This year the 48 Hour Film Project enlisted filmmakers from over 100 cities across the world - from Brisbane and Melbourne all the way to our own Washington D.C.
About 4 months ago I had the pleasure of meeting up with Peter Calafiura, a Washingtonian like myself who was interested in producing a short film for the 48 hour film project.
We spoke about our previous work, I showed him my portfolio and we agreed to talk soon about the project. A month or so later I received news from Peter that he had begun to assemble the crew and find some locations
and that he wanted me on board as Director & Editor!
Fast forward 2 months and we were there! The Washington D.C. portion of the 48 hour film project was slated to begin Friday, May 4th at 7pm.
Peter attended the opening ceremony where each of the
96 participating teams selected a GENRE from a hat! Peter selected our genre;
Dark Comedy.
After the initial meet & greet between crew & actors alike, we received the text from Peter letting us know about the selected genre. It was time to get to work!
We also received a few other required elements for our story: A Character (Denny or Denise Murray, a Recruiter). A prop (Keys) & a specific line of dialogue, "I have just one question..."
Over the course of the next 2-3 hours we brainstormed in writing our plot! We started by researching popular dark comedies and writing them up on the supplied easel and drafting paper.
Writing a short story is hard. Writing a Dark Comedy is even harder.. Writing a short Dark Comedy that needs to be filmed, edited
and delivered within 48 hours is, in a word,
difficult!.
Most of the cast and crew were present during the initial brainstorming session, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours. Using a medium sized, diverse group of people for bouncing off initial ideas is a great way to determine whether or not your idea can cater to an audience. Our brainstorm session heard many great ideas, some not-so-great ones (usually by myself just thinking way outside the box) and finally a winning idea!
Once we had our rough rough outline for our desired storyline we decided to take advantage of the night and shoot some night scenes with Jeff Soukup, our talented main Actor, who is also a very talented musician!
After a couple hours we stopped filming and decided to split off into the 'core' group of writers for the film; Peter, Chris and myself.
By 3.am our outline was complete, and at that time we left it up to the capable hands of our official screenplay writer Chris Young. Chris stayed up till 6am writing our official screenplay! Peter and I were able to get a few hours of sleep while the rest of the crew was told to come back around 8am, prepared for a day full of shooting.
Phase 1 had been completed. Our screenplay was complete and the actors / actresses / and crew had assembled together for a day that was sure to be frenetically fast paced and full of fun... PRODUCTION for our 48 Hour Film Project had just begun... and thankfully I made sure to stop by 7-11 on the way to the location to grab that coffee, because I was surely going to need as much energy as possible!
NEXT UP: Production - Shooting a 4-7 minute short film in less than 24 hours
