I want to be a cowboy

Great use of location for the genre! I didn’t totally follow what the story was or understand who the animated character was, but I feel that the filmmaking and visual communication was strong, and shows promise for this crew in future competition.

It is genuinely a personal bugbear to see a 48 Hours film literally was the first 30 seconds or so of a film on waking up and getting ready shots. What was even more perplexing to me was that you chose a wonderful upbeat song to kickstart proceedings, any if we had actually come into the narrative sooner rather than later I would most definitely have been a happy camper.

Because when things got going this film looked absolutely fantastic!

I think we had a few things going on here that would have greatly benefitted from maybe choosing one to drive the narrative? Whether that was the crossroads, the new dawn, or literally living the dream as per your visual motifs it was easy to see how passionately our lead wanted to be a cowboy, just whilst beautiful once it got going, the plot was threadbare.

Story: 1.5/5
Technical: 3.5/5
Elements: 3/5
Overall: 2.5/5

I agree with Steelpotato - let's do away with getting-out-of-bed montages unless absolutely necessary!

Beyond this though, while the story is a little too bare-bones for my taste, the cinematography is breathtaking and lends itself so well to a western. I desperately wanted more story to accompany these shots, just as much as you wanted to be a cowboy.

The animated Gatekeeper appearing in the middle of the road? That might be the single most baffling creative decision I've seen in the competition all year - what the hell is going on here? Who is that guy!

Challenge for next year: I'd love to see a stronger story coupled with your excellent cinematography!

Firstly, the Red Zone was an inspired choice for a film such as this. It looked great and was beautifully isolated. As others have said, for a film that's under 2:30 you really can't spend much time on "getting-ready-in-the-morning" which I think is something we've probably all done at least once in this comp.

I really like the concept here - a man looking to put aside the unsatisfying part of his life to find something more spiritual. I have no actual idea, but the animated figure is perhaps one showing the path needed to be travelled but also blocking that path as our cowboy hasn't quite moved through the various stages required to reach his enlightenment.

I enjoyed the performance from our sole character and think you created quite a grand-looking scale with your drone shots.

Perhaps a little too much ambiguity in this. Looked great though and wow, I'm filming there if Last-Person-Left-On-Earth comes up again.