning and puts almost every other film to shame in some regards. The balls to film in the snow with the last of the daylight definitely pays off. Really inspiring stuff here

awesome location, cinematography, and sound. keeping the story and content aside, I think the form of this movie was in general consistently beautiful.
stunning to watch such a good-quality movie. honestly wished you guys win more awards. the only thing that I think could be even removed and no harm would be to the movie, was the falling from the cliff shot. anyway, wish you luck for more stuff.

Gods, what a beautiful-looking film. It's easy to say the location did all the work here, but that'd be ignoring the fact that it's also shot really really well - and shooting in snow is *hard*. A lesser team could've made the same logistical effort and shot at the exact same spot and turned out something that looked awful. Clear winner for Best Cinematography.

It's been stated in other reviews, but the film falls down in its storytelling. There are great moments in there - the wide shot of the distant gunslinger stands out, as does some of the suspense-building later on - but the film's just a little all over the place directorially and editorially. It feels like the team had all these great-looking shots and wanted to use all of them even if they didn't really have a specific storytelling purpose, where a slower pace with fewer and more intentional setups might have told the story more simply and clearly (and more in-genre, too). There's also some geographical confusion towards the end, which again, could've been avoided with a more deliberate approach.

And there's the ending itself - I feel like if you set up a missing girl at the top, AND have a dying man say "save my granddaughter" at the midpoint, by law you are REQUIRED to find the girl. I don't know if it was an issue with losing time (in which case, fair enough, it happens), or casting unavailability (in which case, don't write a story featuring a little girl!), but the ending is one of the more frustrating in the comp this year. All the more so because the film that precedes it is so well-made, CGI ragdoll notwithstanding. If he'd walked into the sunset with a rescued girl, shit, this might've placed in the top two. Even if he'd found a corpse, it would've felt more complete, if significantly darker.

I know the core people in this team and what they're capable of, and I feel like they can take this criticism (they probably even agree with it). They also seem to have achieved more or less exactly the crazy ambitious feat they set out to achieve, and that's always worth something. It's not often you see a 48hours film that takes your breath away how this one did, and I wish it well for the coveted national award for cinematography.

I'd seen bits and pieces of this film through facebook stories and thumbnails and things before I got to it and I was so excited.

With a plethora of films (even some of the city's best) shot in drab white houses this year, I was so excited to see such a unique location - one which feels so intentional (were you always planning on shooting your film in the mountains?) but also it so perfectly matches with Pavlova Western as a genre. Visually this film is thrilling, with certain shots of cowboys and the endless winter tundra of Christchurch's rolling fields and hills, being the kind of imagery you just don't see in 48Hours, and at the best of times this film evokes feelings of longing, or melancholy, of hope and hopelessness.

The filmmakers involved with Sons of the Broad Meadow are ones who have made some pretty impressive visuals before, but a consistent weak link in their team, unfortunately, tends to be the story - or at least creating a story which matches the brilliance of the visuals and the ideas. This, sadly, rings true for CRIMSON SNOW, but in a way which allows for, hopefully, some wonderful constructive feedback.

In this case in particular, I think the premise is good, and the broad strokes story structure is fine, but if I could have offered one piece of advice for this script it would be "do less". I'd even go as far as saying this film would have been vastly improved by little-to-no dialogue, because it seems like every line in this film is pretty expository, and I felt the atmosphere created by the location slipping away with every line spoken.

I'd have probably also vetoed the Missing Person poster which looked a bit to glossy for the (admittedly vague) time period - communicate the bounty situation in a different way. I'd have also tried dirtying up the outfits a bit, making that fake blood a little less neon raspberry, and, yeah, probably would have cut the incomplete ragdoll shot at the end - ambitious for sure, but it's a bit of a death knell on the film, disrupting the mood and tone at probably the most tonally important part of the film.

The preceding gun fight between the protagonist and the man in black was awesome, and served as a climax in and of itself, making the ragdoll even less necessary.

I'd also like to talk about the issue of the missing girl not being found - a lot of people I've talked to about this film, including a lot of the judges, have just been absolutely baffled that he doesn't find the granddaughter. I understand this - the easiest way to make a satisfying ending here would indeed be for the guy to find the granddaughter - but I'd like to offer a different thought in this area...

I think stories, at the end of the day, don't need satisfying endings, but they do need thematic closure. Westerns especially thrive on very complicated and hard-to-accept truths and themes - look at something like NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, which has an incredibly non-traditional conclusion. So with all this being said, I don't think the protagonist NEEDED to find the granddaughter, maybe he doesn't, maybe she's dead - as the white fabric he finds would suggest (though literally any other colour would make more sense, how the hell did he spot it?!). However if this is the ending you're going for, it needs to ring true as the conclusion for a theme completely absent from the film.

In other words, a hopeless ending is cool, but what are you saying ABOUT hopelessness?

Every sad ending you've ever seen that worked, worked because a thesis statement is being completed and communicated. THE GODFATHER is about how you can't escape corruption when it surrounds you, WATCHMEN is about how absolute truth is more important than comfort, PARASITE is about how the class divide is so broken that the poor will never become rich even if they work their whole lives. These all have sad endings, but they all have a point. And Westerns, as far as they go, are some of the most thematically rich (and depressing) films ever made.

All of this is definitely me being overly critical out of love - I can see such brilliance beneath the surface here, with the award winning cinematography being just the beginning of a team who have the potential to leave every other team in the dust. Or the snow.

Challenge for next year: I expect the Broad Meadow boys to make equally as brilliant location decisions next year (please PLEASE don't film indoors). What I would recommend is you guys find yourself a really solid writer to join the team, or act as a consultant. OR spend the next year studying story structure yourselves, and make sure you figure out how to be both exciting AND deliver on an emotional set-up.