“Can You Pass Me a Marshmallow?” – a 48 Hour Film Project
I spent this past weekend creating what is now my sixth entry in the 48 Hour Film Project (48HFP). This year, our team Weekend Warriors competed in Boston from May 1-3, 2015. This is the 5th iteration of this team with only a handful returning each year. Being the 5th Anniversary of Weekend Warriors, we decided to revamp our team’s logo to a more polished look.
The 48 Hour Film Project is an international filmmaking competition that puts your filmmaking skills (and sanity) to the test as you are challenged to make a film in less than 48 hours. Teams arrive at the kickoff meeting on Friday night and each team pulls a genre out of a hat. This year we drew “Buddy Film.” After the genres are pulled, the team leaders anxiously wait for the clock to hit seven when the required elements are announced. Every city receives a character, prop & line of dialogue that each team must also include in their film. The criteria we had to include were: character – Shawn or Sharon Middleton, Wordsmith; prop – ice; line of dialogue – “This is the future.”
Our crew shuffles around each year and everyone tends to fill whatever roll is necessary. Again as the producer, I ended up filling a lot of gaps, so I ended up directing, gaffing, co-editing, sound editing and mixing too this year. These weekends are stressful, yet extremely rewarding because in less than two days, you end up with a finalized product. It’s never quite perfect, but that’s not the point. The fact that we were able to write, shoot and edit a short film in such a condensed amount of time speaks volumes to the dedication of our cast and crew.
The initial script was finished fairly late on Friday night, but our outline had been strong enough for us to lock down a few actors to meet us bright and early on Saturday morning. There’s always unforeseen circumstances that delay you with such short time limits, so we were a little late getting going, but recovered quickly by the afternoon. We wrapped just after dinnertime on Saturday and my fellow co-editor Matt, had already been cutting the footage shot throughout the day.
Post-production was going so well that we relaxed, resulting in a final sprint to export. We exported in the car to the drop off point. The car wouldn’t start again resulting in an all out run across the city of Boston to drop the film off. We dropped it off with only minutes left in the competition! Those of us who ran the length of Boylston Street rested easy that night knowing that our film “Can You Pass Me a Marshmallow?” was officially on time for the 2015 Boston 48 Hour Film Project.
Here’s to hoping next year, we don’t have to run to the drop off point!
For more information about the 48 Hour Film Project, visit www.48HourFilm.com
Enjoy!
BC
