A few weeks ago I flew down to Wellington to rejoin the rest of my team for the 48 Hours Film Competition . We lost a few members this year, but we gained a couple of new members who both turned out to be great additions.
What Went Right
In previous years we have shared directing duties around. This gives everyone a go, but leads to lots of time wasting discussion. This year I directed the whole thing apart from a couple of shots and it seemed to go a lot smootherI am not claiming I am a genius director, just that having one person in charge of the shots means less wasteful discussion.
Our editing tools were a lot better this year as well. Last year we edited on an old MacBook and the final render took almost 3 hours. This year Bevan's up-to-date desktop could render faster than realtime, which let us check our work. On top of that, this year's film is edited much more aggressively giving it a sense of pace that our previous efforts have lacked.
We had access to two cameras this year, which allowed us to shoot sitcom style, from two angles at the same time. We worked so fast that we managed to get the film in early!
What Went Wrong
Audio is still a problem. Dialogue was recorded by the camera's built in mic at the time, with no replacement or overdubbing. It could be generously described as "OK". The songs were recorded using a USB headset with no working gain control, with the microphone placed as far away from the singer's mouths as possible. Next year I really would like to get ahold of a proper microphone.
Much of the film has a moody blue cast to it. Possibly this was a stylistic choice by the director to give the scenes a cool, film noir tone. Or possibly I screwed up the white balance right from the start and didn't notice. Who can tell?
There was no free beer at the finish line this year, so our efforts in arriving early were wasted.
You have waited long enough:
(You can also watch it at the 48 Hour Screening Room, along with the other films we competed against)
The reviews have been mostly kind. We didn't make it out of the heats, but there is always next year...