48 hour film I

by Andrew

2011-05-06 01:15:44

Hello to all my loyal readers (all 3 of you). As anyone who sees me semi-regularly knows, my latest obsession hobby is film making.

Before I left on my trip around the world last year I acquired a fair amount of pretty nice film equipment. We did try to film the trip, but not with any great success (a video of the trip is in the works, but don't hold your breath). Still, what's the point of having the gear if you're not going to use it? So, I entered in a 48 hour film contest. On Friday night they tell you the genre and then on Sunday night all the films premier. Trying to do this even a few years ago would have been a challenge (not that it's easy), but the cost of entry has gone down so much that most of the films are actually surprisingly good. You can check out some of the past videos on the website: shoot and run

I've done two now, so I'm a little late writing about it. I found out about the contest on a Tuesday while looking for a new flat, decided to do it even though I didn't have the time and tried to sucker as many friends as possible into joining. In the end thought, although making a 5 minute film in 48 hours is hard enough, Shanti could only join Friday night and most of Saturday, Anne and Mario helped for a few hours on Saturday and I had to leave to see places on Saturday and Sunday (I was still frantically looking for a new place to live after all.)

Our goal was to make a film at all. We had a vague idea of what we were doing, sort of a list of scenes and a motto that "we have the take!" which led to several scenes with no audio. a couple more with no sync and several where the camera was never actually turned on. The result is a deeply silly film which I'd like to share with you now. The finished film, as shown on Sunday 20 March can be seen here [1280x720 229MB].

And the contest you ask? Well, somehow we won the jury prize, mostly by default. There were two other films which I thought were actually better, but we happened to be the only team which followed the rules. The jury just about apologized for giving us first, also I think they were on drugs. But whatever the reason, they can't take it away now. Anyway, enjoy, the next one's better.