Behind the scenes of a short film: the 48 hour film project – Utrecht

Leap of faith
I don’t know about you other directors, but I
have a strong tendency to keep my illusion ‘being in control’ alive. Saying yes to this project with virtually nothing under control, was really a challenge in and of itself. Finally I decided, “Everything will be ok” and “I will have an awsome weekend”. Everything was and I did.

Rules of the game
The title gives away the biggest issue: Making a film within 48 hours!
You are allowed to prepare a cast, a crew, your equipment, your score and strangely enough photo’s (no stockphoto’s) in advance. Friday night at 7:30 pm all teams received the same character, a line and a prop. Then each team drew a genre. The minimum length is four minutes and the maximum is seven minutes plus an extra minute for credits.

What was given
Mockumentary we drew. The Character was a haiku poet. The Line was ” The Summer is over”. The prop was a goldfish.

What is a Haiku again?
This is what wikipedia says: haiku is a form of Japanese Poetry , consisting of 17 moras (or on), in three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 moras respectively. For example:
old pond…..
a frog leaps in
water’s sound

The Script
I wrote the script together with Bastiaan. This was a first for me to write together with someone else. I really enjoyed it. As soon as we got the information, we made an outline within 15 minutes. Next we thought of what information we wanted to tell and in what way. Trying to keep it simple, we wrote it with only two locations. At around 0:30 AM we finished the script.

The Story
So our film is about Kees Neumann, who is a
haiku poet and he’s being followed by a camera crew. He got very famous in Japan when he introduced a new kind of haiku. The Haiku oneliner. Kees looks very succesful at first but soon we learn about his frustrations not being able to write haikus about this specific topic…

Production
Tobias is the guy who got everone together, in charge of the production and filling in the necessary paperwork. We wanted of course a live goldfish and a nice fish bowl. We needed a hotel lobby in which we planned the first scene. For our second scene we needed an hotel room. We didn’t have anything at the beginning of the night.

The first scene
Having called there the day before and struck out, it was a surprise that when the producer called the hotel Friday night again, they said yes. At around 3 AM we were filming our first scene in the breakfast lounge of a very nice hotel in Utrecht.

The deleted scene with the fan
This scene with the fan getting an autograph was written to emphasize the status of the poet. However having only seven minutes, the scene was just too long which is a shame because I find it a very good scene and a funny one too. Imagina how Gert-Jan felt when he heard that his only scene in the project had not made it into the final cut. He was really professionel about it.

The second scene…or not quite yet
Then we were off to a room on the North side of Utrecht. Two assistants had transformed a student room into a hotel room….or so they had tried. They had put a lot of effort into it but it didn’t work. It was too small and really was still a student room. There was no way we could get away with that. By the time we were discussing this it was around 5:45 AM and everybody was terribly low on energy especially me. We decided to try in the morning again for a real hotel room. Just when my alarm clock went of at its usual 6:30 AM, I got into bed and slept a cool 2 hours.

The second scene …now really
Oddly refreshed by only two hours, I was ready for another day. The sun was shining and I was feeling foxy. Tobias the producer had been calling hotels since 9 AM with only negative replies. Around 10 AM we heard that this hotel we thought of ‘not up to standard’ also had renovated rooms. We got on our way with ¾ of the people and checked out the rooms. The space was enough but even the renovated room was still not quite up to par. Just when viewed the third and last room, Tobias called. We could get a room in the Court Hotel. Very nice…. Hooray!

Setphotography
Ruud van Kooten of ‘Broodjelicht’ (Sandwich of Light) makes very beautiful photography and has proved himself yet again with a lovely reportage. All pictures on this page are made by him.

 

Sleep deprivation
Saturday at around 5 PM we were actually finished filming! Things went very smooth and apart from looking like a wreck, I (read ‘my body’) was still holding up nicely. Literally a difference between night and day. At night, apart from actually filming, I felt awful. During the day I just felt fuzzy and mellow but other then that quite fine. At around 7:30 PM I was still relieved I could close my eyes once again. This time for about 12 hours.

Post production with a Musical Haiku
The editor worked until 3 AM on a first edit. Sunday around 11 AM, we were working on the post. I should say they, meaning the editor, the cameraman (on the creditroll) and the musical composer / sounddesigner. As the composer nicely stated “My input was only slowing things down”, which in a way was true of course. Around 2 PM we had a very good edit. Having a Haiku poet as a main character I had asked the composer for a Musical Haiku. A short piece of music with a rythem of 5-7-5. It turned out very nice and can be heard opening the film. At 5 PM the film was ready for export. Still enough time to submit it for the 7:30 PM deadline without breaking a sweat!

A HD version with subtitles will be online soon.

Cinema screening on Wednesday, Prizes on Thursday
All submissions, even the late one (out of the 37 teams, 30 made it in time), were shown in the Dutch Film Festival 48hfp programme the following Wednesday. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it, but I was there on Thursday when we received a total of zero prizes. Of course I was disappointed just like the other 25 teams that didn’t win anything. That will not stop me from participating next time. I had a very nice weekend. I met new interesting people, I learned a lot and on top of that I had good fun.

Keep making films you girls and guys!

Links:
48 hour film project Utrecht

Dutch Filmfestival

Actor Bastiaan Toorenent

Actrice Brandi Russell

Actor Pieter van Boort

Camera Thijs Koelink

Score composer Paul Keurentjes

Photographer Ruud van Kooten

 

 

Behind the scenes of a short film: Parallel Lines Competition

Where was I when this all started
So there I was, behind my computer at work. The work that provides a roof above my head (it’s a great roof). The work that feeds me and my family. The work that let’s me laugh with my collegues. The work that let’s me be part of society.  But also the work that makes me want to put a gun against my head and pull the trigger (I’m slightly exaggerating here for drama purposes), so boring, demotivating and energy draining I find it.

Ridley Scott
Surfing the internet frantically searching to lift my spirits, I see a post about a competition for Philips and Ridley Scott Associates (RSA) to promote the new Philips 21:9 television. You have to admit it’s a fine looking TV but  the fact that Ridley Scott is involved was the real hook. I still remember the first time that I watched Blade Runner. The film was on TV. I was still a kid and Rutger Hauer was about to give one of his best performances. More recent the film Gladiator was an instant classic. Also one of my favorites.

The Competition
Five stunning shorts with all the same dialogue were made by RSA, inspiring filmmakers around the globe to make the sixth short. The dialogue and their order being fixed, the only other rule was a maximum lenght of 3 minutes.

Prizes
First prize is tagging along for a week at one of the Ridley Scott Associates offices and of course your short next to the other five. Other prizes include invitation to a Ridley Scott Associates premiere in London or New York plus spending money,   a Philips 21:9 television for the top 5 and a Philips television for getting in the top 10 .

Additional deadlines for Dutch competitors
Additional deadlines were installed for Dutch competitors to get feedback from well known Dutch professional filmmakers and producers. This would be a great opportunity to get my work exposed .

My motivation
My brain was hooked from the moment I read Ridley Scott. Winning first prize would be great but it’s not something I count on. Getting feedback from the Dutch filmmakers and knowing that your submission will be reviewed by people from RSA and by people from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) was enough for me to get me started. The five example shorts really showed what was possible and if I had any doubts, those shorts wiped them all away.

The Storyboard
After writing the script ‘Het Spel / The Game’, which I finished the next day, the first submission deadline needed a storyboard.  Now I’m creative and resourcefull and all, but my drawing sucks. I posted an ad for a storyboarder on the NFTVM site and within two hours production designer Stephan Duquesnoy responded. He already knew about the competition when he saw my ad and was looking for a way to join the competition.
With only 4 days until the next deadline, Stephan started on the drawings while I experimented with the ones already finished in After Effects, mainly looking for the right order and lenght of the drawings. Soon I realised my ambitions were to high and shots had to be deleted.  After getting the shots right, I recorded some soundseffects and found a couple on the internet. Then I recorded a guitar song and mixed the whole thing together. This would leave me one whole day for uploading the moving storyboard. More than enough.

Feedback on the Storyboard
Within two weeks and just before we were going to film I received the feedback. The storyboard was reviewd by Andre van Duren and Matthijs van Heijningen. They were very impressed by the way the storyboard looked and with the emotion it expressed. On the other hand the story was not totally clear for them. There was still work to do there.

On the filmset With or Mitout sound
With this project I went back to basics. There were five pieces of dialogue, and our sounddesigner was capable of foleying everything, so I didn’t even bother looking for a someone recording the sound. Finally its was just me, the actors and the steadycam operator on the filmset. We could have used a first AD and someone for continuity but we managed and at the end of the first day (around 2:30 AM) we had what we needed.

Working with a steadycam and crashing it
This would be my first project filming with steadycam. I was very enthousiastic about getting Pieter Bruin on board. This would definitely widen the possibilities of filming it. Pieter uses a Segway in combination with a steadycam (see the link to his site below). He has also the normal harness, but he can’t do that the entire day since it’s an extra 20 kilo’s to carry around.
The second day filming, we were in the woods. Filming the chase on the ‘horses’ , I saw Pieter from a distance, slowly falling forward. He crashed! The wheels of the Segway are big enough to handle rough terrain, but somehow one of the wheels got stuck and he fell, breaking his steadycam and severely damaging his camera. Luckily it could still film. We carried on and improvised the rest of the shots. I was sad for the Pieter’s equipment damage but also for missing out on some great steadycam shots I had in mind. The good thing was that without the steadycam, we were filming at a much faster pace. We were able to wrap it up before the sun went down. Check out this super smooth steadycam shot (it didn’t make it due to time and pace purposes):

Feedback on the first edit
We submited a first edit with almost no sounddesign, without the intended score and without any grading or compositing. This time our submission was reviewed by San Fu Malta, owner of Fu Works & Producer of ao ‘Black Book’;  Danyael Sugawara , director and Gouden Kalf winner with his film ‘Alles Stroomt’. and Rob Lucker, director at Hazazah and known for his short films ‘Spielerei’ and ‘Skoda’. Again positive remarks like ‘Good script and concept’ and Good casting’. The pace in editing could still be improved and some other remarks to explain the story even better.

Final Draft

After finishing Sounddesign, the score and the grading and compositing it was time to upload it to the Philips  youtube channel. Things were of the wall there.
People were stress out because uploading was unsuccesfull and there were only a few more days before the official deadline. The amount of ‘last minute’ submissions were obviously more than expected. Confirmation and approval of submissions were promised but alot of  filmmakers never got them.  Fortunately Philips did post a message once and a while about the process. Our submission ‘Het Spel / The Game’ was submitted and approved without any hassels.

Deadlines and Structure
The two additional Dutch deadlines  chopped up the whole process in smaller bits which in it’s turn helped me alot with managing the entire production and having a good overview of what was the next step.

When will the winners be known
August 23, the top 10 will be known. After that viewers can select the top 5 by voting until September 5.  From September 6 until September 19, viewers can vote on their favorite film regardless whether or not the film is in the top 10.

Feelings about this project
I really had fun doing this project. I feel proud of doing this in just over 2 1/2 months next to a full-time job. That said I couldn’t have done this without my excellent cast, crew and a lot of patience of my wife. I’d like to thank all of them.

Keep making films you girls and guys!

Links:
Everything about the competition incl all the submissions

Filmmaking tips by Ridley Scott Associates

Check out the site and amazing portfolio of Production Designer Stephan Duquesnoy

Check the gear of our steadycam operator Pieter Bruin

Dutch ‘New Film and TeleVision Makers’: NFTVM

Brandfighters, also in English, who organized the extra deadlines:
http://www.brandfighers.nl