48 Hours - Then and Now

I thought I'd just write up a quick comparison of last year's 48 experience and this year's - very quick: Last Year We had a sizable team (around 20 or 22) with varying levels of experience. Most of us had very little experience, and none of us had done the 48 before. The writing team consisted of 6 people, the editing team consisted of Norman (who was also the on set technical adviser), and we had an at best nebulous idea of who actually wanted to act in the film. We stayed up writing until 4am Friday, at which time Hix took the 14 page script (already hacked down from 22 pages) home to cut it down to 7 pages by 8am. Meeting at Jenni and Lee's, 8am Saturday. Big huslte to get costumes and props sorted, then meet at first location at 10.30am? Filming at first location until about 12.30pm. Shift to second location, lunch provided by Luke and Sam, filming at second location until 5pm. Break for dinner and LARP. Post-LARP, one hour to shoot a scene at Turnbull house. Many extras to wrangle. Chased out by security guard ata bout 12.05am. Sunday meet up at Botanical Gardens for more shooting. Norm editing on set. Wrap shooting at noon Sunday, back to Norm's. Norm, Jenni and Steve disappear downstairs with very strict instructions not to be interrupted. Time passes. Promised rough cut does not appear. Deadline looms. Output to tape begins around 6.40pm? Deadline missed by 2.41. This Year Slightly larger team (mostly the same). Most of the team now have one 48 under their belt. Writing team = 3 people. Editing team = 2. Post-production team = 4 people, which is very cool. Script finished at a similar time, but looks like it was meant to be 7 pages, not a cut down 22 page idea. Slight chaos at Indigo City in the morning, but enough people knew what to do from last year for it to work out. It would have been easy for some things to slip through the cracks - I think a more organised meeting with public read-through of the script would really help here. At location by 10.30. One location for whole shoot = GOOD. Rain + outdoor shoot = suxxors. Filming commences, hampered by rain. Progress before lunch is slow. Junior editor on set ready to run tape back to Indigo city, but this doesn't happen until 5pm. Filming after lunch is good, though I wonder whether we could have worked faster. We certainly picked up the pace on Sunday morning. Tape run back to Indigo city at 5pm. Shooting stops when light fails, around 5.30pm. No LARP. Matt and Norman capture footage and assemble the beginning and end of the film. Some work is done on the credits. Credits should be finished and viewable by the end of Saturday, so errors can be picked up and fixed on Sunday. Sunday morning features shooting on location in three stages: 1 - First shots, taken back by Matt at 9am (regardless of progress). 2 - remaining dialogue shots, brought back by Jenni as soon as they're done (before noon). 3 - stunt sequence, brought back by Hix as soon as it's done (before 2pm). Simultaneous editing taking place at Indigo city - Svend and Norman working on music (very successfully) and sound effects. This continues while Matt captures footage and assembles scenes, then hands them on to Norm. Rough cut complete by 3.30pm. Jenni and Hix view and make suggestions. I think a safety tape or .avi back-up at this point would be awesome - or even plugging the camera output into a vcr so that it can be recorded to vhs while Jenni and Hix are watching it, then taken upstairs and watched. This could take zero minutes (the vhs option) or about 5 minutes (save to avi) or longer (up to 30 minutes - backup to tape). Probably the avi option would be best? If someone has a dvd recorder they could plug the camera into that and make a dvd in real time. The other possibility is to backup to usb hard drive, which could then be taken to another (non-network) editing station and viewed/rendered/output. Fine tuning continues until 4.30pm. Pressure applied to Norman to get him to output safety tape - 5pm is the deadline. Norman still making changes at 5.10pm. Threatened with stick. Bribed with food. Eventually relents, safety tape complete around 5.40pm. View safety tape, make notes as to fixes needed. Final adjustments, export to tape at 6.15pm. Computer crashes. Back on line by 6.30, output to tape complete by about 6.37. Tape checked and dispatched. Relax, celebrate. Mammoth Improvements Made (Pimp my Pachyderm) The tape was on time. We had a safety cut. We had an assisstant editor. The music was awesome. We knew what needed to be done most of the time. The script was tighter. We had t-shirts (neat but not essential). NZRaG was great as a communication tool, and Svend's fly-on-the-wall updates were brilliant. For Next Time I'd like to see a cut of the film released to the cast and crew as early as possible. They know the script, were on set, and have worked damn hard. They might give valuable feedback (via suggestions box), and deserve to see the fim ASAP regardless. Finding a quick way to achieve this would be boss. Organised Saturday meeting, whiteboard of shooting schedule, public read-through of script, scene summaries on the wall. A practice shoot, any time during the year. I'd love to see our team tackle one or two of the really tough genres - musical, war etc. I know I learned a huge amount from each of the 48 experiences, and would love to learn more.