The True Story of Billy the Horse

Can’t rave about this film enough. The cinematography was beautiful and impressively mastered. Though the icing on the cake has to be the storyline, absolutely crack up and made perfect sense. 10/10

Can’t rave about this film enough. The cinematography was beautiful and impressively mastered. Though the icing on the cake has to be the storyline, absolutely crack up and made perfect sense. 10/10

This was so funny guys. This was so so funny. Was laughing through the entire thing.
If anyone else is wondering, it turns out that a person in a Horse costume pointing a gun is the funniest visual gag that there is. It’s the number one.

I loved seeing Sean as a Wild West Outlaw, and I love how much he committed to the bit. The voice and the performance was amazing. All of the performances in this were great.

Visually it was awesome, I loved the shot of the two leads under a blanket when the camera was inside the Horse costume.

Speaking of the Horse costume. That was one of the greatest 48 Hour costumes ever. Every time the camera cut to its beady eyes, I started laughing again.

Another home run for PlanetFoxFilms 10/10 no notes.

If you told me this was a fully funded short I would have believed you. It's like you lab-grew the perfect 48hour film. What are you feeding your cast and crew?? How did you do this in a weekend??

Another Planet Fox Films banger! P.F.F has such a strong and unique style that I can never seem to quantify. Something about it is very innocent, but also weird as fuck, but also lo-fi, but also high effort? Either way, it's always super entertaining. I LOVED seeing that miniature saloon on fire! I really wish more teams did that! The locations were great! The only downside for me (and this is very personal, so don't listen if you don't want to) but I think the film gets a bit too repetitive, or just doesn't mix it up fast enough for me. The rewatch was slooowww. If this was trimmed down, I think it would really shine. At the same time, I don't ever want P.F.F to change. Keep making stuff, keep it weird, keep making funny props and costumes. I would LOVE to see you guys make a full blown action film. I want to see that horse with a machine gun kill 100 cowboys.

What a wildly fun film. Hints of Coens brothers and Tarantino. With moments of heartfelt warmth. And those one-liners were chef's kiss.
Suspending pretence and going for the ride is where the most fun can be found in this one and thats exactly what I want to see from a 48hour film:)
Sign me up for a sequel or feature!!!

This was an absolute highlight of the entire competition for me so far. Beauty of a film.

It goes without saying that the costume design was absolutely inspired and took it to a level of whimsy that really sold the whole premise.

To me it felt very reminiscent of late 80s, early 90s public access kids television mixed with a bit of Muppets energy and some Gondry magic (that costume would not have looked out of place on the show Kidding).

Adored the smash cut to the grave with the rose, the miniature saloon was a work of art and really admire you (presumably) fossicking through the shelves of a used book store for that old horse book over the weekend.

Only improvement I could think of would have been to tighten up the dialogue in the beginning. Felt like the back and forth between the two main characters could have been a bit snappier to build momentum.

Very much except to see this at the finals.

Multilayered epic that’s two buddy movies in one — a buddy movie about two buddies joining forces to disguise themselves as someone else’s buddy in an entirely separate buddy movie. The best horse oriented movie I’ve seen since I watched A View to a Kill on Amazon Prime last month so that’s pretty cool. Impressive miniature effects which I am convinced could not be created in 48 hours — am reporting this cheeky and sneaky behaviour to the judges to get this film disqualified from contention.

A cautionary tale about allergies. The right balance of stereotypical western, true love story, and absolute bonkers. Billy 2.0 is visually striking, exactly as he should be. I love it.

This film is so rich with comedy you can't help but love it. This is what came to mind when miniature was included as a prompt so I'm surprised less teams did it. And as simple passing gags as "Billy The Adult" had me in stitches. Great job!

Planetfox is always a highlight!
The grade is always excellent, with a solid sound mix, and strong visual storytelling!

I always feel deflated when a short film dedicates a large amount of time to a montage. I feel like leaning montage is indicative that the scale of the story is too large to tell I. This limited framework!

JUSTICE IS SERVED FOR PLANETFOX! After a season of being snubbed, rightly or wrongly, this year not only do they find themselves sooo comfortably in the finals – but they’re climbing the ladder of those top tier noms and, by my ears, were possibly the biggest crowd-pleaser on finals night.

This was my favourite story setup in the entire competition. He’s allergic to apples. Solution? Fake horse. So silly, and so perfect. It’s such a confident idea that the whole film rides on it, and it never buckles.

The performances were stunning and well deserving of their nomination, and it’s worth saying that last year the thing that didn’t quite convince us about PlanetFox was the casting - mostly to do with age. But this year the concept is pulled so far away from reality, into this fairytale-western hybrid, that the characters don’t need to be a certain age or type to make sense. That writing choice makes the casting absolutely perfect.

Now, you’ll have to tell me… did you dub this whole thing later? I didn’t notice anything odd until maybe the fifth or sixth watch, but then one or two little moments made me go “holy smokes, is this all dubbed?” If so, it’s incredible work - practically seamless (except that I caught it, which makes me a legend).

And what a costume. Did you build that horse over the weekend, or did you just happen to have it waiting in the cupboard for exactly this moment? Either way - just stunning. The miniature saloon on fire was also inspired, you should’ve probably gotten a fake award for the best title screen with that title being tracked to the shaky cam, and these sorts of handcrafted touches are what elevate your films beyond just being funny gags.

“He’s allergic to lead” was a standout line and a fitting punchline, but we’ll be honest - it flattened the character arc a little and probably is what cost you a script nom this year. Still, in every other department, this was firing on all cylinders.

THE BEST THING: The best PlanetFoxFilms entry to date: a maturing of technical skills, a sharpness of performance, and a confidence in storytelling that took the audience on the wildest ride in the west. Is this my favourite team in the competition? It could be…maybe I’m biased because we’ve been rooting for each other for a decade now. Maybe the best thing is it’s clear your team is so close and so caring for each other, and having good reliable friends is one of the greatest things you can have in life. I could go on but I’ll stop haha

THE NEXT THING: Hard to say what the appropriate ‘Next Step’ is after such a stunning film. I genuinely hope you make the Grand Finals - if not by judges, by Peter Jackson. It’s probably a case of deciding what you want to gun for in the future - do you wanna win Chch? You may need to think about simplifying your story into something more grounded in reality if that’s the case? But would that be at the cost of making films you want to make? Possibly! Idk, giving advice to the top end is kinda silly because all we really want for you to do is keep entertaining us year after year, regardless of what judges decide.

What an achievement, and what a privilege to be an audience member for this.

PlanetFox! I've been a big fan of your films for a very long time. I may not have always reviewed them but trust me I watched them, and your zany storylines, incredible makeup and fantastic technical skill has always seen me view you as a team with massive potential.

I take my hat off to you for this well deserved grand finalist film; one of the best scripts of the year and it rightly brought the house down at the Embassy.

There's a genuine knack to shooting an outdoor film in 48Hours and the key aspect rather than just getting a nice looking cinematic location is knowing how to frame for natural lighting. Here you got everything so absolutely bang on with your desolate landscape that I truly believed we were in the midst of the wild west gold rush era with bandits and most wanted signs aplenty. Costuming was pitch perfect too.

A horse allergic to an apple and replaced with a pantomime goggle eyed filly costume with the killers inside? Yeah the setup was absolutely gold, and the jokes hit throughout.

I honestly didn't see the ending coming and felt that it was pitch perfect classic kiwi humour which I'm all about in this competition.

Fuck the haters, you don't need to change a thing to make a more serious toned film for this competition to 'do better'. Guerilla incredibly strange film making at its finest.