Buzz Blog

So for a change of pace, we're gonna take a look at something I was personally doing this past week, and I got some photos to show you. ...No, not that. Not that either. I might show that someday, but not today. Nah, this week we're talking about the 48 Hour Film Festival.

 --- Thursday afternoon my pal Tony calls me up and says "Hey, you wanna enter 48 Hour?" Mainly because the film he was working on had to take a week-hiatus from other people working on this festival too. I thought it would be fun so I agreed, to which he said "Good, because I already paid the entry fee." Come Friday night after I got done covering Stroll I'm met with an ecstatic phone call. "Hey dude, for our category, we got Western or Musical! ...Nah, I'm just screwing with you, we got Film de Fem." So evil.

Sitting down over food we thought about what we would do. I could tell it was going well because Tony's opening pitch was "Do you remember Sleepaway Camp? Let's do something like that. We'll get Savannah to play the dude." ...Yeaaaaaaaaaaah, let's not. After an hour of discussion (which at one point involved us contemplating adult film works), we thought up our idea revolving around schizophrenia and we were on our way. Five hours of writing, one hour of prop shopping, an hour of sleep in a bean bag and a hoodie, and we were on our way.

Before filming even began, Tony broke a chair in my apartment. A short backstory, he's filmed here before, and has a habit of moving things around for equipment and shot purposes... stuff that should never move in my home unless I'm moving out. So the first few hours were a tad on the nerve-racking side to say the least. We got our fun cast together of Savannah and Rachel for apartment shots with Lisa and Cameron popping by to help and support. As always the ultimate all-around crew leader Holly brought everything over... including a jib! And Beau ready to put his best boom mic skills to work.

Due to the work schedule I keep I was only able to work the first 24, and the last few shots of the day required filming at a business across town. But the day at my place was awesome. Everything went off without much of a hitch, even had time to take a break and paint to show some of the lead characters talent. Nothing else broke, everything looked cool, and before I knew it they were off and I was asleep.

The only part I didn't like before showing was that because it was a rush, I didn't get to see the final product until Thursday night. I would ask Tony how it turned out and all I would get was “Oh, its good dude.” ...And then he'd just look at me with a half grin with nothing else to say, because he thought it would be funny. ...It wasn't... Went out on Wednesday and got tickets to all the showings and the awards party for Saturday. The first night was frustrating to say the least, the people at the Megaplex messed with the audio so that it was only coming out of the speakers behind the screen, out of fear that our films would blow their precious surround sound speakers. All the while we can hear the rumbling from Terminator next door, but not a lick of dialog from half the films. Why oh why this was even held at the Megaplex (a place I personally view as a local hinder to the film industry), I'll never understand. They need to move back to the Tower, or at least Broadway next year.

Finally came time for ours, playing in the 8PM showing to a packed crowd. Over the course of two days, without pointing out anyone specific, we've seen some of the best and worst in pressurized film making. A lot of awesome tricks I'd love to know how they were done, and a lot of mistakes that will ultimately be lessons for the future. An awesome yet stressful experience to be had.

Coming back from the awards, a bit of the bitter-sweet. We didn't win anything, but I'm not bummed over it. What I was bummed about was the overall feeling from it. No awards (not even envelopes) for the winners, bad lighting so you couldn't see who won, and even one group who apparently refused to show up won an award in a category where the "use of prop" wasn't even noticeable. Clearly there was some odd happenings with the judging and selection, to the point where even winners were confused.

The afterparty was nice, though confusing. Good drinks, nice food, at one point it felt like we were being rushed like cattle to "dance outside" while they had the section cleared off.  Again.. Megaplex... not a festival-friendly place. Management of the complex was not friendly either. If you're going to shut down a room for a festival, that means the film you put in there must be terrible and not doing business. So hey... maybe you should, I don't know, close it for the whole night so you're not explaining to the three people outside why "Ghosts Of GI" hasn't started on time.

Overall though, I did have fun. Two prior Open Mic winners in Matthew Pool and Sohrab Mirmontazeri both won awards for cinematography and acting respectfully. Lot of old friends and colleagues were on hand to chat film, and overall we had a good time. But the big question of the night everyone was asking each other wasn't over doing future projects or films they've seen, it was "will you do it again next year?" And shockingly the overall answer from most... "Not a chance."  But hey, that's still a year away, and you never know what that time will bring.