Taking The Mick

The plotline was a little far fetched in regards to someone stealing a car due to work and family related stress which took me out a little from the story that i was pretty gripped to beforehand. That aside, I really enjoyed watching this short film. Cleverly edited to reveal Mick over and over. Nice moment of them coming together to help him move on. Nice work guys!

For a team that usually takes a lot of care over its world-building and story beats, I felt there were some parts of this that were a bit of a miss.

The reason for having the car was delivered as almost a throw-away explanation and was a real tell rather than showing us how she got it which could have been the opportunity for perhaps a comedic moment or to even show her as a liar - which would have added more to the character. Her change of heart in doing the right thing didn't seem earned enough either as we just didn't know enough about her besides being prone to rash decisions. She actually could have just done one more - namely throwing the box to the side of the road and driving off. Problem solved!

I'm not sure to if I'm on board either with there being no consequences for her actions - she gets to literally just walk away which ties into most of the story just feeling all a little too convenient. I suppose the read you could have would be that circumstances brought them together and they ended up "saving" each other which is kind of sweet.

The performances are strong, the visuals well-executed, the editing is well-timed, the music suitable and apart from a couple of moments, the sound was pretty even. We even got some nice shots of the snow-capped Southern Alps in the background. Beautiful!

The Anniversary genre is one where you really have to add something from another genre to it and "Taking The Mick" does that with its supernatural flavouring. Only, I feel they played it a bit too safe with a relatively well-worn storyline.

TAKING THE MICK sees a 48Hours team do the unthinkable: Listen to my advice from a previous year and actually implement it, that advice in question being a challenge to film outdoors.

What a year to film outdoors too, when the prevailing criticism I find myself doling out to teams is the overuse of ugly sterile post-quake homes, we get this film which is set entirely outside, with beautiful vistas and long stretches of roads. A+ in terms of location use gang. Well, maybe A- if Sons of the Broad Meadow are an A+.

It's also worth noting the quality of the audio here too, which can often be the reason teams don't want to film outside. But this film sounds great.

I'm not so sure if I could give the same praise to the video element of the film, which is serviceable in the framing department, but looked a touch over exposed the whole time, and some shaky stuttery camera pans also had me going "yeesh". Perhaps another couple tries of these takes would have benefitted the film.

As for the story, I think there is a really good foundation here, I think the character journeys are effective, but I think also could have been improved by a bit more visual flair or subjective filmmaking, it feels very stage play, and narratively I think we could have had higher stakes, and a little more massaging on the arc checkpoints - it's all well and good to hear that our protagonist stole a car, or have another character explain "we're all running from something", but in this context it felt like a symptom of trying to cram an emotional resolve into a 5 minute max duration. I think we needed to see her steal the car, and while Mick's line is well written, I think it would have been more effective to communicate this theme via action instead of checkmarking in the dialogue.

Also, does she get in trouble for stealing the car? Surely she's gonna have to explain SOMETHING to the grieving family she takes the Mick to? It all happens off screen, and I can't help feel that the threat of getting in legal trouble would have made her decision a lot harder to make, and ultimately a lot more powerful when she makes it despite this threat.

Welcome to the kind of city manager review you get when you're just so good that I have to delve deeper than your average team and be super constructive with how to improve.

Challenge for next year: I think I'd like to see South Jersey Ghost Research step up in the cinematography department. All your films thus far seem to be focused on coverage of a scene, but I'd love to see a little more style and interesting shot composition or lighting be used. This is filmmaking after all, so have a stab at controlling an image instead of just capturing it yourself.