Topic: Makin' Movies
Now that I've recovered somewhat from the experience, I can catch up on my blog and tell of the experience of doing the 48 Hour Film Project (www.48hourfilm.com) here in San Francisco.
And a tale it is!
To back up: I wasn't certain I would enter, albeit I wanted to. I just dropped a large brick of money on a new Mac Pro system and software, and smarted at the costs I knew a 48 Hour Film would pile atop it. But, finally, I decided I'd do it, but try not to go crazy on the film budget (ha).
I registered a team with the name Fogbelt 2880: because I live in the fogbelt, and 2880 is the number of minutes in 48 hours. Sometimes I'm too obscure for my own good.
Scott Cummins—who directed and edited Secret Identity Crisis—volunteered to come down and help, and I assigned him to be my 1st Assistant Director and Editor, because while I have the new Mac and Final Cut Pro Studio, I have to get up to speed on the software...and I needed someone who knew it.
Getting the crew together was interesting, as I pulled people I knew, friends and co-workers, and also put ads on Craig's list. I landed quite a few off the latter, including two cameramen (with their own HD cameras), a boom operator, an actress (and some standbys) production assistants, etc.
The afternoon before the contest started I remained worried that we might need extra equipment that our camera guys might not have, so I broke down and rented a small four light kit, boom mic kit with boom pole, and a mini grip kit (flags, c-stands, etc.). In retrospect, I'm glad I did, because we ended up using most of it.
Scott attended the launch event with me. This is where all the team leaders show up and get their assignments. The way it works is like this:
- Teams are assigned to one of four Groups (A, B , C or D)
- Team leaders draw a genre out of a hat. Once each genre is drawn, it's out of the running for that Group. As such, each Group will have only one instance of a given genre (like Romance), but there could be four films in that genre, since there's one instance of the genre for each group.
- After the genres are all draw, all teams are told the required Elements that must be included to prove their films were made in the 48 hours. For this competition, the elements were:
- Character: Gus or Gloria Lorenz, Trade Expert
- Prop: a ticket for a bus, plane or train
- Line of Dialogue: "Forget it. I already have."
There are 14 genres. This year's:
-
- Comedy
- Detective/cop
- Drama
- Fantasy
- Film de Femme (strong female character)
- Historical Fiction/Period Piece
- Holiday Film
- Horror
- Musical or Western
- Road Movie
- Romance
- Sci Fi
- Spy
- Thriller/Suspense
When it was my turn to draw, to my horror I drew...Horror. Of the genres, this was the one I wanted last, and the one I had the least interest in! I was dying for Comedy, Sci-Fi, Detective/Cop, or Road Movie. I could have lived with the others. But Horror? F*@%!
I asked Scott's opinion. He agreed with my gut reaction to reject it.
If you reject the genre, you have to take a random wildcard genre, and there's no changing your mind.
The Wildcards this time included:
- Animal Film
- Fable
- Fictional Biopic
- Ghost Movie
- Political Drama
- Silent Film
- Sports Film
- Tragedy
Of these, I wanted Silent Film most of all (I love Silents), or even Animal Film. I wasn't too keen on Sports Film, but I had some ideas of how to go crazy with it.
I got "Fable". My immediate reaction was, "Ok, I can do something with that!"
Scott and I hurried out to meet our team...but Scott was unclear on what a Fable actually was, so he looked it up via his iPhone, confirming that it is—in the classic sense—a story with a moral that is told with anthropomorphized animals or plants (whereas a parable used humans).
After collecting actor P.A. Cooley, we headed back to my place where a lot of the team was assembling. The primary group consisted of cameraman Eriq Wities, script supervisor Becky Wood, 2nd A.D. Becky Sackville-West, and actors Jim Shelton, John Sugden, Erik Braa and P.A. Cooley.
We encircled the coffee table and started discussing ideas.
Story bashing, about 10 p.m., and at the instant we realized Scott had a pink bunny on his t-shirt! Clockwise from bottom center: Scott Cummins, Eriq Wities, P.A. Cooley, Becky Sackville-West, Becky Wood, James D. Shelton, VI, John Sugden (blue shirt), Erik Braa (in doorway), Maurice. Tim Laurel is hidden behind Maurice.
It was a blur of concepts and bits, and I have a hard time replying it in my mind. Fortunately, I had the foresight to set up my video camera and record most of it, in the event I wanted to go back to write down ideas we might've missed. Reviewing the footage didn't prove to be necessary, but it'll make a fun add-on to a future DVD!
After a few hours we'd hammered out the idea of a fable that was a sort of twisted take on the very topical gay marriage issue, but with all the genders and norms set on their heads. Our bearded actors would play the cute little bunnies, our one actress would play the bear, and the biggest, burliest guy in the group would play Mother Nature. Fun!
Partward through the process, Director of Photography Tim Laurel arrived and worked with Scott on making sure we the raw footage could be offloaded from his camera, and later yet Matt Levine and his Audio Engineer Will showed up for a brief discussion of music production. Once all that was done, we kicked out everyone except Jim, John, Scott and I. Scott worked in the back and then went to sleep while the rest of us sat in the living room and blocked out the story. John wrote the lines and action on a yellow pad as we hashed it out. Finally, it was roughed out, and I sent Jim home, put John to bed here, and sat down at the computer to turn John's handwritten pages into screenplay. I gave it the working title "B'ear Rabbit" (ackowledging Uncle Remus). Writing it took far longer than I thought, and I finally saved it and emailed it to the whole crew at -- eek! -- 5:10 a.m.! And we had a 7:00 am set time.
Oh, this was not boding well for any sleep!
celebratory
For some time I've been stymied in my quest to find a wine rack or small liquor cabinet for my dining room. Nothing seemed right for my (admittedly) eclectic tastes.
