2012 48 hour film project

[JoshL]

I know lots of folks around do the 48hfp each year. Not sure if I'm doing it or not yet (my regular team isn't, some folks from that team might want me, but they haven't called me yet, but a more experienced team might need a music guy, so I might end up with them instead). But I digress. Questions for discussion:

1) who is doing it (or has done it already) this year?
2) How many times have you done it?
3) (when finished) What have you learned from this year?
4) (when finished) Anyone win anything?

Best of luck to everyone who is doing it this year! And to those who haven't before, you should give it a try. It's fun and helps you learn a LOT!

 

[Scoopicman]

1) who is doing it (or has done it already) this year?

Made BUG COMPLEX back in April.


2) How many times have you done it?

Five.


3) (when finished) What have you learned from this year?

Not much, it all went smoothly. But from past years, the key is getting the writing done in the first 2 or 3 hours. This was the second time that we shot on the first night (Friday) and were done with actors by Saturday morning. That allowed time for greenscreen FX, music, etc.


4) (when finished) Anyone win anything?

This year, we won Best Actress and Best use of required Dialogue. My wife, Sheila, has been involved in just 3 of these and that was her second time winning Best Actress. She's gold!

 

[Gonzo_Entertainment]

Never done one. Literally ever member of my crew is working with one group or another in this years Nashville fest. I'm the only one sleeping that weekend.

 

[dlevanchuk]

1) who is doing it (or has done it already) this year?
Doing 48 hfp this weekend in Seattle!

2) How many times have you done it?
This is our second time.

3) (when finished) What have you learned from this year?
Well, we learned a lot about location sound and where to film and what to avoid so my audio guy isn't pulling ou his hair in post.

4) (when finished) Anyone win anything?
We won best special effects and best original musical score from last year. This year - hopefully best in the City!!

 

[PatrickAThompson]

Do it! Do it! Do it!

I composed the score for a team in Dallas about a month ago. It was a hectic, crazy 48 hours.. Especially on my end, since I never really got to see a final cut until a few hour before the deadline. So, I just went with the genre style I was given and a rough list of tracks that were needed from the director... For example : 0:20 intense build, 0:45 sad\introspective, 0:30 dark\chase etc... So I wrote and wrote and wrote - creating a collection of puzzle pieces I could plug in once I got the reel. Sure, it would be much easier to go to a music library... but then, you've got NO thematic musical elements which run throughout the short - which typically marks an emotionally strong(er) movie.

I learned that I work well under pressure... and that I can still thrive and work well even when the director says "Try something else" after my first take didn't land. Yup, even in the midst of a 48FP, I was able to do a re-write.

My concern with Dallas' 48FP is that 7.. yes... 7 awards went to a group who had flown in from LA. Their film looked great and had a very legit 'Hollywood' quality to it (on an alleged $5000 budget). And while I'm against the 'everyone gets a trophy' mentality - the judges could have split it up a bit more... and here's why.

My understanding of the 48FP as a whole is that its purpose is to encourage budding film-makers. In a competition like this, when most of the accolades go to a single (albeit outstanding) film, it leaves everyone else DIScouraged. For the teams who shot their film on old-school camcorders, how is this encouraging? The winner's story and dialogue were messy at best -- and IMO, they were more 'action' than their assigned genre of 'drama'. So, what I got out of the awards is that production quality is everything.

By all means... Do it! I'm already making deals with the producer and director from my team for work in the real world. The experience tests your drive, creativity, and tenacity.. (and people skills). It's worth every second!! ...just don't place too much weight on the awards they give out..because in the judge's eyes, production is the only thing that matters.

Keep us posted!!

 

[Cracker Funk]

1) who is doing it (or has done it already) this year?
2) How many times have you done it?

1) Richmond's is this upcoming weekend!
2) This will be my fourth time.

3) (when finished) What have you learned from this year?
4) (when finished) Anyone win anything?

I'll get back to ya.

Best of luck to everyone who is doing it this year! And to those who haven't before, you should give it a try. It's fun and helps you learn a LOT!

It's a lot of fun, for sure. Both the filming and the screening. And being able to shoot run-and-gun is a valuable skill for an indie filmmaker to possess. And of course I imagine it's also very valuable for a composer or any other post crew member to learn how to work under an intensely tight schedule.

Good luck to all!

 

[Scoopicman]

Regarding composers, The rules state that music can be used regardless of when it was composed. As stated HERE.

J. Participating groups are encouraged to work with a local composer and/or musicians to write and record music for the films. It is permissible for a participating group to use pre-recorded music; however the participating group must have the rights to any music used in its film and must provide releases for all music used

Going by the above rule, a composer should at least work out the movie's theme (anytime prior to the weekend) - I suggest a dark version and a light version of it, so it can fit into whatever genre you get.



For the weekend composers, I suggest sitting in on the writing session to understand the genre, plot and pace of action (if any). You can start on a Main Title theme, immediately. In fact, it's all a bit easier if you know there is going to be a Chase, Building Suspense, Comedic Background, Love Scene, etc, etc.

I was once asked to score a feature, without seeing the footage. The above mindset is what a film composer needs. There are "beds" (background music) and (if you know the Editor) you can do separate, isolated "Cues" or "Stingers" that can fit into those beds, but on a seperate audio track.

This year, I edited in the Cues/Stingers/Percussion hits first. Then I created a couple of thematic beds, as time allowed. For BUG COMPLEX, I went through a bunch of the coolest sounds on the Virus TI keyboard and recorded a note/chord of each onto a single 90 second recording and dumped it to the computer where I grabbed/cut them as needed during the edit. I didn't come up with themes, till after, when the picture was locked.

When I work with other teams (as the previous 2 years), I bring one or two keyboards to the editor's house and work on tracks as he edits. He lives too far away to jaunt back and forth, so I just stayed there for the weekend. It was kind of funny because I had never been to his house prior. I ended up sleeping over both years, until we got done. His wife would make us steak, eggs and biscuits, Sunday morning and we continued working into the afternoon. Pretty cool experience.

 

[Cracker Funk]

Screengrab from "The Earth Incident". Keeping the video private, until after the screening of course (7-21).

Yes, that is a miniature model! I've always wanted an excuse to shoot that; I just always assumed I'd spend more than ten minutes on it.

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

Just signed us up for the San Jose competition coming in August. This will be our 9th time in one of the local 48s, but including national competitions and doc challenges I think this will be number 22 or 23 for us. We skipped our hometown (san francisco) - I was actually getting a little burned out and just needed a break! They're a lot of fun, but stressful too...

 

[antoniopantoja]

I took third in my city this year...BUT...

It appears that there was some plagiarism going on here.

The team who took second place here, deliberately stole the entire idea for a film that won in WI in 2011. Besides this, the film was under 4 minutes long. I can provide links if anyone would like to see both films.

The first place winner was also nearly disqualified because they had reshot some old footage. They are really good friends of mine and I don't think they meant any malice, BUT since everything has to be created within the 48, it created some confusion with the 48hfp headquarters. They reshot footage that they used to win the entire contest in 2007 and 2010.

I am asking for advice. If this took place in your city, would you contact someone at 48hfp?

Anyhow, I drew horror as my genre...I REALLY did not want horror.

Here's my film (re-cut for the internet):
https://vimeo.com/46927888

We won Best Cinematography, Best Sound Design, and Best Special Effects

 

[FormerDominator]

I did the Providence one three or so weeks ago. It was my first time. I learned two things, being essentially a one-man crew: 1. Never, EVER trust anyone else that a shot is "in focus" unless you know for a fact they know what they're doing. 2. Even after having been reminded of it for a GODDAMNED MONTH, high-schoolers will still have a tendency to drop out and screw you at the last second.

So, I, uh, don't think that necessarily applies to you.

But at the end of the day it was still fun seeing my movie on the big screen, and though I didn't win anything, my film got a great reaction and a lot of positive comments after the show (it can be found on Indietalk here). I say go for it!

 

[Brooksy]

1) who is doing it (or has done it already) this year?

I did it again this year. It was a blast as always...

2) How many times have you done it?

I have competed with a group the past 4 years. After the first year we have formed our own group and just kept refining and making our group better.

3) (when finished) What have you learned from this year?

Same thing I learn every year and keep adding to it. Let the experts in their respected fields do their job, and trust them. Not to mention work on getting the best person for the position.

4) (when finished) Anyone win anything?

We won Best Cinematography, Best Directing, and Best Film. Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E_5tL-eySM

Hope you enjoy! More importantly I hope you do it. It teaches you so many skills, most you learn when it is all said and done. But I personally this is something that every film maker should experience at least once in their life.

Brooksy

 

[ItDonnedOnMe]

We just wrapped up the San Jose competition this weekend, and got our 23rd film in on time - barely! Kind of a crazy weekend...

We had a couple of team members sick this weekend, and only one actress lined up for the project. We didn't really get started shooting until nearly 2pm on Saturday, wrapped shooting at around 2am on Sunday, and I didn't get to sleep until well after 3. I got up to start the edit at about 8am and ran into serious technical difficulties with pluraleyes - it would run through the whole syncing process and then spit out a timeline with no audio. I finally tracked it down to a still image that had somehow been encoded as a single frame video with no audio. Once I eliminated that it finally worked but I didn't really start editing until almost noon.

Fortunately the edit was pretty straightforward, and by 4pm I was starting to color correct when one of my team members asked where my dog was - and we realized he wasn't anywhere in the house or yard! He must have gone out the front door when someone was coming or going... so another team member jumped in to finish the color correction while several of us wandered the neighborhood looking for my dog. At about 6:15 the local animal control called me to say they'd found my dog, but I had to get down to pick him up right away or he'd have to stay at the pound overnight. So I ran out the door to get him while several other team members headed for the drop off in San Jose (we were in SF) , taking my laptop to do some basic audio mixing, add credits, render and compress on the way.

The drive to San Jose normally takes me an hour on my motorcycle - when it's clear I'm going 80-90mph and when it slows down I can split traffic. Somehow they made the drive in a car in less than 40 minutes and arrived at the drop off location with just a couple of minutes to spare. One guy jumped out of the car and ran into the shopping center only to find everything was closed and the actual dropoff location was nowhere to be found. He saw some people walking by and asked where the billiards hall was and they told him it was actually the next shopping center over. So he sprinted over there and ran up to the drop off table as they were counting down to the cutoff time - we were officially the last team to make it in on time and had just four seconds to spare!

Our audio is pretty rough because we didn't have time to really do a proper mix and the color correction is much more basic than we'd planned for; we also completely forgot to shoot a final shot we wanted to tag on to the end. Overall it was a fun weekend though and we're happy with the film, I'm looking forward to seeing it with an audience this wednesday. It's rough, ridiculous and revolves around a vengeful piñata, so I don't expect to do particularly well in the competition but I think the audience will have fun with it.

So lessons learned...

1. Even when you've been through your workflow dozens of times before without a problem (as with pluraleyes) something can still go wrong and set you back... so leave yourself a little extra time just in case.

2. Edit mobile! Having the option to just pick everything up and head out the door when it comes right down to the wire might be the difference between getting in on time or not. If I hadn't put all the footage on a bus powered fw800 drive we wouldn't have made it.

3. Make sure someone on the crew is keeping an eye on your dog at all times...