48-Hour Film Festival chat

A

A Man With A Camera

i was reading spinner's 48-hour film competition thread and coincidentally, my school, Ohio University, is also having their annual 48-hour film festival this weekend. it's pretty big here, but it's for students only. as of monday there were 30 teams signed up (over 300 people), myself included.

i dunno if anyone cares, but the way it works is on friday night, each team picks a specified genre from a hat, which may include drama, thriller, reality tv, musical, etc. so, it's really a shot in the dark. then, of course, you have 48 hours to write, shoot, edit the movie.

i'm pretty nervous, mainly because i'm very meticulous and for the first time i'm going to have to allocate jobs that i would normally take upon myself, such as editing and camera work. i think the kids that are working with me know their stuff, but do you guys have any advice on delegating, or rather, feeling confident in the people to whom you delegate specific tasks?

also, in such a short time frame, what do you think the most time should be spent on. we have concocted a production schedule, which reserves friday night for writing, saturday for filming and sunday for editing; it seems like the most logical way, but i am worried that we will get too caught up in a stringent schedule and ultimately lose any artistic touch.

any thoughts, feelings?
 
...I have never done this sort of thing before. But maybe you should think of it like this:

have you ever seen those guys in the park playing speed chess? That is what I would think it would be like.

...if anyone else can shed some light....

--spinner :cool:
 
48 hours of fun and work

I did a 48 hour film challenge last year- it was one of the greatest experiences of all time. If you want to read my production synopsis for the film Orange Crush just click that. Here's my advice.

1) Get a crew that can all love each other. It's a bonding experience, so make sure you're all friends going into it. If you work together as a team, and share responsibilities, everyone will feel good about the movie. Let everyone have some creative input- independence brings out the best in people.

2) Divide into two teams. Maybe technical and artistic. We had one team (2 DoP/Camera, 1 Grip, 1 PA), and then another (Director/actors/sound guy). So once we had an initial theme (and color in our case), the technical team went out shooting intro stuff while the creative team banged out a story.

3) Don't sleep. A lot of teams would go for a beer on the Friday night, talk out a script, write it, then sleep, wake up and shoot. Most of them were late and disqualified. Don't slack. Plan in advance for night shooting, and keep night in mind when fleshing out the story. We used an energy drink (Bawls) and Red Bull, Coffee, Bill's Wake Up Juice, and took regular breaks.

4) Edit as you go. The Editor of our film was also a DoP. When we did the challenege it was the hottest weekend in June ever, so we needed to take breaks. I planned in advance for this by making a mock schedule template. Every few hours the teams would split up- one DoP would continue shooting, then the other team would edit what we had shot. Then we would go back and the DoP would sleep (and score) and our editor/DoP would come out to shoot with the sound guy. It got stressing as the director, because you're the only one who doesn't get a break- but once the ball gets rolling you won't be able to stop. A good side-effect of this, is that you won't get caught in rendering time you didn't expect close to the end- by the time we were done we had at least 3 hours left... we sat around drinking Bawls until the 30min mark.

5) Trust each crew member to do thier job. It takes a lot of pressure off when you delegate and then let them do thier work. As a director, give them space but be open to questions (read Clive's thread on Directing Actors), and instead of lingering over thier shoulders- come in at the end, and make your suggestions. Because of the short span of 48 hours, and the task of making a movie, everyone needs to be in on the whole process (have a hand in every cookie jar), so that the film becomes like the child of the crew. That's the most satisfying.

Good luck- remember to make it a fun experience and you won't have any regrets.
 
I was a DP and composer for Spatula's production. I think I got the most sleep out of everyone, an astounding three hours!

in regards to 1) tho...I um...met them the night before. I was introduced as "THE cypher" (from another filmmaking forum)....but my friend Chuck Norris gave them all a dirty look so they trusted me. And then he killed Bill, but luckily Denis has a ton of Bill clone's on standby.
 
...I'm doing it! Its in two weeks! I'm re-teaching myself final cut over the weekend! This will be a good way to keep my skills up ...

-- spinner :cool:
 
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