The Twelve Films Project

Heist-Off! - The June Film

Here is the June film, Heist-Off!, for your viewing pleasure.  This film was written, shot and edited in 48 hours...please watch it with that in mind.

 

A huge thanks to the cast and crew, all of whom put up with a lot of heat, long hours and some very warm costumes.

48-Hour Film Project - Part 3 (wrap up)

Got up on Sunday morning at 7am and started editing.  Matt showed up after working an overnight shift bringing some much needed coffee and doughnut.  First thing I did was sync the audio.  Everything was recorded externally on Zoom's, and we didn't have a dedicated person handling a slate or anything, so it took a little longer than normal.  Plus, some of the audio was recoded mono, some stereo and some as 4-track, so figuring out what went where was kind of an ass-ache.

Instead of syncing everything, I picked the takes I liked and found the audio for them, which sped things up a bit.  I had all the takes picked and synced by noon and started editing.  The first thing I worked on was a fake commercial that runs at the front of the movie as a way to introduce our main character.  Since there was some graphics and green screen work that needed to be done, I wanted to get that out of the way first.  I finished that by about 1pm and dove into the edit.

I got it cut, mixed, color corrected and burned to 2 DVD's by about 6pm.  The documentary crew that had been following me around showed up at my house just as we were leaving, so they came with us to the drop off.  Got the film in early (7:04pm) and then went home to sleep.

The entire film couldn't be any longer than 7 minutes, so some of the stuff we shot had to be cut, which hurt.  The version that I put up on the 12 Films site is going to be a longer edit, putting back some of the funny stuff that had to be cut, which is why it's not going to be up until later this week.

I do need to hand out some major kudos to the amazing cast that worked on the film.  Wright Sulek, Frederic Winkler, Hugo Zesati and Rachel Myhill were amazing and stuck through all the way to the end...amazing work.  They even helped load the equipment once we were done.  You can't ask for more than that.

Also, huge thanks to the people who came out last minute to fill in some small roles (Tom Cunningham and Jon Wayne) and to everyone else on the crew who worked their asses off.

It was a fun weekend, but I don't think I'd ever do one of these again.  The process (at least with this particular group) is a little too rigid and controlling (mostly because of a sea of paperwork that you have to fill out) and it takes a lot of the fun out of it.  

This film is kind of a step back in terms of quality from my other 5 films in this project, but making something like this in 48 hours is a pretty ambitious undertaking and based on all that, I'm happy with how it came out.  Once this new cut of the film is up on the 12 Films site, I'll be at the halfway point which is amazing.  I'm going to put up a post about that later on this week, but it's feeling good.

48-Hour Film Project - Part 2

Woke up after about 3 hours of sleep and got the rest of the paperwork printed as well as extra scripts for everyone.  My black printer ink cartridge gave up the ghost with a few pages left to print, so I wasn't able to get everything printed...some actors have to share scripts, no big deal.

Got to the set at 7am and was greeted with a perfect Texas day, which is to say that it was 87-degrees with about 90% humidity and the sun was barely up.  Foolishly, I forgot to put on the sun screen that I brought along, so my skin was hot and glowing by about noon and continued to cook for most of the day.  By the time the sun went down, people were asking if I was pregnant, I had such a glow about me.  The day topped out at 101-degrees.  The humidity made it feel like you were trying to breathe soup.  One of those cream-based soups.

Actors and crew got to the set by 8am and we suffered our first setback in the audio crew.  The 48-Hour Film Project has an online board where people can post if they want to join a team and make the film.  Audio isn't one of my strong suits and I wanted to get a dedicated audio mixer and boom operator, and lo and behold, someone was looking for a team.  Sadly, when they showed up, they weren't as experienced as they may have let me believe.  We got it all worked out, but not without a lot of hand holding and explaining by me, the person with very little audio experience.

By 9:30, we were up and running thanks to Caleb Hey, who ended up as our MVP yesterday.  Caleb is one of those guys who has a good solid base of knowledge and can jump into different roles quickly.  He really made the day run smoothly and even jumped into his acting pants for a small (but very funny) role.

We also had a small crew from the 48-Hour Film Project stopping by intermittently to shoot for a documentary on some different teams.  During breaks in shooting, the would interview us and ask for updates.

We finished at the first location by about 12:30pm and broke for lunch.  We all went to a Brazilian restaurant called Rio's on Austin's East Side which was close to where our 2nd location was.  We ate (the yucca fries were amazing) and then convoyed over to the house that served as our 2nd location.

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur.  We shot around an actor who had to run out to a rehearsal at 2pm and then got his stuff when he was back at 4:30.  The day got hotter and hotter as we were shooting in the house's backyard, and by 6:30 or so, most of us just wanted to sleep.

The sun wasn't going to go down until at least 9pm, so we shot some greescreen and set up lights.  A pizza break (from East Side Pies) ushered in our fourth wind (thanks to the caffeine and prodigious toppings).  Once it was finally dark, we shot the rest of the film and were packed up by 12:30am.  Not too shabby.

The best experience of shooting this was working with my wife Julie who is an amazing wife.  Julie acted as producer, taking care of all the little stuff and allowing me to focus on getting a huge amount of work shot.  She wrangled props, crew, food, equipment and anything else that needed doing and she did it with a smile and hugs.  She made the shoot run smoothly and everyone loved working with her.  I know this probably sounds like a loving husband talking up his wife, but honestly if I had been working with a producer for the first time and they did this good of a job, I'd be saying exactly the same thing.  The one added perk of having your wife as the producer is the kissing that can go on between takes...much harder to do if you're not married to the producer.

Once home, I backed up all the footage and started it transcoding so I wouldn't have to wait for it in the morning.  Julie and I fell into bed around 2am and the next thing I knew, my alarm was telling me it was 6:30am.  Stupid alarm.

Editing all day today with the drop off taking place from 6:30pm to 7:30pm.  Can't be late!

48-Hour Film Project - Part 1

Matt, Amparo and I went to the 48-Hour Film Project kick-off party tonight to hand in our paperwork, pick our genre and get assigned our prop, character and line of dialogue.  We got there a little after 6pm and got some seats.  They had some films from previous years running so we watched them and discussed how much we hoped we wouldn't get stuck with the dreaded "Musical/Western" genre.

They kicked everything off around 6:30pm and gave us a run-down of the rules, when and where we needed to turn everything in, etc.  Then they got a representative from each group to come up and choose a genre out of a bucket.  When it was my turn I reached my hand in and brought out...Musical/Western.  Yep, I swear to god.

Well, it turns out they have something called a "Wild Card" genre where, if you don't like the genre you choose, you can be assigned a Wild Card genre from the person running the 48-Hour Film Project.  We talked it out and almost decided to keep the Musical genre (we had an idea to do something with puppets, similar to Avenue-Q) but in the end, the fact that none of us knew how to write music won out and we decided to trade for something else.

So that's how we got the Heist Genre.  Yep, we're making a heist movie.  The other variables are:

• Prop: A Purse
• Character: Kevin Withers, a soccer coach
• Line of Dialogue: "Don't tell me what to do."

On the drive back to my place, we threw out story ideas and came up with one that looked like it would work.  As we tried to flesh it out, we kept hitting a wall on a couple of points and it just fell apart.  The great thing is, once it fell apart we hit on a great idea that almost instantly fell into place.  It worked with the locations we have, the amount of actors we have and best of all, we were laughing as we talked about it.

The cast and crew showed up just as we nailed the rough outline and when we pitched it to them, everyone liked it.  The actors threw in some great ideas as did my wife Julie and we all felt like it was something good that we could shoot tomorrow.

The cast & crew left around 9:30pm and Matt, Amparo, Julie and I finally had some dinner.  We all kept talking out the story and Matt outlined it all as we ate.  Once we finished, Matt sat down at my computer and wrote the first half.  I jumped in and finished it up, getting done around 12:30am.

Now I'm scheduling, printing up scripts and other paperwork that the 48-Hour Film Project makes you fill out (they love paperwork and rules...it's a little weird).  I'm hoping to get to bed in the next half-hour, sleep for 4 hours and then get up to be on-set by 7am.  If you've got an E-Trade account, buy Starbucks stock ASAP...it's gonna be a long weekend.

The June Film

I've always wanted to participate in a 48-hour film challenge and it just so happens that the 48-Hour Film Project is touching down in Austin this month.  So for my June film, me and some of my cohorts are going to make an entire short film in 48-hours.

I can't tell you what it's going to be about, because I won't know myself until 7pm on Friday, June 24th, that's when we'll pick a genre out of a hat and be assigned required elements that must appear in the film, like a character, prop and/or specific line of dialogue.  We'll then have until 7pm on Sunday, June 26th to write, produce and post a short film.

It's gonna be a long weekend, but honestly I'm pretty excited about it.