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Making Of A 48 Hour Film: Cognitive Dissonance	2votes
June 12, 2008 07:59 PM	Views:184 Favorited:0 Comments:3

	Filed Under: Film
Tags: 48, canada, cognitive, dissonance, dvx, edmonton, festival, film, hour



You can view this film here: http://exposureroom.com/members/definitiveprojx.aspx/assets/5e0f3504f7aa4629a7c026476ddaee6c/ So awhile back, I entered my local 48 Hour Film Festival competition which took place last weekend. What I thought was going to be "fun" ended up being the hardest thing I've ever done. Shooting a full 18 hour wedding day is nothing compared to what this encompassed. I highly recommend that if you decide to enter one of these, DO NOT GO IT ALONE. You absolutely should assemble a crew to help out. I had 2 actors(one professional, one friend) who helped out tremendously but once shooting finished, it was all on me. They both came into this with little to no experience working in front of cameras. I was the only one who came into this with any type of experience and know-how on filmmaking thus the whole project, from pre-production to post, was painful, stressful and probably shortened my life another 5-10 years. This was my 4th film project that I've done over the years but this was the first time I was going to be able to actually edit one with an NLE. I was excited to finally edit something edgy and cool besides weddings. Sleeping, eating and doing anything healthy went out the window the moment we started production. The rules were not as strict as the official 48 Hour Film Project. We didn't have a specified genre and we were allowed to use stock footage(or basically anything we wanted to shoot beforehand). Here's the list of items we had to have in our film: Word: Wizened (to be added and defined in the credits) Video effect: Sepia tone (removed from the final cut) Props: Fan, suitcase Scene: Car (could be beside a car so we used a bus stop) Line: "They bought it. Incredible. One of the worst performances of my career, and they never doubted it for a second." To keep the competition fair, they only gave us these requirements when the competition officially started and the 48 hour deadline came into effect. I had written a rough outline of the story we were going to shoot beforehand but when the requirements came in, that preparation turned out to be a bad thing. The new requirements turned the whole project upside down. After a rollercoaster of emotions including debating and rewriting, we were able to work these elements in and continue our project. We started shooting Friday. It was hot and sticky. I knew we weren't going to last long out there so I had to keep the setups short and make every take count. We managed to shoot all the outdoor scenes and escape the sun with minimal damage. This was also the first time in a long time I used my Glidecam 4000 and I could barely lift it. My first few attempts were extremely wobbly. The day before, I bought myself a monopod quick release with a tilting screw that I attached to my Glidecam. If I didn't have that, I would not have been able to use the Glidecam much if at all. After shooting Friday afternoon, I had to work on the script during the evening. It wasn't easy to work in the required elements but after consulting with my lead, it all came together. We had our script, or most of it and were ready to shoot all the indoor scenes the next day. Saturday comes and it's raining. Good thing we shot most of the outdoor scenes on Friday. First thing we did was shoot our final outdoor shots and headed to our indoor location. For our indoor location, we required a gym. I got turned down at every facility I contacted. Nobody wanted to co-operate. At the 11th hour, my lead managed to find a friend with a heavy bag setup in his garage that he would let us use for a few hours. We had to make this work because we had no other options. I've never done so many setups in my life in that garage. I managed to rub all the skin off my forefinger because I was screwing and unscrewing my 2 different quick release plates on and off my camera. Not only that, but I also had to move my lighting around after every shot and make sure none of my other equipment was visible in the shot. I also was shooting for the edit and didn't have any type of storyboard or shot list. Every shot was made off the top of my head. The DVX100B held up great. Full manual was easy and natural. Two 5400mah batteries kept me juiced for the whole day. 6 hours later, we were done shooting. I still had to write the narration for the film but I left it to my lead to polish up what I had written beforehand the night before. I hoped it was coherent enough for him to work with since I wrote it in a tired and exhausted state. He took the script home with him to work on and we broke for a few hours. Later that night I met up with my lead and we worked out the final version of the narration. We recorded it in his car in a quiet parking lot. I didn't have any type of proper microphone to use so I used my iRiver 795 with a lapel mic. I hung the mic over the driver's side sun visor so that it was in front of him and we were good to go. A few takes later, we were done and I headed back home with everything I needed to finish the film. It was now 11:00PM Saturday night and the deadline was 5:00PM Sunday afternoon. 18 hours left to get it done. The first thing I did was start capturing the footage. I had about 2.5 hours of tape to capture. The second thing I did was filter the narration in Adobe Audition to clean it up. That took about an hour or two. Fighting the clock I knew that everything didn't have to be perfect, it just had to be good enough. Next thing I did was throw all my footage on the timeline. PANIC ATTACK. It felt like I had no idea what I was doing. "Where do I start? Which clip is better? What is the best way to cut this scene together?" To me, editing weddings is pretty linear. You can choose to deviate off course but you can always find your way back by following the course of events. Following the script was a bit trickier, especially since there was no storyboards or shot list. "Maybe this new scene matches the narration at this point better than that old scene?" Too many choices to make and time was ticking down. One thing that I noticed immediately was that it was tremendously harder to cut a scene together using straight cuts than dissolves. I copped out and used a lot of fades and a few additives but it worked and time was tight. Having not slept for more than 6 hours in the last 3 days was starting to hit me. I was falling asleep with my eyes open. It was the strangest feeling. I would be staring at my timeline and would drift off with my eyes still locked on the timeline. Caffeine was having little to no effect. Running up and down the stairs was the only thing that would clear out the tiredness. At least for a little while. I paced myself as well as I could. I had 3 distinct sections of my film, the beginning(character building), the middle(montage) and the end(the actual story). I finished a rough cut of the beginning and the end first knowing that they were the most important sections. If they weren’t done by 5PM, there was no film to hand in. I then did a rough cut of the middle section and went back to polish up the other parts I had completed earlier. 2:00PM rolls around and it's looking good. I know I won't have enough time to CC/MB any of the film but I shot it in 30P with Kendal Miller's recommended settings so it still looks pretty decent raw. I tweak a few things that bothered me and now it is 3:30PM. Time to burn a DVD to hand in. Adobe Encore 1.51 is junk. No other piece of software will let you down more when you are in a hurry. Here I am, encoding a 10 minute .avi file that I just exported from Adobe Premiere and it's telling me it needs to close because it encountered an audio error. I tried and tried but could not get a DVD burned. Even Nero wouldn’t co-operate because my filesize was over some asinine 2GB limit. Mother#$%@#$%! It's after 4PM. I panic and call the Film Fest people. I explain the situation and they tell me I can dump it onto MiniDV tape and they will burn it for me later. Halfway through my first dump, my camera decides to turn off by itself for no reason. Mother#$%@#$%! It's now 4:30PM and I'm praying my second attempt works. It takes me no less than 15-20 minutes to get to where the drop off point is. It worked. I don't have time to check that it actually recorded and there aren't any dropouts. I pop the tape out of my camera, grab a case and run out the front door wearing the same clothes I've worn for the last 36 hours. Adrenaline was keeping me awake at this point. During the drive, I start getting worried that I may have grabbed the wrong tape when I put it down to find an empty case. I decided there was little chance of that happening and there was nothing that I could do about it if it was indeed the case. My sole goal was to get to the drop off point in 10 minutes. But guess what. There happens to be a marathon going on and the road is blocked off. Mother#$%@#$%! I take a detour and make it to the drop off point sometime around 5:00PM. I jump out of the car while it's still running and hand it to the drop off lady. Just then another participant comes by and explains how his project fell apart on him. I get back in my car, head home and sleep. I did it. I finished my first 48 hour film. Mother#$%@#$%! Around 10 days later, the screening rolls around and the anticipation of an audience seeing the film for the first time is almost too much to take. Thirty minutes into the screening, I see my team’s name appear on screen. I’m frozen in my seat. It’s over before I know it. The audience laughed at more things than I thought they would and we got one of the loudest responses when the credits rolled. They liked it. In the end, we walked away with the Honorable Mention Award for Cinematography but we set out to make a film that could stand on it’s own outside of the 48 Hour Film Fest. We made a film but we walked away with so much more. We proved to ourselves that as a team, even if with no money and limited time, we can still make a decent film that we can be proud of.

Comments

Shiv Kumar

June 13, 2008 08:57 AM

Walter,

Interesting read I must say. I've begun to realize that film making no matter what the budget is really hard. Hard to make the end product look and feel convincing to the audience and keep it far from looking like a home-made production. I think you guys have pulled it off exceptionally well.

Once again I think the team has done a marvelous job. Congratulations.

Will Mahoney

June 13, 2008 09:01 AM

A nice little story, Walter. I like how everything keeps falling apart. But you got it turned in in time and the audience liked the film. Good job. Now I'll go watch your video...