I spent Friday night working on a film for the 24 hour filmmaking contest. They gave everyone a theme, a prop, and a specific line of dialogue that had to be in the film. This year's theme was Mercy. The prop was a candle. The line of dialogue was "I should have." Every team is limited to five people, which must include both cast and crew. The finished film cannot be longer than three minutes.
I joined a team with Murray Triplett, Greg Johnson, Dave Larsen, and Tom Triplett. Murray and Greg had the idea to do a black and white spoof of Twelve Angry Men with each of us playing two or three parts. Murray and I talked over some plot points and some ideas for characters. Then I wrote up a quick script and Murray gave it a quick rewrite. We tried to make every character over-the-top funny.
We met in Bountiful and filmed in a conference room. Everyone took the characters and made them even crazier. Luckily, Dave is a great make-up artist, so we ended up with some funny-looking character roles. I played Mr. Confused and Mr. Rushed. To make my characters distinct, I even agreed to shave my head for one of the parts. Someday maybe I'll collect the 56 bucks people offered to entice me to put razor to scalp.
Later we edited at Greg's office. The hardest part was packing it all into three minutes. We ended up having to cut some of our favorite bits, and the pacing feels like we were on crack. The film might have been a little stronger if we hadn't been constrained by the time limit, but all in all I think it turned out great. 24 hours is not a lot of time to write, film, edit, and master a project. We had it even tougher than many others because we all worked until 5 on Friday, and Provo is an hour away from us. Still, we had the finished DVD in hand by 8 o'clock Saturday morning. For us it was a 15 hour festival.
Thursday night our film will screen along with the other contest entries at the LDS Festival.
Additional postings about this film on: January 22, January 20, January 19
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