Wednesday, September 10, 2014

A 48-hour adventure

This past weekend was completely insane. Hours of intense concentration alternating with hours of waiting, not enough sleep, fast meals, quick costume changes, and a very ill-timed migraine... yes, I was involved in a 48 Hour Film Project! It's a kind of film-making endurance event, where your team finds out on the Friday evening what genre you'll be doing (drawn at random), and you're given a set line of dialogue, prop, and character to include in your 4-7 minute film. You then have until the Sunday evening to write the script, film it, add music and sound effects, edit it, and get two digital copies to headquarters before the deadline.

Celena had put together a fantastic team of film students, musicians and assorted skilful folk. The music team (the three Lewises and me) had expected to be needed only on the Saturday to put together some background music and whatever else was needed. However, the genre we drew was 'Musical'.
So once we all got over our shock and dismay, the writers started writing and the composers started composing...

The music team set up a 'lair' in a bedroom at our team's base. Laptops and keyboards and instruments were everywhere! I recorded some vocals for one of the musical numbers, plus a drawn-out high-C for a sound effect. Chloe's amazing new microphone was a huge help:

A most excellent microphone
 
Chloe and Willie composing amidst the chaos

I hadn't expected to actually appear on camera, but I did! We were filmed playing our instruments for the film's intro, and we appear in another couple of scenes as well. I was a bit freaked out at first, but got over it pretty quick. :)

Being filmed for the intro (photo by Celena)

I've now seen the finished film, and it's both fun and funny - yay! There are definitely a few things we would have tweaked if we'd had more time, but on the whole it's a damn good effort.

I can't wait to go and see all the films on the big screen in two weeks time. We're pretty confident we have a shot at some of the prizes. Fingers crossed! ;)

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