48 Hour Film Festival - DC edition
I know that I owe you a recap on the NYC Midnight screenwriting contest, but since the 48 Hour Film Festival is more recently in my "Rearviewmirror" (Pearl Jam!), I'll hit that first...
If you're not familiar with the contest, here's how it goes - you attend a genre drawing, and if you don't like your genre, you can throw it back for one selected randomly from another list.. Also, every city gets a character and a line of dialogue. Once you have those, you have to write, shoot, edit, export, and turn in a 4-7 minute film in 48 hours. Sounds simple, right? Not so fast...
My group, [sic] Productions (yes, I used my production company name for this - it's a good time to start building the brand!), originally drew Film de Femme, which is a movie with a strong female lead (think "Juno" or Ripley in the "Alien" series). This presented a huge problem for us because while we had several female actresses that would help us, we'd never worked with them before. Could they act? Could they work in our style of writing? We didn't know, and since we had those variables, we threw the genre back and drew Family Film as our second choice. The character was a coach named Ivan/Eve Pagoda, and the line was "We're hoping it gets better."
"Family Film" was a unique genre for our group's inclinations, and after a short debate, we decided to make it more of a film about a family. I actually came up with the original idea that we used - Lizzie and I were on the metro discussing the film (we were off to my company's annual Night at the Ballpark), and she said that there was such a thing as a lactation coach. Well, that was just funny, and I came up with the idea of a young, 20-something couple forced to adopt a nephew when his mother died - but that nephew was me in a diaper.
Yes, I actually did it.
So John and I (and our ladies) hit the game, while Tom stayed home and took off writing. We called back and forth throughout the game, and when we left and went back to Tom's, he'd already scripted three pages. Great - we snatched him up, went back to my place, and just a few hours later, we had a working script. Little did we know just how little we would stick to it...
Early Saturday morning wakeup call, and right away, we're off to buy props. Around 10am, a few crew members (Scott and Lisa) arrived, and we were off to shoot Tom in the metro. This wasn't a bad shot, but looking back, we were foolish to underestimate just how bad the background audio would blow out here. In hindsight, we should have taped the sound of the train, then recorded the dialogue and did some ADR magic. Still, a good shot - several of them, in fact - and we managed to get yelled at by a metro worker (she needed to check our permit).
After that, it was off to a secluded park to film our friends' kid, then on to the parents and their son. By this point, Xana and her boyfriend Matt had joined us, so our crew was almost full. I cannot accurately duplicate the insanity I felt in taping this part - we'd block the shot, rehearse, and then just before we rolled tape, I stripped off my clothes and did the scene in an adult diaper (good thing I've been so dedicated at the gym!). Lunch at Tom's then more shooting ourside his place, then off to John's to shoot an office scene.
A quick word on the office - we wanted to secure one, but because of the rights needed to show it, we just were not able to make it happen. In the end, we did what we always do - we faked it. A little creative blocking put together the shot, and soon, John, Xana, and Lizzie's roommate Deirdre were able to shoot the opening of our movie. After people left, we were exhausted, but we stuck around for another hour or so and filmed most of the ending, as well. When we finally wrapped for the day, we only needed another hour of shooting - we thought...
But first it was back to my place to edit, and that presented the major challenge of the weekend. Just importing and cutting the footage down into usable bits took quite a long time, and after that, I was almost too exhausted to put it into the timeline. Luckily, Tom and John kept me on task and working, and they pushed me much farther along that I thought I could go. Still, as we put it together we started to get excited that we had a funny little movie.
And then we started seeing problems.
Lighting, audio, mics in shots, missing shots - there were a litany of problems. And as we looked over everything, we knew that some reshoots were in order. Not everything, of course, but a pretty decent chunk - all of the first scene (about 2min of screen time), one shot in a major scene, and part of the ending. It was a little disheartening, yes, but we were resolved to do it. The plan was that I'd wake up Sunday morning and edit while they went back to John's and reshot the opening - but of course the best laid plans of mice and men blah blah blah.
I was needed for a shoot, so there went a few hours. And then there were a few more shots to get, and suddenly it's Sunday at 2pm and I'm starting the trims. We were also lax on the audio, so John, Tom and Lisa start diving into that as I'm cutting in a frenzy. Edits turn to closer trims, music is selected, mixed, and added, renders are running, outputs are set...
...and we missed the 7:30 deadline.
Not surprising, actually - I think most of us knew a few hours earlier that it would happen. That meant that we wouldn't be eligible for the big awards, but we could still screen and win an Audience Award. After another two hours of work (with some serious output issues that almost made us miss the second, 9:30 deadline), Tom and I turned the flick in, then went to the bar to unwind and have a beer.
So what did I learn?
Well, it's tough. Even a week later, it's hard to separate from the process, but here goes: am I disappointed that we missed the first deadline? Yes, of course. But I'm much more proud that we even did it AT ALL. I've spent the last several years talking and talking about how much I wanted to do things like this, but in the end, I was always too lazy to follow through. Over the last year, though, things have changed, and I feel the excitement of doing something like this and working on a set again. So while it sucks that we didn't get it in on time, it's awesome that we even did it at all - and it's going to feel even better when I can see it on the big screen next Monday.
One thing that worked in our favor was our cast and crew. Xana was the perfect "Mom" to me, and she took every horrible thing that I said to her (because my character was a big pervert) in stride. Deirdre is actually a natural in front of the camera, and it's not the last time we'll be using her. And on the crew side, Matt has a great eye behind the camera, Scott was awesome at the shitty job of holding the boom pole and working sound, and Lisa made sure everything stayed on time and in line as our assistant director. Oh yes, and we can't forget about our artist, my girlfriend, who made some great ID badges for one shot.
And then there was Tom and John. At times it was rough working together - we were stuck in confined places all weekend, fighting together to get this out, and it wasn't always pretty. But I've listened to other stories that have come from this competition and I'm glad I was able to endure this and create the movie with these guys. They kept me working hard, pushing forward when I wanted to quit, and both were great actors and really stepped up to the plate on the tech side, as well. I think the three of us make a great team, and I can't wait to do it again.
That's right, I said "do it again" because I'm probably not stopping this year. In fact, I plan on doing the Baltimore version of this competition in about six weeks with another coworker - mainly to stay active (without taking such a high-stress role) and see how they run a set and delegate responsibility. I'm not sure if Tom and John will as well - they might never do one of these again - but I know I'm excited for it. Plus there's a 24 Hour Film Festival in August or September - fun!
If you're in DC and get the chance to come out on Monday night, our screening is at 7pm at the AFI in SIlver Springs, MD. Not sure if this will ever get up on YouTube, so check it out while you can!
If you're not familiar with the contest, here's how it goes - you attend a genre drawing, and if you don't like your genre, you can throw it back for one selected randomly from another list.. Also, every city gets a character and a line of dialogue. Once you have those, you have to write, shoot, edit, export, and turn in a 4-7 minute film in 48 hours. Sounds simple, right? Not so fast...
My group, [sic] Productions (yes, I used my production company name for this - it's a good time to start building the brand!), originally drew Film de Femme, which is a movie with a strong female lead (think "Juno" or Ripley in the "Alien" series). This presented a huge problem for us because while we had several female actresses that would help us, we'd never worked with them before. Could they act? Could they work in our style of writing? We didn't know, and since we had those variables, we threw the genre back and drew Family Film as our second choice. The character was a coach named Ivan/Eve Pagoda, and the line was "We're hoping it gets better."
"Family Film" was a unique genre for our group's inclinations, and after a short debate, we decided to make it more of a film about a family. I actually came up with the original idea that we used - Lizzie and I were on the metro discussing the film (we were off to my company's annual Night at the Ballpark), and she said that there was such a thing as a lactation coach. Well, that was just funny, and I came up with the idea of a young, 20-something couple forced to adopt a nephew when his mother died - but that nephew was me in a diaper.
Yes, I actually did it.
So John and I (and our ladies) hit the game, while Tom stayed home and took off writing. We called back and forth throughout the game, and when we left and went back to Tom's, he'd already scripted three pages. Great - we snatched him up, went back to my place, and just a few hours later, we had a working script. Little did we know just how little we would stick to it...
Early Saturday morning wakeup call, and right away, we're off to buy props. Around 10am, a few crew members (Scott and Lisa) arrived, and we were off to shoot Tom in the metro. This wasn't a bad shot, but looking back, we were foolish to underestimate just how bad the background audio would blow out here. In hindsight, we should have taped the sound of the train, then recorded the dialogue and did some ADR magic. Still, a good shot - several of them, in fact - and we managed to get yelled at by a metro worker (she needed to check our permit).
After that, it was off to a secluded park to film our friends' kid, then on to the parents and their son. By this point, Xana and her boyfriend Matt had joined us, so our crew was almost full. I cannot accurately duplicate the insanity I felt in taping this part - we'd block the shot, rehearse, and then just before we rolled tape, I stripped off my clothes and did the scene in an adult diaper (good thing I've been so dedicated at the gym!). Lunch at Tom's then more shooting ourside his place, then off to John's to shoot an office scene.
A quick word on the office - we wanted to secure one, but because of the rights needed to show it, we just were not able to make it happen. In the end, we did what we always do - we faked it. A little creative blocking put together the shot, and soon, John, Xana, and Lizzie's roommate Deirdre were able to shoot the opening of our movie. After people left, we were exhausted, but we stuck around for another hour or so and filmed most of the ending, as well. When we finally wrapped for the day, we only needed another hour of shooting - we thought...
But first it was back to my place to edit, and that presented the major challenge of the weekend. Just importing and cutting the footage down into usable bits took quite a long time, and after that, I was almost too exhausted to put it into the timeline. Luckily, Tom and John kept me on task and working, and they pushed me much farther along that I thought I could go. Still, as we put it together we started to get excited that we had a funny little movie.
And then we started seeing problems.
Lighting, audio, mics in shots, missing shots - there were a litany of problems. And as we looked over everything, we knew that some reshoots were in order. Not everything, of course, but a pretty decent chunk - all of the first scene (about 2min of screen time), one shot in a major scene, and part of the ending. It was a little disheartening, yes, but we were resolved to do it. The plan was that I'd wake up Sunday morning and edit while they went back to John's and reshot the opening - but of course the best laid plans of mice and men blah blah blah.
I was needed for a shoot, so there went a few hours. And then there were a few more shots to get, and suddenly it's Sunday at 2pm and I'm starting the trims. We were also lax on the audio, so John, Tom and Lisa start diving into that as I'm cutting in a frenzy. Edits turn to closer trims, music is selected, mixed, and added, renders are running, outputs are set...
...and we missed the 7:30 deadline.
Not surprising, actually - I think most of us knew a few hours earlier that it would happen. That meant that we wouldn't be eligible for the big awards, but we could still screen and win an Audience Award. After another two hours of work (with some serious output issues that almost made us miss the second, 9:30 deadline), Tom and I turned the flick in, then went to the bar to unwind and have a beer.
So what did I learn?
Well, it's tough. Even a week later, it's hard to separate from the process, but here goes: am I disappointed that we missed the first deadline? Yes, of course. But I'm much more proud that we even did it AT ALL. I've spent the last several years talking and talking about how much I wanted to do things like this, but in the end, I was always too lazy to follow through. Over the last year, though, things have changed, and I feel the excitement of doing something like this and working on a set again. So while it sucks that we didn't get it in on time, it's awesome that we even did it at all - and it's going to feel even better when I can see it on the big screen next Monday.
One thing that worked in our favor was our cast and crew. Xana was the perfect "Mom" to me, and she took every horrible thing that I said to her (because my character was a big pervert) in stride. Deirdre is actually a natural in front of the camera, and it's not the last time we'll be using her. And on the crew side, Matt has a great eye behind the camera, Scott was awesome at the shitty job of holding the boom pole and working sound, and Lisa made sure everything stayed on time and in line as our assistant director. Oh yes, and we can't forget about our artist, my girlfriend, who made some great ID badges for one shot.
And then there was Tom and John. At times it was rough working together - we were stuck in confined places all weekend, fighting together to get this out, and it wasn't always pretty. But I've listened to other stories that have come from this competition and I'm glad I was able to endure this and create the movie with these guys. They kept me working hard, pushing forward when I wanted to quit, and both were great actors and really stepped up to the plate on the tech side, as well. I think the three of us make a great team, and I can't wait to do it again.
That's right, I said "do it again" because I'm probably not stopping this year. In fact, I plan on doing the Baltimore version of this competition in about six weeks with another coworker - mainly to stay active (without taking such a high-stress role) and see how they run a set and delegate responsibility. I'm not sure if Tom and John will as well - they might never do one of these again - but I know I'm excited for it. Plus there's a 24 Hour Film Festival in August or September - fun!
If you're in DC and get the chance to come out on Monday night, our screening is at 7pm at the AFI in SIlver Springs, MD. Not sure if this will ever get up on YouTube, so check it out while you can!