48 hours 2015 - Film Competition - My entry Review

Why Won't she Love me? - The story behind the story...

FRIDAY 1st May

7pm. From the third floor balcony of AUT, LJ and myself stared down at the AV screen on the ground floor of the centre. A huge crowd of people were there, waiting for the start of the 48 hour film festival (www.48hours.co.nz). Teams have 48 hours to make a short film that's no longer than seven minutes, includes a prop, character and character trait, line of dialog and camera technique all supplied by the competition leaders, to be included in the finished film. Nobody is paid, if you have A list actors, they must be volunteers to stay in the spirit of the game.

Professionals, semi professionals, amateurs and first timers all enter. And it's normally quite fun/stressful :)

When I arrived there, LJ already had our case of V energy drinks (one of the sponsors) and the number 4 in black marker across it. When the genre's are announced, we are assigned whatever 4 equals. We watched the intro, the line we had to use 'Oh really", the character 'Harper' -thoughtless, the technique -Match cut/ match dissolve and then the genre list...

This year we were assigned ROM COM. Wow. This will be fun? I hadn't entered a team in this competition since 2011, and I've eatched the odd rom com but they are always quite tacky, the last interesting one I watched was About Time which was quite smart...LJ was just as excited, ieas were running rampant but we were cautious too -we had seen some big crews at the opening event and it would basically be Her and I running ours.

 It's a short film. It has to have a great start, middle and end, have a stong finish, not necessarily a twist but something memorable to walk out with. And each line has to have a purpose. And it has to be a rom-com. Fish out of water then fishes together or couples that should be together already but something always comes up. what to do? Humor doesn't come from the lines but from the characters playing it straight. Hmm.

On the drive home from the event, A nice 20 minute cruise, I came up with an idea....The story should be of a young man, Dillon, who shows up to pick up a date he's never seen but exchanged messages heaps online, but somehow they don't really gel in real life, the fun and games from this result in a bad mix (the laughs) and a resolution (the twist/finish)

That night I stayed up and banged out a script as best I could.

FIRST CHALLENGE

I txted my actress I had organized a week before as she had said she wanted to be a part of the festival and looking for a team. She didn't txt back. I realised then that the first challenge of the weekend was at hand. I had organized a second actress Kat (who was already part of another team) to play a minor role if she could but that would depend on her team, I txted her to found out they were shooting at a beach miles away so a Saturday shoot was out of the question for her but she was super keen so I mentally penned in a Sunday am shoot. But that still left the main part, I frantically facebooked and txted past actresses for a replacement, everyone had either been too old for the part, busy with another team, our team was below their standards, not interested. Luckily, LJ said as a last resort she was happy to act so for our film it was to be the directors acting as well as editing and writing....frustrating as it was, I was comforted by the fact that it wasn't my first time taking part in this circus. 

I txted my actors, and ended up calling them, they wanted a meeting time but without an actress was hard to come up with one on the spot, decided to tell them beach 11am so done with it and could finish on Saturday as normal rule for me is friday write, saturday shoot/cut. Sunday edit/render/hand in.

The original actress did end up messaging me back, she wasn't in Auckland this weekend and didn't understand it was this weekend. Again, something for me to work on. Next year, I was telling LJ, we should have like 20 actresses/actors on call. And some crew. Cos this year this also meant the wife would have to do camerawork for us. Which luckily for me, she didn't mind..too much.

SATURDAY

Saturday came around, bright and early 6am I was on the computer checking messages having gone to bed 1am, trying for last minute actresses. I txted everyone that we would meet at cockle bay at11am and start shooting, the first scene involved a small action bit as my guy tried to impress the girl with his heroics, only fr it to end pearshaped. Check out the location :)

Been here maybe 3 months before, rainchecked it for a future shoot lol The actors got caught in traffic and not having a GPS found it quite hard to find so ended up getting here at 2pm, during the meantime we shot the beach walk scene and then just waited, trying to plan what else we could do.

After finishing the scene at around 4.30, we went to Maccas for lunch/dinner then went home as lighting was gone and deciding I would edit everything we had tonight. Tomorrow we would then film the montage scene as well as the final scene when Kat arrives. Went to sleep at like 2am, but happy that half the editing would be done. Tried to sleep, was wide awake/worrying/planning/imagining this going downhill fast.. we only had 2 and a half minutes of edited footage... On time so far...

SUNDAY

Lj and Kat met us at out place 8am and we got to it, shooting the interior scenes, then outside scenes on the street.

Apart from dealing with the odd kids in the background or lawnmowers and aeroplanes it went well, especially bread throwing scene. I was a bit concerned with set ups but that's filming isn't it, everything takes twice as long as you think in your head. If it wasn't for this stupid deadline of 7p tonight then it would be OK, but it's the whole point and time was running out. The ducks were happy though, fed them alot of bread haha.

After we finished we raced around a couple of parks and places I had in mind for the final scenes (making sure we got the match cut shot of shell turning to bread - you'll see) then back to my place at 3pm to start editing what we had shot today. It seemed impossible but the very word means 'I'M POSSIBLE' . So I went to work the normal way, importing the raw files into Premiere and reviewing the footage, cutting out the takes, choosing the best ones and trying to make the cuts smooth. LJ sourced some soundtracks and eventually we cut together the short film. We found out that the mornigns shots before we went outside had no sound. It appears the mic app was loose, practically kicked myself for not checking as meant first bit had to be soundless as no time to reshot. LJ and I revoiced our bits but Kat was long gone so will have to get here to resound her bits before I upload here to youtube for you all..Heats version is on the 48hour website.  frantically tried to add some fight sfx, missed a couple but got the main ones in there I think.

 Enough is enough, we're out of time and we started rendering at 6pm, I still hadn't time to watch the final edit, Just checked the cuts and hoped for the best as this laptop isn't super powerful so can't watch things in realtime. I'd find out what it turned out like later that night.

SO with laptop rendering and an estimated finish time of an hour (remember deadline at 7pm so cutting it close) we got in the car amazing race styles and headed to the city centre to hand in what we hoped was a just in time finish. Took as ages to find a park, meanwhile the wife has the laptop open telling me how long its taking when I ask, we find a park about 10 minutes away and jog down the street, holding the laptop, praying it would go faster. When we get to the hand in event there are hundreds of people, we find a table and watch the rendering time. 3 minutes on the clock. 4 minutes left to render. We're done, this year is over...

It finished, I put it on the USB and LJ handed in our finished copy 5 minutes after the deadline, exhausted, proud, relived and battleweary - but this at least means we can see it on the big screen at the heats. Hope people at least laugh...

 THURSDAY (heat night)
It was raining, but Melody and I arrived at Academy cinemas excited/nervous to see it our finished short film in a room full of strangers. During the heats when our short went on screen (5th of 12 shorts to show) I remember sinking into my seat, I want to be an actor but seeing myself up there is still a bit wow - did I do that? Some of the sound was off (again, I never saw the final edit before handing it in) so hard to hear the whisper bits, and missed the kick sfx.

I was happy 'Why won't she love me?" told a story and was simple enough for people to follow and get with. People laughed at most of the scenes that we aimed for laughs so that was good as our genre was a rom com and my biggest concern was getting laughs, I'm an action man, laughing's for villians ;). Competition was tough that night, it seemed everyone in auckland knows how to shoot a film lol but our stuff was just as good so relieved.... 

Anyway, left the cinema with the team who seemed happy with the result on screen, so happy for the team, they worked there ass off and it shows up there, really proud of it and our weekend from hell, now back to The Bulletlist webseries and getting that marathon done and completed :)

REVIEWS BELOW

Below are the reviews. Critics critique so cest la vie, We're happy with what we got all things considered...

'Why she won't love me.' by Dark Pictures

Team name: 

Dark Pictures

Film name: 

Why she won't love me.

Genre: 

Rom Com

Heat: 

5

City: 

Auckland

Average rating: 

2.1625

Your rating: None Average: 2.2 (4 votes)

Dogs Breakfast

3.01

This fell into the awkward romcom category for me. There was some amusing stuff in there but wasn't really tight enough to pull it off completely.
Next year they could improve their film with more attention to sound, it was hard to hear some of the dialogue, but this is what this competition is all about.

spanky_the_dolphin

3.01

I think the actual title for this one was 'Why Won't She Love Me', but never mind.
I think this film was hindered a lot by it's technical issues - mostly the badly captured / mixed audio. There were quite a few lines that were just inaudible.
The thing that stuck out most to me though was the story, or more specifically the ending. I felt like it really hurt the film when the guy ran away from the girl he'd just accidentally taken on a date. They were just warming to one another and it seemed like such a weird decision for him to make. It made the audience think less of him as a character and bad for the girl he left behind who we'd spent the whole film getting to know.

Liam Maguren

2.03

Technical woes aside, I wasn't really into the story on offer. The two never "clicked" on the date - she was downright repulsed by his dwebishness - making me want them to break it off rather than root for their happiness together. When the ending tried to sell you on a potential bond, I just couldn't buy it.
I enjoyed the robbery scene, however, That was well done.

Rooks and Knights

4.06

A little shakey on technical and story, however I still liked that they tried to push for us to see a different side of the traditional "romantic comedy" genre, I was sure if the cringe moments were intentional or accidental but I liked the risk.

Nick Depree

2.03

Decent concept, but it wasn't really sold by the actors or script, I didn't quite buy why the 'wrong' girl would go with him in the first place, why she would change her mind quickly at the end, or why the guy went after the 'right' girl anyway. The robbery scene was done quite well and the actors there were amusing. Sound quality definitely let it down, making some lines very hard to understand. Not a bad effort, but clear directions to work on next time.

 ________________________

Thanks for reading the blog and hoped you could take something from it, I will post the link to the video in the next blog :)

Matt.

The Bullet List (Day Four - Boris/Gabriel scenes part one)

So today Friday 20th finally arrived, this was an important shooting day as we would do the majority of Boris's scenes played by the excellent Walter Marsters and Steve got to perfect his acting chops with more drama with Gabriel.

Walter Marsters as BORIS and Steve heke as GABRIEL today. Awesome!

 The night before the shoot I made sure I made a shot list so the day would run smoothly and pretty much stuck to it, a couple of inspired moemnts but you will see, as long as you can follow the story the camera works not too important as long as it shows the reactions and actions at the right time :) Pic below :)

I rearranged the living room of my house to make it look like it was lived in by Boris and had scouted a great location for a meet the day before, a man made park across the road from my work!

 I checked it had ducks or it wasn't going to work, sure enough to my surprise it did have ducks and plenty of them!


After a mix up in meeting times and locations we finally arrived together on the location of the park scene. And sure enough as Murphy's law would have it a tractor mower was scouring the lawns. We shot nonetheless, aint nothing going to bring us down, still, a great lesson for the future :) Apart from me saying action! And the ducks Quacking on cue before my actors could speak, the shoot went smoothly. A pic below :)

Arriving at my house we quickly got into characters and shot three scenes in our 'set'. I have taken reference photos for continuity for next shot when we shoot the finale fight so lets hope we keep it similar, after all, I have to live in it :) Below is one example of a shot today, great shoot with good results :)

On the way to pick up my wife from work my car, lost power, I was on the motorway doing 100 while everyone else was doing the same and suddenly I couldn't accelerate anymore. The gas just went. I was in the 'fast' lane, 4 lines from the side of the road where I needed to be and there was a big truck (read missile) in my next lane and a cop in the next. I had to bear grylls my 'descent' as I coasted and avoid these cars and pull over.

The cop didn't seem to notice/care and I was so happy I had charged my phone before hand and that it was a payweek and had some cash for AA. No better time to sign up for roadside assistance than now right? haha. Life. God giveth God tketh away. On the bright side got my footage shot and car worked fine then, and dont really need it this weekend as can walk to work (not ideal but smile)

Picking up my baby :|

Final Destination. Now the fix up begins...

Anyway, that's the only news for today really. Keep you posted, looking forward to the casting the lead/solo female of our series (some good responses so far) and shooting the action scenes and getting this finished by early may for release in June :)

Below is a pic I snapped while shopping with the wife at Sylvia Park, thought it was amusing to catch a dog in the act trying to drive while owner away, dog's expression was one of 'hey, wait! its not what it looks like!' Funny lol.

Have a great day, see you next post!!

Getting scheduling done for Bulletlist shoot and Kung Fu Elliot

The Bullet List project is finally underway. All day at work I'm trying figure out what I can do on this project when I get home. Been reading 'Three feet from Gold' by the Napoleon Hill foundation and Greg S reid, its full of inspirational stuff and living your passion, so it's great I'm back to my old habits of staying inspired via reading/watching others who have achieved their dreams and it feels nice to get some motivation back, I was suffering from self doubt there for a little minute.

"The knowing. There is a big difference between believing something and knowing."

I know I can be an action star. So what am I waiting for? I've got to get out there and start training again, get mingling and network with other creatives, take any extra jobs I can, sign up for a real acting agency and do what it is I'm really here to do. Customer service pays my bills but my soul doesn't feed on cash. With that said I'll share the little progress I've made since my last post here on the project.

I've copied and pasted the six episode scripts together into one celtx file and it turns out this project will be an hour long!! (that's if the one page equals one minute of screen time ratio plays out, it won't, the action scenes will be cut much longer). Needless to say, for a simple project this still turned out to be something ambitious. This will be the longest project I've ever completed myself but I'll finally have something to call my own!. This is exactly what I need to do.

Below is a screenshot of what my breakdown looks like for when I was figuring what scenes to shoot when so I can try make this achievable. I worked it out to be sixteen different locations.

And below is the first page of my script. Proof :)

Now that I have my jacket for the character of Mark Maxwell, I just need to find some nice kicks and design a simple Tshirt (so I can sell it via my merch site for any enthusiasts but also to stay unique) for him to wear.

Next for the project is the intended camera shots (Shooting script) Exact locations -Might get a camera on my next day off and go on a photo spree :) And then figure out some equipment. Sound is my biggest issue, and half the picture so a biggie!

This weekend I just realxed otherwise, caught up opn The Transporter TV series, definately not statham but an enteratining show nonetheless with some good action scenes, one liners, hot chicks, explosions and car stunts. Bought the wife a bike today and put it together, nothing more empowering than building something, even if I am following instructions ;) Tomorrow We are goign to watch a documentary I saw a trailer for since it's playign at NZ film festival this year. It's a docu on someone similar to myself. He's a big fan of chuck norris and 70's action films (like me lol) and canada has no action stars so he decided he would become one and has dedicated his life to following his dream, it looks funny and sad at the same time but hope for his sake he found happiness. I wanted to watch this in case there are any mistakes I can learn from and to stay realistic with myself. I know the chances of making it are small, but there's still that chance.

Anyway, the trailer is below for those who might be able to find it on netflix or something like that, til next time amigos!