Length: 07:40
Logline: A night of heavy drinking ends with disastrous results for one married couple.
This is the next instalment from Scott Watson's team so let's look and see if there's any improvement. There's not much to the plot here. SPOILER ALERT - A guy gets hammered then hammers his wife to death. But the lack of arc is thankfully saved by the public awareness message at the end. Structure is clear with a nice verbal inciting incident, change of tone at midpoint and definite climax. There's a big problem with pacing tho. Everything feels very drawn out. The drinking scene could be about a third of the length and is there really any need for the camera to continue to swirl around the dead wife? Yes, it's building atmosphere, but today's audiences all have my goldfish attention span and may be put off by the repetitive imagery and lack of advancing plot.
Elizabeth Baillie turns up again along with Craig McEwan, she is by far the more naturalistic of the performers. McEwan sounds like he's come straight from the panto. Baillie's Scottish accent feels more at home than McEwan's River City one. Audio isn't perfect. It's a bit echoey and perhaps too sensitive to movement. Camera too isn't as good as it could be. Handheld probably wasn't the best decision and the last sequence flounders due to McEwan not being in shot clearly as he lies on the sofa. The end music works very well and delivers a sombre tone. The warped Christmas jingle stuff also aids in the "getting pished" scenes where the slow-mo edit also adds to the effect too.
Without knowing the ins and outs of where this piece was to be shown or who it was for, the long length feels detrimental to the message delivered at the end. If anything, this makes you want to have more drink, not less. Saying that, there's good emotional resonance within the second half of the film. That appears to be one of the strong points of this production unit. They just need to bring their technical skills up to that level too.
This is the next instalment from Scott Watson's team so let's look and see if there's any improvement. There's not much to the plot here. SPOILER ALERT - A guy gets hammered then hammers his wife to death. But the lack of arc is thankfully saved by the public awareness message at the end. Structure is clear with a nice verbal inciting incident, change of tone at midpoint and definite climax. There's a big problem with pacing tho. Everything feels very drawn out. The drinking scene could be about a third of the length and is there really any need for the camera to continue to swirl around the dead wife? Yes, it's building atmosphere, but today's audiences all have my goldfish attention span and may be put off by the repetitive imagery and lack of advancing plot.
Elizabeth Baillie turns up again along with Craig McEwan, she is by far the more naturalistic of the performers. McEwan sounds like he's come straight from the panto. Baillie's Scottish accent feels more at home than McEwan's River City one. Audio isn't perfect. It's a bit echoey and perhaps too sensitive to movement. Camera too isn't as good as it could be. Handheld probably wasn't the best decision and the last sequence flounders due to McEwan not being in shot clearly as he lies on the sofa. The end music works very well and delivers a sombre tone. The warped Christmas jingle stuff also aids in the "getting pished" scenes where the slow-mo edit also adds to the effect too.
Without knowing the ins and outs of where this piece was to be shown or who it was for, the long length feels detrimental to the message delivered at the end. If anything, this makes you want to have more drink, not less. Saying that, there's good emotional resonance within the second half of the film. That appears to be one of the strong points of this production unit. They just need to bring their technical skills up to that level too.
Best Bit: Throttle scene.
Worst Bit: Really drawn out.
Read a condensed review of this film on Twitter here.
hehe another good wee review, personally i thought it was drawn out and i thought the actors did a good job...I am personally not happy with this short, it was rushed out for xmas...You seem to be detecting a theme that emotion is playing a continual role in these shorts...I can only imagine a reviewer being driven to drink, might be the next short! :)
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