Well here is an unexpected bit of awesomeness. My film for the San Francisco 48 Hour Film Project, The Yesterage, was recently recognized as a Finalist in the 2010 Image Gazer Film Festival. Saweeet!
Also, I don't think I ever announced the awards that we won from the actual contest. I wish we had some photos from the awards screening. We pulled home 4 awards...
Best Directing "The Yesterage" by 4QR98 Pass
Best Editing "The Yesterage" by 4QR98 Pass
Best Choreography "The Yesterage" by 4QR98 Pass
Best Film Runner-Up "The Yesterage" by 4QR98 Pass
For us this is awesome. I want to thank my team of 3 other people for their work on this film. Alex Hersler, Ben Tuller, and Nick Markham. I still think that the film we accomplished, in the time that was given to us and with such a small crew, is pretty spectacular. So major props to team 4QR98 Pass! BEWARE: You will most likely be seeing another Nellius movie soon.
My buddies and I have been doing this 48 Hour Film Racing thing for a little over a year now, and we love it. Going into it, I always dread the amount of work that is going to be required to meet my standards, because it often comes at the expense of sleep. But at the end of the 48 hours, when my body is numb and teeth are chattering from the absurd amount of caffeine in me, I feel an incredible sense of accomplishment. These weekends are by far the most productive weekends I'll ever have. In the words of Ben Tuller, who is on my team, "These are weekends I will actually remember." Troof.
Here was the assignment for this years SF race. Genre: Fantasy (Awesome) Character: GG Cook the Consultant Prop: A Plate Line: "You're not going to believe what happened."
So, ya... I mean, our whole approach to these weekends is about having fun. We. Just. Want. To. Have. Fun. And we definitely do. But you're still probably asking "What in the world was that?" We'll leave that up for interpretation. Of course, one clue might be to watch the video that comes after this one, Nellius 5000 and Zupitron: Ultimate Battle Buddies.
The cool thing about this movie is that we made this entire thing in 48 Hours, WITH 4 PEOPLE! Our actors were our crew. That was it. We're extremely proud of our ability to make fun films look amazing, with the tiny crew that we have.
The only big difference between this online version and the version we turned in is the sound design. It's now properly mixed and I added a bunch of extra sound effects. We had all of the grading and editing done before hand, which is pretty incredible to think that we color graded in a 48 hour film. IMO, definitely worth it.
One question that was asked at the screening was, "How much of this did we prepare ahead of time?" The answer is, none of it. We fortunately had loads of props and locations from films we have made in the past. We shot this on a Canon EOS 7D with a very basic lens kit. Nothing too fancy... (we didn't get to utilize my macro lens). Hope you enjoyed it. I'm really hoping we're in the running for cinematography this year!
If you prefer to think of me as a classy guy, do not watch this video. If you prefer to think of me as a wedding filmmaker, do not watch this video. If you prefer to think of me as a normal human being, do not watch this video.
Still curious? If you would like to think of me as a crazy kid who loves making movies, then hit play...
So... what IS this? Well, it began as a 100 hour film race. We got the prompt on Thursday night at 5pm. Ben and Liza came over to do some brainstorming and we decided we'd take it easy and brainstorm Friday and write later that night. Well Friday night my good friend Terren was back in town and we had a night out at the bars.
At the bar we toyed around with doing an over the top action movie. The next day, we got together, hydrated, and decided that we'd just make a movie as we went along. We piled a bunch of guns, costumes, and camera equipment into the back of our cars and headed out to film.
Saturday night was a drag. After getting most of our shooting done, I imported the footage and took a look. You can't imagine how terrible and how bad this footage looked. Not only that, we didn't even have a story.
Then I brought the movie into the editing room. It started to pick up steam when I paced it out. It started to come together even more when I did some coloring samples. I spent hours cutting, tweaking, searching through footage, timing music, adding sound effects, and laughing at the ridiculous movie before me.
We showed the movie to the crew Monday night. We were all pleasantly surprised at the final product. I mean, if there has ever been a case of turning garbage into anything more, this is it. Don't get me wrong, I know this movie is still a piece of, well... whatever it is. But damn it's perfect.
Also, this was the most fun I've had filming a movie. Possibly ever.
The film we submitted for the San Jose 48 Hour Film race has won 4 awards!!! Our film, Nellius 5000 & Zupitron: Ultimate Battle Buddies was shown to a large audience at the awards show. The awards we won were:
Producer's Award: Best Overacting "Nellius 5000 and Zupitron: Ultimate Battle Buddies" by 4QR98 Pass
Best Writing "Nellius 5000 and Zupitron: Ultimate Battle Buddies" by 4QR98 Pass
Best Choreography "Nellius 5000 and Zupitron: Ultimate Battle Buddies" by 4QR98 Pass
Runner Up for Best Film "Nellius 5000 and Zupitron: Ultimate Battle Buddies" by 4QR98 Pass
Here is the link to the 48HFP website where the awards are announced.
Congratulations to our team for the epic 48 hours of epic filmmaking mayhem.
August 14th to 16th was the San Jose 48 Hour Film Race. Some friends and I have done a few of these film races before. Basically, we are given some required elements to put in our film and then have only a short period to make the film. The elements we received this time were:
Genre: Buddy Film Prop: Piece from a board game Character: Zack Alexander, Exterminator Required Line: "Tell me again why this matters."
After stressing out for hours about our story, we decided that we should just have fun with the movie and make something totally over the top and ridiculous. After flushing out the gist of the story, Brian Schlotterbeck and Ben Tuller each wrote separate prologues and then we combined the best parts of both.
Our film was in the finals for the audience award, meaning we were in the top three films for the screening. We are still waiting to see if we will get nominated in other categories. We're hoping for nominations in Costumes, Sound Design, and Editing.
This was our first 48 Hour Film competition. This particular competition was based in San Francisco, where there were another 70 teams competing. We were given a few required elements and then 48 hours to write, shoot, and edit the film.
Required Elements Genre: Drama Character: Claude Green, Guitarist Prop: A Hat Required Line: "I believe anyone can change."
We had our idea very quickly; however, we spent so many hours grueling over the script that by the time we had to shoot, we had gotten very little sleep and our brains weren't working very quickly. We were also at an extreme disadvantage as we only had a crew of 2, and 2 actors. The thing is, that's all we need. I'm extremely confident in my teams ability to make films with a skeleton crew. In fact, I'd venture to say there aren't many teams that can do what we can with the resources we have.
The screening for our film went very well. It was at the Roxie theater in San Francisco.
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