The Washington DC 48 Hour Film Project

What Happened During Your Weekend?

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

Year Two and counting...

We just watched “High as a Kite”, our second 48-hour film on the big screen last night (Group H, South County United). If possible, we had more fun filmmaking this year than we did in 2009. As our Director so eloquently stated at our screening last night, this is the second year we’ve had naked men in our films!

As the Production Manager, I was concerned about our growing cast & crew size this year. After we did so well in our freshman year (18th overall out of 100+ films), we had a bandwagon onto which people were jumping.

With only 8 cast & crew members last year, many of us had multiple roles to play, but we were an efficient team. This year, we almost doubled our team size with 15 people. I was worried about too many extra people muddying the waters and getting in the way. But as it turns out, they brought an extra dose of energy, creativity, and passion that was a fantastic addition.

Each one of our new cast/crew members contributed something significant to this production – whether it was operating the main camera, making an onscreen appearance, singing a background vocal in our fun original song, producing an original trombone hat and other fantastic props, or hoisting really heavy gear from set-to-set – ever y person on our team worked their tail off this year and our final film quality shows that fact.

As we drove home from the screening last night, with half of our cast & crew in one car, our Director was already discussing his vision for next year. He’s switching up the roles, creating new ones, eliminating some, consolidating others, and adding a new pecking order of responsibility. We have about 51 weeks to think about it, and a few of us on the team will think about it a lot over the next year.

Our film didn’t place as high in the screening order this year as we’d have liked, but our team still loves the film we made. Our friends and family think it’s a great film too (don’t they have to say that?).

But the best reward of all, by far, is hearing the audience full of people we don’t even know, laughing out loud at all the right spots. As we walked away from the theater last night, someone from the audience caught up with us to tell us how much he just LOVED our film, and that the “weirdness” is what made it great.

Thanks, guy! We’re just high as a kite.

- Jennifer Siler, South County United

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Getting Better All the Time...

Last year at one of the meet-and-greets, I spoke with a man who was trying to convince teams to not only add him, but to also try shooting their films with his DSLR. At the time, I was not as up-to-date on film technology as I should have been, so I casually dismissed his claims, thinking that the pair of mini-DV Sony HD cams we had would easily trump his little DSLR. After all, I had used one of these very cameras in making a short film for a 24-hour festival - 48 Hours was like a godsend! Who, in their right mind, would use some experimental method of shooting tossed into the ensuing 48 hours of chaos?

Not us. We... excuse me, I, was stupid.

Somewhere around hour 40, while I sat helplessly waiting for the import into Final Cut from the camera, feeling the pain as my editing time ticked away, the thought occurred to me that A) when we won that festival, we had an insanely expensive mini-DV conversion box that was importing the video from one tape as we filmed on another, and B) a DSLR setup might actually negate this horrid waste of time.

This year, we all but erased that time loss. By switching from our old Mini-DV and HDD-based cameras, to a new DSLR setup featuring a pair Canon 7D’s and a handful of Canon lenses, we managed to not only shorten our conversion and editing time, but we were also able to create a more professional look by utilizing the cameras’ greater depth of field and improved lighting control. The 7D (along with the 5D Mark II and the Rebel T2i) is incredibly versatile, in that it really did not take as much lighting to create a clean image as it would have with the Sony’s and Panasonic’s that we had used the past couple of years. It’s also lighter weight and smaller so it is easier to maneuver into small spaces.

I HIGHLY recommend a setup like this to anyone who turned their film in late, or felt like they submitted a film that didn’t spend enough time in the editing room. Last year, we submitted a film that was on time. It was unfinished. It was unimpressive. It was unpopular. It was un-everything. Friends of ours who have had the opportunity to see both films have been raving about the year-over-year improvement, and I can’t help but agree - the new workflow REALLY made the difference here, and I can’t wait to see “Shelter” on the big screen.

See you all Friday. And remember, "be good, or you won’t get picked."

- BigTony, Crowded Elevator Pictures

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Group A screening

our film went over pretty well with the crowd. "Shovel" pretty much dominated the show. High production value, funny story. a really good film. I think we came in the top three for the group though. very exiting night. its aways a thrill to see your work not only on the big screen, but in front of an good audience. super fun.

- Adam , the Blue Rhino

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A constant challenge

Wow, we had no idea how tough a horror film could be — especially while keeping it below a PG-13 rating. I'd never directed horror before, our writer hadn't written it before, and our producer had been out of town the entire week leading up to the event. Still, we try to challenge ourselves with something new each year — and this year that meant staying up writing until 6:00 am Saturday morning, shooting straight until 2:00 am Sunday morning, and editing up until the very last possible minute (especially since our first cut came in two minutes too long).

Unfortunately, the challenge proved *just* a bit too much, and we missed the deadline by mere minutes.

Still, we're screening Wednesday night, and I can't *wait* to see the audience reaction (to one moment in particular)! Best of luck to everyone!

- Bill Coughlan, Tohubohu

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Greenscreen makes it all possible

Combining a puppet and a tractor trailer on a major highway is difficult - this was the first year I tried to use a greenscreen effect in our film and it turned out well. As always it was a great weekend. I look forward to seeing everyone's films at the screening. Best of luck to the film makers.

- Mark McKinney, Actors with Strings

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Keep an eye out for Garage Sales!

Yard sales can become a great resource for last minute props. One or two things that we found last minute on Saturday became some of the best props we had!

- Cory, The Betamacks

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