What We're About
Who We Are
The 48 Hour Film Project is a wild and sleepless weekend in which you and a team make a movie—write, shoot, edit and score it—in just 48 hours.
On Friday night, you get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, all to include in your movie. 48 hours later, the movie must be complete. Then it will show at a local theater, usually in the next week.
In 2011, nearly 60,000 filmmakers made 4,000 films in 96 cities on 6 continents. This year, we're even bigger, with filmmakers around the world taking the challenge to make a film in just 48 hours.
Our Mission
The 48 Hour Film Project's mission is to advance filmmaking and promote filmmakers. Through its festival/competition, the Project encourages filmmakers and would-be filmmakers to get out there and make movies. The tight deadline of 48 hours puts the focus squarely on the filmmakers—emphasizing creativity and teamwork skills. While the time limit places an unusual restriction on the filmmakers, it is also liberating by putting an emphasis on "doing" instead of "talking."
Our History
Back in May 2001, Mark Ruppert came up with a crazy idea: to try to make a film in 48 hours. He quickly enlisted his filmmaking partner, Liz Langston, and several other DC filmmakers to form their own teams and join him in this experiment. The big question back then was: "Would films made in only 48 hours even be watchable?"
The answer was a resounding yes, and now ten years later and with more than 400 competitions having taken place around the world, it is amazing to consider the success of the Project. 2012 marks the 11th time we've visited Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York and Austin, and the 13th time for DC.
Our smallest team has consisted of one person who sets up the camera then runs around to be "on-camera". Our largest team to date was a team from Albuquerque with 116 people and 30 horses! We've had about 16,500 teams in the Project over the years, and at 15 people per team, that translates to roughly 200,000 people who have answered the call to come on out and make a movie.
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