72 Hour Filmmaking report - Erik Hanberg

72 Hour Filmmaking report

Slow blogging, but a busy weekend!

I was part of a team that filmed a movie this weekend for the 72 Hour Film Festival. The goal, if you haven't heard, is to make a 5 minute movie in 3 days.

In order to make sure that you don't get a jump on the movie-making, the Grand gives required elements that must be in the film. This year, those were:

  • a map
  • the line of dialog: "Should I know what that means?"
  • something has to break
  • and in the first minute a bag has to be found that contains something important to rest of the film.
That final one is the most prescriptive element I've seen in the festival, but even that's pretty easy to run with.

A group of 5 of us brainstormed and plotted our movie Thursday night after we got the list of required elements.

Friday was spent writing and getting the resources, locations, costumes, and people in place we would need.

Saturday was a long day of filming. We were mostly downtown and filmed inside and out. Work started at 9 and went almost to 5, with not many breaks.

I took it home, began editing, and had a rough cut ready by about 10:30 that night.

That made Sunday a lot easier. I was able to sleep in (yay!) and showed the rest of the cast/producers/writers my rough cut. We figured out what we needed for the final tweaks. I had the film burned to a DVD by 4:00. It felt really good to get it out the door …

The movie shows Friday night at the Rialto along with all the other movies. I'll post it to YouTube after that for everyone's viewing pleasure. But you should still come to the Rialto! It's a lot of fun, and everyone gets to cast a vote for their favorite film.


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