The Columbus 48 Hour Film Project
What Happened During Your Weekend?
The Columbus filmmakers share stories from their wild weekend of filmmaking. (Blogging ended shortly after the filmmaking weekend.)
Got it done in the end
Well since my team never entered anything for the blog, I thought I'd toss one out there. Our team was made up of five people total, and I couldn't be more proud of our team for pulling it off.
Ryan Moody brought the team together and spending all of his own money renting equipment and entering us as a team and was a great producer. I handled most of the production and all the post-production work. Which is funny because when I made the credits at 5:50 on Sunday I was so tired and stressed out I forgot to give myself a editing credit. Andrew Pytlik came from out of town for writing and was a great help on the set. We also had our fantastic leading lady Shayna Morh and supporting her Emily Clouse. Everyone had an acting part in the movie accept for myself, who likes to be behind the camera not in front.
The idea for our movie "In The End" came to us about two hours after we left the Gateway center. Moody, Andrew, and myself were up till around 4 am writing the script. I wrote the basic dialogue, Moody formatted the whole thing, and Andrew fine tuned it the next day. That was the first time I had written a movie like that, and it felt good to have all that input from everyone. Though I think frustrating for all of us at some times.
People laughed and wondered what the special thanks credit to "The cop that let me off with a warning" was all about. Well during the time we had started to write, we thought we might get one shot the first night. The shot was of a car rolling backwards down a hill. We used my car and found a part of the Ohio State campus that was mainly empty. We got one shot off before the police showed up and I explained what we were doing. He was cool about it and I have no record on my license of going backwards on hills, so he let me off with a warning. I invited him to the showing at the Gateway, I wondered if he came.
Other problems we faced included: losing the use of our HD camera and switching to our backup SD cam(stupid but learned from mistake), finding a place to shoot the night shots (we drove to three different places), trying to make our 250w lights compete with daylight, and finally capturing the footage that for no reason at all started to speed up. At the end we felt wonderful and I know we'd all do it again. As an end note, if I had know entire production teams entered this competition I would have stepped my game up. I think we'll all see you next year Columbus.
- Evan Cooksey, Grasshopper Stompers
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Green Screens and Ham
I have worked with green screen on many occasions however for the 48HFP contest and our movie AIDAN 5, it was a rendering challenge. In order to write, shoot, edit and render I needed to make a few concessions. First, a 4 min maximum length story (4 mins 12 seconds to be exact) Second, the number of back grounds needed to be controlled. Third, get to post as fast as I can. (Not unlike other teams!)
2 people wrote, 4 people shot, 1 person edited and 1 very busy graphic artist. We did get some scanning help from an actor and a shoot crew person so multiple hats were needed for sure. After 54 hours awake I started feeling okay, thats when the bottom feel out!
We had to reconstruct a whole scene because it was too large a render and we had audio issues as one composer (my brother) had a family emergency at 3pm on sunday! (Everything was okay, thankfully) But audio sync issues and layoff problems made for a tense finish. At 7:12pm we had master in hand! Our hand in time was 7:26pm. (There was one orange light that I remember.) Ahem...anyway, what a great time. Beer, pizza, chinese food, red bull, we had it all. There is nothing better than passionate people doing what they love. Hats off to anyone who survived that weekend and has a movie to show for it!
Say, I do like green screens and ham!
- Jakson I am.
- John Jackson, Jakson
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Road to Paradise
Such a talented cast & crew to work with. Thank you Larry, (you ROCK as the Pirate) Tim, (funny as heck) Melissa (watch out J.Foster) & Aaron (great videographer/editor) We are extremely pleased with our Road Movie. We're thrilled that it turned out just as we had hoped it would. It has the feel of a feature film, condensed to under 6 minutes. It's funny & entertaining. Quality material suitable for all audiences. We found an absolutely beautiful location to shoot. Thank you Pryamid Hill! Thank you to KC for all you do & for lending an ear. (you can have it back now.) Thanks to cast & crew. Thanks to Man vs.Bar for that fabulous accoustic blues film score. Thanks to Larry & Mary Ann for taking me to the screening. Worse thing about the weekend? hmmmm. Well, some of us didn't get our 8 hrs of beauty sleep friday & saturday night, but we still have youth on our side, so we will survive. Take care all...& as the good Captain Lucas Bailey would say, "Live a Pirate's Life!" (-:
- Shelly Gibbs, Phat Cat Films
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The Puzzle
Shortly after getting back to our production headquarters (which also doubled as a shooting location) a small group went scouring the town for everything 80\\\'s. By 9:30 they had returned with a massive amount of props and costumes including the phone, alarm clock, nearly all the costumes and the puzzle of Columbus (among a bunch of stuff we didn\\\'t use, like the 3 pairs of orange hammer pants).
Right away we decided to use the puzzle as a main point in our story and wrote a very similar ending to what appeared in the film. However we had no idea whether all the pieces would be in that $3 Goodwill purchase. 6–8 people took shifts putting the puzzle together for 4 hours. Miraculously all the pieces were there and our script would work.
The puzzle shots were filmed in reverse order, with our actors responsible for remembering which pieces they put in in each take and removing them for subsequent takes. The puzzle had 7 main steps of deconstruction, each stage required slightly different lighting and wardrobe changes which kept things interesting for our AD.
Our team had a great time. We didn\\\'t have any conflicts and I was the only person that really freaked as our shooting continued into 3AM sunday morning, approximately 4 hours behind schedule. Despite the shoot running long everything from the original score to the end titles came together beautifully.
- Tobias Roediger, RAVE
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What you should have scene
In my blog below i talked about how we had and audio render issue that REALLY hurt our film considering suspense is all about sound. We posted the video on the web Thursday morning but we underestimated the amount of people that would actually take the time to watch it. We just reposted it in flash (70 Megs vs. 400) so you don’t have to wait 10 hours to see it. Please check it out, we put a lot of hard work into the sound and it sucks a render issue got us at the last moment. Listen loud and on good speakers:)!
http://www.arginatestudios.com/goodgirl.html
Thanks for take the time to check it out.
Okay well I gotten get back to listening to the fat sex adapter song LOL.
- Eric Strickler, arginate studios
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5 People Film Team
Wow, I can't believe we pulled it off.
The day of the 48 hour film festival started we had one writer/script supervisor (Brianna McPherson), a producer/editor/2nd DP/audio guy (Brandon Abbott), a director/writer (Chris Miller), and two actors (Este and Matt Hupp).
We had acquired one borrowed camera, a tripod, a small light kit (not used), and a dolly (also not used).
I just want to say I'm amazed that we were able to do it.
Since people were wearing so many hats there were a couple big conflicts, including a showdown on the tracks, but somehow we pushed through.
I learned a lot about film making and how important it is to work as a team. I also learned the importance of knowing what your role is and not over stepping those bounds (of course we had not discussed this extensively beforehand and there was intense drama because of this. A.K.A. I over stepped my bounds).
When I did a similar project in LA one of the producers of that project told me, "Film-making is a train wreck at best" and that it's alway a miracle that something is created in the end. I would say we where involve in something like a plane crashing into the Hindenburg.
I am so proud of my team and am glad we are still a tight knit group of friends. I quoted a line from Tombstone as I walked up to Chris, our director, after the screening, "There, now we can be friends again."
- Brandon Abbott, Film Futura
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Wow. Just Wow.
I just wanted to add a quick note to say how absolutely amazed I was at the incredible level of the work tonight. Personally, I don't know how many of you even managed to *edit* these pieces in 48 hours - let alone take them from concept to script to screen in that time.
All of you - no matter your individual role(s) or part(s) in creating your pieces - should be tremendously proud of your accomplishments. I was simply stunned. We all were.
KC - great job dude - my heartfelt congrats and thanks. Hope I can be a part of the 2009 edition, and I hope all of you storytellers will as well (and maybe twice the number of you!)
On a technical note - yes, the projection system was probably not "optimal" (are they ever?), but we judges all have a copy of the screener DVDs and will be getting together very soon to view in a much more controlled environment. So don't worry - everything will get a fair shake (and allow us to take better notes that we could by "cellphone light" :)
Fantastic work everyone.
-jimmy
www.bytemonkeys.tv
- Jimmy Dutt, Judging Panel
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I would do it all over again next weekend
What an amazing, insane, and incredibly exhausting weekend. Yet, we would do it all over again next weekend no questions asked. The majority of our movie was shot at a beer and wine drive through next to two popular bars. The problems we had seemed to be endless. The ambient sound of all the coolers was extremely loud, there is product in every square inch of the building, some of our actors and actresses bailed out on us in short notice, and people were wandering in at 4am asking and sometimes even begging to buy beer. Not to mention before we even shot the film, every crew member seemed to have a different interpretation of our genre, fantasy. Our deadline was to be shooting by midnight friday night, and we shot our first scene at 3am.
My advice to first time 48 Hour Filmmakers: Manage your time, manage your time, manage your time.
Special thanks to KC for organizing an event like this and for being very helpful throughout the process! We can\\\'t wait for next year. Good luck to everyone!
Bryce Koechlin
-AddVision
- Bryce Koechlin, AddVision
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Wow!
What a weekend. This was Random Pictures' first go at the 48 Hour Film Project and we had a blast. I am very proud of the work my team has done. With only 4 members, including a cat, we managed to put together a completed film. From dealing with computer crashes to having no equipment except our camera, we managed to pull it off. I am very happy with our final product and hope everyone else enjoys it just as much.
Our film, entitled "Through the Eyes of a Cat", will be posted online following the screenings.
Thank you 48HFP for a great, if exhausting, weekend
- Benjamin West, Random Pictures
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Audio lessons
This was team arginate studios first 48 hour film fest and I bow to those that got in a 100% completed project. I completely under estimated how difficult it would be to record, engineer, mix and master pro quality audio in such a short period of time. I have heard many stories and jokes about junk audio in 48 hour film fest videos. Our team made it a priority to overcome this stigma so we engineered 100% all of our effects from scratch via synthesis and Foley, we wrote and recorded all original score tracks (including an acoustic track), we removed all errors from every single piece of dialog and effects and the results were simply amazing. Sadly at the last minute we had an audio mixdown render bomb out. I attempted to re-render but the render finished about 13 minutes too late. Our project made it in but sadly the version that made it was a test version that is missing 70% of the audio and a few visual effects that we spent many hours working on. So it looks like I will have to wait until next year to melt all of year ears off with prodigious amounts of bass:).
We will be releasing the real version of our film "Good Girl" on the web tomorrow before the contest begins and we really hope you will take the time to check out all the hard work we put in.
I had a great time and loved every second of it even though it was a very humbling experience. Lessons to be learned; a lot can change in 15 minutes so use every second wisely.
Kudos to everyone involved in making a film this weekend.
- Eric Strickler, arginate studios
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What A Great Event!
If you're a film maker who took part in the very first Columbus 48 Hour Film Project, my hat's off to you! In only 48 hours, you've accomplished something. You wrote a story, filmed it, edited it and added music and sound effects. You dealt with the equipment failures and the inability to rent just the gear you wanted and the best and the worst that dealing with real people can present... and now your hard work is going to be shown to everybody on the silver screen at a major Columbus-area theatre, The Gateway!
I competed in Cincinnati and Cleveland in 2007, and I had a lot of fun. It was personally rewarding. But it pales in comparison to the pride I have in extending the 48 Hour Film Project, at long last, to Ohio's capitol city. It was long overdue, and your movies are proof. Good job, everyone!
KC
- KC Allen, Columbus Producer
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The real story of our team
Not enough room to dip into all the details here but I will say that we all had one heck of a time doing this. Congrats to all the teams that attempted this feat. Having done similar online type contests like this, but normally with longer times, I can tell you this stretched us out and made us think, fast.
For those reading this that haven't tried this, it really isn't as easy as it sounds. Nearly every team I talked with after the fact told me there were a lot of technical issues they would have loved to have fixed up, if only they had another hour or two. Well, it is what it is and what is is is a whole lot of fun.
Very much looking forward to seeing what the rest of the groups came up with. thanks to KC and the whole gang for doing a great job.
To my fellow team mates, go Team Make-Shift.
Sean
- Sean McHenry, Make-Shift
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Rough Night
This was so much fun, can't wait till next year. Our team worked real hard all the way to the finish. This is what film is all about down dirty and with all the glitches of the digital age.
Big thanks to all the Columbus Actors that helped us out. As well as the city itself. The North Market is the place to shop and film for true Columbus feel and people. Thanks to them most of all for putting up with the shoot.
And last but not least Shout out to K.C. Allen for bring Columbus the 48 hour films. You the man KC.
- Shylow Hanning, Ohio University Zanesville
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