My buddy Danny and I this year took part in "Iron Filmmaker," which is part of the California Independent Film Festival. The contest is that you get 24 hours to make a 3 minute short film. They give us 3 synopses to pick from, then you head out the door and come back at 10 the next morning, film in hand, everything gets screened and they crown the winners.
Danny and I ran into a bit of an issue this year when nobody else could come and help, so we got his brother and his brother's girlfriend to act when they got off work (at 7pm), and we spent the rest of the time thinking, writing a script and setting up lights and camera positions.
The synopsis we chose was thus: A man on the way to his date's house runs over her kitten, and must find different places to hide the cat so she doesn't find out. We decided to do it as a film noir, with a detective on a case who stops by his beautiful secretary's house but kills her cat on the way. It's got the inner monologue, and we did it all in black and white.
Lights wise, I had 2 Totas and a home depot worklight, so I set the totas up high to light the room and set the home depot in the kitchen to bring that up, which was about it for lighting options.
I was sort of annoyed because we were the only team to stay within the 3 minute time limit (I added credits after), and our 'good' cut came out to 4:30, we spent the morning before cutting out a minute and a half to get to the time limit, which was ignored by everybody else. It seemed to me that part of the challenge was getting your film in the time limit. Also, they screened our film first (they didn't announce it, just started playing it) and played it with the lights ON so the first half looked washed out and was ignored because most of the audience was still talking.
Either way, we took 2nd and Danny and I were very impressed with ourselves and our film, I think it's perhaps the best piece I've done to express my "style" as a writer/director (the jokes are obvious and rushed, but the atmosphere and acting are part of the style i'm shooting for), and we're going to re-add the rest of the edit, do up some masks for special effects & colours, and ship it off to a couple of other festivals for fun.
Here are some stills:
And here is the movie: http://www.jlboyce.com/video/Murder_My_Kitten.mov
Direct download is appreciated
Danny and I ran into a bit of an issue this year when nobody else could come and help, so we got his brother and his brother's girlfriend to act when they got off work (at 7pm), and we spent the rest of the time thinking, writing a script and setting up lights and camera positions.
The synopsis we chose was thus: A man on the way to his date's house runs over her kitten, and must find different places to hide the cat so she doesn't find out. We decided to do it as a film noir, with a detective on a case who stops by his beautiful secretary's house but kills her cat on the way. It's got the inner monologue, and we did it all in black and white.
Lights wise, I had 2 Totas and a home depot worklight, so I set the totas up high to light the room and set the home depot in the kitchen to bring that up, which was about it for lighting options.
I was sort of annoyed because we were the only team to stay within the 3 minute time limit (I added credits after), and our 'good' cut came out to 4:30, we spent the morning before cutting out a minute and a half to get to the time limit, which was ignored by everybody else. It seemed to me that part of the challenge was getting your film in the time limit. Also, they screened our film first (they didn't announce it, just started playing it) and played it with the lights ON so the first half looked washed out and was ignored because most of the audience was still talking.
Either way, we took 2nd and Danny and I were very impressed with ourselves and our film, I think it's perhaps the best piece I've done to express my "style" as a writer/director (the jokes are obvious and rushed, but the atmosphere and acting are part of the style i'm shooting for), and we're going to re-add the rest of the edit, do up some masks for special effects & colours, and ship it off to a couple of other festivals for fun.
Here are some stills:
And here is the movie: http://www.jlboyce.com/video/Murder_My_Kitten.mov
Direct download is appreciated
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