The New York 48 Hour Film Project
What Happened During Your Weekend?
The New York filmmakers share stories from their wild weekend of filmmaking. (Blogging ended shortly after the filmmaking weekend.)
By the Power of Greyskull
In the Masters of the Universe movie, He Man was played by Dolph Lundgren. Man-at-Arms was played by Jon Cypher. Word.
- David Stott, New York City Producer
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Our most ambitious production ever
WOW, what a weekend!!!
First of all I want to thank everyone on my cast and crew (some of them worked both sides of the camera, Hats off!) for their absolute dedication to this project.
The whole weekend was one big adventure, after the kick-off we traveled to Jersey to our diner location, then between 4 and 5 in the morning we headed upstate New York for our scenes in the woods and one interior shot.
Then finally on Sunday morning we ended our shoot in the Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Everyone who worked on this movie did an incredibly stellar job at every juncture, I must emphasize that everyone has displayed such prowess, such passion and dedication to achieving and even exceeding our objectives.
This crew was unstoppable, even if some of us ended up with ticks from the woods (the DoP counted six ticks just on himself).
You guys did a Killer work!
I was so blessed to have all of your help!
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
respectfully,
Daniel Dacian
- Daniel Dacian, Domestic Flight
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Huzzah!
My father has a saying, "Nothing easy is worth doing…". His wisdom became really crystalized for me the first time I did a 48 Hour Film. It's a quote I remind myself whenever I'm getting frustrated during the moviemaking process (which typically happens during on-set rewrites of the script during shooting…). However, the stress incurred and effort required to pull off a 48 Hour Film is definitely surpassed by the fun and excitement of the process, and crossing the finish-line with a movie in the can. I can only imagine and extrapolate the exhilaration that cast and crew feel after completing a Hollywood feature that's lasted a year or more from inception to final print. As usual, I was proud of my cast and crew. They gave boundless energy and inspiration and hardwork, and we all banded together around our goal to produce a movie that was succinct, interesting, and in-line with the stylistic vision (I had more then a few people say to me "Uh…you want the film to look like... what?..."). It's funny because when I watch the movie, I see all the little errors, I have a wish list of things I would have done differently if I had more time, but in the end, I'm pleased with the final product. I'm always amazed what a bunch of dedicated people can accomplish in 48 hours. A main challenge for us over the weekend was the rotoscoping effect which required lots of time setting up lights during shooting, and 10+ hours of rendertime in post production, meaning I had to make sure we had a final assembly in the can by Sunday morning, which in turn meant absolutely no sleep Saturday night. But when I look at the finished film, to say it was totally worth it for me is an understatement. Lots of people ask me why I would possibly subject myself to a weekend of no-sleep and stress. To them I can only offer, "Those who dance are always considered insane by those that can't hear the music."
- Alex Kontoleon, Zander & Leland Productions Ltd.
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Amazingly,
I was listening to WNYC on Friday morning and heard the NYC 48 HR producer David speaking with Brian Lehrer about the project that was to start that evening at 7pm. I thought, “Damn I missed signing up again”. I decided I should sign up on the waitlist and then I would at least get notified when the next contest was. A few hours later, David called me to say there was a cancellation and would I like to join. I said I’d call him back in 20 minutes, as I had to check. I called my partner, and even though we had to another shoot scheduled for Saturday morning and one scheduled for Sunday morning (a freelancer’s work is never done), no sitters for our 1 and 4 year olds, and a birthday party to attend, we decided to throw caution to the wind and go for it.
It was one of the best, funniest, and most stressful times we’ve had in a long time. Surprisingly, we are thrilled with our finished project, it’s not perfect, but it actually works well. We might be biased. We can’t wait until next year when perhaps we’ll even be more prepared and maybe line up a crew.
It was great to see what all the other teams in our group did too. Hopefully we’ll be able to see all the films from New York online as it is so inspiring to think about what can be accomplished when you put your mind to it.
- Karen Nourse & Zachary Bennett, Mobinoshilie
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What a City
I continue to be impressed by the dedication of the New York 48HFP community. We're a good combination of professionals, hobbyists and enthusiasts and I re-learned the lesson that the heartfelt amateur effort can sometimes be more appealing and affecting than the polished professional showreel. What's the saying? Amatuers built Noah's Ark, professionals built the Titanic. Our audiences cheered just as hard for underdogs as they did the pro work, which is why we agree to participate in such an obviously difficult and hare-brained event. We go to the moon because it is hard, and I enjoy working with and for filmmakers who don't know what their limits are supposed to be.
- David Stott, New York City Producer
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An Amazing Weekend With Some Amazing People
By far, the hardest part of my job as writer was keeping myself from over-writing. With some whip-cracking from my producers, we wound up with a story that was simple enough that the other members of the cast and crew were able to bring a lot of themselves to it. I couldn't be happier with the end result we attained by leaving room for talented people to do their thing.
Their wasn't a single person on this project who you can't feel in the final product. I had a great group of people that I would love to work with again any day of the week.
- Aaron Kheifets, Team 1A
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Our Crazy Experience
While some teams seemed to have crews as big as small feature films, Goose & Bunny was the collaboration of two dedicated filmmakers. Though I, the director and editor and my girlfriend, the cinematographer had done lots of projects using just the two of us, this was our first with a 48-hour deadline.
We drew Suspense/Thriller out of the hat and drove home, brainstorming ideas and starting outlines, a process that went well into Friday night. We finally came up and finished a script we liked by about 4:30am then went to sleep for a few hours, the only sleep we'd get the rest of the weekend.
We met the actors at 10am Saturday at the apartment building we'd be filming in and got to work. We encouraged lots of improvising and tried to keep it fun, though we knew we had a LOT to shoot and since we didn't have a dedicated editor, we couldn't even begin the cut until everything was finished. We ended up shooting for 13 hours. Luckily for us the actors, none of whom we had met prior to this, all turned out to be as dedicated as us, and some of the best performances came at the end of the long day.
We were going to edit at the post-production company I work for, but as we arrived at the manhattan offices around midnight, I realized I never got a key card to get in the front door! Looks like we'd be cutting this on my macbook pro. So we drove back to my Queens apartment and I felt a little nervousness for the first time. Only 19 hours to go ... which isn't long at all in editing-time.
Finally started editing by 1am, and we rocked it, fighting exhaustion but excited by the footage and the finished product we had in our heads. We edited straight through the night, morning and afternoon, finally putting on the last touches and hitting EXPORT at 5:45. What we hadn't accounted for was the fact that since we had to compress our HD footage to SD to meet the guidelines, exporting was going to take close to an HOUR, and I live anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour away depending on traffic.
We nervously watched the status bar crawl up percentage points until 6:45 when it finally reached 100%. We copied the file off the harddrive to our laptop then grapped the laptop and some blank dvd's and jumped in the car. I burned the dvd's as Alison sped to the drop-off point. Luckily the roads were mostly empty and we made it with about 12 minutes to spare, went home and preceded to finally sleep.
Please check out the completed film at http://vimeo.com/4975798 , entitled "Sealed Shut"
It was a great experience, can't wait to see everyone else's this weekend!
- Alex and Alison, Goose & Bunny Productions
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Another fun weekend of filmmaking
Distortion, our entry in this year's competition, was our 14th weekend film (between 48HFP and NFC) and while we have certainly come along way from our first attempt, I am always amazed at the butterflies that still show up that Friday night as we realize that we have to actually make another (semi) coherent film within the next two days. With the help of our talented and dedicated cast and crew, we were really pleased with the results this outing.
Distortion as well as a select few of our other films are available at http://www.vimeo.com/cupomeat
- Ron Houghtaling, Cup O'Meat Productions
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The Best Ever Weekend!!!
The weekend was just the best ever!!! It was our first time ever doing something like this. It was a crazy mix of no sleep and tons of creativity. It is so great to see such a random group of people come together and create something out of nothing. The great thing that came out of this event is that my Daughter and I discovered that we make an incredible team together! We were both shocked by this realization! The only real stressful period, was at 5PM when I went to print to video and my firewire port went on me!!! It was working just hours before, when I made a test print. Yikes!!!!! After my mental breakdown and lots of praying, I was able to get one print that was completed at 5:38PM. I live in PA, 2 Hours outside of the city! I grabbed two cameras and made my second print in the car while my husband drove....no flew....into the city. Thank God he was listening to the Traffic report and we didn\\\'t take the Holland Tunnel. We made it with 20 minutes to spare!!! :) I can\\\'t wait until the next one!!! :)
- Lynn Noble, White Light Pictures
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web presence?
I had fun, as always - got less sleep than usual because I decided to completely rewrite and reshoot halfway through.
If other groups have youtube channels or web presence, could you share them? My youtube channel is www.youtube.com/cinemasolo and the website it www.cinemasolo.com.
I'd like to keep up with what other groups are doing. -Bill Dyszel
- bill dyszel, cinemasolo
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The power of three
So this film race was AMAZING! We did run into some problems though. We brained stormed for 6 hours and kept having writers block when it came to the ending of the film. Then we finally figured it out, we were going to film on my friends boat at night in a spooky marina. Then on our way up to the GWB, they called me with what I thought were directions to the marina in NJ, but instead it was to tell me we can't use the boat. So we had to rewrite everything on the way out to Long Island. We only had 4 writers, then one had to leave for graduation. So it was just up to us three people to finish writing, film it, crew it, act in it, and edit it! But we did and we are all REALLY proud of our film! We can't wait to screen it for you all!!!!!
GO BORING ACES!!!
- Chris Van Kirk, Boring Aces
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Good Experience
I normally shoot sketch-improv movies, so this one was shot in the same style but scripted. Limited crew and actors, just very simple. Since our story is about the day and age of technology, it was reality at its finest since my co-writer was writing from out of town and emailing all of her ideas back and forth with me, and all of our music was obtained digitally as well.
It's so interesting to me, what you can do with limited resources, in film. I can't wait to see everyone's projects.
- Colleen Sturtevant, W47 Films
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Foiled by the Holland Tunnel
Well, it was an interesting weekend for the team, and, for the most part enjoyable. Personally I had to do a lot of driving this weekend picking up equipment as well as driving different members of the team too and from Philly. I put a lot of miles on the vehicle as the team’s chief gopher. It was fun to watch the team work together to bring an idea from beginning to final film. Everyone involved appeared to have a good time. The only sad point of the whole experience would be that thanks to the Holland Tunnel we were a couple of minutes late. A trip that should have taken 45 minutes took over two hours. It was heart breaking watching the faces of my team members as we sat stuck in traffic. Faces that showed happiness and a sense of accomplishment changed to worried and then defeated as the minutes ticked down while we waited are turn to enter the tunnel. I’m curious how many other teams were foiled by traffic. Was anyone else with us sitting there wondering why on Friday there was no traffic and on Sunday it looked like 8 am rush hour? Oh well, it just shows how easily the best plans can be destroyed. At least it was an interesting experience.
- Andy Mizov, Shoehorn
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