Madeline’s failures were twofold: the idea behind the plot was weak, and that plot was poorly executed.

The plot follows a girl trying to make money in a metro terminal. Madeline tries to street perform by juggling, gets frustrated by the lack of response cash, and retreats to her postmodern dwelling. She tries a different approach: she designs and builds practical machinery and tries to sell it. This fails as well and the discouragement continues until she decides to build a humanoid robot. Here, she is not concerned with making money and the robot serves no practical purpose. Closure is achieved when she realizes that a robot juggling is much more interesting (and profitable) than a human juggling. As I alluded to in my pre-film plot summary, Madeline gives the robot a telling smile just before credits.

A good plot must be straightforward, involve a strong central conflict, and end with a clear resolution. Madeline did none of these very well.

In fact, the best parts of the film where those which have little to do with the plot. One of my favorites is the extended first scene (which is common in my films), which sets the mood, introduces the setting and silhouetted characters, and plays with camera movement. Another is the abstract visualization of the design process, which was not in my original write-up, but felt appropriate to the mood and was largely a result of Blender experimentation.

Most of the short is plagued by seemingly-random images, which make sense to me but not to my audience. I used filler shots, reused scenes, and did not spend enough energy on scenes that mattered – like Madeline’s epiphany about making a humanoid robot just for herself.

My recent films (notably Eros) are good at setting a mood and conveying a basic theme, but telling stories is the the ultimate goal of any filmmaker. Hopefully my future films will watch more like a well-thought out short story than an improve poem at a poetry jam.