The 48 Hour Film Project

This weekend, Indianapolis hosted its third annual 48 Hour Film Project. For those of you not "in the know", it's basically a festival that is held literally around the world in which teams of film crews and their actors compete to make a 4-7 minute film in 48 hours. The word "exhausting" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Here's how it works. All registered teams (and all 30 spots were filled this year) meet on Friday night at 7 p.m. to draw which genre they will be filming (e.g. drama, romance, sci-fi, western or musical, comedy, detective/cop, etc.). Then, all teams are given a character they must use in the film, a prop that must be seen, and a line of dialogue that must be included VERBATIM in order for the submission to be accepted. Failure to include all of the required elements results in a disqualified submission (this is to ensure that no work was created or filmed prior to the festival).

Once teams have all the required information, they set out to write the script, shoot all the necessary scenes, edit the footage and add any musical score into a 5-7 minute film, and submit that film by 7:30 p.m. that Sunday (48 hours after the start). Oh yeah, and if the film is delivered late (including one minute after the official deadline, it's disqualified too).

And now that you know the background to how the festival works, I just wanted to say that we had a fabulous time shooting our scenes on Saturday. I worked with a new crew this year and they were all amazing. The story was really funny, the director, Rick Uskert, and his crew were awesome, and I was working alongside some really great actors to boot.

Our team's genre was detective/cop. I had to laugh because that was the same genre I worked on last year with a completely different crew. (You can see last year's film "Cassandra" on my YouTube page.) The prop we had to use this year was a ball, the character we had to use was Dr. Shirley Kane, a psychiatrist, and the line we had to use was, "I'm not talking to you."

I'm so eager to see the finished product because the story was such a riot. It was centering on two detectives who have to find out what happened to the Sarge's best friend, Officer McGuffin (his dog). I didn't have a major role in this one, but it was still fun, nonetheless. I played the Sarge's secretary for a scene and answered phone calls from the two detectives. I won't give away the ending, but I will post a link to the film as soon as I have a copy of it.

All of the finished films will be screened this Thursday, August 6th in Indianapolis at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Our film is in the first grouping of 15 being shown at 7 p.m., and the the second set of 15 films will be shown at 9:30 p.m. It is $10 per person to attend one session (15 films), or $15 to attend both sessions (all 30 films). I will be there for our film, and if I can swing it with my babysitter, I'd like to stay for both sessions because some really good friends of mine have films in the second session. It's so much fun to see what other crews have done with their genres and how they used the required elements in their films.

If you have time on Thursday, I strongly urge you to come to the screenings. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll groan, but most of all, you'll have a great time.