The Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project
What Happened During Your Weekend?
The Minneapolis filmmakers share stories from their wild weekend of filmmaking. (Blogging ended shortly after the filmmaking weekend.)
First Time
First year doing this, and I must say that it was a lot of fun and worth doing. I'm already looking forward to next year and trying to come up with ways to make what I did so much better.
First year, I hadn't seen what other people had done before, and I was unfortunately, vastly understaffed. I had three people who helped brainstorm up ideas. Then I spent the whole night up writing, picking up props and such. I managed to pull off two hours of sleep, which I felt was pretty good, all things said. The next morning about two thirds of my cast and crew decided to show up late, granted that was do to the fact 94 WB was closed in between St. Paul and Minneapolis, so we got a late start. The shoot was interrupted by some more of the cast showing up even later as they tried to bail at the last few days. For the cast and crew that I had it went extremely well, the footage, which I was worried about as I shot everything. I made a rough cut of the footage that night and managed to pull off five or maybe six hours of sleep. I got up the next morning did a complete edit and worked on the sound track and sound editing until about three when I was so exhausted I was kind of worried that any changes I made would end up being the wrong ones. So at that point I just got ready to hand it and dropped it off just around five thirty. Where Ira and the person who was helping him collect the films made a comment on how tired I looked. Probably should add that I worked from 5:30 to 9:30 AM on Friday, so I think in sixty-five hours I slept about eight hours, fortunately I took Monday off, so I didn't have to wake up that early like I normally would have.
I had a ton of fun working on it though, and I'm looking forward to around a year from now when I'm hoping to do this again. I know I need to pull in other people with technical background, and I hope that I can. I had several friends who had to work who would have been invaluable. I want to congratulate everyone for amazing work from what I saw, and next time I'm going to try and increase my cast and crew from seven to at least 14, haha.
- Peder Swendsrud, The Scando Casters
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First time's the charm.
A group of us caught wind of the 48HFP in one of our film classes -- the kind where you study them, not make them. We decided to jump in head first and try to make a film. None of us (save one of our actors) had a lick of experience; I had taken one intro screenwriting class where most of the feedback involved the word "un-filmable". Our only lighting rig was made out of scrap wood and duct tape, our props and costumes assembled from garages and closets, our cast and crew old high school friends, our primary camera over 10 years old.
When we arrived on location it was like a bomb went off in everyone's collective head. Our sound crew goes off and records in an empty silo, using slamming stable doors, creaky handles, and support beams to make some of our music. Our production crew hops in a frigid river and floats downstream for a shot that is less than 10 seconds long, the director directs, the cameraman shoots, the actors act -- we make a film.
As far as I'm concerned we've already gotten our prize. The handful of us from the team who could make it to the screening and a room full of others saw our very first film. Despite it not being perfect, the ample rough spots and rookie mistakes, it's still a victory in my book.
We've all had a taste, and by god it tastes great.
- Bob Plantenberg, The Kinski Maneuver
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Road Blocks
Little did any of us know that closed highways would deter us from getting our project in on time. We had the best possible crew I could imagine for this project. Script was done Fri night, smooth 12 hour shoot on Sat, and editing went by like a breeze. There is nothing more disappointing that getting in just 15 min late beacuse of being forced to drive 30 miles on side roads. In my mind, we completed on time as far as our production was concerned. It just goes to show how you can have everything in the can with plenty to spare and the unthinkable can happen. Side note: Shooting at one location was a Godsend.
- Ralph Matthews, Project Green Man
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Being tested
Everything that you as a filmmaker can plan for is covered. You check you list of possible things you need to take care of so that once the 48 hour period starts you have a small amount of worries.
Well let me tell you we had every possible scenario occur to us.
First our original editor had a family emergency to attend to (death in the family). Our Screenwriter became gravely ill Friday morning. We drew Musical/Western one genre we hoped we wouldn't get. So that was traded in for Surprise Ending. 35W Northbound was closed all weekend so that added a half hr to 45 mins on our travel time come Sat morning. We set up and then we're told we'd have to move if this other group comes and we had a paid permit! How can we be double booked? The city has to make their $$ somehow. After set-up we realize the batteries on our cam isn't fully charged. We get our 1st scene set-up and a pedestrian knocks over a light fixture shattering a bulb. Other smaller issues occurred that just added to the fact we were being tested for the whole weekend. Well @ least we finished unlike last year.
- Nathan, ASCEND Entertainment
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