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 w
e 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
Actor Bastiaan Toorenent
Actrice Brandi Russell
Actor Pieter van Boort
Camera Thijs Koelink
Score composer Paul Keurentjes
Photographer Ruud van Kooten
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