48 hour film fest, anyone done this?

Heyo

I've joined up to a 48 hour film fest, an I was wondering if anyone has done it before and if they have any stories or tips to share

excited for it

(It's where you are given a genre, a line of dialogue and a prop and you make a short film in 48 hours)

But why?

I fail to see the excitement.

I've been meaning to join a marathon film fest like that, but I've yet to sign up for one. Would love to hear how it went!

why not?

Reasons why? i think it'l be an awesome experience

I was going to watch all the alien movies and play through both Dead Space games in one sitting for halloween last year. does that count?

also it didn't work out i got through alien 2 then said "fuck this" and beat dead space one then called it a day.

Is this something people do? This is the first I've heard of a 24h movie marathon.

Maybe it will be, but it just sounds exhausting to me Red12b. :) I've seen trilogies and quads in marathons with friends but going for more than 3 or 4 movies in a row wouldn't be fun for me. I like movies and drinks but come on.

Haha, yeah, 24 hr of films are awesome, but this is where teams have 48 hours to create a film.

It's where you are given a genre, a line of dialogue and a prop and you make a short film in 48 hours

No, but I'd love to. It sounds hecka the funs.

Aaaha, so you make the films? I'm sorry for misunderstanding your entire thread. Thanks for the edit. :)

Do you have the genre and stuff yet? Sounds like fun. In high school I took a media class and one of the projects was to make a video in a week about whatever word you pulled out of a hat. We got gladiator. So it was like a 4 minute video of my friends and I beating each other up while O Fortuna played. Good times. No real tips, just have fun!

@red12b: Oh, ok. I thought it was watching movies non-stop for 48 hours. Now this seems much better and actually fun. Hope you enjoy it :)

I was into video production in high school, really enjoyed it. I can defanatly see how this would be fun. sometimes its not about the end product, its about the stress of the deadline, everyone working together, creating, pitching ideas, and having fun.

its basicly just a reason to make a movie. Man I miss first period.

@dagbiker: What kind of stuff did you guys make? Did you show it to the rest of the school?

I've done a few of them and everything always seems to go wrong in the last two hours. So try to have everything done four hours early I guess? You should also make sure you get some rest because if you think you can just power through, things will get real bad in the editing room. Trust me.

Oh, and have fun!

no you get that on the day

That sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.

Are there limits for team sizes and stuff?

All I can say is try to get as many angles on each scene as you can, given the time restraints. A lot of new filmmakers just film entire scenes as one shot, and it looks dull. They also tend to forget to pan and tilt the camera around, which makes shit more dramatic.

Good luck! Making movies is awesome, just have fun with it.

@funkydupe we did morning anouncements every day, through the video system. then we would make features, like interviews, Holliday specials and things like that. It was pretty awesome everyone there was reall close. It was like the breakfast club, excpt an hour a day for four years. it was fucking awesome.

That sounds like fun. Every time I've had an opportunity to make short films I've gone with animated instead since that's what I want to do as a career.

I don't think so, it can be anything from a small team of 6 to a group of 20 pros

I did a 24-hour one before; I think we were given a line, a prop, and a location. It went incredibly smoothly because our team had a really good director. I mostly helped to set up lighting, had 2 lines and fainted in a scene. I got no real advice other than to have fun!

That sounds like fun. I'll bet you'll have to be fuckin on point though. 48 hours to conceive, shoot, and edit a short. But I guess that's the point (and the fun).

I came in here thinking you were going to sit down and watch 48 hours worth of movies.

Yeah I almost submitted a paragraph or two of tips on how to stay up watching movies for 48 hours...

its a ton of fun i did it in atlanta last year

Also this is excellent advice. Try to get the editing done early because something will almost definitely go wrong. Most every group you talk to will have a horror story of how their com crashed in the middle of rendering or the hard drive with everything on it fried or the PA spilled coffee on camera or the director went blind, etc. Things will come up and you must be able to adapt on the fly. Also pre-planning is key.

@red12b: Plan! Plan! Plan! Anything and everything you possibly can. Make sure people know their jobs. I'm sure, however, that you know this.

I've done a 24 and 48 hour film fest about a year ago. You wouldn't think it would help but the 48 hour film fest is a godsend compared to 24. I hardly slept for that and the end product was complete crap. Now despite my preference, I've learned that I hate timed film competitions like this. I feel like the amount of time you have at your disposal is so finite that you can't learn anything from it. It's so restricted that the only point of these film competitions is to "get out there and shoot". That's fine and all, but when the rules surrounding the competition are so easy to break, many people that join these competitions have already completed the work and have included one or two additional scenes that scarcely fulfill the parameters of qualification (usually it's some stupid prop that has to be used or something).

I find them fun but hardly constructive.