The Grand Finalists for this year’s 48Hours Furious Filmmaking competition have been announced, a heavily delayed announcement due to this year “being the most intense and tight judging in 48HOURS history!”
That isn’t just a line to get you to BUY TICKETS RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW FOR THE GRAND FINAL JULY 4TH AT THE AUCKLAND CIVIC THEATRE, it’s a reflection of how much greater the “furious filmmaking” has become – in both quantity and quality.
Below are some great shorts that would have easily made their respective city finals a few years ago, but due to the hefty competition, they missed out. (OK, some also got disqualified.) Nevertheless, these are shorts to like and love and share, and there are plenty more that deserve the light outside of Finalists’ shadows.
From a purely technical standpoint, The Greatest Gunman is a bit messy (like 98% of all 48Hours films). But man, I laughed pretty damn hard on several occasions at the onslaught of silliness, with most of the laughs being rewarded to Tane Huata as the titular gunman.
UNE’s 2014 short Ballsed Up was one of the shortest films the competition’s ever seen – and one of that year’s most memorable. Managing to tick off all the required elements in one conversation without breaking a sweat, Dangerous Interchange is just as compact and just as witty – albeit with twice as many shots this time around.
I Love Loops scored PJ’s Wildcard last year with an all-out animated anthology assault that was unlike anything the competition has seen before. This year’s entry loses an animator but gains a whole lot more – mainly an upping of visual quality. This time, the group goes into braver storytelling territory, and while this horror might stumble a bit with its tale, the narrative stunt they pull proved this team are more than a good gimmick.
An animated science gone mad story about a mutant psychic orange deserves to have an equally mad animated style, and Squint Eastwood attended to that like an MTV cartoonist drunk on painkiller cocktails (I mean this as a compliment, I swear). If there’s anything wrong with this otherwise enjoyably bonkers short, it’s that it’s slightly too long in parts – a complaint I hardly ever have with animation, and may have ultimately been why this short was disqualified.
Another film to be slapped with a heartbreaking DQ is this rom-com from 2014 Grand Finalists Cinetrance. It might not have the most outstanding premise, but the filmmakers know what makes a rom-com buzz – they’ve got the look, the music, and the plot turns to prove it. Most importantly, the actors know how to deliver such a groove, moving back and forth from cartoonish to sincere like a well-oiled pendulum.
Here’s a simple, sweet and uncommon 48Hours film about a shy fellow trying to muster the courage to ask a girl out on a date. Had the script gone through another revision or two with tighter pacing and snappier dialogue, this would have been a strong finalist. As it is, Paper Girl is still a great-looking film that executes a neat concept with a clever visual effect to boot. And while the ending may have caught some off guard, I thought it was perfect.
There are so many more quality films lurking in the vast chasm of the Screening Room. Got a favourite? List it off in the comments below!
And if you want to check out the films that DID get through, grab a ticket to the 48Hours Grand Finals right here!
