Expansion

the story here is clear which is good. there’s some good effort out into the production design. Well done on making a film in 48hours. Next steps I’d say would be to work on making your performances sound confident in their dialogue.

I’ll try to explain what I mean by that. It doesn’t mean you have to write a script with every word planned out. But if you have a strong idea of what you want the scene to do, ie how do the characters get from A to B, then before you roll camera, have your cast run through the scenario and come up with words they can use that get those points across in a way that sounds natural and works for the story. Then if you rehearse that a couple times your talent will shine a lot more on camera and the audience will be able to feel more connected to the characters. (as an example, we used this method in our 2018 film “A Slice of You” - there was no script!)

Really cute story in this film, it’s always nice to see a happy ending of people making new friends.

Sneaking out to a party for the new kid, our 2 leads discover they may have more in common with him than they realise when nobody else turns up to the disco ball extravaganza.

I think for mine the thing that jumped out were quite a number of camera shots being out of focus. This is the thing I would stress you to try and make sure you really nail with each and every shot. If it's automated and on a tripod that would explain things, but if that was the case I'd recommend mixing things up and shots with 3 performers on screen perhaps being cut down in framing to 1 or 2 to allow the performer not speaking to operate the camera and get your captures crisp and sharp.

I liked the grounded slice of life approach, making an unexpected friend and bonding, and the positive vibe was well appreciated. But some sense of dramatic urgency would have helped improve things a lot I felt.

Story: 2/5
Technical: 1.5/5
Elements: 2/5
Overall: 2/5

I always look forward to Off Demand, a team which often bring some really interesting concepts to the competition and seem to put a lot more focus on genre than other younger teams.

Expansion may be where they've met their match though - and coming-of-age seems to be quite a rough abstract genre for some people, and with nothing juicy to sink their teeth into like time travel or nature run amok or Something Invisible, this film is functionally much less exciting than the team's previous outtings.

It's not all bad - I appreciate the age appropriate casting, and the story that is told is about young people having young people experiences (which is what coming-of-age is all about), but the story itself leaves something to be desired.

The emotional journey is simple, but good. Befriending a social outcast is a great idea, but I think this stuff works a lot better as the background of a story than the WHOLE story. For example, imagine the characters bonding over their favourite video game while they're lost in the woods, or exploring the sewers, or trotting along train tracks looking for a dead body rumoured to be lying somewhere close? The party setting just fell flat for me, unfortunately.

Coming-of-Age seems to trip people up in this regard, almost everyone who gets the genre is trying to make the subdued and hangout natured BOYHOOD but I think the competition needs Coming-of-Age films like STAND BY ME or IT.

I bring this up with your film specifically because this is a great example of how a team who've shown a lot of ingenuity with their locations before, decided to set the film inside. I'm sick of seeing these houses as well, they're everywhere this year.

Challenge for next year: Get back to your roots and use location to your advantage. A good location can make a film truly pop, and if you get another internally focused genre like Coming-of-Age, remember that just because its Coming-of-Age doesn't mean it can't also be a time travel movie or an adventure movie or a film noir or a musical.

I think a script would have benefited you greatly in this as it seems from the outside looking in that a lot of the dialogue was improvised. That's fine to do (and I love TheRealClose's tip) but you need some sort of skeleton so it doesn't come across as unnatural or in the case of this, a feeling of repetitiveness as if each character is saying the same thing in the same way that was just said!

With your age group, coming-of-age really does give you a lot of possibilities and as AJ suggests pair it with something else - my team's 48HR films are never really just one thing and this is, of course, true of a lot of teams. Do it no matter the assigned genre!

On the tech side - try and lose the jump cuts unless they have a cinematic purpose and take time over your focus. It seems you have a nice tight team and you're almost veterans so use that experience!