Monday 11th May 200948 Hour Post Mortem

Last weekend was the 48 Hour Film Festival. Unfortunately it encompassed Andrea's first mothers day, but despite that we made a movie. Here I lay out the basic process for those interested. If you're not, skip to the end.

6:00pm, Friday 8th: The weekend began at the Freemans Bay Community Centre where we were given the required elements:

Genre: The Politically Incorrect Movie or The Religious Movie
Line: "It doesn't fit"
Prop: A Rock
Character: Alex Puddle, an exaggerator.

With 264 teams in Auckland, there were a LOT of people there. The atmosphere was, as always, charged with adrenaline, Stella Artois and V. The required info was given via drawing numbers for the genres, then everything was revealed just before 7pm.

7:10pm, Friday 8th: We met up at Cactuslab to nut out a basic script, locations, cast etc. This kept us going until about 11:30pm. At this point we all went home, where most of us went to bed, while Frank started fleshing out the script. For the record, I got about 6 hours sleep, while Frank probably got about 3.

8:00am, Saturday 9th: Meeting at Melita's place, we set up and started shooting. Various people came and went throughout the day, and we managed to get the filming done by 6:30pm.

We then all went home and most people had dinner, spent quality time with their families, and went to bed. I had dinner, spent a short amount of time with my family, then started editing.

8:00pm, Saturday 9th: 3 hours of capturing 2 hours video to my PC was followed by about 5 hours of editing on Saturday night/Sunday morning. I managed to get a (very) rough cut together that came to 10 mins, 35 sec. EEK! The max time allowed is 7mins including credits.

I had intentionally let a fair amount of excess video that needed trimming, but I didn't think it was quite that much. I also did a couple of simple blue screen shots, and got to bed right on 3am.

8:00am, Sunday 10th: After about 4 hours sleep, a shower and breakfast, I went back to the editing.

I did a few more of the bluescreen shots until Frank arrived at about 9:30am. We then started working on cutting the video down to the required length.

12:45pm, Sunday 10th: First computer crash. I hit save, then left the room to get a drink, and returned to find the computer mid-restart. Once it was back I re-opened Premiere to the message "This project is corrupted and cannot be opened."

Thankfully an auto-save from 40 mins prior worked fine, and as most of that time was figuring out what to do, it only to 10 mins to recover.

2:00pm, Sunday 10th: Second computer crash. Saw the bluescreen this time. Thankfully the project wasn't corrupted, undoubtedly because I had started backing it up every couple of minutes.

2:45pm, Sunday 10th: Third computer crash, again not corrupting the file, just taking out 10 mins in restart Windows, start up Premiere and load project file.

3:10pm, Sunday 10th: Editing complete from video point of view. Project rendered out and backed up to external device. We could hand this in if needs be, but we wouldn't be too happy about it. We managed to get the short down to 6:39 by trimming a lot of shots quite a lot, and by dropping one scene entirely (sorry Chris!).

4:00pm, Sunday 10th: Sound effects and music added to project, now in state we would be happy to hand it in, but still a couple of minor edits to do if they don't take too long. Frank heads home at this point, confident that I can handle the minor work left to do.

4:45pm, Sunday 10th: Editing done, final render complete, and I start the output to tape process. At the same time I call my mum to wish her a Happy Mother's Day.

5:17pm, Sunday 10th: Tape written, I hop in the car to hand it in in Freemans Bay.

5:47pm, Sunday 10th: I'm the first through the door at the Auckland finishing line, and we're done!

Result: I'm quite pleased with this years work. Frank's writing was solid, with strong material that had a pretty good connection to "the real world". Last years film was quite good, but it existed alone without any connection to real subjects or events. This short referenced a number of real topics, which made it much more relatable to most people.

The filming quality was reasonable. I'm happy with the sound except for one shot where the Rode VideoMic had been unplugged (by me) and I didn't realise it. Still, it wasn't BAD, just not as good.

Lighting was a bit of an issue, as Melita's house was quite dark, with very few lights itself. With the help of a couple of 500W halogen risers, and a reflector, we sorted most of that out pretty well.

One thing I didn't make enough of a deal over was the White Balance. Since we were filming under halogens, I should have rebalanced the colour a few times, but it totally slipped my mind. Thankfully the only shots that it was REALLY noticable were the shots that were intended to be "on TV" in the film, and as such I determined that it could pass.

Overall though, I'm happy. I think we improve with every year, and hopefully the trend continues.

The heat is this Thursday, and hopefully it will be received well by the audience of about 200 other team members and judges.