Journey To Dreams

A determined dancer practices as hard as she possible can with a prestigious audition coming up, working for hours on end with the encouragement of her best friend to nail her routine.

I really liked the use of lighting her to convey just how much time and effort was put into proceedings by the protagonist. Whether by shooting early in the day and then later, or colour grading, by the second half of the film the visual tones and use of change of how shadows came into the room gave every impression how long our lead had been at it.

Great dancing by the lead actress who looked like she genuinely knew how to dance, and I also liked that this worked as a slice of life; encouragement from dad, and the journey to the audition actually being the meat and payoff for the short rather than any big dramatic conclusion.

Clean sound. This went an awfully long way to help this film stand out in this heat of mostly high school teams I must say. The ADR dubbing was clean and made the dialogue audible and easy to understand.

Now where the film could have done with a bit of improvement I felt was the camera framing and editing. Camera shots were clean, well lit and in focus, with good white balance throughout, but a couple of shots got away from the team with characters chopped off from frame for example. Would have also have loved to see some more cinematic techniques to give more visual flair to the obvious dancing talent, but that's just me.

From an editing point of view, just felt that a number of shots were held for a few seconds too long, almost making me think of some of the actions as tedious, but I guess that is genuinely how dancing is, a tedious process to become the best.

Story perhaps a bit light and lacked much originality but I liked the way it played out the and overall really well made.

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

Taniwha Road has been competing for a few years now and they've produced another quality short here. Going the dance route is a popular choice for teams who get the option and it was a smart choice here. The lead has some dancing skills which helps!

Filming, lighting and sound pretty consistent overall although I felt the ADR work needed a bit more around it to build it into the scene - was a bit too artificial for me.

My major issue is that nothing much happens to make me care. There's no real conflict - our lead practices her dance over and over until it's good and then goes to the contest/audition. There's a bit of doubt in her mind but not really enough to make me care. I thought the security scene at Te Pae was a real highlight - loved the acting there. Watch those reflections in sunglasses though.

Overall, another top effort from Taniwha Road. Bound to push the Schools comp pretty hard once more. Nice work!

Some great use of locations here and I think some quite nice framing too. The story is simple, but it has a nice heart to it. It would have been nice to see more build up to that turning point where she regains her confidence. I think I’m not sure exactly what was going on inside the dancer’s head as to why she’s doubting herself, and it could have been cool to find a way to communicate that to the audience.

Taniwha Road continue to show more enthusiasm and eagerness to explore filmmaking than any other school team, and it's been this way for years. The finished films aren't always perfect, but the technical ideas and concepts this team has tackled in their various outings has always inspired me.

While JOURNEY TO DREAMS is a little light in the story department, we're still seeing the fruits of a young team who take on feedback and dive headfirst into their projects - no other school team is employing ADR, for example (not as effectively as this anyway), and it's been a joy to watch them improve over the years.

The acting is good, the dancing is great and the beginning/end have great adherence to story structure - it's the middle of the film which maybe could have used a little work I think - because it's mostly just practicing dancing, which I think could have been expressed in a more narratively dynamic way.

Like, maybe the main character rolls her ankle? Or maybe she's gonna be late for the audition? Or do her and her best friend have an argument but heal their friendship through the power of dance? What I'm basically talking about is drama, higher stakes, something which you nailed in your superhero film last year.

Always consider how to make your story bigger and deeper, more exciting. Your technical prowess is only getting better and better and the experimenting you're doing with the form is inspiring. I think its only a matter of time before you get that perfect genre which moves you to make a film worthy of the city finals.

Challenge for next year: Really focus on telling a compelling and thrilling story - think of high stakes, what will happen to these characters if they fail? Will they be kicked out of school? Will they lose their lover? Will they die? Explore these tensions and marry them with your inventive and scrappy filmmaking.