This is my second 24 hour TFC and I thought I'd share it once again with my fellow filmmakers. Please note that since the last one, I've upgraded to using a Panasonic DVX-100b, a better boom mic, and a lighting kit. Also I used better actors and a more well thought out team...

Meeting at the GO train station my team was all there BEFORE our scheduled meeting time. This was shocking, so I was sure someone forgot different clothes or a piece of equipment. Again, I was suprised with everyone being fully prepared.

Becoming more confident, we find the place downtown where we need to sign in and are one of the first to register. There are some B shooters around and they got some footage of me and my team.

The challenge finally starts and away we go with our bags in hand, eager to find out what's inside our "Challenge Pack". All we find in the bag is a MiniDV tape and a little envelope titled "Challenge Pack". We thought it was some kind of joke, and upon opening it we found that we have to find ourselves an issue of NOW magazine and turn to page 118 to be inspired.

Finally finding a current issue of NOW magazine, we turned to page 118 and I immediatley looked for the word "inspiration". It was a good guess as the first heading was "INSPIRATION" and was about the film challenge.

Our genre was "Toronto Living", our theme "Exposed", our word "Flannel" and our prop was the NOW magazine.

I'm sure many of you could think of a lot of different ideas for this, but when we started we honestly couldn't. We spent almost 3 hours trying to decide (over food of course) which direction to take it in.

After much deliberation we started to film, and moved from the downtown area to Durham. We filmed by the lake originally and that was horrible. The actors were absoloutley frozen and the wind made all the footage unusable. I forgot my wind screen for my mic and we didn't have time to get it.

On to another location where we were able to film the same scene, with no interference. It was good, but daylight was still running out and we had a few more outdoor scenes to do. Our next shot needed to be in an alley and the only one we could find was between an adult movie store and sexual education building.

Needless to say, shooting that scene was interesting and the dirty looks we got from the sex ed. building were not appreciated (at least by me) We were off to shoot the indoor scenes next but had to hold off on the actual filming because everyone was hungry. I ordered a few pizzas, wings, garlic bread and picked up some beer which all seemed to satisfy the team.

We were now ready to shoot our last few scenes. There were a lot of lighting issues, but I think it overall gave the film a unique look and it took us a while to make up a couple extra scenes to fill time and tie up loose ends. This was quickly done, but for all our efficiency it was already 12 and we still had over an hour of footage to import and edit down to 4.5 to 6.5 minutes.

It was off to my house to edit and the person I had originally designated to edit said he was tired and wouldn't be able to do it. That was fine by me as I wanted to do the editing myself. I had a vision of what I wanted it to be and the editor and I had conflicting ideas all day long.

I have to admit it was my first time editing 24pa footage and didn't have much time to try all the things I wanted, but I had read lots of posts on this board concerning it and thought that it was decent considering the time restrictions and it being my only time.

Suprisingly it came to a tight 5:42 minutes and looked great to me. Even the other team members seemed to notice the difference in the "look" of the movie. We filled out all the remaining paperwork and I drove it downtown to the drop off point and got it in 5 minutes before the deadline.

All in all it was a great experience, especially it being my first time filming AND editing in 24pa (I only recently upgraded to my DVX100b). I'm sure there were many things that I didn't do or missed but it was a good time to learn. One thing I noticed I used too much of was gain and didn't figure out until post production-I should have taken everyone's advice and stayed away from it but sometimes to get the shots I needed and lighting was near impossible due to time restrictions it was necessary. I guess we'll see how it looks on the big screen, wish me luck guys!

-Kegan