The movie genre is drawn randomly for each team. We drew ‘Horror’. There is a prop, character and line of dialog required in all the movie entries. This year, the prop was a sandwich, the character was Karen or Kevin Schnabel, an Expert and the required line of dialog was “I hope they decide soon.”

Christina and I have participated in the 48-Hour Film Project for several years. The group we worked with in previous years decided to take a break this year, so Christina and I decided to try by ourselves. Christina Produced and Directed the video. Together we wrote the script and edited the video.  I also got about an hour to add music score and sound FX. (Like I said, not much time for luxuries!) I also make a cameo in the film as the enigmatic Kevin Schnabel.

It was a lot of work for two people! But we did have some help. Jessica Mallon volunteered to be our starlet, appearing in the film as Karen Carlson. Reid Rejsa did some post-production audio mixing and mastering. Both of them did a fantastic job. Thanks much to Jess and Reid for all their help!

I attended the screening of the films selected by judges as the “Best Of” and after the screening, they listed the award winners for ‘Best Picture’ and such. There were a lot of really great movies this year, and all the awards were well-deserved. It was also nice to see the creator of the event, Mark Ruppert, come out to flyover land and oversee the showing and awards, and congratulate the winners personally.

Our entry was titled “Locked”. It didn’t win any awards, but that was never our goal. We had a great time, learned a lot, and completed the project on time. We made a video in 48 hours that stood its ground against the other entries. In that respect, our movie was highly successful.

You can view “Locked” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVtHBqK-45Q Feel free to rate and comment on the movie!

-Zero

Thanks much to FirstShowing.net.

Art Is Resistance
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Font Conference

Art Is Resistance
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The group team Chiaroscuro was up against had 3 films go to the finals, so it’s no surprise that our effort “Fort World” didn’t make it to finals, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of, we had some great company and great competition.

…next time….

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

It was a crazy weekend.

Friday 7:30PM

The genre we drew was ‘Film de Femme’ which aside from being a blatantly sexist genre, is also pretty open to interpretation. The prop was a fish, of all things, and the line of dialog was “You look very familiar”.

The group assembled over pizza and beer, and began brainstorming ideas. We tossed around a lot of great ideas, and I think it was the wide-openness of the genre that made it difficult for us to dial in on any particular one. It might have been easier to start with more limitations, but by 9:30 we had a plot roughed out. As part of the script-writing team, I helped to flush out a script by midnight, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius called ‘Fort World’.

Saturday Fucking Early AM

I joined the team (late: typical) and began designing the set, which was the interior of FortWorld. I swear, when we got done, it looked like the inside of the bottle from “I Dream Of Jeannie” After shooting started, I headed back home and helped my friend Reid Rejsa put together a few foley sound effects. I actually had time for a nap before the gang came over laden with video. Things were going swimmingly. Josh and I sat down to pick through some music, and “The Sarahs” began slicing and dicing the video…

…when the power went out.

Saturday 10:00 PM

I called the power company, and was informed that power wouldn’t likely be restored for 4 hours. So the Sarahs pulled the video workstation, and took it to their place. I went to bed eventually, around 3:30 AM, and still powerless.

Sunday 8:00 AM

Still no power. I pulled my entire goddamned studio apart and fit it into the trunk of a 96 Saturn, and lugged the whole thing over to Josh’s place. While I put the foley FX into place, Josh and Colin came up with some quirky musical pieces to slip in. A little touchup on the audio, and we pressed a DVD around 5 on Sunday, leaving us 2.5 hours to turn it in.

Tonight:

Like I said, tonight we got to see FortWorld on the big screen, and I was pretty impressed. Team Chiaroscuro certainly has made some progress since our 2006 submission; this year’s entry was much more ambitious. Aside from the power outage, there were no major technical glitches.

The whole project makes me want to do more small film projects, but one thing at a time. I already have one live performance to focus on… plenty of time for video later…

Art Is Resistance
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Art Is Resistance
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Art Is Resistance
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Art Is Resistance
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