48 Hour Film Project - Denver - Winner (1 Viewer)

[Jason Harbaugh]

Last weekend I headed a team in the 48 Hour Film Project, completing a short film from start to finish the span of 48 hours. All writing, rehearsing, shooting, editing, music have to be created in that span. No stock footage may be used. I directed, acted in, and edited it.

Each team draws a different genre out of a hat. We drew 'comedy'.

Then every team gets the same required elements that must show up somewhere in the film.

Prop - Sign
Character - Buddy or Belle Edwards, Truck Driver
Line of Dialogue - "You're not going to believe it."

Wrote it on Friday night, shot it all saturday, then edited on sunday to get it in exactly 1 minute before the deadline!

They screened it earlier this week at a local theatre to a sold out crowd. It went over very well. 13 teams total made it. Then last night they had the awards.

We took home:
Best Choreography
Best Musical Score
Best Acting (Zombie)
Best Directing
Best Film

Since we won Best Film, we get to go on and compete against all of the other best films from each city to see who is crowned, best short film of 2006.

We did it last year too. It is such a fun project and if you have ever wanted to make a short film but keep procrastinating, sign up for this because it forces you to get it done.

You can view it at:
http://www.lynxfx.com/48hour/
(I'm the zombie)

 

[teapot2001]

Good job, Jason. It could be shot better and shortened, but it was pretty impressive considering the time restriction. Congrats on the awards so far!

~T

 

[Steve Felix]

Nice work, that was a funny and varied set of gags, especially for one evening's writing work.

Zombie poker face =

 

[teapot2001]

I loved the zombie poker face idea, but I didn't like how it was shot. I think it needed more cuts between the zombie and truck driver before he folded, with a slow pull in of their faces or a close-up.

One shot I really liked was the pan over to the zombie during the interview.

What kind of equipment did you use, Jason?

~T

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

Thanks for the comments guys. I could knitpick this thing to death, and believe me I have. We got behind on schedule so the poker scene, end commercial, and all the party stuff was fairly rushed. The poker scene especially. That's probably the only one where I wasn't sure what I wanted, and didn't really like how it was shot. It's also hard being in it and directing at the same time. I couldn't see how things were being framed as we abandoned using a monitor by that time in the night.

It also came down to being too long and having to cut back. We had a time limit on the film itself.

We shot it on a canon XL-H1 HDV camera. Shot in 1080i/60 but captured it as downconverted DV. I'll go back and recapture in HD to make a nice high rez version. We did use a dolly for a few shots, the dinner scene, club scene, and the end of the date sequence going from night to day. Some worked out great, some not so great. But I learned a lot with that.

It was all edited with Vegas 6.

Overall I was really happy with the end result, especially when you compare it to the other films submitted. While some had very good story ideas, the production value was a lot lower. But there were a few with some shots where you went, wow that was pretty darn cool.

I also hit a grand slam yesterday in softball, so I'm having a good week.