Bloom

This was so great! Tackling an animated film in 48Hours is a huge task and you did such a great job! I loved the story and I think the way you worked together as a whānau is so wholesome! The stop-motion sequence was so fun, and even the voice acting from the younger ones worked really well and they all sounded so natural! You clearly have an eye for colour because the whole film from start to finish is gorgeous with very charming character designs too! I hope you guys do really well in the competition!

Beautiful film making (as we have come to expect from che and her talented collabs). The heart felt story is as timeless as it is currently relevant. The addition of the real life elements were so cute and had the room of hardened adults gushing over it.
Spot on:)

a Great little animated story. where the found footage was something genuinely artistically human. loved the media, within media angle and it had some real heart.

the set up in the world made the pay off stronger. great work

Loved this! Well done on another great animation. Loved the inclusion of the family. Spot on.

Awesome, nice to see the whanau involved :)

It's always interesting to watch an animated short for this competition; this one was particularly interesting in that it was an animation about doing some animation. The art style was quite nice, with a good balance of detail and simplicity. Perhaps some of the movements could've been sharper, and the fonts did stand out quite a bit, but generally it was pretty good. There was some nice parallax in one of the pan shots too. Sound work was effective, but I think more could be done with the effects to flesh out the atmosphere more. Found footage as a genre was a bit of a stretch, but maybe that's nitpicking a bit much.

One of the hardest things to nail in this competition is theme. And you have done it brilliantly, and made it look easy. The spirit of creation is here and incorporating a young boys pure creativity and joy is a statement in itself.
We loved the art style and the character design.
The film doesn't try and expand itself into something too big or unsatisfying, but stays very neat in a simple and effective delivery/flow.

We love this and appreciate the kind of thing it stands for against the current AI hellscape online.

Well now this is certainly an interesting alternate universe film with a lot to say about the pitfalls of A.I. and a deep underlying message that brute force automation will never beat the heart of (literally) organic material.

Absolutely fantastically drawn and smoothly animated, a believable world inhabited by anthropomorphic vegetables is quickly built that at first has us thinking Kubrick but then a more whimsical youngster shows the signs that there is still hope to break free from the machine, Neo-style.

Given homework to produce a short film works as the catalyst for something with a lot more heart than a prompt produced film can ever accomplish. Really warming to see the original score was beautifully composed as well.

The colours absolutely popped off screen and the film was pleasing from start to finish, with personal moments that really made the film unique and raw in the best possible way at the same time.

For me I do wonder if the film would have played more favourably with the judges with a slightly more conventional narrative. I'm not suggesting dialogue but essentially the film is centered around our protagonist being an outlier. Which is great. And then the task of making a short film drives the plot forward.

But was the dramatic question strong enough to make us concerned for our likeable characters at any point? It seemed like danger was lurking in the background and perhaps bringing that threat forward would have elevated the film? Just my 2c.

A lovely film, great job The Immortal Think Tank!

Apparently acorns have the perfect appendage to protect them from hypnotic AI computers.

A very cute and genuine film. The animated characters are lovely. So are the voices. Colour creates a striking contrast between the dreary opening and the cheery ending. Films about AI seem to be in vogue this year, but this treatment is delightfully heartfelt and wholesome.

Making a film about making a film, and having an animated film inside an animated film, are big gambles. They only pay off because the credits delightfully reveal that animated movie #2 was made by eight-year-old Moss. This hammers home the film's message that art that is real is better and more alive than soulless AI outputs. A child's creativity is inspiring and contagious.

The let-down in this film is the volume of the music. It's too loud, drowning out the cute voices and sound effects, and forcing me to turn the volume of my TV down much lower than I should need to. Perhaps sound mix was the last-minute casualty after a sleepless weekend of loving, painstaking animation. But audio can make or break a film. This film would benefit from some attention to the levels monitor and making sure the decibels of each track adhere to the relevant 48Hours guidance.

Thank you for being the first to review my own film! It meant a lot to have a flurry of reviews from around the country straight after the heat. In return, you are my first review of a non-Christchurch 48Hours film. I lived in Tauranga as an adolescent so it seems fitting.

I loved this! I like your artstyle and colour choices and can tell you have worked hard at your animation/illustration practice, and all of the animating must have been so much effort in 48 hours. I also admired the title 'Bloom' illustration and the bits of animation with parallax especially.

I also loved the character designs, they are so cute! I wonder if somehow more variation could be achieved (e.g. those at 3:54) in veggie body shape profile, or other features like the eyes or eye colour/shape even (but having them be similar also makes it clear that they have something in common, i.e. age/status, so I'm not sure...weigh that up??)

I echo what has been said about the background music volume distracting from the story and found it hard to hear sound effects over top of it. I think this was the biggest thing for me. Also, the music being energetically similar at 0:47 as what it is at 1:30 made me uncertain about how I should be feeling about events on-screen e.g. maybe the scene in the home could have had gentler music or something slower that invokes curiosity like...what's going to happen next? Or sadness/uncertainty as protagonist wonders what they should do next?

Dialogue would have been even more work but I wonder if it would have helped us engage with the protagonist more? Maybe that, or a more salient 'threat' in the film might have helped us to connect to the characters/what's at stake?

Also making a film about making a film is cool. Making a film that comments on AI output is cool.

This is just two cents from a novice film-maker, so definitely take this with a grain of salt. I think you did amazing. Also thanks for reviewing my film! Critique is indeed the way for us to make better and better films each year, so I appreciate it so much!