I absolutely love short films. To be able to tell a compelling story in a short amount of time is an amazing skill to have.
First I watched “Soliders” and even though the grand total was two minutes long, I was about to ball like a baby. The whole story is about a mom visiting the grave of her son, who was a solider. However, he is standing there watching her and trying to communicate to her that he’s there. They had very little dialogue but because there was not a lot of dialogue, it was extremely powerful. Also the use of handheld made the scene feel more genuine than if they had used a tripod.
After I watched that, I thought the musical would make me better. But nope, I was wrong. That was still sad and depressing. Which is fine, there are sad musicals out there that I love (Next to Normal and Spring Awakening being my favorites). Being a big musical lover, I had never seen a short film musical. While the main guy in the story was not a good singer, he was a great actor and so was his love interest in the film. What I liked about this musical was the connection the two main characters had and how desperately they wanted to be together, although she was married to someone else. This had very graceful camera movements and had some great editing. I really liked how the film was in black and white while they were talking but in color when they were singing. This was a great editing choice and made the songs more powerful.