The Silent Man

Wow. Just wow. An astonishing achievement.

Fantastic film, brilliantly executed on all levels! Loved the Mayor, she was so badass!

This was the clear winner of the night - Everything was executed perfectly. The characters were great. Mystery with a hint of Comedy, it was A+!

Such a well thought out film! Great interpretation of thoughtlessness!

Another superb achievement from TBALC. Beautifully shot and clever story. And excellent use of Harper Harrison's thoughtless trait. Nice to see Vanessa Wells (Zebra Crossing and Eh team) with this crowd this year; always good.

Absolutely Smashed It. I loved this film. From the moment you realised you are watching Film Noir murder mystery in a world where everyone can hear each others Inner monologues I knew this film was going to be gold. Brilliant concept and extremely well executed. Great Cinematography, great script, Great acting and great score. Given that I liked this film even more than TBALCs entry from last year I would say they are clearly the front runner for City Winner again this year.

What I Liked: I don't think I've ever seen a better concept and execution of that concept come out of 48hours. To me this film is not only a brilliant achievement within 48hours but a wickedly cleaver short film in it's own right. I'm amazed that in the space of 7minutes (or how ever long this film was) the concept was so strong that they where able to sneak in the moment where two characters started thinking/talking over each other before one character said "You go first" this was for me the best joke of the film, and that it lands so well is only testament to how onboard I was with the concept and what the film was doing. And i haven't even mentioned the acting and technical aspects. both of which stood out again as major achievements if i had to pick one area that this film could have been improved upon it would be that in an ideal world this script/concept would have been done with a larger costume budget and filmed on a real studio backlot from the 1940s :) City Finalist? Yes City Winner? Yes Its about time TBALC won the 48hours competition outright (at a national level) and retired so the rest of us can have a go ;)

This was awesome. Such a great concept, taken to it's full potential. Everything was kept close to this central idea of outer-inner-monologues too, as the villain is revealed and defeated due to her thoughtlessness. Well done guys, absolutely deserving of your city win, hopefully you win Nationals!

Simply terrific. Can't wait for this to be uploaded.

In a world where everyone can hear each other's inner monologues, a private detective battles with a challenging case. There really is a lot to like about TBALC. They write well, they "do" characters, they nail genre, they have excellent acting talent, they land cinematography, editing, music, costuming, locations and they're all quite humble about it too. With "The Silent Man" their stars may have aligned even more than normal, producing perhaps their best ever 48HOUR short. Certainly everything went their way - I couldn't think of a better team to get the Mystery genre and it came as no surprise to me that they'd made classic film noir. And with this film they've pretty much ticked off all the noir tropes; world-weary private-eye; femme fatale, black n white, venetian blinds, light and dark... the list goes on. Most importantly of course, the inner-monologue rich with metaphors and similes dripping references to the city, the weather etc. It's all done rather well and with the typical pace and humour you'd expect from TBALC. It's pretty entertaining stuff and all of the cast play their roles expertly. Very hard to fault. However, if I have a quibble it's that the films strength, the inner-monologue shtick, could also be it's weakness. While witty, it does get tiresome and repetitive and I couldn't help but think that there must be someone is this world of inner-monologues who had the ability to just not think out loud. And so it came to pass, with a character introduced very, very late in the piece (or had they actually been referenced somehow prior?) and thus the mystery was solved without much investigation at all. And as such the end is very cliche, but what else would you expect? A mere quibble though as this really is an excellent short in every aspect. An easy city winner. Will be a national finalist and may just push very hard for the grand prize. Great work!