OUCH.

Just came back from 48 Hours of FURIOUS filmmaking. It's a big competition over here in New Zealand. Unfortunately everything that COULD go wrong DID - and I am absolutely guttered, to say the least.

Friday 13th May, 7.00pm:

Turned up to the Wellington Paramount Theatre, where the other 70 teams from my regions were. Looking around the room it was fairly obvious what I was up against. Practically everyone was over 25, with a mix of some slightly younger, and people up to around 40. (although mostly 20's-30's). I am 16.

Each time was assigned a genre. We got 'disney family movie'. I met up with the writer & camerman and we started writing. We wrote all night, into 6:30am the next morning when the rest of the cast and crew arrived. Our script was pretty average and amatuer, but it was the best we could pull together in like 10 hours, while we're tired, under pressure, and stuck for ideas.

Saturday 14th May, 7am

Cast and crew were all here. One of our main actors told us he had to go to karate training for 2 and a half hours, and it cut RIGHT into when we were shooting his main scene.

We went out to shoot the first few scenes. Unfortunately the wind was a huge problem, and I only had a small windsheild on my ext. mic. I had headphones, but our boom operator really didn't give us accurate feedback on what the sound was like.

We switched locations at 2pm and shot until 5. We had a bit of mucking around because we needed one of the cast to come back, and we had to wait. We got about 6 pages done - there was a lot of mucking around and we didnt get the shots we need. Because the script deadline was broken by HOURS, we didnt have any time to plan shots so it was all on the spot.

Saturday Night

Looking back at the first scenes we shot Saturday morning, we realised it was just crap. It looked really bad when we cut it up, and yeah. It sucked. The other stuff on the 2pm shoot was Okay, and we edited it and kept it. Unfortunately we still edited the old footage which wasted hours of our time.

Sunday 15th May, 8am

Deadlines were absolutely broken. Cast arrived, and we broke the news that we were reshooting 3 pages, plus a whole lot of extra stuff that we couldnt shoot the day before due to the lighting being too dark
(at the shoot around 5pm Saturday).

We shot the first 3 pages again, and then the last two, in a few hours. Pretty good effort, and the shots wern't too bad, although we missed out some cuts and so we had dialogue with nothing to cut to.

I was hoping to have the shooting DONE by Saturday night, so music could come into play on Sunday. Boy was I wrong.

Sunday 12pm.

Finished the whole shoot. We had hours of work ahead of editing, and we needed a score. Don't worry, it gets worse.

At 5pm something really bad happened. We were moving shots all over the timeline, and somehow we managed to unsync the audio with the video and mix it 'round. This meant we had to rearrange pretty much everything.

At 5:45pm we were finished editing and needed to add music. I was going to write a score, but we thought we'd just use tracks I had written. Sadly we had to be back at Paramount at 7pm to hand in the final tape and we had no sound effects, no music, slight glitches (or so we thought) and a whole heap of other things. We only had time to add ONE pre written track, the rest of the movie had no sound effects or music. It gets worse.

6:05pm

There was no way we would get to the finish on time if we didnt hurry up. We lost the list of cast and crew so now we had to think it up on the spot, and we missed people out. (We didn't realize this until we were on the way, speeding down the highway with our tape). We had only a few minutes to add 10 seconds of bars and tone, some text, credits, and it was REALLY rushed.

6:10pm

Sent the movie to DV tape. Unfortunately there was a whole minute and half worth of footage where the image stutters and pauses (really badly) and then it randomly fastfowards to a bit. Our best shots were cut out here, dialogue was out of sync, and it was really bad. We only found out later that our intro dialogue was also WAY out of sync. Our ending was terrible. Our characters were supposed to be burrying back up some bones, but instead the only good take we got (in a hurry) was them hitting the ground with sticks like they're attacking it, and the camera tracking away. Not a good look.

6:50 Arrived at the finish line. Handed in the tape but I was not happy.

7:45pm

got back home and realized how bad it actually was. We watched it on the TV, and I swear it was the WORST film I've EVER, EVER seen. Even for 48 hour filmmaking, it was 1/4 of what we were capable of. We have a screening next monday night with the other 10 teams in the group (the 70 teams from my area were split into 7 groups of 10). I am NOT looking foward to it


And that's it. This was typed in a hurry, I'm really down on myself right now. I will be entering next year, but I will be so much more prepared.

Guttered.

-Chris

hahahaha, don't be angry at me but this is so funny in a good way. It reminds me of my own past experiences. Nothing wrong with ****ing it up, as you said, next year you will be much better prepared. I learned by far the most when I failed with something. The second try was always a much better one.

The most important thing you probably experienced yourself is the lenght of the script. I'd write a 1-3 page script so you can actually shoot it in one or 1.5 days.

good luck and please...post the movie somewhere, now I can't wait to see it. This could also make a fun documentary

Hoeks is right. We've all been there (just - not on a 48 hour deadline necessarily) so don't beat yourself up over it. Live and learn! Don't worry, move on to better things! You tried, and that takes quite a bit of guts. I'd be terrified to do a 48 hour film.

that really sucks man, but at least you got some good experience, and everyone has to **** up at some point.

Your experience (and others like it) are the reasons why I despise these "48 hour/24 hour" spontaneous festivals. They give you a theme which always either sucks or is cliche, and such a short amount of time to conceptualize ideas and scripts for that crappy theme. The fact is that they don't bring out the best in you. It forces you and the film to be rushed and it doesn't convey your potential as a filmmaker one bit.

Write a script yourself with a lot of time, give yourself and others sufficient time to film it so it turns out good, then send it to more worthy festivals. Good luck!