Shelly and Mary are two friends with relationship problems. Shelly feels that her husband is growing increasingly distant, and she fears he’s having an affair. Mary, who has been dating a romantic young man for the past two years, is eager to take the relationship to the next level and become engaged, but isn’t sure if that’s the best thing. The two women discuss their dilemmas one afternoon over a cup of tea and realize that both of their respective relationships have questions that need answers.
This short focuses primarily on the characters of Mary and Shelly, who they are individually, and how they interact as they share their problems. Films that focus on or are driven by character interaction can be wonderful, but are often very difficult to pull off successfully. Because they tend to rely heavily on dialogue and less on visual storytelling, such films must work twice as hard to convey information (and hold the audience's attention). This can result in the movie being bogged down by the amount of dialogue.
Waiting to Pop the Question is what British comedian Eddie Izzard would call “a Room with a View with a Staircase and a Pond-type movie”; the acting is fine, but the story drags under the weight of the dialogue. There are several reasons for this. First, as most of the action takes place in one location (Shelly’s living room), Mary and Shelly are stationary; there is no real movement during their conversation. Allowing the actors to move and physically interact with the space and objects around them can reveal more about their character than dialogue alone. Films such as Oculus and Waiting on Alphie are dialogue-driven and take place in one main location; however, the way the characters interact with their environment enhances the dialogue. (Regardless of the type of film you're shooting, remaining on stationary characters that don't move for extended periods of dialogue or monologue results in "talking heads." Because of the propensity for this in documentaries, some of the most well-regarded documentarians conduct interviews with their subjects while these subjects are doing day-to-day activities like cleaning a stall, scrubbing a counter, or other visually interesting activities. This is even more essential in narrative storytelling than it is in documentaries.)
Secondly, although the women discussed issues that were very personal, the characters themselves were not well-developed. Mary comes across as a naïve Jane Bennett-type of character, while Shelly bears similarities to Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw. Additionally, the majority of the film is lopsidedly focused on Mary’s relationship, while Shelly’s dilemma about her husband is forgotten and unresolved by the end of the film. These issues are most likely due to the length of the project; it is extremely difficult to do a character-driven piece that focuses on two people and their problems in just 20 minutes. For the kind of detail that this story is trying to convey, an additional 10 minutes (at least) would be needed to further develop the story and the characters. Either that, or it would have been better to make the film about Mary’s dilemma (without mentioning Shelly’s problem), and use the entire 20 minutes to focus on her and develop her character.
For the most part, the visual look was good. The lighting was balanced and even throughout the film. However, there were a few odd jump-cuts, most notably after a brief flashback scene of Mary and her boyfriend in a boat. (Immediately after the transition at the end of the scene to another scene, the camera jumps to another angle distractingly.) Additionally, director chose to use split-screen during some of the dialogue sequences, which felt very out-of-place, since this convention is so rarely used unless people are talking on the phone or separated by a great distance. Although some films utilize split-screen shots when the characters are already next to each other, that technique usually only works when the entire film features artistic editing. Because the rest of the film had a very basic, simple look, the appearance of such an artistic editing choice was jolting.
