The 48 Hour Film Project 2018
What is the 48 Hour Film Project?
The 48 Hour Film project is an international annual event. Teams of filmmakers have a weekend to shoot and cut a 4 to 7 minute movie. No team can have a prepared script prior to opening night, each team must draw the genre for their film from a hat on opening night then the festival announces the required elements to incorporate into the movie; A line of dialogue, a required character, and a required prop.
Joining Fort Hewin
I was invited to join Team Fort Hewin by Director Bryan Patterson. This was Fort Hewin's second year to participate in The 48 Hour Film Project. The team drew the genres of Fantasy and Coming of Age so I was asked to come on board as the visual effect supervisor.
Visual Effects Supervisor
The filmmakers and actors would consult with me on the visual effects shots or we would workshop the best way to shoot a VFX idea. (Photo provided by Matt Baber)
Double Duty
It's not unusual to be asked to do more than one job on a short film. In this case, I was asked to play a cop. I got to drive a police car and everything. (Photo provided by Matt Baber)
Supervising in Costume
Here is a picture of Me and the Director of Photography, Matt Baber working out the best way to shoot a VFX shot. (Photo provided by Matt Baber)
Triple Duty: Yikes!
We wrapped around midnight and things looked peachy keen. The editor was going to finish the rough cut then send me the footage that needed visual effects but that's not what happened.
Sunday morning I found out that there were complications and I would need to edit the movie myself.
All day Sunday was a rush to log the footage and cut the movie together before the 7:30 pm deadline. Yikes!
Oh, No!
I had all the footage logged by noon and discovered some important footage was missing. Editing now became a task of re-ordering the footage in a way that made sense for the viewer. This would also mean the audio would suffer and I would have to spend less time on the visual effects.
Just under the wire
I managed to get a rough cut with music and slap together some really basic visual effects by 6:30 pm.
The next concern was render time. The movie was shot in 4k resolution and there was a sudden realization that I had never rendered a 4k movie from my computer before. I had no idea how long it was going to take.
Originally, there was no reason to consider rendering the final cut from my computer because we were never planning for me to edit the movie.
It turns out my iMac and Final Cut Pro X rock at rendering video. My machine rendered the 4k pro res project into an 1080 mp4 file in about 10 minutes.
The movie was transferred to a USB flash drive and the filmmakers dropped off the movie by 7:15 pm.
Premiere Night!
The all team movies premiered yesterday day at the Tower Theater.The audience reception was positive and I was comforting to hear the battle stories from the other filmmakers. I had a great time and would probably participate again next year.