The Milwaukee 48 Hour Film Project

What Happened During Your Weekend?

The Milwaukee filmmakers share stories from their wild weekend of filmmaking. (Blogging will begin after the filmmaking weekend ends.)

Non-Stop

Hello reader,

I'm M. Quinn Levandosi, team leader for Gnarly Gnome Productions and our movie "Super Suburb Showdown" in the superhero category.

This is the first time me or any of my 5 partners have ever done any kind of competetive film making whatsoever, so this was all completely new to us.

It started on Friday night. After much debate and discussion we settled on the plot of a single superhero who was very much like a normal person with only mundane powers if any (think Rorschach from Watchmen). Who was sitting in his apartment all beat up after a fight trying to justify his position as a superhero. He would have newspaper articles and photos taped up all over his walls, and each one he would look at would trigger a flashback about some way being a super hero has hurt him (losing friends, family, etc.) and then his phone would ring and he would have to decide to answer the call of duty or not. We had a lot of great ideas. So All day and night saturday we filmed everything.

Then at 4 am on Sunday I looked at it and realized that it was just horrible. The idea was there, but we just did not have the acting ability to sell the emotion. So we decided that we would scrap everything, sleep for a few hours, and attempt to do everything from scratch in 9 hours.

Sunday morning we wrote a comedy that became our final movie about superheros trying to live next door to their new neighbors- their arch nemises (nemisi?) We shot in 3 hours. Every single line was ad-libbed and we made up the scenes on the fly. We had to edit the movie on the 2 hour car ride to Milwaukee from Appleton (where we are from). We ended up handing the movie in with 35 SECONDS to spare.

None of us though anyone would actually laugh at us just ad libbing for 6.5 minutes, but lo and behold we got a lot of cheap laughs which is all we watned to do.

Next year we'll be back actually knowing what were doing with actual editing software and such and hopefully make a movie that can be in the running for some awards.

Thanks to everyone who came to the screenings!

- M. Quinn Levandoski, Gnarly Gnome Productions

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Dekker

My mission was simple: just get the film in on time. We were late last year. We weren't going to be late again.

We'd learned from last year's mistakes. We set up a neutral Film Central so that people could come and go at all hours. We centered it in the heart of downtown Milwaukee so that all of our locations were in a single straight shot. Most importantly, we slept in shifts, making sure that some sort of progress was constantly getting done.

I was worried about the ambitions of our script--I would've been more comfortable with less characters & fewer locations -- but Jared and team were fearless, determined and inventive, streamlining their filming to get exactly what was needed with plenty of time to spare.

It was a good thing, since we needed the extra time on Sunday, as we grappled with music and rights issues. By the time we were ready to export, there was barely an hour left, and that scared me, because exporting is where everything went clean off the rails last year.

I'd done everything I could to make sure the PC was clean, fast and ready to work. I'd double-checked all of the footage settings and import settings and export settings, but still wasn't sure we were going to get a finished movie exporting without issue.

So I started the camera, and clicked "Export to Tape" on my screen, and...nothing happened. I instantly got that sinking, diarrhea-like sensation in the pit of my stomach. Jared immediately recused himself to the hotel's Business Center to print off the last forms he needed. I knew he didn't want to witness what could be another disaster.

Again, I clicked it -- "Export to Tape." Nothing. I was crushed.

Then Taylor Rick said, "Why don't you close down all your programs and reopen them? Sometimes that works." Bless his sensible heart. I did exactly as he suggested, and everything worked exactly as it was supposed to, exactly as we wished it had last year.

And just over seven minutes later, I held the cassette in my hand, the writing on it boldly proclaiming: "DEKKER." And then we were at Art Bar, and Jared was handing the tape over to Angie, and I was getting drinks for the three of us, and 47 hours and 40-odd minutes had passed since this crazy adventure had started, and WE WERE ON TIME.

Mission accomplished.

- Joel Zawada, Ideogram Films

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Dekker

I was really excited about getting involved in this hyper and creative project and I wasn't disappointed in the least. Jared, the director was very relaxed and professional about the whole thing which made the cast and crew react the same way. Had lots of laughs, heard many stories, met new and interesting people and got to be involved in a wild and crazy filming event. The viewing at the Oriental Theater was the frosting on the cake!

- Michael Denk, Ideogram

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Dekker

I had a great time, and further enhanced my career. The team was very nice from the actors to the crew. Having been an entertainer most of my life, this film showed me that there are still genuine people out there

- Michael Hart, Ideogram

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