1st Place
Blair Waltman Decibel
Judges Comments
This is great! Footage looks very nice and is edited together seamlessly with many matched action sequences, especially at the beginning. Great job incorporating natural sound and cutting between nat sound bites and interview bites. Strong interview that is both informative and emotionally evocative. B-roll helps do a ton of showing how the program works instead of relying on the interview to tell us. The only thing that is a bit detracting is the interview being shot on a video chat, though I'm guessing there was a practical reason for that. You could work on a bit better color correction to make your nicely shot footage really sing. Overall excellent work. Lovely story that draws the viewer into this world. Well done letting the POV and narrative be told through main character. Nice camera work, though some shots are overexposed and shaky. Music matched the mood. Sound ups were great. This really felt like a finished, complete film in which the viewer gets to know the motivation of the main character.
2nd Place
Lauren M Schneiderman The Philadelphia Inquirer
Judges Comments
This is excellent. Nicely shot and edited, but even more importantly, a thoughtful, informative, and emotionally impactful perspective on one of the most controversial topics in our country today. Great visual variety, strong interviews, solid editing. Good job getting an interview from the protestor side as well. A few shots outside the clinic are a bit shaky. I like the incorporation of some stills and the montage of newscaster bites, but it would have been nice to credit who those voices were, maybe just at the end. This is really powerful, important work. Well done accessing this difficult story. It's a highly charged, newsworthy issue and this piece took on a human POV to get at it. Good use of abstract camera work to concea patients'l identities.Good interviews, but the doctor's sound bites were oversized. Needed more story and POV from the escort.
Judges: Zach Putnam/Zach Putnam Productions, Kate McMahon/Kate McMahon Productions