Usually it takes me about a month to make a 30 second intro for a three minute film. Yes. A whole month. And that’s ACTUAL time, not me stuffing around chain-smoking or visiting the fridge to get myself another beer or googling Premiere Pro tutorials.
Clearly filmmaking is not my calling in life.
But for others, it’s a real passion, so much so that they would be hardcore enough to enter the 48 Hour Film Project. It’s exactly that: make a film in 48 hours. Sounds easy, hey? Surely you could pre-prod the whole thing beforehand and film over two days.
Not so simple. Each film has a prop, a line, a character and a genre that must be used. The catch: none of these details are revealed until the kick-off time. Basically, you go in completely blind before you embark on a weekend of scriptwriting, casting, location scouting, filming, editing, scoring and submitting within 48 hours.
First-time director, Andrew Fenaughty, entered this year’s comp brimming with enthusiasm and confidence, only to almost pull the plug 12 hours later due to script problems. His script, the film noir, Une Femme en Blanc et Noir, was still unfinished at 3am, with shooting due to start at 8am.
“It was ridiculously ambitious, a little naïve and probably a bit stupid and stubborn on my part…but we did it…” says Fenaughty.
With a 20-person crew ranging from very little to twenty years experience, Fenaughty was stoked with how little drama there was on set.
“There were no egos at all. I think the strength of our film was that it really was collaborative, everyone had ownership of the film and that’s why it worked. Everyone had their creative contribution which was completely unstifled,” says Fenaughty.
Despite the stress and pressure of the competition, for Alex Cunningham, Une Femme’s producer, finishing the project on time was quite an achievement.
“It was a personal best for me that we got the film in on time. Everything else is a bonus.”
For this year’s event, 43 teams entered. 41 teams finished. 38 teams got their film back on time. The finished films are screening over two nights this Friday and Saturday at Fed Square’s BMW Edge with six finalists from each screening going into Sunday’s Awards Night. The audience also gets to join in by voting for their favourite films so get on down to Fed Square this weekend and support Melbourne’s amazing budding filmmakers.
The 48 Hour Film Project screens 17 and 18 December at BMW Edge, Federation Square. Check the website for more details.
