The “Boneyeard” after unloading everything.

The Kickoff

At about 6:40 PM Friday night at the RJ Cinema Distillery and Tap Room, we spun a wheel for our genres. We drew “Action-Adventure” and “Utopia or Dystopia”. Whew! No “Musical” or “Dance Film” for us! Dodged a bullet there.

At 7 PM, we received the rest of the assignment: We had to have a character “Shawn or Shawna Copeland”, a food critic. We had to include a vacuum cleaner, and the line, “Can we circle back to this when we have more time?” With that, we headed off to make a film.

Writing the Script

On the ride back to the Bauer’s, Jackson Coates, Thad, and I discussed possible stories and settled on the basic idea. Jackson, Alex Wey, and I hammered out the details and began writing the script. That process always takes longer than you thnk it should, and we didn’t have a near-final script until after midnight. After 3.5 hours of sleep, I got up at 5 AM to finish the script.

Pre-Production

At breakfast, 7 AM Saturday morning, the cast did a table read. We were a but long, but since some of the scenes happen concurrently, we thought (hoped?) we could come in under 7 minutes. Still, the script was an aggressive target: 8 scenes across three interior locations (one green screen), plus two exterior drone shots. We had our work cut out for us.

Production

The Newsroom (green screen)

We had hung the green screen and placed two lights for it on Friday, but since we didn’t know what we would be doing with (if we used it at all), we still had to set up tables, get chairs, set up the camera, a teleprompter, and light the talent. It took a couple of hours to set that up and we filmed those scenes until just after noon.

Shawna’s Apartment

After a lunch break, we started setting up the shots of Shawna. We spent time laying out the shots, and setting up the lighting, so we didn’t do our first take until after 3 PM. It all went smoothly enough, but the day was getting away from us and we still had a lot to shoot.

Alex & Julia’s Living Room

We struck Shawna’s set and moved to the living room. It was getting late, so we opted for natural lighting to save time. Shooting here was tricky because of the windows along the back of the house, so we crafted camera angles that would avoid having blown-out windows in the background. The late-day sun was also playing havoc with us, casting bright spots through high windows. We blocked it out as best we could. At one point we had to have a 12′ C-stand lifted up even higher by two crew members, Nicole Bauer and Mark Bugada (see the gallery, below).

Outside Drone Shots

We wrapped the interior shots with time to spare. We ordered pizza for everyone and still had to wait for the sun to get low enough for the outdoor shots. In retrospect, we could have waited a bit longer for some golden-hour goodness, but we didn’t want to run out of light. We have a lot to learn about the drone, but Jackson did a fine job getting our final shots.

Post-Production

Thanks to Joye Bauer, I finally had a DIT (Digital Image Technician). My editing job was much easier since Joye was able to sync video and sound clips perfectly. We had used a slate, which helped speed the process, but her contribution here was invaluable.

The rough cut came together very well, though it still took until 1 AM to have something to show the crew. I got to bed around 1:30 AM and got up a 5:30 AM to finish the edit.

On Sunday, I tweaked the edit, added effects and, again thanks to Joye, had music to put in place. The final version wasn’t perfect—it never is in a 48-hour film—but it came out really well. We uploaded it easily ahead of the deadline.

Wrapping Up

Sunday night Thad helped me pack up and load the gear back into into the minivan, which took until 10:30. I got about 6 hours of sleep before driving the 2 hours back home, unloading the van, returning it, and putting (most) everything away.

Part of Monday through Wednesday was spent putting together the poster and trailer, editing and uploading stills and behind-the-scenes photos (at bottom), and writing this.

What’s Next?

Now we wait for the screening on June 26th. Tickets are on sale now. And then we wait for to see if we are shut out on the awards front for the third time in a row. We have a better film this  year, so maybe not?