Heartless: The Story of the Tin Man

This video is a live-action version of the story of the Tin Man (from the books, not the MGM movie). It’s interesting mostly in that it illustrates a problem I’ve noticed with a lot of amateur ‘shorts’. The cinematography is nice, the costumes are great, the story is good (I’m a big fan of the Baum books), but it still comes off as poorly done. And I place the blame squarely on the actors. It is very, very, rare for productions at this level to have decent actors, and I don’t understand that at all. Ideas?