The Deadly Portrait, 2011 48 Hour Film Project Kansas City

The 48 Hour Film Project is an excellent exercise for film makers of all levels of skill and experience. Even if you've never made a video project before in your life, the 48 Hour Film Project will be both an amazing learning experience and a weekend full of memorable challenges.

Basically, it works like this; you show up Friday night, and have no idea what you are going to film. At a certain time (let's say 6:30 p.m.) you draw a genre of film that you (and/or your team) will be making. There are 14 possible genres of films ranging from sci-fi to drama, horror to period piece, and you have no control over what you are going to get. Now if you hate what you drew, you can throw it back and draw again, but your next draw is from a different 8 genres, that may be even more challenging, like family film or silent film. If you make the choice to draw again, you are stuck with what you get. Each team will be making a different type of movie, but in some cases (depending on local rules) more than one team may draw that same genre.

Next, you are told of a random prop to use in your film. Last year ours was "glass", pretty random, and this year we were given "alarm clock". I have read other cities where the items range from "pencil" to "bow tie". But there is only one item required to be in your film, however it must be a used prop, and not just a background set-piece.

The next random thing is a character that you must have in your story. Fortunately, they are typically cross gender, as in Griffin or Gretta Fletcher, or Sam or Samantha Tangent. The interesting part about this element is that this character also has a given occupation. It is often easy enough to include a character name in any story, but when you draw Period Piece, and then have to include an Animal Psychologist, you may find this an additional challenge. All part of the fun!

And finally, there is the random line of dialogue. This could be anything that has ever come out of anyone's mouth, or any thought that you may have ever had, but in this case, it is given to you, not written by you or your team. It has to be used ver-batim, and consecutively by the same character. The only real challenge here is to do it correctly, and to make sure that you don't forget to do it at all.

Aside from the genre of film, each city will draw the same prop, character, and dialogue to use in their films. This makes for a great deal of fun to see how each team works the required elements into their film.

If you have any interest in film making, or are just looking for something fun for you and your friends to do over a crazy weekend, I highly encourage you to check out the 48 Hour Film Project website http://www.48hourfilm.com and look for the upcoming event nearest to you!

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• 48
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• project
• movie
• short
• period
• piece
• genre
• prop
• dialogue
• character
• kansas
• city
• 2011
• 48hfp
• Portrait
• Character (arts)
• forty
• eight
• drama
• weekend
• medieval
• science
• history
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• rube
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• device
• alarm
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[RDJim]

Great job. I particularly like the added bonus artwork on the set.