48 Hrs. (1982)

http://www.48hourfilm.com/en/greensboro/

"The 48 Hour Film Project is a wild and sleepless weekend in which you and a team make a movie—write, shoot, edit and score it—in just 48 hours.

On Friday night, you get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, all to include in your movie. 48 hours later, the movie must be complete. Then it will show at a local theater, usually in the next week."

I'm so grateful to my best bud, Austin, who's been competing in the 48 Hour Film Project for the last 2 years. He built a small crew of UNCSA first years and a couple of local G-boro friends who ended up working very well with each other. 
I learned quickly that as prepared as you would like to be, you can't do much without a genre. 

Thursday June 21st, 2012- Location, Location, Location.

Step one. Find locations to potentially shoot it. How do you do that when you don't actually have a film? Easy. Woo them. So far we have two bakeries (one of which is my absolute favorite in Greensboro), one coffee shop, a church, and a high school. As the co-producer I generated a letter that was attached to the Location Release Form pretty much requesting to film in their establishment without a film. Without a film, I mean that we won't actually write it until tonight when we get our genre.

Friday June 22nd, 2012- gen•re noun a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature characterized by similarities in form, style or subject matter. 

Today was a waiting game for 6:00 pm when we finally got the genre of our film (we were also assigned a character, a prop and a line.)

Headquarters

After transforming the basement into our own personal 48H Headquarters everyone begins to arrive. Beginning with our main actor, Zack Messick, followed by our editor, Ian Quarels and Director of Photography, Camilo Herrera. Austin, Director, Zach and I run over to get the genre. 

Quick panic strikes as everyone adjusts to the news of having Musical as our genre. Secretly I was uber excited and couldn't wait to start collaborating on ideas for a not-so-cheesy musical!

Alex Amick, actor, joins the party and offers great feedback. We all throw our ideas on the table, and like most cases, not everyone agrees with the other. Which only offers more great ideas. It got a little rough at times but we bounced back quickly. Eric Ball, actor, shows up as we start developing a concept and writing songs. This process is followed by writing the script then a shot list. Which is when I can write a potential schedule for the day. Did I mention we decide to base the whole story in a tattoo parlor without having a tattoo parlor locked? Ambitious, but fun. The story is created. The lyrics are written and the crew begins to part ways for the night. 

Saturday June 23rd, 2012- Shooting Day

7:00am alarm goes off. Sound Mixer, Isaac Banks, arrives to record the songs to later dub over the picture. The Director, Editor and Mixer work diligently early in the morning while the other crew members slowly get up and gather the equipment. 

Just a little behind schedule we arrive at our first location to capture some "B-Roll" footage of horses for one of the segments. I couldn't help myself...

After the shots we rushed over to our first complete crew location, a parking deck roof for some fun city skyline shots. This was a good moment for the crew while we watched our leading man spray whip cream all over his shirtless chest. 

We quickly approached being really over schedule so the next location time was cut in half, an alleyway. We got our shot in less than fifteen minutes and moved on. 

Eric Ball's flowers

Our story follows Zach who is nervous about a date with Beth. He's meeting her at a tattoo parlor where his friend, Alex, works and runs some ideas by him and a customer, Eric. He wants to write her a song and goes through 4 different genres (and country song, a Glam Rock song, a rap, and a pop song) before he decides on an acoustic singer/songwriter song which always wins. It is a hilarious journey, what would you do if you only had 10 minutes to write the perfect song?

Lunch Time, compliments to Chic Fil-A! A special thank you to Beth who filled up 8 Large [complimentary] waters for the poor, starving, parched crew. 

We locked the tattoo parlor at 11am when they opened. http://littlejohnstattoo.com/ We arrived right on time and started setting up. Aside from the buzzing sound in the background [tattoo needle] we got all the shots we wanted and were very satisfied with the outcome. 

The location I was most excited about was our final location of the day, Maxie B's. A Shabby Chic Cake Bakery that my bff, Jen would definitely approve of. http://www.maxieb.com/

There was a great feeling in the air when we wrapped on the final shot. We got back to headquarters (Austin's basement), and had some great lasagna and talked about how tired we were. 

We all agreed on one thing that night. That everything went swimingly and that we had a great leader and team. From the beginning it was apparent that this project meant a lot to everyone and we worked hard and non stop all day together. There was a great sense of comradeship. And like some people can dedicate their practice in yoga to someone, I'd like to take this time to dedicate this blog to Austin and his family for sponsoring our team and being so great through a process full of so many emotions. 

Thank you for everything. 

Isaac Banks, Camilo Herrera, Ian Quarles, Alex Amick, Will Bednar, Eric Ball, Zach Messick, Austin Elliott, Christene Hurley

Cast/Crew photo: Missing- Ellis Elliott, Tim Elliott, Timothy Stroud and Beth Hawkes. 

It's Editing time! My job is technically done so I get to relax. Cue the Mixer and Editor: 

Sunday June 24th, 2012- Editing and End of competition. 

Ian stayed up until 9:00am putting all of the footage in a chronological order and syncing the sound from set to the picture. 

With most of the crew gone we start breaking down the headquarters and diving deep into editing. The film is due promptly at 7:30pm. 

5 minutes to spare

A very tired editor finally crashes on the way home. 

Final thoughts... The video is complete. Our screening is next Thursday at 9pm. After that, we can make our video live. And as proud as I am for this film, I wish I could remind anyone who watches it that with any film, the filmmakers and editors can take their time for the most part with the editing step. And that they can schedule as long as [the producer] wants for filming.The point of this project was to do all of that in 48 hours. If we had more time to shoot and edit I'm sure we'd have a very different film. On that note, again, I couldn't be more proud of the cast and crew and I can't wait to do it again next year. 

Update: We are now able to make our film live and here it is!!