VF48Hours Lockdown Forum

Is this a good place to address review comments/questions too?

As long as it promotes your film!

So many of us wait to be recognised, rather than being proactive.

Hopefully this is a place where you embrace tooting your own horn.

I think you're right that we're slow to toot our own whistles in our culture, for fear of being seen as arrogant, or (maybe worse) wrong. It's easy to talk among your team who all did the process with you in the weekend and be like "oh I reckon we should have been nominated for X", but harder to say it out loud, lol.

I am in Taranaki, however, so got a bit lucky this year with small numbers. We got 6 nominations, but then there are teams with like 7, 8 or 12(!) nominations. I'm sure that every one of the 17 films that entered would have something noteworthy about it, and would be a cool reason to have like "honorable mention" type awards that are just played at the final event. "Best homage to a classic movie" or "best bad joke" or "best totally unexpected moment" type stuff. It would make people feel good in larger regions too.

I don't want to do any tootelage of horns because we are proud of our nominations after not getting any last year (even though we prob won't win any), but some of the ones we did/didn't get nominated for felt quite surprising, so always interesting to see how other people view your film compared to how you do, haha.

I'll keep tooting!

I think the door slam in my film was AWESOME! I had to think about it a bit, then follow through all by myself. Did anyone else spot the DOOM style button?

Honk Honk!

I really like the idea of this thread.

So, I’m very proud of our entry “The Stile”. Here’s why:

- We set out to deliver a grim, unsettling tone and we achieved it.
- We kept it simple. Basically one location; couple of actors. Efficient four-hour shoot. It didn’t need to be any more complicated.
- Proud that our intent was to have people think about who the characters were, their motivations, and in particular, Death. And if that took a rewatch, so be it.
- Proud that we stuck to our plan of having the character of Death be free of any of the stereotypical stylings of the character – eg, black robes, skull face, scythe, deep supernatural voice. We presented Death as appearing in a form another person might relate to - in this case a teenager. The idea being that this wasn’t the first time our lead had met Death. He appears as a teen this time to get his message across. So, we could have had dialogue that explained this explicitly but wanted to avoid this route. Our lead says “You look younger” as an opener and later “Why have you come then? Like this?”. Too abstract? Don’t care! I like to think that if there is a being such as Death then they appear in a form I imagine them to be.
- Proud that we made some good decisions around providing more background on why our lead was harming herself, especially the decisions to leave out some trite abuse dialogue.
- Really chuffed reviewers liked the cinematography.
- Proud that while our puddle shot might seem like a throwaway it ties into Death and crossing water.
- Really proud of the performance of our lead actor, Beth. She nailed the role. Gutted for her that she wasn’t recognised as one of the five “Best Performers”. A victim, I feel, of the cull in acting recognition this year.
- Proud that we took a risk in making a serious film, with a difficult subject matter. The film offers a perspective on suicide which some people might feel we have no right commenting on. Oh, well that’s how I feel about this issue.
- Proud that we did a different take on the Star-crossed Lovers genre. The key aspect is that these two “lovers” can’t be together at this moment. Death loves her as he does all souls but the barrier in his way is that he can’t take her because it’s not her time, as with all souls. She simply wants to be with Death but can’t because of the rules set. So, I don’t agree with comments that the love was unrequited therefore only vaguely meeting genre. Key aspect of the genre is two “people” who want to be together but can’t.
- Proud that we did Ultra. We were always going to have a teen character so it wasn’t a huge leap. We used an adult actor for Death and gave him a teen’s voice for the reasons listed above. Also don’t agree that this gave lip service to Ultra for one character. Death was clearly represented as a child. I’ve seen Ultra films that clearly had main characters who weren’t children or animals where this hasn’t been commented on or detracted from those films progressing further.
- Proud that we made the 25 shortlist in Christchurch. Gutted we didn’t make the 15 finalists. 50/50 on whether the shortlist serves any great purpose.

In the end, if not for 48HRS, we wouldn’t have made this film. So, out of everything I’m most grateful for that.

in reply to Mista Teas:

So, I’m very proud of our entry “The Stile”. Here’s why:

I really liked your film! It's also actually really, really interested hearing this side of the film from the team. I've changed my mind about the tooting, because it's not so much about the tooting as having a bit of a glimpse into what each team's films mean to *them*. So maybe I'll come post after our final has been and give a bit more background to our film.

Your analysis of your film is really cool, and it's really nice to hear about the intentions behind some of the things in the film. There are always things we put into films that are subtle in meaning, and may be lost on the audience, but it doesn't mean they're not there or that they don't serve their purpose. Even massive budget Hollywood productions often come out with director's commentaries that give you further insight, right?

I'm a huge fan of people going serious with 48 hour films. Short films are such a good opportunity for social commentary and high impact feels (not that comedies don't have social commentary, get the subtext right and they can be pretty deep and meaningful on the other levels, but many 48hr comedies are more surface level). Ironically of course this year our team did a light comedy, after doing a serious alien film last year about social alienation... and we got actual nominations this year.

So with that, would love to hear the backstory and back-thoughts of more people's films :)

in reply to Rastinha:

I've changed my mind about the tooting, because it's not so much about the tooting as having a bit of a glimpse into what each team's films mean to *them*.

I think you're spot on here! Looking forward to seeing your film - all the best for the 'Naki final.

I really enjoyed working with my family. The two boys are mine.
I think we kept it light-hearted and childish, which was an aim.

I loved that the mispronunciation of 'Miramar' got a laugh.
Survived Ultra and didn't feel that the final product suffered- although losing the dog for a decent chunk of Saturday was kinda stressful.

We used Kevin Mcleod for the first time (I think) so I can tick that 48 Hour box off.

I am very very proud of what my tam accomplished for it's first time ever doing the 4hour film competition. You can check out our film in the screening room. :) JADED!!!
https://www.48hours.co.nz/screening-room/2018-1/wellington/jaded/

Here’s the evolution of our film ‘Altar’:
- When we got AntiRomCom I just thought WTF is that!? I really struggled to get my head around it. But once we pared back to what-we-could-do-with-what-stuff-we-had-available, we could see a clear idea
- And then once we decided we were goIng Serious, we decided to go Dark!
- I successfully killed our lead. We toyed with saying he didn’t have to be killed, he could maybe be arrested or in a fight and unconscious/amnesia or something, but I really felt he just had die! I really wanted to hit the audience hard. I believe that impact is much bigger/sadder, and I was delighted when someone in our heat actually gasped at The Moment.
- So we stuck to a solid ending, previously we’ve been guilty of assuming the viewer has picked up on things and therefore not nailed our ending. At the time it feels like you are telegraphing/patronizing the audience, but you have to remember they have 5 minutes to take it all in and you’ve been writing for 5 hours!
- We called it ‘Altar’ because of the obvious place she is, but that we hoped the audience Alters it’s view of him. I wanted a clever title graphic to flick between the two words Altar and Alter but, dammit, why isn’t it the 48.5hours competition....?!?!
- We’ve been interested in the Review feedback that discusses why she’s alone in the church talking to herself. We had discussed this at great length on the Friday night and wanted to show her complete sense of aloneness, and her ever-diminishing hope that he might actually show up (hence the glances over the shoulder and her constant looks towards the door, and the lonely drone end shot). Perhaps we didn’t quite nail that.
- Overall, v proud. Our best yet in all our own opinions. Please check us out, spoiler alert, it’s not a comedy!!