The Cincinnati 48 Hour Film Project
What Happened During Your Weekend?
The Cincinnati filmmakers share stories from their wild weekend of filmmaking. (Blogging will begin after the filmmaking weekend ends.)
WILDWOOD BOOTCAMP
A fun weekend. The sun was HOT but we couldn't have asked for a better filming location for our 'survivalist bootcamp.' Over 30 acres of beautiful wild forest and a river flowing through it. Things went remarkably smooth on both shoot day and editing day. Big thanks to Tom, my skilled videographer and editor. Great cast. Rick, you were awesome as Colonel Stern! Thank you Sir, for all the valuable lessons you gave us. (: Brian, your original music was kickin' and fit the film to a T.
I am quite pleased with the film and it was great fun for us to make. 'Wildwood Bootcamp'....catch it soon at www.48.tv
- Shelly G., PHAT CAT FILMS
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Hour 29 of 48 - The FCP crashes (noob)
It's a fact: humans require sleep after most activities. Sleep deprivation tends to spawn its own unique problems. @ Hour 29, I have not had much sleep. This is where I am after many hours of dropping tape then cutting. I am focused and motivated. I am so into my work that I do not notice the sweat pouring from my body and brow. I do not realize that the temperature rising ever-so from the ten thousand watts creating day in the midst of night. I am perched, in an office just above all of it. I drag some video to the time line and snap it into place. There is a slight pop then my iMac screen turns to black. The all mighty Apple has crashed.
At this point I am like "ok what the efff man?" I restart the machine and am handed another tape. i get FCP up and start digitizing while clawing through the auto-save vault using finder. I can't find a save time that is anywhere near the time of crash then "pop" - machine fails again. Now I am perturbed beyond belief so I stand up, grab the top of my iMac to tilt the screen and come to the realization that my system is about to melt. The upper left corner of my machine is so hot you can't hold your hand on it for more than a few seconds. Brad said it best: "110 Degrees is bad in the edit room"
I give the machine 10 minutes to cool then restart. I check FCP auto save time. It is set to one hour. WTF?!? I usually it set for 10 minutes. I have lost nearly an hours worth of work. Damn it Damn it Damn it.... I have to find cooler surroundings.
It would take me 20 minutes to psychologically recover enough to figure the move out. I am helped by a friend of the producer's (whose name escapes me because I have been drinking this evening - a lot...) We move the edit to the basement. For a desktop I have 2 feet by 3 feet of plywood. It rest's upon 2 wobbly saw horses next to a noisy furnace. Headset for audio is a must, The noise from the furnace is ever present. I use a small fan to cool the back of the Mac. I am ready to press on.
During the crash FCP decides to get funny on me. FCP takes half of what I have digitized and spews it all over my iMac HDD and external. I have to search through dozens of mov files entitled "untitled". I find some of the days work but other files have corrupted and some how now only contain a fraction of the footage that was there before. WTF!!!!! Some of it wont play @ all :-/. My morale is shot. What do I do now? Pizza.
I walk around for a bit and try to push my self back into the edit. With a change of my head, I get there. I roll out 12 minutes of time line using footage that is present. They may not have been the best takes but they worked. Either way, 12 minutes is way too long. I have to get it to 8 minutes (or so I was told) The sun is up so I run to my hotel room and shower. I return.
I move things around and then I get the film back to 8 minutes. I am exhausted. I find my way to the breakfast nook upstairs where the secondary edit station is. I fall out for like an hour and a half.
Ben awakens me and I get back into the game. I begin to polish and mix. Jon then informs me "hey man this can only be 7 minutes - 8 minutes with credits. My pants are shit-ted as my forehead begins to furl. Again, mental meltdown but am able to press onward. I cut the remaining minute out as we approach the deadline. I do the best i can with what I got. Pace is good but a whole lot of other things need work. I keep calling out to my SFX guy to bring me SFX. He does so. The mac wont read them. I need a codec. There is no internet on set. Mother efffin frackin flippin flavinnnn*Y*&%!!!!! Finally figure it out and the clock says "export now". Times up - roll it to tape.
I make a few last minute changes and roll it out. The tape has only audio WTF!!!!! We are close to blowing the deadline and the pressure is on. We have one last chance after a system restart to get this film on tape. FCP is up and @ 7:01 starts exporting to tape. We have picture and audio. With nail biting all around we wait as Ben and I call to Aimee how many minutes are left. "5 minutes" Ben yells up the stairs. "3 minutes" Ben yells up the stairs. "2 minutes" Ben yells up the stairs. Aimee yells down something to the affect "This countdown is more suspenseful than our film will ever be". She is frazzled. We all are. The credits roll out and I stop the export. The tape is checked. It's good!!!! 19 minutes to deadline. I collapse into my chair.
JoCur makes it with a minute and a half to spare. I just want to sleep...........
Terrance Huff
Editor (kinda)
JoCur Entertainment
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs088.snc1/5079_94526547790_547822790_2466617_2122188_n.jpg
- Terrance Huff, JoCur Entertainment
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All Things Considered
Lots of snags in the days leading up to the 48 hour time period, but way too much production value to give up. I decided when I was left with almost no crew, the only acceptable substitute was people I TRUST. My friends, with minimal film experience, showed up at my house at 7 am (earlier than most of them had seen the day in years) and gave me everything they had until we finally called it a wrap for shooting at 10:00 that evening, It was a lot more work. but would have been worse without the backing of the people you absolutely can rely on to back you up..
- John Possman, ZOD
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Playing with dolls
Here were the pros and cons of using dolls over live actors:
Cons:
1) No change of expression, of course (besides Kuleshov Effect)
Pros:
1) Less actors needed
2) Allowed us to focus on delivering emotion through dialog, camera angles, and music
3) Smaller sets
4) More fun?
I hope you have as much fun watching our film "Fork in the Road" as we did making it!
- Marcus Adams, Project Mayhem
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Animated
This year we decided early on that we would attempt animation for whatever genre we pulled. Of course, Shawn from our team pulled the dreaded "Musical/Western". Good Times.
Our first attempt was to write a Johnny Cash-style story song that would go with the animated western story, in effect doing both a muscial and a western. After our music composer Lauryn ripped up our first attempt to write a song, we decided to take her advice to use narration with music and just stick to a western.
In the end, we came up with a nice little film that we're all very pleased with. Thanks to Shawn's spot on narration and for turning out artwork at a lightening pace and Lauryn for the great guitar work that added so much to the film. It's called "The Ballad of Len Pellaton" and will be part of the Group D screening on Sat. Take a look and let us know what you think.
- Greg Nichols, Digital Awesome
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Injurious Episodes
Seems like injuries are the theme this year. We shot our suspense/thriller in an abandoned school building. In our shot of goofing off in the principal's office, our main character, reacting to fear, leaped over the desk, planted one foot on the desk calendar which slipped, and sent him perilously flying into the wall and landing across his leg on the desk corner. He was ready for the next take 60 seconds later - a far cry from his insistence that he be chauffered around earlier in the evening. I can't wait for everyone to see our final edit.
- P.R. Frank, Blind Dayton
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Great Experience
Last year was hectic. The original story was thrown away. A reshoot started Saturday evening, followed by non-stop post production until entry submission minutes before the deadline. What resulted was an Audience Award winner ("embearassed") and a lot of stress and fatigue.
I wanted to be normal this year. Story creation was like a writer's room, expanded from two people to eight. It was pretty much the majority of the crew from the Friday Night Fu (www.fridaynightfu.com) There were lots of ideas, fun and energy.
Ryan Magrish, as DP, alleviated a lot of pressure over the weekend. I like shooting some stuff, but I prefer to produce, write and edit. Magrish worked with me in post production as well. Not only did it make for a more enjoyable weekend, we finished the final edit Sunday at 2pm.
I want to thank everyone on Gray V-Train for making a fun story and an enjoyable 48HFP weekend. I'm hoping other will enjoy our film as well.
- Matt Gray, Gray V-Train
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Did I really work for this guy?
Knowing what a crazy lunatic my old boss is, I asked him to be an actor in my film. When I drew "Superhero" as the genre, I knew I had to write a great part for him. I watched this middle-aged executive chase a complete stranger in a parking lot and fall while he was dressed in a ridiculous costume. He sacrificed his left ankle for our film and I thank him.
- Matthew , Galligator
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Fireworks and Film
Setting off fireworks during a shoot is a tricky thing. Our fireworks fell over and started sending sparks and flames toward the actors, who kept going with the scene. I hid behind the tallest person in the scene. We could only do one take, so it had to be finished. Actors putting their lives on the line for the 48... That's dedication.
- Christa , Team Tomorrow
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