I Kill Spies

How fricken crazy would this be?
The Extreme Filmmaker 48 hour thing is coming up:

Well, the Summer Screening may be over, but it’s not too early to start thinking about your next film! The next festival is scheduled for February 28, 2004, with a submission deadline of February 6.

Just the thought of it makes me want to go to sleep.

Whenever I hear that phrase I think of 12 Monkeys.

But I’m not talking about releasing zoo animals or destroying human civilization. I’m talking about the 48 Hour Film Project and our entry, “Xtremely Xtreme,” showing tonight at 7pm and 9:30 at the Roxie Theater in SF, and again at 7pm on Wednesday.

The rules for the 48 Hour Film Project in summary:

• Your finished movie has to be 5-10 minutes in length
• you have to write, shoot, and edit in the 48 hour time period
• you have to include the required elements in your short: in the 2003 San Francisco we had:
  • a vinyl record
  • the character Hugh Simon, Bouncer
  • the line “I was lied to, and very much deceived“
• You have to match the genre you pull out of a hat on Friday. Our group got “Mockumentary” and my friend Sam got “Horror.” Personally I was scared to death of “Musical” but as it turns out they merged it with “Western” so you could do either.

Soooo…. we did it. Ben Hardie, my brother Kirby and I developed the story we came up with (based on our required elements) on Friday night. Hardie and I had a finished script around 11 pm, and wrote our schedule for the next day.

We started shooting at around 8 am on Saturday, and shot until about 1 am Sunday. I took a nap-break and then at 6 am I started editing… by this time I was basically a zombie, but enough infrastructure was in place that let me be on autopilot. At around 10 am Kirby, Matt, Ben Scott, and Hardie came over to shoot coverage shots, and Tom to finish the music and integrate it into the rough cut. Dy was slaving away on the credits (easy) and the reality show titles (not so easy).

I’ll log more later… it’s still too close to remember half of what we did. Shac is totally sick now, and I am barely awake as I go in to work. Our premiere is tonight! Woooo!

SAM: so we made the competition
SAM: i mean
SAM: the exhibition
SAM: but not the competition
SAM: pinnacle sucks ass
SAM: we lost the entire edit at 5 PM
SAM: so we had to recut
SAM: it came out nice htough
BRIAN: oh my god that sucks so hard
SAM: yes
SAM: yes it does

…

SHAC: holy crap!
BRIAN: yeah!
SHAC: thats like… monitor-punching level frustration

Continuing on my
observations from the shoot/edit:

• we need a slate. It speeds up editing a LOT.
• If we had both a slate and
  a PA writing down the tape counter readings for
  all the takes, and a check next to the ones the director said were “good,”
  we could have someone loading the clips onto the editing machine while the production is still going. About a third of the time I spent editing this one was getting the clips from the tape onto the machine. This process would give us the DV equivalent of “dailies,” and we would know if there are bad takes while we were still running around shooting. So notice that process actually needs three additional crew- one to note the counter times at the shoot, one to get the samples into the machine, and another to run the tapes back and forth. Ideally you’d have a fourt person doing the slate, but I’m thinking that could be a member of the cast.
• More than one unit (camera, lights, sound and associated crew). I’m a little undecided on this one… it would have been very helpful to get people doing the individual interviews in parallel, but then I don’t have a control over the look of the shot. Maybe if I explicitly storyboarded the shot in extreme shot detail?

Something that’s really interesting: we shot this thing yesterday, all day- it felt like it was 3 am when it was only 8 pm. After a while I wasn’t really paying attention to the script… So much so that reviewing the footage now, I realise we completely missed a very crucial line… thank goodness for “covereage!”

Since we had one male character actor and three female, and the male was the central character, all the girls needed better parts. But to do that, we made them all pretty unpleasant- and all based on really cartoony people I’ve actually known. I’m hoping the effect is not too misogynistic.

• having a camera operator makes it easier for the director to line up the shot and monitor the take
• You need a crew member for every major man-sized piece of equipment- 2 lights, a tripod and a sound boom = 4 crew
• Having someone on “continuity” would be nice- a crew whose sole job is to write down the tape counter at the beginning of each take, marking if the director thought it was “good.” After the shoot at a given location, this continuity person would review the footage for that shot (about 3 min?) to make sure every line was covered.
• Actors: read the line. Think of what it means, what you would think if someone said this to you. Now think about why it makes you think this. Remember the facts of the line. NOW say the line, as the character.

The Mirror Project. People photographing themselves in mirrors. Kind of asinine.
Web link of note: The Mirror Project
(At http://mirrorproject.com/)

Melinda’s band “Fantasia.” I think they are a cover band?
Web link of note: Mel’s band “Fantasia”
(At http://www.fantasiarocks.com)

Ok, it’s actually called Boss Coffee from Suntory. Doesn’t he look like Stalin? Maybe the unholy love-child of Stalin and Bob Dobbs.

Be sure to play the games on the site- there is a typing game and a crazy English game. It sort of reminds me of Wario Ware.

Turns out we were not the only ones to think BOSS looks like Stalin- there is a review on 8 bit joystick which compares him to Stalin as well!

Now we refer to the various flavors by what Stalin is doing in the picture on the can- “Stalin Driving”, “Stalin on the Phone”, “Stalin with Dog”.

Of course I made everyone watch the Ayumi Hamasaki BOSS commercial, where she sings “LOVE” with half the lyrics replaced with “BOSS.”

A friend in Tokyo (a white guy) asked his coworkers about BOSS- they said BOSS reminds them of MacArthur, who is not a negative figure.

Go figure!

Pictured: Stalin Reading Paper, Stalin on Vacation, Stalin Driving

Web link of note: Stalin Coffee
(At http://www.s-boss.com)

Insane. We’re doing the 48 Hour Film Project starting tomorrow… we won’t know what genre our movie is until 7 pm, and we have until 7pm on Sunday to write, film, and edit our 5-10 minute short. We do have a genre list though… I’ve heard some crews are writing snippets for every possible choice, but that seems like cheating somehow.

It turns out there are a bunch of these kinds of contests, including the Extreme Filmmaker 48 Hour Film Festival and the British
48 Hour Film Challenge.

I’ve planned a lot. I have worksheets for storyboards, location schedule, and reel notes. I set up a crew-only blog. We have 10 people on the cast and crew, and everyone is in constant cell phone contact. We have a caterer. We have cameras, laptops, editing systems, decks, a light kit, and rented pro sound gear. I bought one can of every Stalin Coffee that they make. I just can’t help feeling like we’re forgetting something.

Gah. No wonder producers get paid so much.

You know who has a cool site? Greg Pak. Half Korean director. I met him once, he is pretty awesome. He has all kinds of advice on his website, including sample legal releases.