from:
http://www.sonnyboo.com/cgi-bin/ib219/topic.cgi?forum=7&topic=17
48 Hour Film Project Blog
((7:32 AM Aug 7th, 2004)) Okay, it's late/early. We just wrapped principal photography on location at TALITA's, a Mexican food restaurant on High Street. We wrapped exactly on time and - miracle of miracles - without an assistant director (take THAT Derek!!!!).
Let's get in the WAY BACK MACHINE and go back about two months ago. Linda Byrket, my friend and someone who helps me on shoots as well as I help her on her shoots, found out about the 48 Hour Film Project, and wanted to do it. She initially asked me if I was interested and I said, as I have been saying for months now... NO MORE SHORTS!. The idea repulsed me at that time. One week later, I reconsidered. Miguel Baldoni said we wanted to D.P. it and said I owed him one more short, something we could work on together. I read up on the rules and the concept of the project. Linda offered to produce if I'd direct.
The rules of the game are this - at 7
M on Friday you are handed four things - a PROP, a GENRE, a LINE OF DIALOGUE, and CHARACTER NAME. Then you have 48 hours (until 7
M Sunday night) to write, direct, produce, edit, and turn in a finished movie 4-8 minutes long. If any of the items are missing, or if you're 15 minutes late - GAME OVER. You movie will screen but won't compete. The prize? an AVID editing system. (Editor's note, as a non-fan of AVID, the prize is hardly the reason to play the game). You are not allowed to write a script or do much of anything except cast & crew recruiting prior to the shoot. Casting is a bear because you don't have a script. How do you rehearse? What kind of characters are they? We don’t know yet...
Linda, the consummate professional and excellent producer started casting & location scouting right away. We wanted a lot of options. Her husband Bret, who would also handle camera duties and editing duties, contributed a great idea of pre-contributing some story ideas and outlines to match each of the 12 genres. We decide that my new place (Brandy's condo) will be COMMAND CENTRAL, as I have 3 working adobe premiere editing stations. Bret's brother gets recruited to be our official screenwriter, as he has a lot of writing experience and is held in high regards.
I want to meet and work with the actors that I have not worked with before. Especially a young lady named Megan Pillar because she had emailed me over a year before and asked to be a part of any upcoming Sonnyboo Productions, but nothing I had called for a 16 year old girl. Megan had since acted in several local productions and even a movie for Showtime with D.B. Sweeney and the girl from Panic Room. Her resume & reel were impressive, so I wanted to work with her. There were also several other actors and actresses I wanted to play with. The problem is - how do you rehearse for a script, genre, and characters you don't have yet? How do you develop a trust relationship between director and actor on a time restraint when you don't know each other at all?
Here's my solution, which is hardly unique or special: play some very basic actor games with them. I started by meeting everyone at Linda's and we all discussed the contest and the interest levels. We introduced ourselves and then moved into some improvisation exercises, like "what's on the table?", where 1 out of 3 selected actors try to convey without words what's on the table & the other two have to guess solely based on their physical acting. That's more for warm up and basic chemistry between actors.
Then comes the fun game. Pair everyone up and go with a simple set of dialogue
CHARACTER 1
What's that?
CHARACTER 2
What?
CHARACTER 1
That!
CHARACTER 2
Nothing.
They can make it drama, comedy, sci fi, whatever. The point is to see what they come up with (see what their instincts are) and then you (the director) can then give direction. Shape the performance WITH the actor and see how well they understand what you say and how you say it. It's a great and very simple game that shows how well you can communicate direction and how well they can tweak a performance.
We got a great set of people. The only problem is that we won't know until Friday at 7
M what kind of story and characters we'll need. So a lot of people are playing this game and we may not need them even if they're they are good. We have a great cast. Age & gender variances.
Our plan is to try to start shooting at 5:AM on Saturday morning. We tell the cast & crew to expect a call & email Friday night at approx 9-10PM with instruction on where to be.
-----------
Linda scouted locations and found us an office, a restaurant, a country setting, an 1800's historical site, and 4 suburban homes. We're pretty much ready for anything.
Friday at 3
M, the lovely and sexified Brandy Seymour volunteered to be our representative in Cincinnati to receive our PROP, LINE OF DIALOGUE, CHARACTER NAME, and GENRE. We are walking on eggshells because we are terrified of getting "Western or Musical" or worse -> "Fantasy". Creating a movie in one of those genres in less than 48 hours is an abysmal thought. We brainstormed some basic story ideas, but they mostly tend toward comedy. It's a strength for our respective styles. We find ways to bend our comedic ideas towards the other genres like SPY, ROMANCE, et al.
at 6:30 PM Friday, Linda, Bret, Dan Kiely, Micah, and more arrive to await our cell phone call from the Kick Off event. The screenwriter (Bret's brother Chris) is awaiting a speaker phone call to write our screenplay in whatever genre we get. At 7:10 PM we get a phone call from Brandy... we got :
GENRE - COMEDY
CHARACTER - J.P. HONEYSUCKLE, JUDGE
LINE OF DIALOGUE - "SOME PEOPLE CALL ME MAURICE"
PROP - TROPHY OR AWARD
-----------------------
Lots of ideas are submitted from a variety of friends and fellow filmmakers/actors. My suggestions are simple ideas with no more than 3 locations (2 ideas with only 1 location each) and a limited number of characters. Some other really funny and clever ideas are submitted. We have a hard time deciding which are the best because the caliber is high.
A story idea I submitted, a kind of follow up to "LICENSE EXAM", about a couple having an argument turns into an altered reality trial gets picked by Chris. We have only one problem... we can only get into the restaurant location Linda secured at 4:30 AM to 11:AM... and again at 11
M Saturday. Linda frantically calls to see if we can use it all night Friday night (a few short hours away). They say YES, we can get in at 11
M. Our calls to the cast now mean to ask who can make it at midnight, 6 hours earlier than we had asked them to be ready.
All cast confirm so that's okay. The only person we can't find is Stephen who loaded up the crane, dolly, tripod and more in his car and we can't do much without it... Panic at midnight.
We receive the script within 60 minutes of deciding which story to go with and it's GREAT. I laugh a lot at what Chris did. He got the vibe and did some great dialogue. It's funny. We don't need changes. We await an email and start to send people to the location to get started. When we arrive to the location, we start working on a shot list. It's a panic hurry, but we do it. I start with a table read with the cast, and then start a blocking rehearsal. After that, setting up our first shot, a dolly pan shot (Stephen arrived okay) and it takes some time to setup and rehearse the camera move. We start shooting 1 hour after we planned, but things stay smooth there out.
Shooting was fun. There was a lot of verbose dialogue for actors to learn in no time. We had a lot to shoot in 1 night. The actors were well cast and they pulled of exactly what we needed. George Caleodis stands out. Putting a bow tie on him incited a Colonel Sanders-type southern lawyer impersonation to die for. I got to have my own miniature George Lucas "Video Village" monitoring our two camera setups on two small 7" LCD portable DVD players as monitors. It's a great way to see this.
Team 3.2 Million Miles (thus named by Linda for the amount the Earth will travel in 48 Hours) pulled it off.
We wrapped up at 7:AM and headed off to get some sleep and start the capture/edit session. Micah, in Micah fashion, heard "between 1
M to 2PM" and arrived at 1
M. Bret & Linda arrived at 2... Editing ensued and didn't stop until 5:45AM, then I spent a few minutes setting up a colour correction and took another nap. When I woke up, Bret & Linda were knocking on the door. Time to take a look at the piece... two hours of render to go. Decision time - do we let it finish & find out IF it looks good, or stop it & tweak only audio an other nit-pickety things. We decide to let it finish.
It does. It looks better. Now to finish audio. Music placement and even composition (thanks to Sonic Foundry's ACID). We set our own deadline as 3
M on the road to get down to Cincinnati for the due time of 7
M turn ins. At some point during the haze of 3:AM-4:AM, we decided on the title "Always Late". In the only truly Ironic twist, with lots of "irony" being bandied about willy-nilly, was that "Always Late" was the first movie turned in on Sunday.
In the end, we have a 6 minute short.
36 teams signed up for Cincinnati. 33 picked up, only 23 turned in their movies.
Next Saturday they will play the 23 submitted movies. There will be audience awards. On September 11th or 12th they will have another screening of the "Best of" movies from the first screening and they will announce the winner for "Best of Cincinnati". I think we have a real shot at it.
see this:
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/08/09/tem_48hours09.html
