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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
