May 20, 2011

48 Hours (not starring Eddie Murphy or Nick Nolte)

Final entry: I just wanted to point you towards my friend (and fellow team-member) Chris' blog and his wrap-up of not only this year's 48Hour weekend, but all of our 48Hour entries. You can find his surprisingly well written (for a Sunday night after a weekend with little to no sleep) entry here.

Sunday 8:02pm: well, some technical issues with the export to tape aside (aren't there always? Yes. There are) there were absolutely no problems with finishing our editing. This was a bizarre feeling.

Even stranger was handing our film in at 6:30pm a full half hour before the end of the Challenge. So three team members, a fairly carefree attitude and a DSLR camera lead to a successful weekend.

V48Hours Filmmaking Challenge: job done. 

Sunday 7:45am: due to technical computer issues I have no hope of understanding, I had to select all the takes I wanted last night and have them render overnight. Am now about to head off and begin the actual editing. 

Damnable computers.

Saturday 9:45pm: principal  photography finished. Is this the earliest we've ever finished filming for 48? Possibly. Am just glad to have my pants on. To the edit!


Saturday 7:15pm: no Rapture. Still filming


Saturday 5:50pm: only a few minutes left until the Rapture comes along to spoil our filming.


It's been a great reminder, so far, of how much I love making short films. From the initial scripting stage; those minutes or hours worrying and fretting over what the hell is about that moves so quickly and silently into a free flow of outrageous, crazy and great ideas. And then the next day trying to realise those insane moments and images you conjured up the night before. All with a crew of two.


Saturday 1:10pm: first scene shot! We are a go! It's somewhat strange being in front of the camera, rather than behind it. We'll see the extent of my acting abilities when I have to deliver some actual dialogue. Ruh-roh.


Feeling pretty good about our day so far - two man crew and we're taking it pretty cruisey. We'll see how that's working out for us in 12 hours time. My bet? We'll be fine as! It's all about having a bit o' fun, right?


Saturday 8:37am: Good morning. Breakfast. Coffee. Coffee especially. A decent sleep (and coffee) is necessary for a full day's filming, followed by a full night's editing. 

And it looks like I'll be acting in this film too. This should be... interesting. The last significant bit of acting I did was in this. We'll see how it goes...

Friday 11:52pm: script completed. Time for bed. Yes, sleep time!

Friday 10:30pm: the competition has begun! We have our assigned items and genre and we are off! The things we have to include this year are a Character by the name of Bobby/Bobbi Young, an ex-bully; a bent piece of wire; the line of dialogue "What have you got?" and all films must end on a freeze frame. Genius! Our genre for this year is Mystery. There was another good selection of 12 genres this year, and I'm only sorry we missed out on getting something like the Quest film, or One Room Setting (mixed with another genre from the list). 

We have our idea (after a particularly good brain-storming session) and it looks like it could be a corker. I won't spoil anything here but I'll say I'm quite looking forward to seeing how it all comes together. 

Right. On to writing the script. Wooo!


Friday 5:00pm: am about to head off to the Launch of the competition. The day didn’t start with the best signs: had an awful dream last night about the 48Hour.

I was on my way to the Launch location when I decided to meet my teammate, C, at his work. There he showed me the finished Team Intro we had to have and he had edited. He had completely cocked it up. Instead of being a short, snappy piece it was slow, turgid and filled with weird shots we hadn’t actually shot. I didn’t say anything but we ended up faffing about and talking. Looking at my watch I saw it was 6:15pm. We had missed the Launch!* We were panicking. I was freaking out. We were trying to work out a way to fix this; contact the Wellington organiser and get our genre, check the website, PANIC AND FREAK OUT?!

Thankfully, like a cop-out ending, it was all a dream. I awoke shaken, heart palpitating, but thankful it was still Friday morning. This hadn't actually happened. I can only hope the weekend is nothing like my tortured subconscious.

*You have to make it to the Launch location before 6:00 as the doors are then shut no-one in or out, ‘til 7:00.

2 comments:

  1. All the best - looking forward to hearing about the final result.

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  2. Yay! Glad to hear you made it! and that you weren't affected by the Rapture. (I'm thinking maybe it did happen, but only a couple of people were found worldwide. And the Devil just though, schmeh, and went back to sleep).

    Apparently only 126 out of 185 Wellington teams got in on time. We, unfortunately, were 10 mins late handing our Musical in. *sigh* It's called 'Mad Bad Bobby: Or How I Learned To Stop Trolling And Love Jesus', from team The Jump Cuts.

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