“Snow Day” – a 48 Hour Film Project
This past weekend, I took part in my seventh 48 Hour Film Project (48HFP). Our team, Weekend Warriors, competed in Boston from May 13-15, 2016 this year. Each year our team must welcome new teammates and say farewell to others. Due to the changing strengths of our team, each film is a new experience. We decided to animate our film this year which presented a whole bunch of new challenges for us (as if making a film in 48 hours wasn’t enough!)
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 two genres out of a hat. We had to choose one (or both!) of our genres which were “Buddy Film” and “Western.” After all of the roughly 80 teams pulled their genres, we all anxiously waited 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 – Paulette or Pierre Kubiak, Connoisseur; prop – an envelope; line of dialogue – “What’s that supposed to mean?” (or “What is that supposed to mean?”)
Knowing that we were animating our film, we did our best to write the story in such a way that we could realistically produce it within the timeframe of the competition. We created an animatic (animated storyboard) on Friday night which gave us a sense of the timing and story. We just kept plugging away at the illustrations and then the animations on Saturday while our sound designer (who had never sound designed before!) and composer started pulling their pieces together. Sunday was mostly finishing up and cleaning up the film while adding the finishing touches.
Despite the challenges of the animation, this was the smoothest 48 Hour Film Project that I have done. Everyone slept comfortably both nights and we turned our film in with an hour to spare! Our film “Snow Day” was turned in at 6:37pm! This was my fourth year competing in Boston and the first that did not result in us running down Boylston Street to the drop off location. It was an absolute blast and I can honestly say that we will be planning to do another animated 48 Hour Film in the future.
For more information about the 48 Hour Film Project, visit www.48HourFilm.com/boston
Enjoy!
BC
