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Posted: Sun Jan 13th, 2008 01:21 pm |
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How To Make A Film In 48 Hours
The 48hr Film Challenge was first proposed by Johnnie Oddball in 2002. It is exactly what the title suggests, the challenge to create, shoot and edit a short film in the space of two days from a title and genre drawn at random from a hat at the start of day one.
Johnnie's contention was that too much of filmmaking was about finding reasons not to make your film. In a world where more people want to make short films than want to watch them there is never any real need for a finished film. Therefore there are often far more reasons to not finish a film then there are to wash your hands of it. Consequently many people can spend years polishing a ten or fifteen minute masterpiece that has no audience. Johnnie's hope was to encourage people to get down to business - also hoping that the frission of a challenge would help draw an actual audience.
The act of cramming the entire creative process into two days is invigorating. It instantly shows up what is really important, shows where you tend to waste your time, where you need to spend more time and also gives you a great deal of faith to take with you. After making a film in 48hrs the challenge of a months filming and six months editing is far less daunting...
Of course part of the fun of the process is working out how you are going to do it for yourself, however if you are going to attempt it here are a few things that you might like to bare in mind.
Simplicity.
Like all film making the real mantra is always "Keep It Simple, Stupid". Our first 48hr film, "Juice" may be ten minutes long but the idea - taking the piss out of ourselves and the filmmaking process - is pretty straight forward. "Pour Un Temps" is about a girl killing her abusive brother. Our big failure, "Anything Goes" is a three minute cross-genre spy-thriller-musical-comedy with a complex plot full of bluff and double-bluff being explained by people singing unaccompanied. It's no surprise that by the time "Anything Goes" ends the audience is left blinking in startled confusion.
Flexibility.
The problems with "Anything Goes" stemmed from a group failure to think of a better idea. To be fair the ease of a challenge often comes down to the stricture of the title and genre - "Anything Goes" was just too wide a canvas for us to cope with. Naturally one of the key things that will help you make a film in 48hrs is a mind both open and fertile. Not just because you will have to rapidly make a film in a genre and with a title not of your own choosing; as with any film all manner of things can suddenly change, unlike other films you don't have very much time to adapt to those changes. If you cannot get the location you wanted, the prop you needed, or the shot that works there is no time for you to go away and have another think - you need to be open to alternatives so that answers are easy to come by.
On the other hand though, it is easy to forget that good films, especially good short films, need to be clear, concise and most of all - controlled. Too often with a 48hr film the participants get obsessed with being ready for anything and refuse to ever actually make up their minds about what they are making. The best 48hr film we made, "Pour Un Temps", was the result of a definite decision we took right at the start of the competition. We decided that this was the story we were going to tell and we stuck to that, whatever problems subsequently arose. Of all three of our 48hr films this is the one that most films like a genuine piece of cinema, rather than an experiment in what we could achieve in the time. It is the one that feels like it has the most purpose.
The Audience.
Leading on from this need to be sure of your idea, is the question 'Why are you making this film?' The entrants in the UK 48hr Challenge were generally impressive in their ability to make, often technically very complex films in such a short space of time. Very few of them were actually worth watching though. Like so much British cinema, they were films that existed for the filmmaker and their friends, rather than for a general audience. Watching the other entrants into the Berlin Challenge in 2004 it was sobering to see quite how good the German filmmakers were. Not technically, though nothing was poor quality, but the really striking feature was that the German films were aiming a long way past the finish line of the 48th hour.
Making a film in 48hrs is impressive, but if that film isn't any good then it's a bit of a wasted effort. Who is the film really for? What are you really trying to say? What do you think the audience will enjoy about your story or the way you tell it?
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