Graffitical

A different approach in this short from what we usually see with this genre. Essentially a tour around the city's street art by our protagonist while being followed by the "Gatekeeper of social standards". It's a solid idea but not a great deal happens. Unless I missed it, we don't really know until the credits what the motivation of the gatekeeper is as they kind of randomly turn up. It may have been better if there was a lot more made of the chase/hide-n-seek nature of the film. There seemed to be very few stakes which given the sweet ending is fine, but for me, there just wasn't enough conflict to care that much. Nicely shot and edited with excellent coverage and some nice use of shadows.

I appreciate the imaginative take, we really do see too many procedural crime dramas in this genre, so nice work!

Skateboarding in an urban jungle can make for genuinely interesting cinema; see SKATE KITCHEN, WASSUP ROCKERS, PARANOID PARK, and I liked that the team, and I kind of liked that the team presented Gisborne as a concrete maze, a playground for rebellion persay.

Where I got a little bit lost was in thinking for the vast majority of the film that our lead was simply a high school kid playing hookie from school and that the woman chasing after them was a truancy officer. For me to not realise that this was in fact a "gatekeeper of social standards" until the end credits probably points to the film needing a few more hints or exposition to give clarity to proceedings.

Tons of coverage across your film so I commend you for really going all out to convey your message. The other main issue for me was though that by using one concrete alleyway after another without any real geographical pointers, it really meant that the journey was unclear both literally and metaphorically.

Story: 1.5/5
Technical: 2.5/5
Elements: 3/5
Overall: 2/5

I mean....... this film looked pretty. Clean sound too.

Probably win a few Gizzy awards.

NAPIER does indeed look pretty. Nice hipster dream zone out film. I dig it.

Well done to this team.