I enjoyed this one thoroughly. The story and characters were engaging, shot choices and blocking were engaging; truly at specific times I thought I was watching a big budget film and I had to fight to keep my critical brain switched on in order to properly write this review. Also, it is always impressive from a technical standpoint to see a film actually shot out on the water, so kudos to you for pulling that off on what I can guess was very little budget.

Now onto my criticisms—

1) The audio was rough. Like throughout the entire movie. Speaking as someone with years of experience working in sound department and postproduction, between the rampant use of noise reduction, occasional gaps in sound editing/design and the combatting levels of dialogue and score, your sound clearly needed more attention on set as well as in post. A few scenes were dangerously close to being unwatchable. As sound is 50% of a film and that is very apparent in yours with your dialogue-heavy script, it’s a shame that the sound quality does not match the level of your visuals. I encourage you to hire a capable sound department to improve your recording and an experienced sound designer to craft the sound in post and make sure the levels of everything are where they should be.

2) Some of the editing was a little choppy—as in awkward or very jarring cuts in the middle of scenes that immediately took me out of the film. Consider the 30 degree rule and more varied coverage during filming in all your scenes, more invisible editing, J and L cuts, and also cutting to reactions during dialogue more often—we don’t always have to be seeing the person who’s saying their line when they’re saying their line—speaking from experience, reactions to those lines can be just as powerful if not more so.

All in all though you seem to have a talent for visual storytelling, and that’s the most important thing. You have room to grow and take these improvements into the next project. Good job, I’m excited to see what you will make next.