truER detective

A solid entry, with strong technical elements, and effective use of comedic juxtaposition.

Great dialogue and rrally enjoyed the interaction between your two detectives.

I'll tell you right now I am not a fan of talking heads in 48 Hours and never have been, which is a shame as there were a couple of very strong performances here of P.I.s piecing together a missing person.
Where the film worked was by elevating the believe it or not storytelling as each potential reason for the disappearance came to the fore. The re-enactments had perfect comic timing to the verbal descriptions we had been parlayed as an audience.

The only issue for me is that the form and structure for how the film unfolded just kept making me think mockumentary .

Having said that your edit, framing, lighting and camerawork were all strong and the audio worked for the type of film here. Do I wish it was a little bit more cinematic? Maybe a focus pull here and there to elevate? Perhaps because there were moments where cinematically it was a little flat.

Genuinely curious how long you spent on the KFC ripoff stand for what was a tiny but highlight gag. A fun film overall with some real strengths in its performances.

Absolutely loved this film's storytelling! The dialogue was excellent and the entire film was jam packed with humor.
I loved the bullet time moments and gave a little chuckle at the drop in camera quality for the spilt second that they happened!
The cutting back to all the different possibilities (and the interview with the fast food guy!) were all pulled off and edited great.

Overall, an extremely enjoyable film, good work!

Well I enjoyed it! Liked the natural comedy and banter between the actors.
Nice take on a different way to do comedy of errors

Awesome performance from the actors. Killed their roles and the chemistry was notable. Really well made

A true comedy of errors! Fantastic work from the Five Musketeers! Loved the hyper fast montage style edits, the YFC cameo, the insane bullet time rig that's only in the film for like 2 seconds!!?! Crazy work here! Also some of the best noir lighting in the whole damn competition so far, and it's not even a noir film!! The crowd LOVED the banter with the detectives, and there were audible gasps at the twist ending! My only note is that I would have loved to see more stop motion animation! The alien was a delight!

This was so fun! The lead actors bounced off each other so great. I loved the stop motion! My sister and I have been making jokes about fireproof shoes since the heats and my sisters boyfriend got really excited about the chicken guy cameo.

Loved this film. The chemistry between the leads was so smooth. The lighting and underproduced nature of the camera work was spot on for the vibe. The contrast of the intercut hypothesised situations were all escalating in hilarity and the "other worldly" cutaway took me out.
A simple premise done in a visually interesting and engaging way

The perfect 48hours film - raw, unpretentious and unhinged fun with a great low key ending which tied it all together nicely.

What I liked:
Ahh, Five Musketeers, how far you’ve come. I think you nailed the style you were after – smoky room, slobbish aspiring P.Is, weird stuff in the background, and shot like a true crime doco interview. The strength is in the scenes outside the room – the theories retold, which were dynamic, fun, well edited, and had a good punchline.

Take it or leave it:
Did this need to be done in an interview room or could it have been done more at the scene, during the investigation, in their car – I just wanted more variety in location and, yeah, less mockumentary as the talking-head banter runs a little thin no matter how wild the theories were getting. The two leads were really good – give them more to do apart from sit there and occasionally get up.

Final hot air:
Screening crowd loved it and, as has become the norm for this team, a really well-made film that should be finals-bound. Great work!

Now I'm someone who deeply believes in the possibility of spontaneous human combustion. I have been ridiculed for at least two decades for this belief but I'm still standing firm. I subscribe to the theory that cigarette embers may have fallen on a sleeping person, slowly ignited the layer of fat underneath their skin, brought their body to a critical temperature level and BOOM!

Because of these beliefs, this film resonates with me on a fact-based level. It also makes me concerned for the amount of smoke in the detectives' room. Is this cigarette smoke or did someone leave a toaster on? There is A LOT of smoke.

I'm not typically a fan of the mockumentary talking head, but somehow this film doesn't really feel that way. I'm not sure how it feels. My take on it is that it's actually two guys in a pub philosophising about something they've read in the paper. Their own back-seat psuedo-detective personalities place them in this world within their own minds, desperately trying to illustrate their theories as they become less and less likely. It's as if someone took an authentic, pre-existing conversation and produced a film around it, recontextulising it ALA Aardman's Creature Comforts or The Ricky Gervais Show. Whether or not this is intentional, I feel like it really works and would have paid off so well to see them in a pedestrian environment at the end.

The flashback/cutaway/musings work so well. They feel rooted in late 90s pop culture - you wouldn't steal a car/crimewatch - and those bullet-time shots are an all-timer of a decision in my book. Absolutely nuts to include them just for the fun of it.

YFC's questionably sponsored product placement was a wonderful and completely unnecessary addition that I'm here for.

The performances were excellent. Downplayed and authentic, I don't know if it was fully improvised, or they took liberties with the script and riffed on it, or they're just that good. Either way they worked brilliantly.

The mixed media approach with loads of different techniques and stop motion animation was super effective. From a production standpoint I could have possibly done with a little more coherency from the shooting style in the detective scenes. Locked off/shaky handheld/zooms etc all mixed together pulled me out of that space stylistically. But just a touch. I also would have loved for that blind shutter gobo to be a tad defocussed and for the smoke to catch some of that light. But I did appreciate how it was a cool blue light to suggest the moon which so many people fail to think about!

A great film that will almost certainly make at run at the regional finals.

Side note - it really made me laugh that the "fireproof" shoes were made from vegan leather, a material commonly produced with petroleum-based plastics.

Getting a bullet time effect in your film that looks this good in a 48Hour film is a huge achievement! You guys always trying new ideas and crazy technical concepts, and I am always so inspired and impressed! It can be hard to pull off a dialogue heavy film in 48Hours and I think you guys did a great job! The writing was really witty, and the performers were great and worked really well together! I of course adored the stop-motion, I just needed a little more. Therefore, I encourage you to do a full stop-motion animated film next year ;)

Very good use of the genre, nice work

Great performances, great cinematography, really entertaining.

Dang, I really gotta get me a pair of those fire proof shoes.

I have a feeling I'll be saying this a lot in my finalists reviews - this film would have easily cleaned up the whole thing even just a couple of years ago. It has that sense of humour that truly fuels this entire competition from head to toe. The banter between the leads is great, with fun escelations of sillyness, and an ending reveal that may be seen as a hit or miss for some, but for me was a home run, loved it.

Now, I will choose something to pick on, because I know Luke is eagerly anticipating an absolute glazing of the product, so I need to balance it out! One thing that (probably controversially) didn't land for me personally was the bullet time rig shots - I know, crazy right, aren't I someone who champions ambition and loves to see stunts like this? Yes I am! I just wonder whether the choice to include them was a bit of a distraction from the tightness of the rest of this. The concept is great, but the blurryness of those shoes distracted me! I think if I was looking over your shoulder and had a mandate to cut something, it would have been my suggestion, entirely based on how well I felt everything else was flowing, and entirely just because of my taste I think. Given that's my only front of mind gripe of this, I hope you're stoked haha.

Okay back to glazing. Has anyone pointed out the double layer of comedy of errors in this film yet? The comedy of the leads errors as they stumble over eachothers understanding of the case, and the discussion of the comedic errors the missing person may or may have not experienced? I thought this was an absolute slam dunk! The concept put this very high on my list - idk, maybe it's not as clear to others as it was to me?

This film unfortunately got snubbed a few noms that I felt it deserved, particularly editing, would have been nice for it to get recognition for that, it was one of the most confident edits we got this year. Judging be a mystery sometimes! Alas, not quite the same ground breaking submission as last year, but your choice to not let the competition take up months of your life this year was probably a wise one! Proof your talent isn't bound by a spaceship, only by fried chicken.

THE BEST THING: Another strong and highly entertaining tale from Luke and co. - The highlight for me being 'desintergrated him', the delivery of that probably should have got a line of dialogue nom hahaha

THE NEXT THING: Hmmm I'm not actually sure! You've kind of proven you can handle lots of different kinds of tone and tale, from stranded in outer space to quoting the beatles every couple of seconds - is there anything you haven't done yet that you're keen to try? I'd love to see it! Maybe an authentic romance/drama? That'd be fascinating!

Perfect way to open the finals, this movie is such a blast! Love the way the ideas escalate in absurdity; such great momentum to a hilarious punchline. And cameo of the year in Yang! That's what 48 hours is all about!