A short film about revenge and gangs in the streets of Manchester. Despite being a fan of Cade's work, Two wrongs, doesn't seem to get out of the shadow of its sensory plot and questionable premise. Two Wrongs explores Mark's plot for revenge following his brother's death by 'gang leader' Connor, on the streets of Manchester. The underlying message behind this short for me was about what revenge really achieves in the big scheme of things. Upon watching this film, it is evident that Cade has a knowledgeable grasp of aesthetics and visual storytelling through his choices of shot sizes and camera angles, however, the film for me was way too rushed and the audience has virtually no time to really absorb anything or get to feel any true emotion for any of the characters.<br/><br/>I thought the cinematography, color grading, and location-scouting were all excellent. As someone had mentioned in the comments, each location has a certain character to it. This really helped me follow the storyline despite the fact that it involved a lot of location changes within a short duration. The differing color tones of the locations also reflected and foreshadowed the events of each scene which I found intriguing. I'll give two examples of where I found this worked effectively.<br/><br/>Firstly, in the second shot (10 seconds in), I thought that the contrast of light blues on the left of the screen and the darker oranges of the right-hand side may have reflected the moral debate going on within the scene. Mark was the archetypal "good guy", the hero if you will, trying to persuade his brother away from the "bad" temptations of smoking, thus, his backdrop was a light blue. Contrastingly, however, Pete's friends, who were perhaps pressuring him into smoking with them, were shown on a dark orange background, to reflect the potential danger of following their influence. It was as though Pete had to choose between the light and dark side of the shot.<br/><br/>Secondly, I love the use of such an orange color palette from 3:05 onwards. Not only is it very aesthetically pleasing but, with red having such strong connotations of blood and gore, I think it foreshadows the violence that is about to occur.<br/><br/>Moving on to the story, I thought this was a weary example of story structure. Yes, there was a clear inciting incident (Pete's murder). Yes, there's the rising tension that can be seen as Mark gets into a fight with Connor and buys a gun. Yes, there's the climax when Connor reaches Mark and shoots and yes Cade ends the film on the adrenaline-high of the climax (which can be truly effective if used correctly). But it didn't quite hit the 'Mark' for me. There was a disconnect between the characters on screen and the audience. If I were to quote Robert Mckee "When telling a story, the audience really needs a character who they can relate to, who they can follow and share feelings with". I feel Cade didn't establish that 'brotherly bond' between Mark and his brother so the audience could feel empathy for them and it ultimately felt as if this was a short film trying to be a feature.<br/><br/>Overall, I thought this short was neither great nor terrible. I know Cade is only a young filmmaker and still learning so I'm looking forward to seeing his work in the future. For me, there were "two wrongs" in this short: the script and attention to detail. I've been watching Simon Cade's DSLRguide videos for some time now and I can only stress that this bloke has a fantastic grasp of aesthetics and is constantly learning how to up his game and present his videos in a very professional manner, what let me down about this film is the fact that he overlooked a very simple thing which anyone who has ever owned or shot a gun will know (audiences outside of the UK where real guns are extremely hard to get your hands on will instantly spot it), the gun seller tells him not to load it, but he only handed him a gift wrapped (not very discreet)pistol, implying that the gun already had a loaded magazine inside (there was no second bag or magazine handed over that could contain the bullets with which to load the gun). Later when the first shot was fired and the gun fell to the floor, the slide locked back indicating that the magazine was empty, next shot the slide is once again forward indicating that it was loaded. This ruined the flow and the mood as the illusion of reality was instantly shattered. Fantastic attempt, but Mr. Cade seems to be a man with an eye for detail, which is why I'm surprised that such a glaring detail was overlooked.
Pandelee replied
338 weeks ago