Krista - https://vimeo.com/ornana/krista
I liked what this film was trying to do, but I don't know that it really worked for me. Maybe it's worth a rewatch.
The film opens with Krista hitting a stick along railings. I really liked the sound design, but It’s a very filmy thing to do. I don’t think people really do that, do they? Anyway, the lead actor was very good. The acting teacher was distractingly bad though!
I really enjoyed the crosscutting between the actors play-fighting and the real fighting. I don't really know what it was trying to say, but it worked for me. I guess it was simply connecting the two times in our minds for later in the film.
My main issue with this film is the ending. At the end, she tries to get revenge on the boy in her acting class who stood back and didn't do anything before. However, to me, she just comes across in a really unsympathetic light. I understand her intentions, but the way she went about it just seemed completely wrong to me. She just assaults some kid in front of the entire class. I don't even understand how that enabled her to get revenge or make any kind of a point. She just comes across as a really unlikeable, bad person.
And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool - https://vimeo.com/170127382
I have very mixed feelings about this film. There were lots of moments in it that I really liked, but I don't think it really held together as a complete whole.
The film had loads of Lots of POVs of inanimate objects. For example, there were shots from the bottom of a glass, inside a bowling ball, a gun etc. Why they did this, I'm not quite sure. I imagine it was simply a stylistic thing, because I can't see any thematic or narrative reason for this. I had similar feelings about the way the film was split into chapters and that it cuts into slow motion seemingly at random.
Speaking of themes; I honestly am not sure what the film was about. I get that then throwing the goldfish into the pool and not be able to see them was meant to be really deep and all, and I didn't necessarily dislike it, but I don’t really think it was quite as deep as the film seemed to think it was. The ending simply came across as pretentious and meaningless.
The film did lots of things I’m sick of seeing in short films. For instance when the girl stood motionless while the huge, sped up crowd moves around her. This is just a cliche of student films at this stage and I'm pretty bored of seeing it.
The title of the film 'And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool' implies that the goldfish incident happens at the end of a long story. That there was a sprawling series of events that led to them putting the fish in the pool. But there wasn’t. They were just handed some fish at random at the end of the film. I found that disappointing, because it was an intriguing title. I also forgot that the film was meant to be a true story, because it's not really a story at all.
This probably sounds very negative, but it's honest. However, there were some things I did really like about the film. I really enjoyed the sound design of the girls food. It was absolutely sickening. It sounded disgusting.
I liked the editing in the scene with the emojis. I think the comedic timing was very good and it was a nice idea. It could have been cringey and I don't really like that kind of thing usually, but it really worked well in this case.
In a scene at the swimming pool where the girl walks past the swimming instructor, the very fast paced editing back and forth between the two was very intense. I liked it a lot.
160 Characters - https://vimeo.com/189536800
I think this film had a really interesting concept, but I don't think it lived up to its potential. I think the idea of telling the story through us seeing the text messages is such a fun premise. It had so much promise. However, in the end it proved unsatisfying. The use of voiceover was just unnecessary. It over-explained things. There's a certain air of mystery that would come from just reading the messages and I think that would make the film much more compelling.
I didn't like the Edgar Wright styled editing. I don't have any issue with it in principle, but it didn't have the sound design to support it, so it just felt amateurish. I also really didn't like the final line of the film ("It already says 'low on space'"). Arthur and I had to listen to it about five times in order to work out what she said, because it was so unclear. And when we realised what she was saying it was even more frustrating, because it was seemingly irrelevant to the overall narrative and themes of the film.
I think possibly my favourite aspect of the film was when we saw the text being typed on the screen, but not sent. We watched the person on the other end thinking. I think it was oddly personally and I really liked it.
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