48 hour film festival

slimchrisp

slimchrisp

Well-known member
i'm doing my first 48 hour film festival in a few weeks (columbus oh). so stoked!!! anyone else here ever been in one? advice for a smooth and successful 48 hours? i'm on the b camera, and also do some writing. can't wait!
 
I just came off of the 48-hour project here in Seattle. We ended up with the "Spy" film genre. The prop was a nail file, character was "Mike Jordache - member of the paparazzi", and the line of dialogue was "What time to you get off?".

I was brought in by a friend who worked with me on a recent documentary (he'd been running our location sound), and for the 48-hour film project, he was the DP. My role on this one was Gaffer and 2nd unit DP, though when our sound guy left for the day and we had a pickup to shoot, I fired up my field mixer and our boom.

Our biggest struggle on Saturday, was getting the locations lined up, and shuttling the talent to each location. The crew was almost always set up way in advance of the talent arriving, and there was plenty of waiting around. This could probably have been avoided by having one person responsible for corralling the cast and providing transportation (or cutting down on the locations in the script).

We were ready to start filming at 6am on Saturday morning, after having loaded our van with the grip and camera equipment the night before. We ended up starting the filming sometime around 9:30am, and finished 6 locations later around 10:45pm.

We had two HVX200 cameras with 60GB worth of P2 cards (32, 16, 8 and 4), and only had one off-load around 2pm. We shot 26gb total, and could have definitely kept shooting with the cards on hand. If we needed it, we also had a Firestore FS-100.

After watching the first batch of groups' films being screened last night, I was really surprised to hear only three or four films having good audio. The vast majority seemed to either use an on-camera mic, or just really not consider location sound to be important. In my opinion, our film had the cleanest and most professional sounding audio (Sound Devices 442 and Sound Devices 302 mixers with Senhheiser 416 and other mics).

One of the films had a very different look, that could either have been a film transfer, RED, or potentially a Letus Ultimate with Sony EX-1... but definitely not HVX/HPX. It really stood out on visuals, but had some inconsistencies in the acting (e.g. one character was introduced with one name, but someone called them by another name later in the film.)

My biggest suggestion for you, is to get decent visuals, and make sure you have a dedicated audio person running a boom. The audio alone will most likely set you apart from your competition! When writing your script, also try to keep locations to a minimum, and spend some time developing your characters.

I'm sure you'll have a great time. For me, I really enjoyed working with such a great group of like-minded people who were extremely professional on set. Enjoy the experience!
 
I've done a few of em.. this seems to be working for us:

Find someone you trust to take one of the key positions. The writer's big
day is friday, the director/dp works saturday and the editor is 'on' sunday.

If one of those jobs can be offloaded, you can have someone fresh step
in when its needed most. Fatigue has had the largest impact on our
shorts.

Its also a great idea to have specific producers lined up to do nothing but
wrangle talent w/wardrobe and locations... those can take valuable time
to arrange.
 
I would love to do something like this, but I know there's no way I could get a group of people to help out. Is there a way you can sign up solo and be put into the mix of a group, or would I actually be alone?
 
I'm doing a 24 Hour one in London on September 12th.

Heh! O_O';

Preperation is what I recommend, and sleep alot before hand.

Plan timetables and shifts out. Try to think of locations beforehand. Write a few plots up beforehand. It's not cheating. Just prepertion. =)

Never know, one may fit the specifications.
 
I just did the Diesel 24 hour film race here in Vancouver, BC. Hawk, for mine, you were able to check the website to see if people needing additional crew members, so i'd check that out.

try to get as much sleep as possible before you get started. i had a rough time because i worked a full day at my normal job, then a few hours later had to begin. it was a friday at 10pm till saturday at 10pm. i was the second unit camera, so i just waited around a few hours till they called me to say they were done with the script. i was also the editor so when filming was done, i was still hard at work while everyone else slept around me.. oh how i envied them.. ha ha..

but this was one of the best experiences of my life. being tired sucks, but you get over it. they showed our film on the big screen along with the 28 other entries that made it in on time. i also was the editor for the behind the scenes footage, sorry, ASSISTANT editor, and it's going to show on TV tomorrow! funny thing is no one seems to know what time.. arg..

i made a LOT of connections. i aquired a live sound engineer for my music video production company. i met a guy who wants me to be the editor for a tv movie. i talked to a photographer who's interested in joining my company. well, the list goes on and on.

getting good sound is a great tip. make sure you are using someone who knows what they're doing. keep good track of your scenes. they usually provide you with a timeline that's good to follow - do your best to follow it. altho if you are writer and b camera you probably arent in charge of those things...

well good luck, have fun!
 
thanks for the words of wisdom everyone. i'm not producing or directing, so i think that will make my experience a lot less stressful. the guys who are producing and directing have done a few of these plus they are super organized, so hopefully things will go smoothly and be a lot of fun. i'll let you know.
 
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