“If you see him again, tell me.”

I’m back from Rhode Island, and I’ve actually showered and slept.

Once again, I participated in Team “They’re Using Tools” 48 Hour Film Project. I ended up taking an even greater role than last year- I drove the entire brainstorming session for the story, for instance, and had to fill in for any number of coordination duties and planning. (I ended up giving myself a Producer credit as a result.)

We pulled “Road Movie” as the genre- exactly the genre Melinda wanted, because it meant filming inside air conditioned cars. Of course, there was plenty of times when we were outside in the sun anyway filming, but it did let us do a number of car shots. I even got to serve as a stunt driver, keeping pace with the Mustang that the main characters were supposed to be driving (we used a stunt driver for that, too) as a cameraman leaned out the window of my car to film it, and gave me instructions like “get in front of him!” and “slow down to try to get him going around the exit.”

Unfortunately, we didn’t finish in the time alotted. As I understand, the movie was dropped off 15 minutes after the deadline. This actually isn’t as big a deal as it may sound… the movie still gets to screen at the festival, it just can’t win any awards. The big draw of completing one of these projects is to have the piece for portfolios, and just say that we did it. (And really, since those extra 15 minutes weren’t anyone’s fault, it doesn’t invalidate any of our hard work whatsoever.)

However, in the future (whether for my own team or if I go up to Providence again next year) I will strongly push for getting two editors: an overnight editor who will digitize and work on a first pass by his/herself on Saturday night while everyone else sleeps (who doesn’t participate in the shooting), and then hands off the work to a second, more full editing team on Sunday. I think that would go a long way towards speeding things up.

I have not even seen the final cut of the film myself, just a very rough cut early on (And of course I won’t be there in Rhode Island this Wednesday for the screening). As I understand it, something I felt was very important didn’t make it in due to the deadline (and that lead to no small amount of frustration on my part, which I had to seriously cool off about), but hopefully the version that is sent out on DVD includes it.

Regardless, I have a blast at 48hfp, and it makes me want to do it more than once a year. Of course, I really like the city of Providence, and I really like the team up there, but I feel like the more experience I get at moviemaking, the more experienced I get at all kinds of different skills. And of course, I always like having any final creative project with my name somewhere on it.