Photograph courtesy of Al Vitale
There are no writers' strikes for the filmmakers of the 48 Hour Film Project, and there are no divas pouting in their trailers. There's no time.
The annual worldwide challenge for which "you literally write, shoot, edit and deliver a movie, all within 48 hours," as Doug Whyte explains, has become immensely popular among St. Louis' low-budget filmmaking community. Whyte, the producer for the local staging of the contest, reports that 72 separate crews turned in their 3- to 7-minute films last year, and he expects even more in '08. (Audiences can view all of the films on June 10 through 12 and the finalists on June 19 at the Tivoli Theatre.)
How do the teams divide up their time to create these films? On Friday night you get assigned your genre, and you get a character, a line and a prop that each team has to use. Most people write all night Friday, then shoot all day Saturday and usually edit Sunday — although now, with laptops, a lot of people start editing right there on the set.
What are the genres? There are 14 different genres. People will have to do either horror; comedy; romance; detective/cop; drama; fantasy; film de femme, which means it has to have a strong female lead; historical fiction; holiday film; musical or Western; road movie; sci-fi; spy; and thriller/suspense.
This sounds like so much fun. It's a lot of fun, and I think that's why it's grown so big in St. Louis. You might work on a short film that takes you six months to a year, and you're constantly up at night thinking you should change this or do that, but this is straight from the gut, and you're doing it with your friends.
Describe some of the memorable films. The first year there was a film called "Ice Cream Man" by Doveed Linder which totally blew me away. It was a horror film about a hardware store owner whose wife had been murdered, and people were coming back from the dead. There was another one by Aaron Crozier called "Radiation Always Wins" that was just hilarious. It was about a superhero who was a total drunk and a total loser.
What is the frenzy of teams turning in their finished films at the wire like? Oh man, it has been as dramatic as it could possibly be. Usually they're coming in with laptops still burning the DVD. Two years ago a team came running up, and we were doing our countdown for the last 10 seconds, we're going "ten, nine, eight," and the guy came through the door and threw the envelope with the tape in it at me — and I caught it at "one."
