The "48-Hour Film Project"

[davewalton]

Hi,Just thought I'd share my upcoming weekend with you guys. Don't ask me how or why, but I'm part of a team competing in the 48-Hour Film Project competition (www.48hourfilm.com). Teams from various cities compete to write, shoot, edit, and burn a completed DVD in only 48 hours. I'm part of a team (one of many) competing in the St. Louis region. This is purely for fun, just for the craziness of doing it. When the 48-hour clock started a few hours ago, representitives from each team were given a genre at random, as well as a character name, prop, and dialog line that has to be used in the film. Examples of film genres that teams could draw are things like comedy, drama, horror, etc. We drew "fantasy". Yuk. Not enough time for costumes or special effects. The director guy said it'll probably turn into a situational or comedy fantasy like "Big" or "Groundhog Day" or something like that.Tonight the script writers will write the script incorporating the required elements (a character named "Leo or Linda Garren, Bank Manager", a shopping bag as a prop, and the dialog line "Is that all I am to you?". Tomorrow morning they start shooting and will film all day long. Tomorrow night they'll start editing. I'll get the final cut sometime early Sunday morning and will have to score and record the music by around noon. Then they'll do the final mix and burn a DVD. Then someone delivers it to the drop-off point before the deadline (hopefully). Technically, I'm allowed to use existing music but I'm hoping to keep true to the spirit of things and keep it original from the ground up. We'll see... I might be too much of a musical wuss to pull it off. I have my strengths but being prolific under pressure isn't one of them. I think the movies will be posted on the 48 Hour Film site. I'll update with a link when I can.Later,Dave

[roughly]

I had heard about this not too long ago. It sounds fabulously fun! Best of luck with it. Let us know if you win!

[ernstinen]

Hey Dave,This is probably too late for your project, but one technique I've used is to set up a "percussion" series of samples on your keyboard, i.e., one patch that has a lot of different percussion sounds on the keyboard at one time.Then, just let your "fingers do the walking" at random as you watch the video. Use the emotions of the video to speed up or slow down as you react to what you're seeing and feeling. --- Then add music as fast as you can (don't THINK), and orchestrate your musical ideas. Use or delete the original percussion as you see fit.I did this for the first scene of a short film, and it worked great. The rest was a chore. Good Luck,Ern