WINNER! -- Best Special Effects (The Celeveland 48 Hour Film Project 2011).
Who will save you from yourself?
THE BACK STORY:
After our entry in the Philly 48 Hour Film Project in 2010 ('The Song of the South Trail', find it here:
http://youtu.be/99QeGkQcIFc).
The guys (Gary Joseph & Mike Nicholson) and I committed ourselves to making this a yearly project. But, as these things go, 'life' mounted against us and we could not do Philly 2011.
Later in the Summer, Gary and Mike spotted the (somewhat) nearby Cleveland 48 Hour project and signed up. It was touch and go whether I could make it (I literally decided the night before).
On a Friday morning in late July at 5:00 AM, we set out for Cleveland. Made great time and were checked into our hotel by 2:00 PM. Enough time for a nap before heading to 'festival headquarters' (aka 'some bar')
Time for a little explanation of the 48 Hour Film Project. It's basically a series of festivals that run all over the world where teams have just 48 hours to make a 4-7 minute film. The team's picks their genre out of a hat and then all teams have to have the same prop, character and line of dialogue. This is what we ended up with:
Genre -- Drama
Prop - Headphones
Character - Dexter Taylor, Psychology Professor
Line of Dialogue - "Nothing is mundane."
Our genre, 'Drama', was pretty much the last thing we wanted to end up with. Our theory being, that with a 4-7 minute film it's easier to produce a comedy and work on some laughs from the audience, then a Drama where it's tough to get an audience 'emotionally involved' in such a short time. Right after the drawing we stopped at a steak house for our 'brainstorming' session. And it went slowly. We kept (naturally) going back to the comedy thing. But finally, a light at the end of the tunnel. Instead of keeping the audience smiling with laughter, let's keep their eyes focused on the screen with some well done (but 'old school' special effects).
With that, we went back to the hotel and started writing. And is was even slower going! By 3 AM we finally had half the script done. The 'roof top' scenes. We knew we would be shooting that first, so went for some well deserved sleep. Next morning shot that, and then wrote the rest of the script (the therapist office) to be shot Saturday night.
As tough as the writing was (in comparison to 'The Song of the South) the editing (to me) seemed to go more smoothly. It was no real problem to have the finished product delivered by seven.
TECHNICAL STUFF (you know you love this part):
The movie was shot in HD with the Panasonic AG-HMC150P (I would recommend it to anyone!) and edited on our three apples running Final Cut Pro.
The title (like last year's 48 hour project 'The Song of the South Trail') was a late 'discovery'. As we threw titles around (while we were editing). Two things came out. It turns out the building we used was at 'Rockwell Avenue', which is a strong name and the idea (we used last year with 'South Trail') to pay some sort of homage to a classic movie could only help with 'movie type' judges.
I remembered a classic French short film (that was purchased as an episode of the 'Twilight Zone') called 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'. It shared a man at a great height facing his death. Right there, the decision was made, and 'An Occurrence at Rockwell Avenue' was born.
REFLECTION:
Trading interesting special effects for laughs was a great discovery and really worked to our advantage. I would be happy to do it again. As impressed as the audience was with the roof top shots, the toughest special effects shot is the twinning of Mike at the end of the film. The car passes behind BOTH Mikes at 4:40. Check it out. A really nice effect. And tough enough that we shot an alternate take just in case it didn't work. I do think the title should probably have been 'An Occurrence at Rockwell Ave' (rather than Avenue) to more closely mime the cadence of 'Owl Creek Bridge'. The reason we decided not to is Ave doesn't look right without a period, and the period doesn't look right in this title. Oh well.
SIDE NOTES:
We were actually 'Top 3' in four categories; 'Writing', 'Editing', 'Special Effects', and the 'Audience Choice' Award for our screening (which is all the more impressive as only Gary and Mike were there to vote for our film -- the rest of the packed house was there for other films).
Another shout to our 'ghost' composer as Billy Franks' song 'Angel at Your Elbow' fits perfectly for the theme.
In 2010 we fielded our team for the Philadelphia 48 Hour Project, that can be found here:
http://youtu.be/99QeGkQcIFc
Thanks for stopping by,
m mccleery
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Yearlyby TheMediatech328 views
Love it!
MrBillyfranks 6 months ago