Meet Heath

The huge amount of uneasy tension developed in this short really signposted that all was not what it seemed. This looming sense of dred was well played out largely due to the chemistry between the two leads. And even though there is a giveaway in the film's title I didn't expect the action taken by one of the characters to be what it was. How I feel about drastic that action was - I'm not sure.

Apart from one scene near the start that I thought was a little over-exposed, the cinematography was very sharp and there were some effective wide shots. The dialogue was a bit drowned out in the car conversation by other vehicles but the acting sold the situation despite this. The second half of the film is its strong point with editing, camerawork and acting all in synergy leading to the dramatic conclusion.

CHCH On AIr are veterans in the comp and have produced one of their stronger efforts here. Great job!

Showing some effective, crafty storytelling here. Some nice looking shots with strong dialogue and direction, and totally convincing and entertaining performances.

This was a good-looking film, with a few interesting locations (filmed in Scotland?). Sound for the dialogue had a lot of background noise, and also seemed to sit very low in the mix, and I had to go back a couple of times to figure out what some of the lines were. The establishing sections of the film included some shots and scenes that felt like they existed solely to tick the boxes of certain required elements, but once we arrived at the main scene the story settled and found a lot more focus.

There is a huge story reveal which I won't spoil here, but it will surely be divisive for audiences. It didn't work for me personally, not because the plot point is bad in itself, but because I felt like it was presented in a way that was tonally confusing, and also dodged some of the rich story potential latent in the reveal. As it was, the story ended on what felt like a bad-taste punchline to a sketch, leaving character motivations that led up to the big reveal, and the consequences that would surely follow it, unexplored.

Of the two main characters, I found myself much more interested in learning more about the backstory and motivations of the woman; unfortunately, the story and the camera eye itself tended to linger more on the man, which had the effect of making him a sort of default protagonist, which was an awkward tension to have as a viewer.

One interesting choice the film made was to have no musical soundtrack; this is often a decision that can be effective at stripping back scenes to their raw essence, and eliminating the potential for music to emotionally manipulate the audience. However, in this case I felt that because there was some extreme tonal ambiguity in terms of how we the audience were supposed to feel about the events portrayed, by the end I was really craving soundtrack music to help clarify the intended thesis of the film.

Now I know that I'm sounding rather negative about all this, but there's one aspect of the film that was really good, and that is the performances of the two leads. Their performances both sat in a naturalistic space, underplaying a lot of the emotional beats in a way that read effectively on camera (unlike the theatrical overacting which is a hallmark of many 48hours films). Some of the lines may have been a bit clunky, but they found ways to give them some emotional truth and authenticity.

Going forward, I would encourage this team to consider how a big story twist, rather than being an endpoint to work towards, could instead be a mid- or even start-point to build upon, because that's often where the best character development happens.

I'm going to be the disagreeing voice in the room here and probably by quite some margin...because I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING LOVED THIS FILM.

Here's the thing that has struck to me after speaking to a few people about MEET HEATH. I've been told this film was 'mean spirited', others have said that the intentions of the team across their body of work in the competition should be considered, and I'm not having a bar of that. We judge films on their own merit in this competition in my opinion and how they go about setting out what they set out to achieve in terms of that film, for that specific year, with the genre and element requirements a huge consideration.

After 10 years or so of good but flawed films, in my opinion Christchurch On Air in 2022 have absolutely knocked it out of the park.

First things first, the play on words, yeah damn that's clever "Christchurch On Air...set in Ayr, Scotland" whilst nothing of note to the plot I found that a lovely little touch. You all saying there was background noise in the film...watch it again; that was foley for the beach wind and not any disruption on the sound design. And yet in the mix that moderate wind being raised as a viewer immediately brought about some distraction, creating a parallel with the distracted mind of the lead actress who had forgotten the couples own anniversary...at their spot, the beach, which is very carefully spelt out.

Cinematically the film looked absolutely fantastic. The plot was allowed to develop and breath, with realistic dialogue such as blaming forgetting an important event on a long, tiring week at work and selling this through body language of being unnerved at the mention of celebrating the relationship.

As we moved onto to a golden baked idyllic picnic scenario, reminiscent of UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, the romcom genre tropes of going all out to show true love seemingly came to the fore, only to be turned on its head in quite dramatic fashion given that our lead actor has never really been the outdoor type.

Also if you know anything about British treats you'll appreciate the zing that taking the Tunnock's Tea Cakes was.

Onto the elephant in the room, was the cellphone reveal, the sinking feeling as the reading of text messages drew parallels much closer to Peter Greenaway than a Diane Lane romp..."mean spirited". Fucking A it was, and it was a jawdropper at the same time. It hit me right in the feels. With texts of "how to get away" there was just enough to show that the resulting actions were within the predisposed; that there was a history and longing for a fairtyale and that what we saw on screen, the attempt to make a majestic anniversary picnic was much greater than the sum of its parts.

Call me crazy but I could see this film winning the whole competition in 2022.

Story: 5/5
Technical: 4.5/5
Elements: 4/5
Overall: 5/5

Outside of a few technical hiccups, most of which I may be willing to overlook because of the tight nature of the competition, this is a solid effort put in by Christchurch On Air.

The chemistry between the two leads is what sells the film for me, they are both so natural in their roles and play off of each other wonderfully.

The editing really comes to life in the second half of the film and would have to disagree with a previous reviewer in that I loved the lack of soundtrack. This film seems as if it was intended to have a sense of ambiguity and the addition of a soundtrack may have pushed the film too far in the way of melodrama.

The cinematography was wonderful in parts, but slightly lacking in others. The direction was solid and there is a clear consistency from beginning to end.

I would say that the biggest compliment I could give the film is that I would gladly go back to it for repeated viewings. The story is engaging, the actors believable and it I would argue that once you have seen it through for the first time, there is a completely different film to watch the second time.

I give it two thumbs up, if I had more thumbs then this film would receive them.

In what is a massive step forward for this team, MEET HEATH is a cold and calculated surprise thriller with some solid performances and a unique location - funny that team with "Christchurch" in their name looks to have shot in Scotland.

In previous reviews for Chch on Air's previous films, I implored you to be a bit more experimental with your storytelling - for years I felt you'd told us the same story about morally reprehensible men who die or kill someone at the end, and while, uh, you certainly didn't change your stripes, you have greatly improved your filmmaking, and as such made it further in the competition than ever before.

A lot of MEET HEATH is very effective, and while there were just one-too-many flaws for it to quite resonate with the judges, it's no small victory to say this is your best film yet.

So, what are those one-too-many flaws you ask? Well on a technical side, the scene in the car at the start became so drowned out with traffic that it felt like I was missing important dialogue, and I think some ADR could have been employed here to fix the audio scape.

Similarly, though not as unsalvageable, the cinematography is framed nice, but COMPLETELY flat. The kind of footage you can tell was shot on a good camera, but it seems it didn't make it to the colour grading session before the 48Hours was up, which is a massive shame because it's uninspiring desaturated look is probably one of the main contributing factors to this film stumbling at the finish line. Even just a quick pass to deepen the shadows, or a standard LUT thrown on an adjustment layer would have made this film a hell of a lot more engaging to look at.

I'm not saying it couldn't have still looked bleak and cold - it wouldn't surprise me if this was your creative vision - but there's a big difference between intentionally and unintentionally desaturated footage, and unfortunately MEET HEATH does not do very dynamic things with its grade, looking more like I'm watching a film through fog than enjoying any deep or rich near-monochromatic visual dimensionality.

Lastly I'd like to talk about your story - so be prepared for a bit more of a subjective critique, and feel free to reject it entirely. The first note I have here is I think the film could really just start at the picnic. I'm surprised you didn't make this call anyway considering the drowned-out dialogue in the car, but virtually nothing is told to us as an audience before the picnic that we can't glean later. I guess in this version you'd also be gutting the anniversary genre clarification and the compulsory gatekeeper, so maybe start at the gate, or work some figurative gatekeeping into the characters' personalities. Instead of "I'll leave you two alone" the final line could have been "Happy anniversary" and then bam we've ticked off all the boxes.

My more radical story note though, would be I'm far FAR more interested in what would happen next, or if the stakes were upped. This film seems to want us to side with the man - he sure taught his cheating girlfriend a lesson! - but to be honest I sympathize far more with the woman, whose clearly psychotic insane and abusive boyfriend pushed her into Heath's arms in the first place. And now he's MURDERED him???

I think if you'd started with the picnic, had the murder/baked into a pie reveal be the midpoint, and the rest of the film was the woman either escaping being murdered herself by her clearly insane boyfriend (he did drive them out into the middle of nowhere, the perfect crime), OR if you still want to have him cockily leave her there, I'd have loved to see her take revenge on him. Catch up to him, kill him, bake him into a fucking pie.

There are flashes of a brilliant idea in the film we have - in particular I love that the titular Heath isn't even a character in the film - but I'm sorry I just thinking murdering someone and forcing someone else to eat their minced up body is a LOT worse than cheating on someone, and the lead male gives me the vibe that he probably wasn't a particularly good partner anyway.

Finally, whichever story approach you decided to take, I think we needed to see a finger poking out of the second pie or something - something to confirm Heath has indeed been chopped up, because if I was her, and this happened to me, I probably wouldn't believe my boyfriend if he all but admitted to a grisly murder like that, and even as an audience member I'm not sure I believe him now either.

I hope all of this provides some insight and clarity into how I judged this film (I can't speak for the other judges), and while I know criticism can be painful, I truly intend for this to inspire you to continue to improve and overcome certain shortcomings in the future. I think Chch on Air have proven this year that there are some great storytellers on board the team, I just think the stories they tell, like Heath himself, need a little more time to bake in the oven.

Challenge for next year: Story notes aside, the big things are your technical bits and pieces because a film that looks crisp and sounds crisp will override any subjective storytelling issues I, or any of the judges, have. Things like colour grade and audio quality should be your big goal for next year. Narratively, I think I'd still like to see you dip into some new ideas - what does a Christchurch on Air comedy look like? Perhaps it's not fair for me to make suggestions in that area, because you should write what you want to write. But I hope you get musical or something next year ;)