48 hours to write, film, edit, and get no sleep

It was intense. It was tiring. It was extremely fun. It was the SATO 48 hour film festival in Springfield, MO. Hundreds of teams and thousands of people competed. I was one of them.

The objective: create a 5 minute film in 48 hours or less.

The catch: We were given a specific set of objects and ideas that we had to include in the film.

The rules:

1. All work on the film must happen within the 48 hours.
2. The final video has to be less than 5 minutes.
3. The film must include a specific 3D printed object twice (In my film, it’s the object that we used as a cup handle)
4. We were given a riddle to include in the film.
5. There were a couple of other rules that are hard to explain. Basically the rules made it so that people wouldn’t be able to work on it before the 48 hours.

 

Check out my film here:

 

 

As this was my second year participating, I knew that it’s not as easy as it seems. The previous year, I finished the film with 10 minutes to spare. The deadline is extremely strict and you can’t be a minute late. I had to export the film on my laptop while one of my friends drove to the drop off point. Despite me only getting 4 hours of sleep for the weekend, it still was almost not enough time.

This year was going to be different. I was determined to finish it early and also get some decent sleep. I ended up accomplishing one of those goals.

It started Friday night when we were given the Inspiration Package. It was tough. The idea I had going into the weekend wasn’t going to work with the objectives we were given. So, I started fresh and came up with the idea of doing a split screen film.

I wanted to try something different. Something never been done before. It was going to be extremely hard but hopefully worth it. I wanted to show a burglar breaking into a house from both the perspectives of the home owners and the burglar…at the same time. Plus I wanted to do it with continuous takes and no cuts.

 

 

Planning the film

The timing had to be perfect. SPOILER- When the wife comes home and unlocks the door knob, it has to shake from both angles at the same time. This is especially hard when the takes where 3+ minutes long.

To pull off the timing, I developed a plan in Excel. Every movement of the characters was planned out to the second. On the first night of the challenge, I walked through all of the actions with my timer in hand. I saw how long it took and recorded the time. It was a logistical nightmare.

Then, I recorded my voice. You might wonder why I did this. I promise it’s not because I love the sound of my voice. I really don’t.

Anyway, I read aloud the actions of the characters. This way, while we filmed, I could play back the actions with the exact same timing. The actors had to listen to my voice through speakers in the room that would tell them when they needed to be at certain places at certain times. This was a major challenge because they had to act as a part of the scene and not simply react to the voice. I think they did a great job.

Here’s both clips of me giving directions for the actors while we shot. I made a different one for each angle. If you play them together, you can see how they line up.

 

 

 

Another challenge was sound. Because my voice was in the background of every take, we had to do ADR for everything. With only 48 hours, doing the foley and ADR was tough. This is probably the film’s biggest weakness.

 

 

The day of filming

On the day of filming, we realized that it would be nearly impossible to do the film in one continuous shot. There were a ton of issues with timing and the logistics of going inside/outside and driving in the car. So, we decided to hide a couple of cuts. There are 3 hidden cuts in the film. Comment below if you think you can find them!

After 7 hours of setting up the house for lighting and set dressing, and another 6 hours of filming, we finally finished. Now it was time to edit.

 

Editing the film

The editing process began on Saturday night. I first worked on hiding the cuts. I knew that if I didn’t get the cuts right, then the film would suffer. It took hours of After Effects work, but eventually I got a result I was happy with.

Next, I worked on the timing. Even with all of the hard work we did beforehand, the timing still wasn’t perfect. I had to use time remapping in After Effects to match the timing. Unfortunately, there are a couple of times where it is noticeable if you are looking for it. If you look at the time when the burglar enters the closet, the burglars shot is sped up by at least 600%.

Finally, after finishing the timing and hidden cuts, I was able to do the sound design. My composer dropped out last minute, so I ended up having to make the music. I am not much of a sound designer, so this was definitely an interesting process. I broke out the guitar and found a chord structure I liked. Then I added a stack full of effects until it felt atmospheric and ominous. Overall, I’m really proud of how it turned out given the lack of time and resources I had.

Here’s the soundtrack of the film:

 

 

Final thoughts

I would love to make this film again when I have more time. 48 hours was simply not enough to bring it from a decent film to an excellent film. It was a great proof of concept that will hopefully inspire others to try the idea.

If you are ever in the Springfield area, I highly encourage you to participate in next year’s challenge. It is an amazing community of filmmakers that truly love the process. If you aren’t in Springfield, maybe find another similar film challenge. It’s a lot of work, but the sense of accomplishment is something you will never forget.