The Austin 48 Hour Film Project

What Happened During Your Weekend?

The Austin filmmakers share stories from their wild weekend of filmmaking. (Blogging ended shortly after the filmmaking weekend.)

What a blast!

Just wanted to second Heather's confession that the entire Irony Coast team must be absolutely insane, as well as to let everyone know what a great time I had making "Happy Father's Day!" This is the most fun I've ever had working on a down-to-the-wire project. I would call it a nailbiter, except for the fact that nobody on the team had any time for biting nails!

It was even more special for me because it was for Austin, a city I love and will always consider my hometown, even though I didn't move there until my twenties! Thanks, Austin, and thanks 48HFD. I had a ball!

- Cecilia Bonvillain, Irony Coast Productions

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Insanity

On a normal Saturday to most, I along with our director (Victor DiGiovanni) were walking around a store looking for items to create a make-shift superhero costume. When we asked the clerks where we could find large adult sweat pants, chains, and superhero items we got some strange looks. But it wasn\\\'t until two weeks later when we were once again filming another 48 hr project and we sent someone out to buy whipped cream, bananas, pickles, and CONDOMS did it hit home that we might be crazy. That person came back and professed they could never shop at the grocery store again. It only got worse when we put the condoms on the bananas. No one was making us do it. We were all there on our free time. It validated we definitely had gone insane. But we wouldn\\\'t change a thing. It was too much fun. We are looking forward to doing this all over again.

- Heather Tucker, Irony Coast Productions

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So there we were, minding our own movie...

...with a brand new romance script in hand and less than 36 hours left to shoot, score & edit. It had already been a long 12 hours full of chaos and a scrapping of our original script, banana costumes and video. We had lost a few key cast/crew along the way, but things were finally coming back together and our momentum had returned stronger than ever. That is, until a mysterious man rolled a dolly of plastic right through the middle of our set and started blowing up an inflatable jumpy castle in front of our camera without saying a word. We were like; "What the....??? Who is this guy?"

Turned out that our location had unknowingly been double booked and he was setting up for his own 3 hour slide show and luncheon for 120 kids/families. So, we moved our stuff over, he set up the jumpy castle elsewhere and we shared the space... along with the sound of their party and slide show music track - which repeated every 30 seconds...over & over & over again like an audio nightmare.
Despite all of that and a few more interesting & bizarre obstacles, we managed to pool our skills & resources to put together a terrific little romance - "Time to Fall", which I refer to as, "Our 24 hour film".

- Danielle , Victor's Pictures

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Great ride

I loved working with all the talented people the past weekend! It is very nice to see a project come together in such a wonderful way. We had the vision and turned it into a reality.I hope to work with you guys in the future and thanks for the great memories!

- Elaina Wilcox, de facto

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woo (with extra) hoo!

First of all, I LOVE our super team! Everyone brings so much more to the table than their title and its an honor to have access to that level of talent and inspiration for this and future films.

What a rush! In the past, ive participated in 48HFR as an actor only, not nearly as involved with the pre and post production aspects. As producer, writer, actor, this year was definitely a high dive into the wonderful world of make it happen NOW. Above all, I believe it shows everyone involved how much can be accomplished in one weekend, when most people are doing brunch and bars. The rush, for me, comes from bypassing the self-critic that thrives on the rework, rethink and redo. While there is a place for that in filmmaking refinement, it often serves as more of an impediment than a virtuous quality and there is simply no time to negotiate with that in this race.

I also love watching everyone else\\\'s films - its great to see what everyone else was up to while we were focused on our thing. Take care for now, filmmakers extraordinaire!

- Jolyn Janis, de Facto

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My Wallet

I lost a wallet last night at the screening! If you have it, will you please write me back? I will be very thankful! If you send me some details that were on my ID, I will send you a description of what else is in the wallet so that way we both know no one is faking! Thank you so much for your help!

- Karly Kohlman, PB&J

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Learning experience

This is the third time I\\\'ve participated in a film race kind of event, and I really do think they\\\'re an excellent way of learning the industry by jumping in at the deep end and just getting on with it. I\\\'m never happy with the end result, of course, but that\\\'s part of the process of accepting what you do as a piece of art. You don\\\'t learn a thing unless you\\\'re prepared to make mistakes, after all.

And be expected to make mistakes making a short film in such a short time...

But the great thing about making such short shorts is that not only does it force you to get yourself organised enough to produce something by a deadline - an invaluable skill in our industry - but it also forces you to understand the timing of telling a story to such a degree that you can condense it down to just a few minutes.

If you can do all the above in 48 hours or less, it means you have great tools for making \\

- Jack Lee, Melton

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IGNORE THAT NEXT MESSAGE

Don't know what happened, but my previous post was originally garbled. Anyway, it was just more of my raves, thank yous, and pats on the back to everyone involved.

- Sherry Mills , Austin Producer

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GOOD JOB!

Love reading these funny stories! Keep 'em comin'! This is our biggest and best year of 48 HFP filmmaking in the 8 years I've been involved. Thanks a bunch to all of you who keep coming back, and a big welcome to all the newcomers. The party at Mangia was great fun. Tonight's screening of Groups A & B was awesome! We're looking very forward to the next two nights of screenings.

- Sherry Mills , Austin Producer

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What in the hell did I get myself into?

So, about midway into actual filming, when we all realized that we had spent the entire day in a dirty unventilated garage, in Texas, in June, with 7 people, oh, and film lights, we started questioning our collective sanity. It wasn't that it was uncomfortable, it was that we were starting to think, "This isn't so bad."
Had we somehow gone insane because of the heat? That is totally possible. Then, it all became clear. One of our actors came into WAY to close contact with another, far, far sweatier actor. He stepped back and said, "Man, you smell like boxed wine. Like boxed white wine. You smell like white Franzia."
I don't believe I have ever laughed so far.
Then everyone started laughing and we had to stop for a few minutes.
Through all the laughing, in the most miserable conditions imaginable, a realization dawned.
This is the most fun I've had in years. Why? Because making movies is fun! It's so much fun that it overshadows sweat box conditions. Being around people who share that love, actually doing it, is the greatest way to spend a day. Yeah it was uncomfortable, but it was like being in the trenches, and the worse the heat got, the more we came together. It was like a little family was born in that sauna.
Was it hot and sweaty and dirty and a little miserable? Yes! Hell yes!
Would I do it again? In a second.

- Jim Dirkes, Redfruit 48

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Want to lose weight? Do the 48.

Well, I have the best way to lose weight... become a film maker in the 48 hour film festival.

Weekend started Friday morning. I left my bed at 5:30 am, June 19th.
Went to work, normal time, put in my 8, then got ready for the 48 hour film project. The genre, character, prop, and line selection meeting was at 7:00 pm and I was writing by 9:00. Finished the script and started the shot log, ad storyboard around 3:30 am. Finished, and was at Sams for snacks, water, and batteries at 7:00 am. Went to pick up equipment at 10:00 am, and met with my group at 10:30. We were on location by 12:00 and our first shoot at 12:30.
Filmed all day until 7:00 then bought pizzas for the cast and crew. You you know what? I didn't have time. I was with the composer, and different cast members going on footage. We wrapped first day at 11:00 pm. I helped to pack the equipment, and with the cleaning, I was home by 1:30 am. That's when I started editing. Log, capture, and editing until 9 am. Back on set at 10 am. Wrapped the final shot at 1:30 and back to editing. Ran into problems so the editing went through to midnight. Had to hand off the project to get it finished so we could get it screened. We missed the deadline but we were determined to finish the project and do whatever it took. The cast and crew deserved it. Those guys worked their tails off in the heat all day and came back the next for more. I was blessed with working with creative people who were very talented. They make it all worthwhile know that there are hard working people who are in this industry for the right reason.

Didn't do a exact before and after, but I was down 8 lbs from 5 days ago.

- Troy , Pfinx Films

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Just bumming around

Best 48hr film festival weekend.. we have ever experienced. We got BUDDY FILM. Our script writing team finished about 11:30ish... which was good enough to get some sleep. We had a call time of 8a.m. and were shooting around 9a.m. Started transferring footage at noon, finished shooting at 2ish and had everything uploaded by 3p.m. Saturday night we were 95% done with our editing... which is a first for us. We got some sleep... again! Sunday we touched up some sound, and color issues and added credits. We had a little trouble exporting to dvd as a back up, but thats ok,, cause the mini dv tape was our first choice anyways. Hopefully people will laugh as much as we did. Check us out at www.calvarysouthaustin.com for more of our short films.. click the Funny Videos pic.

- Jeremy Valencia, Calvary South Austin Films

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Our Weekend

I have been in the film industry for 5 months now, absolutely no prior experience, and I love it. Our weekend started out great as we got Cop/Detec., which we were hoping for. I went back to the fort and we started brainstorming. That went Great, as a matter of fact so great that we had time to sleep. The Saturday morning shoot went off without a hitch, we were rushing a bit because of the time crisis, but nothing major. We finished at 1 pm Sat afternoon and we started transferring to Final cut and 2 times it crashed at 95%.
Once downloaded, 4 pm Sat, we started to sort some things and looking at the footage. Well, we were tired so some took naps and others went home to take showers and some to work. Now it is 10 pm Sat night and just happens to be one of team mates birthday. We figure we are so far ahead that a little party time to celebrate, how far ahead we are, wouldn't hurt. So we went downtown Sat night for ONE Drink.
Sun morning at 3 when your editor is puking his brains out, your hopes to finish the project are slim. We finally STARTED editing at noon Sunday and finished just before 6:30. We were under the impression, because we are so organized, that the deadline was 6:30. We didn't have time to do light correction or sound levels-Or add gun sounds-because we wasted 24 hours partying and messing around. This was our learning lesson.
So we took our time to get Mangia and prepared a speech on the way that we only really wanted to audience awards and not the industry approval. We arrived at Mangia's, waited in the car for a minute, and called some people, this was at 7:20. Around 7:25 we head to Mangia's and while walking a lady in her truck yelled, "Run! It's almost Time!" So we run in and turn the project in at 7:27. We are so happy that we are actually in the contest that we can't wait to be judged by the industry.
I had a great time, met some nice people and plan to do it again. Thanks to everyone that helped.

Ty

- Ty Crull, Blunt Objects

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