VF48Hours 2020 Forum

We enjoyed it this year.
We're one of those who didn't make the finals.
Will we do it in 2019?
Unsure. We're a bit of a collective in how we approach each year.
In regards to your theory, there is also option c- a little bit of a and b. This is my view.

Ultra is a really fun added challenge. We didn't do it last year and while we were really happy with the film we made, we were kicking ourselves for not doing it at 7pm on that Friday night when Sequel was announced. I feel like the other elements have changed to be much easier too. We didn't even have to think about them last year. This year they all managed to flow into our story really easily. For any kind of challenge with elements I feel like Ultra is a must now.

I think that every team who has made it to the grand finals should automatically be required to do the ultra challenge every year following. It's crazy that Cool Story Bro was not qualified to compete in Ultra even after winning the competition. If they won't go as far as to make it a requirement of successful teams, it should at least be another way for them to be qualified.

That could be due to a) more experienced teams take Ultra and tend to be better at the format, or b) the added restriction helps story. I’m more inclined toward the latter. Imposing restrictions helps story and encourages creativity.

As most (if not all) of those Ultra teams have made the GF before I'd say it's more a case of them being proven quality film-makers rather than attributing specifically to ULTRA.

I think that every team who has made it to the grand finals should automatically be required to do the ultra challenge every year following

I'm not sure that imposing anything like this on entrants is a good way to go. As we pay the entry fee we should really be doing the comp how we choose to do it. ULTRA is fine as an optional challenge. Also how do you manage something like that? Purely on team names? How much of a team would need to still be in that team the following year?

ULTRA was fine this year (aside from some ambiguity around the "Main characters" thing). As I had U18 actors already in my team it wasn't much of a stretch as we were always going to have a story based around them. The challenge came more from the genre we got "Star-crossed Lovers". I'm pretty confident we would have made the same film irrespective of ULTRA as our focus in the Friday planning was all about the genre, not about ULTRA.

I'm not sure that imposing anything like this on entrants is a good way to go. As we pay the entry fee we should really be doing the comp how we choose to do it. ULTRA is fine as an optional challenge. Also how do you manage something like that? Purely on team names? How much of a team would need to still be in that team the following year?

Yeah I'd do it based on team names. I can understand circumstances change for teams and they may not have the same people each year that got them to the grand finals, but to me that seems like a good reason to change your name if you no longer feel like you're up to the challenges that team could have handled. It is a bit rough to force it on teams, but 48Hours isn't meant to be an easy weekend. To me it would be the same as forcing a team to do a genre they don't want like musical. We pay for that challenge and enjoy facing it with no time to doubt ourselves. I think we end up with a lot of great films in the competition this way that many teams might not have been able to do with complete creative freedom and time.

At the very least the 5 year wait time should be waived for grand finalists so if they want the challenge they can sign up for it.

Our team took a vote to do ultra this year as sequel last year seemed to hurt many teams, although mostly because viewers hadn't seen the originals.

I pushed for it this year on the basis that we do better with more rather than less restrictions and that turned out to be true and has resulted in our first Grand Final appearance.

Ultra really helps you refine your ideas and strip away needless complexity. Although I think it was harder for live action teams, it was a real curve ball for us this year because we had rigged a bunch of adult human characters.

We had to decide if we would adapt the human characters into children or into some kind of zootopia type environment, which would have been a musical + antro animals in human situations + another genre. In the end it just seemed too conceptually layered, so we went back to basics.

What I'm saying is that without ultra we wouldn't have made a dinosaur rap, so I'd totally do ultra again.

I think that Ultra should just be open to anyone!
The five-year thing only seemed like it was there to ensure you'd have films to do a sequel to in the first year. (Which I've already spoken at length about my feelings regarding)

Say if a professional production company is doing 48 for the first or second time & want the extra challenge and feel equipped to do so, they should be allowed to do it.

It's just an opt-in extra element essentially, shouldn't be left only to veteran teams in my mind. Also, along the same train of thought, veteran teams shouldn't necessarily feel obliged or forced to do it. For instance if it's your first year without some usual core members, may you're not feeling as prepared and with no knowledge of what aspect of filmmaking it will effect, maybe you just want to play it safe for a year, as something like that is already a massive added challenge for your team. HAVING SAID THAT, if you've done it plenty of times before & especially if you've won the whole competition before, don't be a pussy & just do it.

Although if it changes to being open to anyone, I'm not really a fan of the other elements being relatively inconsequential and then Ultra being the only real challenge to include, which is what it felt a bit like this year.

Personally: having run the Chch comp for seven years and done pretty well in the comp prior to that, there was no way I couldn't do Ultra. It'd have felt like a cop-out.

Unless it's something that requires prior entries to exist, I do think Ultra should be open to everyone, though. Perhaps with a disclaimer that "we strongly advise that you don't do this unless you've done it for 5 years or more". When all the experienced teams go for it and nobody else is even allowed to, it creates a weird class divide within the comp, and I don't think the organisers have ever wanted to do that.

I wonder whether there's a more perfect distillation of the idea of "Ultra" than the animals/children rule though. "Never work with children or animals" has become such a well-known truism of film production and showbiz, and it ended up being a wonderful inspiration and enabling constraint for a lot of teams.

And fwiw, I still think "sequel" was a strong offer that didn't get taken up creatively by many teams. We got mostly pretty basic interpretations of what sequels can be - not many films that stood on their own, and wayyy too many flashback sequences.

Maybe it could be 2 or 3 years instead of 5 but I kind of like the whole experience angle to it. Coming out of the competition the past 2 years I've felt like I've been putting an unnecessary burden on myself since I'm not as equiped as some teams to deal with these curveballs but I also like that It can force you to start the weekend with a fresh slate. Will defiantly be doing Ultra again next year.

in reply to Andrew Todd:

And fwiw, I still think "sequel" was a strong offer that didn't get taken up creatively by many teams. We got mostly pretty basic interpretations of what sequels can be - not many films that stood on their own, and wayyy too many flashback sequences.

I wonder if part of the problem was that Sequel was chosen as the very first Ultra challenge, and at that time people were still getting their head around what Ultra even meant. I suspect that had Sequel been the Ultra challenge for this year, i.e. with a year for the comp and its competitors to digest the initial experience of Ultra, you would have seen a whole lot more creative offerings.

(Also, Animals/Children is a much more straightforward offer to add into the 48HOURS framework, and probably would have functioned better as an initial Ultra challenge to ease people into the idea.)

#hindsight2c

Oooo I'm loving this discussion. It has certainly surprised us how many Ultra teams have done so well this year - maybe it wasn't hard enough lol - last year it certainly made or broke teams. We see Ultra as being something that should be really hard and make sure that the competition remains challenging to teams who have gotten really good at 48 and need things spiced up a bit. I do think that added constraints help with creativity and this year's children/animals requirement really made people come up with interesting and original ideas which then made for great films.

The 5 year thing is a little arbitrary and we could relax it and make it shorter - and yes any team that makes the grand finals should be capable of the extra challenge - that said teams do email me to register for Ultra, its not automatic so we could open it up a bit to teams who are obviously experienced enough to handle it.

I should note that there were a few teams around the place who came to the launch late and thought they had to do ultra so there were a couple of accidental ultras.

We are making this up as we go along so keep on piling in with your thoughts and suggestions and we will take them on board for next year.

Cheers, Ruth.

It was better this year than last year, but it's a bit silly that there still isn't a regional Best Ultra, at least in the larger centres. Honestly I wouldn't recommend any teams do Ultra, but if we enter again we probably will.

in reply to ruth:

maybe it wasn't hard enough lol

Yeah, I don't think it was. This is because of the out that was given where adults could play the children or animals. If teams had to actually use children or animals as their main characters it would have been a tougher challenge.

in reply to Mista Teas:

This is very true. We managed to find an awesome kid to act in our film but if we couldn't find one or didn't want to use one there was the backup to just use adult actors. The criteria for kid to go up to a 17 year old character made it fairly easy too I thought. We wouldn't even have to dress up as animals or kids. We'd just get our mid 20's-30's actors to play teenagers like every other film does.

I feel like a lot of teams chose to do things the hard way with last years Ultra too. But I do like that teams don't go for the easy way out when opting to do Ultra. You've got to embrace the challenge, and then dial yourself back to what is realistically achievable.

in reply to Jason:

The criteria for kid to go up to a 17 year old character made it fairly easy too I thought.

That rather bothered me. It's very clearly not who the expression is about. We used a 3 year old (to play a 4 year old).

I love your stuff themorgan! I used a 4 month old to play two opposing military overlords. Fun times. I am still recovering from that weekend.

in reply to themorgan:

That rather bothered me. It's very clearly not who the expression is about.

As a team that did Ultra and got HIGH SCHOOL MOVIE I understand why the age had to go up to 17. There was a good 1 hour of our weekend that was wasted while we sat around dejected over the fact we had to make a High school movie (and be true to the genre as often requested by the judges) and somehow use only children or animals. I think if High School movie wasn't one of the genres then they could have taken the "Child" aspect of Ultra even tighter down to like under 10years old or even younger as you say. But with that particular genre in there this year it would have completely destroyed those Ultra teams if the restriction was THAT young.

Although I'm still interested in how our talking Pheotus from inside a pregnant teenager at high school story would have turned out! hahahahaha.

I was disappointed that one Wellington Ultra finalist had, in my opinion, the main character as an adult and the secondary character as a child.

Finding the cast to film would have been tough yes or writing to suit who you had would also have been tough- but that was the idea of Ultra.

The film itself was strong- and had it not been an Ultra then it would have stood up in terms of quality.

in reply to Clayton Hiku:

Although I'm still interested in how our talking Pheotus from inside a pregnant teenager at high school story would have turned out! hahahahaha.

As much as I enjoyed your film, I am now really disappointed that I didn't get to witness this masterwork.

in reply to Clayton Hiku:

Although I'm still interested in how our talking Pheotus from inside a pregnant teenager at high school story would have turned out! hahahahaha.

"LOOK WHO'S TALKING ALREADY"