The simple genius of the 48 Hour Film Project is that it forces you to make a movie. It’s easy to sit around and think to yourself, “Hey, I should get off my ass and make a film.” It’s much harder to find the time, energy, motivation, and moxie to do so. The 48 Hour Film Project compacts the entire moviemaking process into a forced two-day whirlwind. You start on a Friday night, and by Sunday evening, you are exhausted from sleep deprivation but are also the proud owner of a completed film.
My team, Ducks in a Row, has participated five times now, meaning we’ve made five movies over ten days. Without the motivation of the 48 Hour Film Project, none of them would exist. That would be a tragedy, and I am very thankful for the opportunity.
People sometimes ask me which of our films is my favorite. It’s not a question I can answer. I don’t have children, but if I did, I imagine it would be like asking which kid I preferred the most. Each of our films has its strengths and flaws. All are unique. Every one says something about the incredible journey the 48 Hour Film Project has allowed my team and I to take over the years.
Way back in the 1990s when Ross & Rachel were still a thing, my best friend Erik and I decided to make a short film. We barely knew what we were doing, but putting together a movie on 16mm film is an experience I will never forget. Thanks to YouTube, an old school projector is no longer needed to watch “Daddy’s Little Girl,” our first opus. If you do spend the 41 minutes to do so, please be kind!
Back then, making a movie even as short as the 48 Hour Project’s allotted four to seven minutes would probably not have been possible without owning a film processing lab. In the two decades since, things have changed so much that almost anyone can do it. Wanting to get back into moviemaking, the forced two-day timeframe seemed like the perfect opportunity. In 2013, we took the plunge and went in with great expectations. And then I put us in a position to have to make a western.
Some explanation of the Project’s rules is in order. To prevent teams from doing any filmmaking beforehand, the organizers put together specific requirements you have to fulfill. The most important is the genre draw that kicks off the weekend. More than anything, it dictates what kind of movie you will be making. The rules have changed through the years, but basically, you draw two genres out of a hat and have to pick one. If you pull “drama or comedy,” then you can choose whether to make one of those straightforward types of films. For a long time, the most challenging pair to draw was “musical or western.” So, of course, that’s what I pulled our first year.
We were saved by another the Project’s rules: the inclusion of a required prop. This is an item that has to appear somewhere in the film. While the prop doesn’t have to be integral to the story, you can win an award if you use it in the best way. Our first year, it was bubble wrap. Not wanting to tackle a musical, we ended up making a straightforward gunfight flick where the characters used bubble wrap instead of guns. I don’t like to toot my own horn too much, but I will say this was a stroke of great genius. So much so that we ended up winning the best prop award.
The movie is called “The Bridge,” and we filmed it in the baking Florida sun on what was probably the hottest day of the year. I lost at least five pounds of water sweating that day. I still think it was worth it.
The next year we were on surer footing and drew time travel as our genre. I don’t remember what the other choice was, but I doubt we even considered it. We quickly tied in the idea of time travel with another of the Project’s required elements: a character who must appear in the film. In 2014 it was Andrew or Andi Tracey, a children’s book author.
Our idea was to write a movie about an author in his later years who wishes he wrote something more substantial than books about a golden-haired girl named Sunny and her kitten. He goes back in time to try and change things, with unexpected results. Erik and I cranked the script out faster than any of the others we have done over the years. The contest kicks off at 7:00 PM on Friday, and we try to have the screenplay finished by midnight. This schedule gives us time to get a little shut-eye before a long day of shooting on Saturday. The story of “Sunny & Kitten Get Ice Cream” just flowed, and I think we finished our script by 10:30.
Of course, it helps to have a strong group of actors volunteering to appear in your movie. We have some regulars who we can rely on to do just about anything. It’s nice to be able to match them with a part in the story quickly and have the comfort that they can handle it. Our biggest challenge that year was shooting a scene with three characters eating ice cream in a muggy but very photogenic park. We must have gone through five gallons of the stuff that afternoon.
Out film ended up winning the awards for best use of the required character and best actor for Richard Coppinger’s work playing the author as an older man. We were up for the best film of the Project that year. While we didn’t win, as all the runners up say, it was still an honor to be nominated.
Our next movie came in 2016 when we produced “Sucks to Be You,” a road movie about a nebbish of a vacuum salesman who murders his way to being the employee of the month. We collaborated that year with Team FITUMI, another group of 48 Hour Film Veterans who were taking a year off from doing their own thing. You can check out their movies here. (Erik, myself, and others on our team helped them out the previous year when we took time off from the Ducks.)
One of the magical things about the 48 Hour Film Project is how a group of people can come together so quickly when working in close quarters for a short period. We’ve been lucky to have more or less the same core helping us out over the years. Working with another strong team in 2016 made the experience that much more enjoyable. There aren’t many better ways to spend a late Saturday afternoon than hosing down your lead actor with fake blood.
We didn’t win any awards for our most R rated flick, but I still get a smile every time I watch it.
After another one-year hiatus where we helped out our FITUMI friends again, Erik and I were back in the saddle in 2018. And guess what? We drew the dreaded “musical or western” choice again. I must have angered the genre gods somehow over the years and this is how they take out their revenge. Anyway, having already tackled a western, we decided to try our hand at a musical this time.
We have a very talented group of local musicians who have worked with us on all our 48 Hour Films. Over the years, they have formed into a band called Zerobabies. Check out their Facebook page here and see them live if you get the chance. They specialize in an instrumental rock n’ roll guitar sound, so when we told them that a musical was in the works, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m not sure they did either. But they pulled it off beautifully. We had a jazzy riff, rap, country, and more to choose from. As always, it was phenomenal.
We were nominated for a slew of awards, including one for the elusive best film, though we only won for choreography. I wish the music would have been recognized, but I have learned to try and let things like that go. Something I’ve come to appreciate over the years is that you don’t make movies to win awards. You make them to entertain audiences. I think that “Vocal Yokels,” our musical send-up of reality shows, does just that.
This year, I pulled the dreaded western genre again. Thankfully, the organizers mercifully paired it with something other than musical. If that were the choice, our film would have been nothing but me cursing loudly to music for the full seven minutes. Instead, our other genre option was slapstick, so picking that was a no brainer. It turned into much more of a challenge than I thought. If I took anything away from our experience this year, it’s that comedy is damn hard.
Maybe this is why Erik and I almost forgot to include the other mandatory element in our script: the line of dialogue. This final filmmaking requirement is a sentence a character must speak in your movie. For the 2019 contest, it was “I wish I could help you.” Erik was halfway out the door around midnight when I had the realization that we completely forgot about it. Ten minutes later, the problem was solved.
Thinking about it, the 48 Hour Film Project is really all about problem-solving. Making a coherent short movie in just two days is nothing but a series of problems you have to overcome. Our main one this year was trying to make an interesting movie that revolved around an avocado (this year’s required prop). It was another exhausting experience, but I loved every minute of it. “The Avocado Affair” is another fond memory that I’ll be able to watch again and again for the rest of my life.
Erik once told me about a film producer who applauded every move he watched. He said he did this because making a movie is difficult, and anyone who can pull it off deserves to be recognized. My experience with the 48 Hour Film Project backs that up completely. Everyone who has had the guts to compete and produce a film deserves an ovation. If you have ever wanted to be a filmmaker or are just interested in being part of a team that makes a movie, you should definitely check it out.
I just went on a nice journey down memory lane.