The Boston 48 Hour Film Project
What Happened During Your Weekend?
The Boston filmmakers share stories from their wild weekend of filmmaking. (Blogging ended shortly after the filmmaking weekend.)
Buckle Buddies
This year we get a late start. Friday night Papows performs with his band at the Rhumbline in Gloucester, so we all go out and have a little too much fun. Undeterred, we meet the next morning at the crack of 11 for coffee and a leisurely breakfast. Papows tells us that he was shaken out of bed the night before with a momentous idea.
"What is it?" we ask. He pauses for dramatic effect. "Two scientists get their belt buckles magnetized together." He looks around the table, waiting for our approval. Noone speaks. We are afraid to spoil the moment. It's now startlingly clear that our film has been laid out before us, next to our hash omelets and hollandaise sauce. With thirty-two hours left, we order another round of coffees.
Now it's almost four o'clock and we're still looking for a little girl whose head we can put a gun to. I'm making calls in the fading daylight. Morale is low. We find out our potential kids are at Build-a-Bear until sundown -- bad news. We've also cut a magical friendship elf from our script, which causes a huge rift in the team. We feel beaten and tired, but not defeated ...yet.
After a promising lead, we pack the production van and head to my parent's house where we dress the yard to look like a little girl's birthday party. We have the kids we need, but none of them have any acting experience or the slightest interest in helping our film to succeed. One boy keeps asking where the cat is. But we do have one thing that will motivate just about any 6-year-old -- cake.
Luckily we strike a deal and get the performances we want. We wrap the party just before the sun sinks below the horizon. There's little to no coverage for most of the shots, and I'm starting to think this whole film might need to be scrapped.
With 24 hours left, we go to lick our wounds over dinner and drinks. I tell the team that we need to go watch the footage and decide if we should even finish the damn thing. They laugh at me... until they realize I'm serious. Mike P. assures me that we can pull the thing together; Ricky just stares in disbelief; Parsons orders another beer.
Back at the studio I'm busy assembling our shots of the party while the other guys build a laboratory in front of the green screen. I finally come out to see how it looks and I'm stunned. We're back. We shoot our lab shots and assemble a rough cut of the film. It's past 3:30 am when I finally push back my chair and hit the floor of the edit suite for a few hours of sleep.
....................................................
Since I participated in my first 48 Hour Film exactly one year ago, I have recurring dreams where I'm trying to make a 48. It's never the same plot, the film is always different, but there's the same sense of urgency. That worried sickness that the film won't be finished on time. But on this night I sleep restfully and I don't remember my dreams.
"Wake up, Rip Van Tinkle." Papows is looming over me.
"Did you get coffee?"
"No."
We go get really, really big coffees.
With 8 hours to go, Brian takes a train to Gloucester from Salem and starts working on some music for the film. He tells us he feels exhausted just looking at us. I work on the finish edit while Parsons sweetens the sound. Ricky, Papows, and Mike P. go to get pick up shots.
We've hit a groove now as a team. We made it over the hump. There's always that breaking point where you hate the film, but once you get past that, you just pick up steam until delivery. I realize I need that moment. You have to hate your film so you can make it better. Without it, I would be settling. I share my revelation with Mike P. He tells me to shut up and eject his drive so he can work on the special effects. I think we're starting to get cranky.
We're trying to throw vocals on our would-be hit single, "Stuck On Something" and it's not going well. We have 3 hours to go, and no one is up to the task of belting out the beautiful lyrics we wrote. Add to that the fact that Mike P. brought up his whole electronic drum kit and is fucking around on it. I catch Parsons doing something for work on his laptop when he's supposed to be giving me a final audio mix of the birthday party. Meanwhile, Ricky's trying to print paperwork and there's a jam in the printer, so he goes and sits on the couch.
I still have a lot to do on the edit, but I find the time to color correct most of the shots and I am now working on a logo for the title. Papows is screaming over my shoulder to finish the god-damn film before I work on the title and I ignore him. I can't stop. He continues to scream. Parsons joins in. Apparently they think we won't finish in time; we have an hour and a half. I make coffee.
We watch the film as we put it to tape. We're all happy with it and Mike P. and Papows hit the road to make the deadline. And they do.
- Emile
Director, Buckle Buddies
- emile doucette, production blue
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Barnyard animals?
Oh, yeah, barnyard animals and so much more! Despite getting a "too bad frown" from Ben Guaraldi when we drew our genre, we were psyched! We had an absolute ball filming our Western comedy, BLAZING NEEDLES! With a lot of pre-planning, a great writing team, and a strict schedule, we had the script written by 11 PM. After a good night sleep, we hit the farm (literally) for a 6:30 AM crew call. Thankfully, we had no major technical glitches, and with the help of expert animal handlers, by 4 PM, we had wrapped filming. We might have wrapped sooner had it not been for frequent "laugh" breaks (how can you not laugh when you're filming with a llama?). Then, after an incredible team effort and after our actor/editor extraordinnaire, Dawn Anderson, worked her magic, we had BLAZING NEEDLES, a scatalogically comical Western about two llama wrangling old biddies in search of an endless supply of knitting yarn. This was truly the best fun we've ever had in 48 hours! We hope you enjoy our film as much as we do.
- Karen Webb, New Tricks Productions
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The Mad Race To The Finish
Our film, A Perfect Fit was shot in Gloucester which is, quite simply, a terrific place to set a quirky story of the sort we had in mind.
The production turned into a marathon sleepver session, beginning Friday night with a writers' brain-storming session and the mad assembling of editing equipment and unloading of light and sound gear. Our big old house was filled with bodies and devices plugged into every available electrical outlet.
We had a few story outlines worked out ahead of time and a group of actors already lined up. I wanted a film with different ages and ethnicities and I hoped it would have a female protagonist, be a real chick flick. When we pulled Super Hero, that turned everything on its head. Even the word "hero" implies male. Then, there was the matter of incorporating the elements. So, we had to toss most of what we'd planned. Three of us discussed how to use our wonderful cast and the locations we had previously secured. We tried our best and managed to include all but one actor in the end -- simply ran out of time for his scene.
The technical group was AMAZING -- 6 unique setups, plus special effects. And the crew was fairly delirious by midday on Sunday, now waiting for a musical score coming from a Nashville composer who did an incredible job hammering out humorous music and sounds in about 3 hours.
The race at the end was tough -- there's always more things we could have tweaked and we didn't have much time to layer in and mix the final score. But the result is beautiful and funny and it's an experience I'll never forget.
- Genine Amada Tillotson, A Shot in The Dark Productions
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Amazing Experieince
What a fun, amazing weekend. A team of individuals who didn't know eachother came together so beautifully to make this film. Things were running so smoothly starting with picking the genre we were all hoping for, comedy. Then because of some editing and sound glitches on Sunday we turned our film in at 7:31! Talk about a knife in your heart! I think it would have been easier to swallow if it weren't so close! But all in all a great, fun experience. I can't wait to do it again!
- Marissa Lapadura, Barrel of Laughs
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Parameters, parameters, parameters
There's something both creatively challenging and helpful about the parameters of this festival. Our team this year was made up of a handful of previous Playomatic team members and then a number of actors and crew who jumped in at near the last minute to help create our wacky little film, TIME SHARE. And after we got our genre and elements, we had our additional parameters (as I'm sure every team does) of "we have this location until 1pm, these actors in the morning, these in the afternoon, these all day.." And each and every parameter helped us craft our quirky story. A very fun weekend with both 48hfp veterans and newbies. Looking forward to the screening!
- Amanda Good Hennessey, Playomatic Zero
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Masterpiece Theatre Meets Doctor Who
That's what one of our editors said when we needed to submit a logline for our film. And it fits perfectly.
We shot for about 11 hours in two locations on Saturday. (Salem, MA and Jamaica Plain.)Several cast members had to drive, in costume to the second location. The Tobin bridge toll collectors laughed as a car full of Victorian women handed them the dollar bills.
- Art Hennessey, Playomatic Zero
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Congratulations!
This year we had 93 teams begin the 48HFP weekend, and almost everyone finished, with 74 teams on-time! Well done!
We went and visited a few sets and were impressed at the creativity and professionalism and fun of the shoots. Thanks to everyone for hosting us, and thanks to everyone for taking the challenge to make a movie in 48 hours!
See you at the screenings!
- Ben Guaraldi, Boston Producer of the 48 Hour Film Project
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7 hr film pjct
we did all our shooting in 7 hrs because thats how long we had our location for. amazed how we did that. technically things may have suffered, but the film is hilarious! 12 person crew, ecreybody who acted also helped with production and vise versa. this is our first time and we had so much fun! may do nyc end of the month if we can get a spot!
- aaron sandler, lightning strikes twice
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7 hr film pjct
we did all our shooting in 7 hrs because thats how long we had our location for. amazed how we did that. technically things may have suffered, but the film is hilarious!
- aaron sandler, lightning strikes twice
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first 48 experience for our crew
Well, we began with many ideas... perhaps too many... but ended with an agreeable concept. All this from industrial professionals trying to educate students, all the while making a 48 hour film. Whew! It's one thing to make a movie in 2 days but another to try to make it educational for students too. Kudos to our crew. Our high school students rock and so does the staff! Is that appropriate or cool to say!?*@ Had a fantastic time this weekend. So cool! Way to go crew. FRED-TV is truly a great place!
- Pauline McGrath, FRED-TV
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What do you mean there is no usable audio?!?!?
Thats what my Co-Producer/Director said when I called here at 1:30 in the morning when she was at home taking a nap. I was capturing the shots into my edit system only to find that on one critical shot something happened to the boom mic and we no usable audio. To make matters worse, re-shooting was not really an option as it was shot outside at about 5pm -- not really possible with a 7:30 deadline. A bunch of us were scrambling to fix this problem (including my girlfriend who volunteered to stop working on school work -- that she needed to be doing -- to help figure out some fixes with the audio filters in Final Cut). Luckly the affected actor was a cool guy and had experience with ADR, he came back and re-dubbed his lines in the edit suite, I went out to record street sounds and I rebuilt the entire soundtrack for that scene.
- Adam Dusenberry, KDS Productions
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47 Hour Film Project
Unfortunately for our team, our film was rejected for being late. At 7:40, our film was delivered and we were informed that we had missed the deadline. The thing is, we did not receive our genre until after 7:40pm on Friday. I didn't realize we had entered the 47 hour film project. Disappointing.
[48HFP Note: We are in touch with Paul about the preceding post, but all Wild Card genres in Boston were distributed by 7:20pm. -- Ben Guaraldi, Boston Producer]
- Paul , Groton Tomatoes
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Leah, you're cuddly.
Having flown the red eye from Phoenix to Boston with a 2 hour lay over at 5am in Detroit, I was already tired before we even pulled our amazing genre of Suspense/Thriller.
Our team of 5, as Jason mentioned, did anything everything, an amazing effort made by all. It would have been nice to have a second editor, but to be honest, I'm not sure I want one. When you're the only one putting it all together, you get the royal treatment. All I had to do was "think" espresso and it was brought right to my location cemented in the computer chair. I believe there was a back massage in there too.
I'm not sure if it was lack of sleep, or the bone crushing fight scene sound effects, but I cried when we first watched it all together.
- Patricia Miller, Drunk Driven Filmzorz
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5 cast, 5 crew, same people
We were a team of 3 until Friday morning, when we not only picked up two extremely important new teammates, but a 2nd camera as well. Because we had so few people, everyone had to be both IN the film, and work ON it; not an easy task in 48 hours. Everyone worked a camera for at least one scene. Patricia, our editor, worked furiously non-stop, and took "breaks" to be rushed on location to film her scenes, and then rushed back to continue editing! Voice-overs were being done while fight scenes were being choreographed, and details were being written into the story as music was being written. All-in-all, it was an amazing experience, and I can't wait to do it again next year!
-Jason
- Jason Boxerman, Drunk Driven Filmzorz
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One Shot... One crazy complex shot!
One shot, I thought to myself, that would make the process so much easier... wrong! It was an awesome weekend of filming and our team was absoultly the best. The film came out amazing. I wish after people saw it, they could see all 15 crew that were hidden in all the different places as the camera swung around they would leap out and change everything, from coustumes to set decore. It was increadible. Way to go team! Come see our film Thursday at 7:00pm!
- Daniel Lee White, LTJFilms
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