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48-Hour Film Project
The Making of a Short Film in 48 Hours
By Chris Parkhurst

08.15.04

It's Sunday, four days before Portland’s first annual 48 Hour Film Project begins. From 7:00 p.m. on Friday night, when we will be handed a genre, a prop and a single line of dialogue that must be instituted into the film, until 7:00 p.m. on Sunday evening we will successfully endure two nights of voluntary insomnia (if that sort of thing could ever be considered voluntary). We will compose a short, film masterpiece, our own little DaVinci (or our Von Trier, if you prefer), which will exhibit the following week at the Hollywood Theater.

Exactly one week from today we will have finished our entry into the festival. We will have spent 48 hours of life with a handpicked cast and crew of professionals, hopefuls and other-such misfits, many who I've never met before. We will have experienced bouts of anxiety and diarrhea, an artistic struggle between the director and his lead actor and a brief, but nevertheless real affair with the leading lady.

Of course, this is merely how I imagine what it must be like to do this sort of Thing. When, in fact, this is not the sort of Thing that one can ever possibly predict. Being able to predict the outcome of the making a film would be like being able to predict the outcome of this year's Presidential election. We all have a pretty good idea of who's going to win the damn thing, but we also know that Florida happened.

So it’s the Sunday before the big event and here is what I've got: An eighteen-piece cast and crew that are going to allow me to direct them for a period of 48 hours.

I've got a director of photography, a writer, editor, producer, two music composers, a craft services department (yes, I did say Craft Services - in this case vegan, like the volunteers), an art director, costumes and props master, locations person, a key grip and gaffer, etc.

I'm feeling extremely Confident about our crew. On paper, we're the New York Yankees. I only hope that come The Weekend, we don't play like the New York Mets.

Now, the cast is another story...

8.16.04 Monday Morning

After playing a few serious games of phone tag I’ve finally gotten a hold of the actors. Clara has signed on but doesn't get out of her job until 2:00 a.m. on Saturday morning and would like to have from 12 noon – 2:00 p.m. on Sunday off to play on her softball team. Lisa, who we "inked" last week, is going to be shooting another gig on Saturday (our actual day of shooting!) from 8:00 a.m. –11:00 a.m. Nick, the male lead hopeful, is getting back to me tomorrow to find out whether or not he can get a cheap flight out. Apparently he doesn't live here in Portland. No, he lives in Long Beach, CA. I did not know this until approximately seven minutes ago.

I must now phone my technical expertise, Zach and Thom (a.k.a. Average Joe) and explain to them that I need them to make a dolly system in the next few days (that in the end is never needed).

I also just got off of the phone with my sister, Jill, a music teacher, and my good friend Jaime who are responsible for scoring the music. Jill inquires as to the possible genres that we might get come Friday: film noir, romance, comedy, mystery, sci-fi, western, musical and super hero.

Jill starts pounding out the opening chords to the Superman theme.

8.17.04 Tuesday

I receive a phone call from Nick and he tells me that he will not be making it up to Portland. Great. This leaves me with three days to go and no male lead. I love filmmaking. Always keeping you on your toes.

I explain this particular conundrum to Rob, the organizer of the event and old friend. He quickly sends me a headshot/resume of a guy that he met the past weekend at a pre-Burning Man celebration. I am quite skeptical for two reasons (1) I know Rob (2) I know Burning Man.

However, when I phone the guy, he sounds very interested in being a part of the team. He explains that he could have worked for another team but he didn't really want to be one of their extras. Apparently, they had a long-list of talent already lined up.

I do not let him know that we have a rather short list, but I assure him that he will have a substantial role in our film.

8.18.04 Wednesday – 08.19.04 Thursday

The next two days are spent finalizing meeting times, equipment pick-ups and other extremely vital but boring items, which brings us to...

08.20.04 The Day

Morning: I wake up and grab a cup of coffee and mull over what needs to be done before 7:00 p.m.

I've got equipment being delivered by one of the members of the art department, Patty. Now, this in itself is something that would make any Hollywood production lose its wheels. A costumes/prop person schlepping the camera equipment?! What gross misconduct. If this sort of thing were done, there might be great rebellions and looting in L.A. by whatever Guild office was nearest the location.

But such needless catastrophes are nowhere to be found on our film. No time or place for Ego here.

6:15 p.m. - Skye, my Director of Photography, and I find ourselves at the Know Theatre where we prepare to select our film genre from a hat. On the way over, we discussed our most favorable choice (based on the possible story line templates we created beforehand) would be to pull the romance genre and that our least favorable choices would be film noir or musical/western.

A large, rather motley collection of filmmakers awaits their fate. The room is packed and one can sense the excitement building, ready to explode for the next 48 hours.

It is announced that the film prop for everyone's films will be a hooded sweatshirt. The character will be W. Winston, a retired racecar driver and the line that must be used is “Maybe I did, Maybe I didn't.”

When I select our film genre from a hat, I can only laugh: Western/musical.

Because of the difficulty of the particular genre, it is the only film genre that allows for a choice. On the drive back to base camp, Skye and I have made an executive decision to go with a Western and have phoned Producer Jenn Lackey and Writer Jen Rabin to let them know that the brainstorm session should commence.

By 11:00 p.m., most everyone has been sent home to get their only night's rest of The Weekend. We will all reconvene back here at the house at 8 a.m.

Jen, the writer, will be up for hours churning out a script.

08.21.04 Saturday - The Day of Shooting

On Saturday three quite significant things happen to me. Other than these three very specific occurrences, most of the day goes by quickly and ends up a blur. The significant things are as follows: (1) a horse turns its ass toward me and shits in my direction. (2) My leading actor vomits on the pavement (3) I ask one of my actresses out on a date.

A Horse Shits in My Direction:

I get up at around 7:00 a.m. after not being able to sleep much, even though I know this might be the only sleep of the two nights that I get.

Sometime before 8:00 a.m. people start flooding the house. Most of these people were complete strangers to me up until our production meeting the week prior.

We all feast upon this wonderful breakfast prepared by our craft services crew appropriately using the working title Outtake Takeout. There are three different quiches, muffins, coffee, bacon and sausage.

Jen, the writer, groggily enters my house. She is not entirely thrilled to be there for re-writes as she was up late doing the initial copy. She finds it even more thrilling when I tell here that we can't use any of the script and that I want her to write something entirely different.

I meet the other actress, Clara, and try to pretend that hours before she hadn't nearly ditched our operation because she had to move boxes. She cutely sits at the fireplace and smiles up at me. Uh oh, I think, I'm going to fall for an actress.

We depart for our location shortly thereafter. While we are setting up at the location, Jen is re-writing the script and our producer, also Jenn, is picking up our Money Car she negotiated for cheap.

It’s 12:30 p.m. and we have reached the location of our shoot. The name of the town I have no idea. I know it has taken roughly 47 minutes to drive out here, due east of Portland or at least I think it’s east.

We pull onto a gravel road leading to a farm. The owners are friends of Skye. We are greeted by overzealous horses (hang on, we'll get there), goats that I swear keep braying my name, "Chriiiis. Chriiiis," and a very nice couple that offers to let a full-fledged movie cast and to crew come onto their humbled abode and play for a while.

Just before Skye and I go scout exactly where the shooting will take place, I walk over to a fence where one of the female actors, Clara, is gazing into a big brown horse's eyes. She is holding the horse underneath his chin, leaning her head into his and never breaking gaze. It looks as if she's communicating with him telepathically letting him know that we're going to be borrowing his space for a little while. It's somehow, beautiful and surreal and I know it’s perfect for a still photo.

I fire off a couple of frames, I can't help but notice that I'm finding Clara rather attractive as I close in and start getting tighter shots, when quite suddenly I find the horse's ass pointed in my direction. I have a National Geographic moment and I find myself strangely fascinated with what's about to happen, but just before the emergence of the Missile, I quickly jump into action, realizing that I've got to save our actress. I deftly shove her aside and say something like, “Whew, that was close”. I turn to her, ready to accept her gratitude and see that she's just staring at me. She says, "Wow, don't freak out. It's only natural."

For the next hour we wait for the script and our Money Car to arrive.

Our Male Lead Vomits:

2:00 p.m. we have Jen's scripts in our hands and a 2004 sonic blue, Mustang convertible is parked at an angle on the side of the road. We’re ready to tell our short, modern Western tale of restitution. There also happens to be about five crewmembers around the car setting up the camera shot, aluminum foil deflect glorious rays of sunlight onto our brand new, shiny, blue Money Car. It’s romantic.

We shoot our first take sometime around 3:00 p.m., continuing to do set-ups, rehearsing and shooting for the next five or so hours, taking one very short lunch break. Most of this is all a blur.

There are two particular moments during the shoot to note. The first being the fact that we use orange juice and crumbled bits of bread to produce a rather disgusting bit of vomit and we place our male lead, Andrew, facedown on the pavement "lying in his own puke." Two extremely livid sisters are berating Andrew for drunkenly mowing down their brother. His only reply is to spew upwards, nearly hitting lead actress, Lisa, in the face, which prompts her to ad-lib, "What the hell are you doing?!"

It’s an actor's uninhibited moment. No amount of direction, writing or rehearsing can achieve it. It's the shot that must be used whatever the cost - the cost, in our case it’s Clara flubbing her line.

The second moment is when Skye places himself a mere six inches from the Mustang that is teetering perilously on the edge of a small metallic ramp above him. We decide this is the best way to achieve the effect of Andrew watching as the Mustang runs over him. We must raise the car up off of the road just enough to get the camera and its fearless operator below it.

There are no safety measures in place, nothing to stop the car from coming off the small $15 ramps and onto the heads of our Director of Photography and male lead. Unless our producer has pulled something out of thin air, we have no safety measures tucked away in the tumbleweeds.

During the second take the car is driven up the cheap, unstable ramp and one of the car wheels slides up the ramp incorrectly causing the car to become unsteady. I motion to our stunt driver to turn the wheel the other way, which he does; only he does it too sharply. Awful metallic scraping sounds occur and the ramp is suddenly teetering perilously close to Skye's prone body.

I quickly yell cut and start to pull Skye back from danger. Being more concerned with the shot, he isn't entirely happy about this course of action, but he finally consents.

The two actors and our stunt driver wonder how to safely get the 'Stang off of the ramp. Within seconds the choice is made for them as the wheel finally pushes the ramp over entirely. A look of utter fear is taking up residence on producer Jenn's face. She is accountable for the safe return of our Money Car, but we somehow managed to free the car without a scratch and we start moving again.

We set up and do the shot three more times. Soon we’re loosing light and thunderous looking rain clouds are hanging overhead. By the time we’re finished shooting it’s dark and pouring down rain. Of course the convertible has the top down, but it’s only damp enough to dry out in time for its safe return.

We did it. Everything is shot.

I Hit on My Actress:

We arrive back at base camp at 10:00 p.m. Clearly Outtake Takeout has been at it for hours again and the cast and crew are treated to a full dinner.

In the kitchen and dining area we're greeted by the musical sounds of Jill and Jaime composing. They're hard at work on the score for the film. (It should be noted that upon completion of the film, I believe that the score was the single best element of the film.)

I'm talking with Clara and eating some chow and we decide to head downstairs so that I can check out what the musicians are up to. Jaime stops for a moment from playing his trumpet to take a swig of bourbon from his flask. Next to my sister on her piano is a half-smoked bowl of pot.

This is a Good Sign. For these are Musicians and clearly in the history of music the majority, if not all, great musicians have relied on some sort of illicit substance to find their Muse.

I open a bottle of wine, take a swig and pass it over to Clara who does the same before passing it along to the next person. The wine passes between Clara and I a few times.

At precisely 10:58 p.m. I make my move and walk Clara out to her car. This is the same point in time where I make an ass of myself by being the director who asks his actress out. Talk about bad form, faux-pas numero uno when working on a film. How utterly cheesy and cliché can one possibly be? But I apparently can't help myself. Surprisingly she consents to giving me her number. This is where I say that I already have it, yes, I’m a complete buffoon.

08.22.04 Sunday - The Hour of Reckoning

I awake on Sunday morning at 8:00 a.m. after having only gotten about three hours, I can already smell the aroma of coffee. But when I go out to the kitchen I am surprised to see that no one is around. I then follow the smell upstairs to our makeshift post-production facilities. I'm quite familiar with the area, having just been up here three hours ago, working alongside our Editor, Jerry.

The next nearly eleven hours are spent in this little area, penned off from most of humanity and life. Other than occasionally going downstairs to check in on the music, neither one of us leave the room.

At one point, Skye and Chihiro, our sound guy are sent off to create some fantastic noises to accompany the sound of the 'Stang ramming into one person and crushing another's noggin. When they come back with the tapes, it’s revealed that jumping on the hood of a car, breaking twigs and stepping on wet pieces of chicken have done the trick.

Jerry calmly, yet gleefully inserts these sounds into our scene. Soon the music is added to the mix and hairs go up on my arms when I hear what has been created downstairs, a mere 40 feet below us. The scoring is going to work perfectly with our movie.

We edit right up until 7:05 p.m., when I declare our movie finished. We output to tape and are out the door by 7:10 p.m. and make it to the drop-off point in ten minutes time. It can be a done, a film can be made in less than 48 hours.

That night much of the cast and crew rejoice back at base camp to a final meal and then head out for a couple of brews at a local brewpub. Everyone seems to feel somewhere between elated and tired.

At one point, as I look around the long table, I realize that I've experienced something incredible that I will probably never forget, twenty people (initially strangers) working in a 48-hour period to make a little piece of Art.

What Insane Fun.