The Lure of 24 Hour Film Festivals

Feature: Page (2) of 2 - 09/09/04

The Lure of 24 Hour Film Festivals So What's the Big Deal?
The desktop computer and powerful editing software has given the power of filmmaking to the true independents, those with the desire and drive to tell a digital story. Francis Ford Coppola once said that the next great filmmaker would be some fat girl in Ohio. There is no doubt that the art of digital filmmaking will give rise to the next great movie maker, and because of the sheer popularity of these festivals, it won't be long before Hollywood takes notice of a great film, whose makers entered their story into one of these festivals.

To get a better grasp of the whole notion of creating a film in 24 hours, DMN senior editor John B. Virata spoke with Kurt Spenser on his views of the 24 hour film festival phenomenon, as well as how his group put together a film for the Scavenger Film Festival. Here is what he had to say.

DMN: How did the idea of 24 hour film festivals come about?
KS: Not sure on this one, for us it came from the Scavenger films folks whom we met while Matthew Pierce( a member of our team) was working at Revolution Studios.

DMN: Is there any criteria that participants have to follow? Is each festival different in their criteria?
KS: Each festival is different, check out www.scavengerfilms.com for our criteria. Generally, you get three things that have to appear or play a significant role in your film. 15 seconds of laughtrack, a universal series of dialogue for everyone to include, a scene at a fast food drive-thru, a doughnut, the word lobensnizzlehoffgluben, a subtitle, these are just a few from the past off the top of my head. Don't spend more than 50 bucks on your film. No more than five crew members. No copyrighted or licensed music etc.

DMN: How do you prepare for something that you have no idea about, let
alone write a script, shoot, edit and finish?
KS: 24 hour DV filmmaking is an extreme sport. You don't think, you just do. Brainstorm, write, brainstorm, shotlist, shoot, edit, shoot, edit, brainstorm re-shoot, re-edit, lay it to tape, pray that it works when it plays and that traffic isn't bad as you break every traffic law on the books getting it to the drop point by 7PM.

DMN: What is your advice on how to enter a 24 hour film festival?
KS: Get a team of people together that like to stay up all night yelling at each other about movies. Google search for some in your area -- There are many differnt flavors out there (I love www.scavengerfilms.com). Get a camera and a desktop editing suite that you can use for 24 hours. Enter/Apply/submit, whatever, Then go make a movie!

DMN: What kind of pre-planning do you perform? Can you do any preplanning?
KS: Besides having at least two people available for 24 hours, a working DV camera, knowing where we're going to edit, and that we have plenty of caffeine on hand, NO. We really adhere to the spirit of the festival and try not to limit our film to some preconceived outline or idea. That's the whole point.

DMN: Who is joining these festivals?
KS: Filmmakers. Professional, aspiring, amateur, student, hobbyists. The great thing about the festivals is that at the end of the 24 hours you are a filmmaker, you have a short film, and you have learned something new about how to write, produce, direct, and act in a high pressure, low cost environment.

DMN: How long have you been joining these festivals?
KS: We've been shooting 24 hour short films for about two years. Our team has been represented at the last five Scavenger fests.

DMN: For the Scavenger Film festival, do you know how many entries were received?
KS: Eight Teams received rules,completed films, and screened them. I'm not sure how many teams applied using the writen application but eight were accepted, and everyone who completes a film gets to screen it.

DMN: For your entry, Three Wishes of Paddy Cake, how long did it take to write a script?
KS: We got the rules at 7:15A.M. and had an outline and basic shotlist at 10:30A.M.

DMN: What kind of camera did you use to shoot the film?
KS: Canon GL2, Rebekcah Martz was our camera and videography guru, Brandon Hill was our "A" Operator.

DMN: How much time was spent shooting the film?
KS: We started shooting at about 10:30A.M. and shot our last sequence around 3:30 PM the next day.

DMN: How much time was spent editing the film?
KS: Joe Mastromonaco started editing immediately once we had shot our first sequence -- so 20 hours on and off. That does include creating all of our effects also. He was a machine. This was the first time we used Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects 6.0. It was the smoothest experience we have had to date and allowed us to produce the most
sophisticated of our 24 hour films yet.

DMN: What hardware did you use to edit the film?
KS: P4 2.8 Ghz with 1GB RAM, 120GB hard disk drive and a generic FireWire card, running Adobe Premiere Pro, the latest release, and After Effects 6.0.

DMN: How did you do the chase scene with all the blondes?
KS: First thing, the key, we talked about the shot and the effect with Joe before we went out to shoot it. Joe clearly knew what he needed, and we knew we had to be efficient. We shot several different people running down the street (avoiding traffic at 4:30 AM) using the same camera setup. Joe jumped into After Effects from Premiere, created several different clones of the runners -- carefully but quickly cutting them out, cleaning them up, laying them back in, filling the shot out as realistically as possible and looping the sequence dropping it right back into Premiere -- This is my basic understanding of his process. The integration of After Effects and Premiere was a huge part of the sucess and ability to do this effectively on such a compressed timeline.

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John Virata is senior editor of Digital Media Online. You can email him at jvirata@digitalmedianet.com

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