12 Hours away from 48 Hour (Film Project)

I should be sleeping right now. In fact, I was. I got to bed at about 2:30, after finally arriving home after a long long long day marked by TV commercial production, 48 Hour Film preparation, trips to Louisiana and back, and a session with a friend on how to use the Firestore with the HVX 200 (that's 100% video geekspeak...don't attempt to figure out what that means unless you KNOW what it means.) Oh yeah, I even managed to squeeze a funeral in.

But today's going to be a long day, too. So why am I not sleeping???

Because I woke up about thirty minutes ago with something I ate last night not setting well with me. I'm not nauseous. It's more like a stomach cramp. I took some Pepto, and while I wait for it to work its magic, I'm sitting here typing.


This year is shaping up to be both more organized and prepared AND more chaotic. I think we have our best team yet, both in front of and behind the camera. For once, I won't be the only editing option, as we have a skilled, dedicated editor assigned. He should be able to start editing while we are still shooting. That should make Sunday's final edit session a thousand times easier. Plus, there will be at least two others of us (me and Chris) who will be able to either spell him, or work on segments or special effects on separate computers. We also have a dedicated composer for our film's music (but we still have Digital Juice on hand as backup).

The more chaotic part comes in the form that we aren't nearly as set on good locations as we were in previous years. We've got my office secured, a few outdoor areas, and I've got paperwork in for using our office building's interior (which has some cool elevators and a wide open atrium). Also this year, we don't have ONE perfect staging area. We'll be meeting at one location for the giant group gathering, a different location for the script-writing session, and a third location for editing. If not for the fact that my office building turns off the A/C on weekends, we could do everything there. As it is, we can probably meet for SOME of the time on Saturday (especially if we are doing any shooting there). But for Sunday, if we want to use my edit systems, we'll have to suffer through horrible stuffy heat (or else bring a couple of dozen fans. Our other option is to set up the edit system at someone's house. We WERE going to set up at the dedicated editor's house, but within the past week or so, he has moved, so all of his stuff is in boxes. We still haven't got this one figured out yet.

But I'm most excited about our cast. We have a rather large pool of talent this year, just about all of which have prior acting experience (either in REAL films, or else have been on our team in years past). My only concern is our coming up with a concept and a script that manages to give everyone a solid part. Because of the talent level this year, I'm more confident about our writing a looser script and allowing the actors to improvise more. This will make it easier at the script stage, but a bit tougher during the edit. We'll see.


As we do every year, we try to anticipate potential story ideas based on the potential genres we might pull. If our film ends up with a zoo murder in it, or a jury deliberation room, or a kidnapped newscaster, or extensive funny subtitles, then you'll know we managed to use one of those ideas. However, as also happens every year, we will almost certainly come up with something brand new that really integrates the required elements. I'm confident in our ability to come up with something really good, either way.

It's always an incredibly fun weekend, but amazingly exhausting. The last two years, our goal was to WIN this event, which we didn't do (although we did win bunches of individual awards/smiley face stickers). THIS year, our goal isn't to win, but to produce an amazing short film. Winning would be a nice byproduct obviously, but at the end of the day, we're more concerned with ending up with something we're very proud of.

Irony Coast Productions should be up to the task.