The Cincinnati 48 Hour Film Project

What Happened During Your Weekend?

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

Thorskin - by Brawny Lads (Group C)

This will be the seventh year that the Lads participated in the Cincinnati 48 Hour and it was the closest we ever came to missing the deadline! In a nutshell, we didnt have the film finalized till 7:10pm and we made it to Fountain Square with 30 seconds to spare. Needless to say, an adreniline rush on top of sleep depreviation makes for one insane experience!

This year was a first for us in many aspects. We brought on a lot of fresh talent and crew, some of which showed up - some didnt - but, we always plan on 50% not showing up, so it was no surprise. Let that be a lesson to other filmmakers - you cant count on everone showing up... ever!

Normally, in the past, our four-man crew plays double duty behind and in front of the camera, but this year we were fortunate enough to have dedicated crew to handle script supervision, production assistance and best of all, wardrobe! Considering our time constraints, I doubt we could have pulled off a barbarian-romance film without having a dedicated person to handle the tedious task of stapling/taping together pleather and curtains into medival attire! Even with the extra effort, gearing up our actors proved to eat up more time than we expected, pushing us to start filming at NOON the next day - thus, giving us less than 9 hours of daylight to shoot under on Saturday!

One thing I really love about the 48 is that it allows us to film under a 'loose' script, which means there's lots of room for improv! Ted (who played Thorskin) took the liberty of making his character shine, and by doing so, inspired our other actors to follow suit. Anytime you can get a "Jim Carey" type in your mix, it makes directing so much easier... that is, unless they go too far out in left-field. ;)

Thanks to the 48 hour folks for keeping the spirit of filmmaking alive! As always, we look forward to participating in the following events to come!

Russ
Director of Thorskin
Brawny Lads Films
www.myspace.com/brawnylads

- Russ Lamkin, Brawny Lads

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The filming of 'The Birthday Party'

We received Film de Femme at the kickoff drawing. As a female filmmaker, I thought that was a great genre to work with.
We went with a Film de Femme comedy. I was fortunate to get a great group of actors & crew together, and things just really fell into place on the day of the shoot.
Day of editing was hectic, but once complete, we were quite pleased with our finished product. At the screening the audience reaction was fantastic. Lots of hearty laughter at all the right times. (:
'The Birthday Party' was a ton of fun to create, and i'm looking forward to next years 48 hour film project.

- Shelly , Phat Cat Films

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Fantasy, dear god...

So, the conversation before I left my apartment Friday night to draw the genre was...if you get Fantasy or Musical/western, go for the wild card....

As I reached my hand into the hat and opened my piece of paper, the first thing I saw was Fan-....DEAR GOD, fantasy what the hell do i do with fantasy!?!? I called my team to deliberate. Our final consensus was: we're scared shitless of the wild card genres. So we stuck with fantasy.

We went quick to work on our brainstorming and came up with some pretty decent ideas, and decided to think outside of the box as to what could actually be considered a "fantasy" film. We went with an incredibly cheesey almost "Are You Afraid of the Dark-ish" theme about teaching a selfish boy a lesson. So, after being cleverly tricked by a magical bum, the boy sets off on a quest to get his cell phone back using his magical toilet paper roll as his map. Ha, yea...

I totally enjoyed myself, and this was the first year doing this that I had total control as the director/producer/cinemtaographer. I would like to say that I am proud that our team leadership was lead by WOMEN! Thanks to Amy Wallace and Lee Snow for helping compose shots and help edit. Thanks to the rest of my cast and crew for a really fun weekend.

With the little experience on our crew, I feel we did the best we could and I am proud of our finished product. Despite some minor continuity mistakes, anyone who watches our short on Sunday, watch with a light-heart because it is cheesy as all hell.

P.S: I really wanted to do a sequel to the Peanut Butter Solution, but I wasn't sure if this was allowed. Maybe next time...;

- Jessica Dennis, POV Productions

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Recap of our production

Just wanted to send out a quick message on our production. We pulled Horror and decided to go with it. After brainstorming and writing for a few hours on Friday night, we had a shooting script ready for a 5 minute film. All of the shooting took place at my condo and after warning the neighbors that there would be screaming, yelling, and thick smoke coming from under my front door for the rest of the day, taping began in earnest on Saturday morning. After a few hours of one of our leads being coated in blood, coughing up blood, and lying face down in blood, we had enough footage to start editing.

Take a look for us in Group D on Sunday as we present "The Bidder" by Digital Awesome. Feel free to let us know what you think and we look forward to seeing everyone's entries.

- Greg Nichols, Digital Awesome

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24 Hour Film

My team was one of two teams with the Wild Card Fable genre. Instead of following the rule of not working with kids or animals, I took a risk and featured a three year old in a film about a little girl, her lost teddy bear, an evil queen and a theme involving friendship. I wanted to really push the cute factor.

Things were going great Saturday morning. We were all amazed at how our young actress nailed her lines with emotion. We all thought this would be an awesome day. Unfortunately, a case of shyness hit in and our pet project was done. It was time to completely overhaul the entire project.

After breaking through our depression of losing our great story, a new idea was born at 8:00pm Saturday night. With less than 24 hours, we made a short film and submitted it to Christian with fifteen minutes to spare.

All-in-all, we had a great time this year. I'm curious what the average cast/crew per team was. We probably had the smallest cast/crew of all the teams. We had five actors (including a three year old). Three of the actors were also writers. Plus, we had one person doing production (dir,prod,edit,write).

- Matthew Gray, Gray V-Train

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Congratulations!

I'd like to express my thanks, and say congratulations to all the teams that participated in the 48 Hour Film Project this past weekend. You all looked tired, but excited to turn in your
films. I can't wait to see them all.

I hope you are all well rested. I look forward to see you all again at the screening next Sunday at the 20th Century theater in Oakley. Please tell as many people as you can. Lets pack the house, and show what Cincinnati can do in only 48 hours!

The screening times are:
Group A: 12:30pm
Group B: 3:00pm
Group C: 5:30pm
Group D: 8:00pm

Tickets so on sale at the door at 11:00
Individual screenings are $10.00 an all day pass for all four screenings is $30.00

See you there!!!

- Christian Appleby, City Producer

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