The 48-Hour Film Project challenges average people to do in two days what professional film makers take months to do: complete a film from screenplay to editing.
The project continues to be the primary event of its kind. All competitors are knocked down to the same level as far as resources and time are concerned, said Matt Page, the winning director of 2008’s competition.
“It’s a competition where having money is not an advantage,” Page said. “Money isn’t going to get you a well-written script Friday night. You don’t have time to rely on things like special effects or having someone famous in your movie. This time frame is a great equalizer. It’s really about story.”
Mark Ruppert and Liz Langston started the project in 2001 in Washington, D.C. Since then, it has expanded across the country and the world, visiting cities such as New York City, Chicago, Rome, Paris, Beijing and, for the fifth year now, Albuquerque.
The festival, though, is pretty much the same for every city. The competitors assemble a team beforehand, meet in a central location at 7:30 p.m. — this year at the Orpheum Art Space. They receive a genre, a character, a prop and a line of dialogue that must be worked into the film somehow, and are then given 48 hours to return whatever they have to Kelly’s Brew Pub by 7:30 p.m. The winning film for each city is entered into a larger pool where the best 13 are screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
Even if the films are turned in one minute late, they are disqualified from competition, said Scott Milder, Albuquerque’s deputy city producer.
Page said he was apprehensive about entering the film festival. To him, it didn’t seem possible to create a good product in 48 hours.
“I didn’t know what to think of the 48 hours, because, initially, I was kind of skeptical because I don’t like to do productions that aren’t properly prepped and planned out,” Page said. “That was just as an outsider’s perspective. Now, that’s the thing I like the most about it. It forces you to be creative and collaborate with everybody and pull something together really fast. It’s something I look forward to every year now.”
Kyle Traynor, who won the contest in 2009, said he heard horror stories about the festival from his friends but decided to compete anyway.
“It’s definitely stressful. There’s no doubt about it,” Traynor said. “But you have to pick the right people. The 48 is what you want it to be, I think. If you want to go out and go crazy and make it a huge production, you can totally do that. If you want to keep it really small and have fun with it, you can do that, too. A lot of people end up making it a little too big, which causes stress like that.”
Milder, who won the local 48-hour Film Project in 2006, said the festival has tremendous benefits for the winner.
“On a professional level, you would be surprised at how much winning the 48-hour film project and screening at the Cannes Film Festival. It means something,” he said. “On that pure business level, it can give you a calling card if you happen to win and the movie goes far.”
More importantly, the benefits of the stress-filled festival extend beyond networking purposes. Milder said the festival is a creative boon for aspiring filmmakers.
“Particularly, film school students can be — and I know this from experience. There’s something very protected about working in a film school environment — where you are kind of working with your friends,” Milder said. “You have an entire semester to make a thesis film. You’re using school equipment. You can learn a lot that way, but it doesn’t actually teach you about the problem solving, on-the-spot kind of thing where you’re losing light and you have to be done shooting at night, and you have 10 more shots to get. That’s what the 48-hour Film Project is about.”
Traynor said would-be filmmakers shouldn’t worry about creating a “good” film.
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“It’s all kinds of different levels of filmmaking,” Traynor said. “Some of the movies you are going to see in there are god awful. I’ve made bad movies myself. It’s totally open. It’s just about making a product to be totally proud of. It doesn’t matter what it is.”
There is a flat fee of $135 to enter the competition before June 14th and an additional $20 for late registrations. Those considering competing are encouraged to attend a meet and greet at Marble Brewery Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. Milder said it’s a good place to learn more about the festival or to meet other filmmakers interested in competing.
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