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.)
Amazing Experience!
I had won 3rd place at the 24 hour film festival this year. I also had some friends win best cinematography, best writing, best sound design, best editing, and the audience award.
Being a networker, I conjured up a list of talented people/ an All-Star team to compete in the 48 hour film festival. Adam Zang wrote a tremdously suspenseful script "Nowhere Man", Clyde Garrido captured it onto a Panasonic HVX, Paul Tennis and I directed, Yancy Phillips composed sound and I edited. The cast and crew put in their best effort and we made an amazing film!
It was a better experience than the 24 hour film festival because you can push yourself to your creative limits, whereas in 24 hours you just don't have enough time to see-through a clear visioned project.
- Keith Rivers, krfilms
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2008 First Timer
Two years ago i noticed a listing for the 48 hour screenings during a visit to your city, i live in France.suggested to my son, Loui 17, that we take part: he is intersted in filming and done a fair amount of unfocussed experimental work.
We arrived in Seattle on the ist July and signed up even though we had only a small camcorder and no way to edit until i bought a laptop a week later.
Being visitors we didnt have access to any equipmentfor lighting except the headlights of our borrowed car so when we drew the genre horror and decided to shoot at night we didnt feel that technically we would be very sucessful.
Some of the seemingly hundreds of emails the producer sent out worried me even more, he spoke in technical terms that i didnt understand and when he asked us to add bartones to the beginning of the film i had to write and ask him if i was out of depth.
He encouraged me to continue so i cast my 13 year old daughter as lead and set out looking at cemeterys on friday night, thinking that a grave might be in the story somewhere.
The cemetery was locked up but there seemed to be room for a child to squeeze under, so there was an idea for a closing shot.
Minnie's friend plays the violin and she wrote the music and played it to the laptops microphone for the soundtrack and we added a few soundeffects from I movie as we learnt how to use the programme.
We ended up only having saturday night to shoot, which gave us no safety room and two actors who were going to help us out gave up waiting and went home while we were still trying to convince Minnie to enter the grave yard in the dark.
We finished somehow and i am amazed that the film has already been screened, a huge congratulations to Kirk there.
One thing that surprised me from the screening is how short our film seemed to be next to the others. I don't understand why and would love someone more experienced to explain. Is it just because i had already viewed ours a zillion times.
You can email me at adamstppr@aol.com
- chris adams, thicker than water
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Great experience for learning and personal growth
This past weekend I had the great privilege of being involved in a fun and ambitious endeavor with best people I ever could have hoped for. Everyone was selfless in attitude and enthusiastic to contribute in any way. They were understanding, patient, and stalwart in the face of heat stroke and fatigue. Being surrounded by torrents of creativity, cunning, and at times, genius is humbling and brings me great deal of pride that I was allowed the opportunity to participate. Mistakes were defiantly made. Schedules were sundered and forgotten. Furrows showed the telltale signs of frustration and panic. We persevered despite it all and became better film-makers and friends.
I learned so much about myself in the process. Of everyone involved I was definitely the most panicked over time-lines and other hurdles. I learned that I must channel that energy in to solutions and workarounds instead of letting doubt sour my attitude and creative ability. I gained insight on my capability to push through physical pain, stress, and fatigue. I am truly grateful that for the rest of my life that I will have this experience to reflect upon.
J. Allan Fassett
Focus Media
2008 48 hour film project, Seattle
Film Name: "Post Mortem"
Genre: Detective/Cop
- J. Allan Fassett, Focus Media
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Another year and another fabulous experience!
I am the composer for this year and last year's 48 Hour film project, " The Last to Remember" for Przemek Pardyak and Xeo Xee Team.
Nothing outrageous happened (except for the fact it's pretty outrageous to compose music on the fly, basically without anything but a script and some footage!) ...this is my experience...
I got the call on Friday night ... " A Silent Film" well not so silent for the composer :)
The writing team worked through the night and by early Saturday morning they had a script. I read through the script, spoke with the director and started composing
At around 3pm I headed to the filming site, an amazing location thanks to our producer/writer/actor Meredith Binder who secured the site several weeks ago, Seattle City Hall
I talked with Przemek during their lunch break and also watched some of the filming. I also spoke with William Brody our editor to get an ETA for a cut of the film. The filming looked fantastic.
I headed back to my studio to work out more music ideas.
At about 12:30am I had a short cut of the film to look at.
Sunday 6:30 am I am writing music and emailing with the William who is busy editing.
Wanting to create the best music possible for such an excellent film i avoided laying just anything down.. except at about 6pm, the deadline was fast approaching. We were all getting a bit nervous, myself especially. i made some quick edits and sent the tracks off. Thanks to "you send it .com" I was able to do everything via email with AIF files.
I drove to SFI and met Przemek and William, signed a few papers and we handed in the film ON TIME! :)
I'm looking forward to the screening on Tuesday 6:30 pm at the Neptune in Seattle. Our film is titled " Permit".
We have an amazing team and I would absolutely do it again with this team!
See you all Tuesday,
Nan Avant
www.nanavant.com
www.myspace.com/nanavant
- Nan Avant, Xeo Xee
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