Quintessential Studios' Weblog

Borrowing from the title of one of the shows I like to watch, I’m going to talk about doing my first 48 Hour Film Project. I’m going to break this down into installments as there is a lot that I have to write on this. So here’s the first.

June 22, held my first 48 HFP meeting. This is where I asked people who responded to my Craigslist ad to attend. From that first meeting, I believe I got three new people who stuck all the way to the end of the project. Two other attendees went on to start their own group for the 48 HFP and one more quit near the end and I opted not to bring them back on. The rest just disappeared.

There were more meetings and practice “two-hour film projects” and in the end there were a little over 20 people involved in the project, in one way or another.

The reason I wanted to do this 48 Hour Film Project in the first place is that I have spent the last year and a half studying about editing, video and film making and while reading and doing little practicals here and there, I knew that nothing would compare to actually getting out there and getting my hands dirty with some project with a hard deadline.

At first the group that I co-founded, The 20 Projects Project, seemed lackadaisical about doing the project but as we spent more time preparing for the show, they got more and more excited and active in relation to it.

Around the same time, we got interested in finishing an old project (with a new re-vamped ending) and starting using the practice sessions as “20 projects” projects.

I have studied a few film contests and the 48 Hour Film Project, overall, seemed not so professional that we couldn’t compete and also professional enough that we didn’t feel silly entering it.

I became interested in the Inland Empire 48 Hour Film Project last year but we heard about it too late to really enter and so I put myself on their mailing list to hear about the next year’s competition. Thus I got early emails about it and also had time to get things together in time to enter.

I really consider this more of an experiment in human nature and accomplishment than a film contest. This is a test to see if people working together in stressful situations can actually get a completed product and if they fail, where are the out-points so that they can be improved upon. It was an exercise in management.

I learned a lot of things about myself and different personality types and a whole lot about what not to do. I learned areas that needed improvement and I think we all learned new skills. After all, practice makes perfect and this was really good practice.

There were a reported 25 teams that competed this last weekend and of those, I watched about half. Everyone did a great job completing the task that they set out to complete. I gather that some had the end product that they wanted to achieve. We didn’t.

Stay tuned for more….