it's a bit generic isn't it?

I enjoyed it and I would not view this as a failure at all. It's better than many that I have seen. The build up was good but I also agree that it needed a stronger ending. I want to be devastated. @neokoo had some good ideas but there are many different ways that you could get there.

I thought that the acting was good, as was the camera work.

Thanks for sharing.

@rockfall This is a good short. Was very intersting plot twist when he pays her 50 pounds. The only reason I could guess for festival rejections would be that the ending sorta leaves you feeling that although the lead character is healing and moving on, he doesn't get what he wants (a new girlfriend/wife). So we feel his life is just stretching out with unfilfilled loneliness....at least for now. Many viewers might find it unsatisying. I think it's interesting.

On the technical side, most of the film looks great with nice image quality and nice compositions. There are some moments here and there where the composition/framing wasn't pro looking. There were also some moments where the actual image quality looked a bit video-ish. I'd say 75% of the shots look great. The audio for dialogue was pretty good across the board although something sounded a bit off on a few occassions, but 95% of it was fine. Music was pretty good overall.

I think this was a success - I enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing. Maybe the festival people wanted to see something like 'Terms of Endearment'. Maybe look at that film as clue to elevating image quality as well as what some call "emotional payoff".

Yep, who the hell knows. I was turned down for every festival I submitted to a few years ago for a short I did on TBI before it was a huge concern in the military. My DP worked on Star Wars and Indiana Jones so it's not like it looked bad :)

The only thing I might say is it could be sped up. Think of how many submissions people have to watch and you might only get a min or two before they move on to the next. You have to grab them from the start. I know they only give scripts 10 pages at most before they go on to the next.

It looks good, good sound, good acting, pretty good story, WAY too long.

Festivals typically prefer light, comedic crowd-pleasing shorts -- and under 10 minutes, as has been noted. Unless you're a celebrity, or have one in your film, anything over 15 minutes is likely to be a dead loss. Unlikely a screener will even watch the whole thing.

Consider that U.S. festivals field thousands of shorts and most of the staff is unpaid, which means lots of student-age interns doing the pre-screening. Foreign festivals tend to be state supported, and much better financed, so there may be more consideration for the slush pile material. But they still have to deal with huge volumes.

If it makes you feel any better, there was a feature called "In the Family", which runs something like 160 minutes and which was rejected by at least 30 U.S. festivals. In frustration, the filmmaker opened it himself in NYC, and got rave reviews in the New York Times and elsewhere. Of course, he still didn't make any money, but you can't have everything.

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to watch it and leave a comment.

It's really helpful to hear what people have to say and gives me food for thought. In an earlier draft of the script I had Tom and Emma get together and go on a proper date but I just felt it wrapped things up a bit too neatly. Maybe festivals like neatly.

Yeah I don't like the handheld shots either, I should have planned that better! Some of the sound suffers from us not having the right sort of mic for the indoor scenes so there was a bit of an echo that I tried to get rid of.

I'll aim for something shorter and more concise for the next film and work on the ending more. I'll also aim for more consistency with the cinematography and sound.

That said, maybe I should focus my efforts on something feature length instead since most of my stories seem to be too big for shorter shorts!

I did learn a lot from making it though.