The Seattle 48 Hour Film Project

What Happened During Your Weekend?

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

Down to the wire

When I screeched into the parking lot of drop-off location, the contest organizer announced, "Two minutes left."

Yikes! Wow we really cut it close. But we had a blast. We got the genre "Mockumentary" and we had a lot of fun shooting and editing this film.

We had a very diverse team. Members ranged in age from 14 years to more than 60 years.

It was fun seeing all the films at the screenings. There are a lot of talented filmmakers in Seattle.

- M.C. Schuler, Per Che No Posse

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Less than a minute to spare

Unbelievable experience. The collaboration and creative outlet against the time restriction produced some interesting results. Can't wait to see it on the big screen.

Burned the DVD in the car on the way over to turn it in only to discover we didn't have the paperwork. Superhero wife of director dropped paperwork off with less than a minute to spare!

- Eric, What.

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always slate

Wow, what a Great experience. I\\\'m really happy with what we came up with. I think we took a very unique take on our genre.

Everyone we rounded up for our team worked out fantastic. Saturday was hectic but light hearted (for the most part) and we got wonderful performances from unexpected people.

Costume and Display was funny on Sat morning. Many strangely familiar faces. It's amazing what you can get done when your up against a tight deadline like that. Plus you can quickly learn what NOT to do for the next time.

Always Slate your shots (sorry Jonh)

I will certainly participate with this team again!!

- Mike Marin, 911 Media

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Musically speaking...

Being a composer on a 48 hour project is always interesting, challenging, and slightly chaotic :-)

After only briefly meeting the film crew for the first time Saturday morning before they took off on location, I spent the day working up themes based on the initial script. The challenge, of course, is needing to start writing before shooting is complete, and to deliver recorded clips before final editing yields exact timings! That's the fun of it. Saturday evening was spent at Top of the Hill Music studio in Duvall, where engineer Steven Bell and I recorded into the night, including us both almost crawling inside his grand piano to coax odd strumming and plucking noises out of it for a couple clips of our ghost movie. Delivered the music to the all-night editing team around 1 AM, and left it all in their able hands to use it however they could. Can't wait to see it Thursday night, already counting down until we get to do this again next year!

- Jack Brand, The Kim Group

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Prop Shopping

Saturday morning I needed to get us a mustache, so I went to the costume store on Denny Way. While perusing the selection, a couple other people came to look at mustaches and asked right away, “are you doing the 48 hour film project too?” “Yep,” I answered.

As we both were checking out, I asked them what genre they had drawn. “Historical Fiction” they said. Then, looking at the mustache I picked, they asked, “how about you, Western?”

“Nope. Romance,” I said, and we all had a good laugh.

- Jeremy Cavner, 3TProductions

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I had no idea what I was getting into

I've had more fun this weekend than I can remember in a long, long time. And it was all an accident.

Ages ago, I registered at the Seattle website of the 48 Hour Film project. I was hoping to join an experienced team so that I could learn something.

The day before the weekend started, I got an email from a Meetup group of “International Women,” wondering if I wanted to join their team. They signed up on a lark, realized they hadn't a clue, and, found my name at the bottom of the resource barrel.

I offered an ambivalent “maybe”, went off to the Fremont Solstice Parade like I planned, and kept in touch by phone as they worked out a story. At 4pm on Saturday, I was in a condo in Bellevue, with five women, working out a storyline that I thought I might be able to produce.

We started filming two hours later, and finished at midnight, at a Lake Washington park, with our villain tied to a tree with neckties.

That we were a diverse crew is an understatement. Brazilian, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and me. The film is not likely to win any awards (except, perhaps, entry by most naïve crew), but I had a total blast making it. I loved the collaboration, the challenge (how do I convert my pajama clad character into a superhero?), the command of a story and a process of telling it.

I wish I knew how to handle sound in Soundtrack Pro. I've seen Larry Jorden's Lynda.com training about 5 times now, and it hasn't helped much. I wish I knew how to color correct. Heck, I wish I knew how to properly expose video with my Canon XH A1. I hit many of my limits with this project. It shows.

But boy, was it fun. I logged video until 1am, and was too hyped up to get to sleep for another hour. I was up at 7 labeling clips. By 9 I had a rough cut (funny how much faster it is to edit when you've shot with a sequence already in mind). By 5 I had the rough edges in the sound and color sanded as smooth as I knew how.

See you Thursday.

- Doug Plummer, Floating Tea

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Gear Ga Ga

We had so much gear on set it was like gear ga ga. As a documentary filmmaker, I'm used to bare bones productions. This weekend we had lots of cool stuff to ooh and aah over, like a steadi-cam and LED lights! Plus we had a great crew all exceling at their roles. If I tell anymore, I'll give stuff away! Tune in for our screening Tuesday night!

- JS Parker, Remote Viewing Apparatus

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