VF48Hours Lockdown Forum

I liked it.

Took us a while to think about what film we could turn into a survival movie. We certainly pushed the boundaries of that genre, hopefully it still counts, but we'll see.

I would maintain you can make a sequel to any film in any genre...

It was certainly fun to revisit that one film that made you itch to do more - but I don't think I'd do it again if it was a sequel. I like making up a new story every year and changing up the visual aesthetic.

I wasn't thrilled about the sequel at first but once I decided what film to do a sequel of I think it helped the writing more then if I had to write the film from scratch. I think the biggest problems I ran into was that I was under the impression that we also had to combine this years genre with the last films genre so I was rolling out films based on that. The other thing was keeping track of all of the elements. I kept looking up on the 48 hours website thinking things like "What's this years line of dialogue? What is this years prop?"
I think it would be good to have a different Ultra challenge every year I could keep making sequels to Operator until I had a 48 hours franchise going on but it would be good to make things fresh every year.

We loved it! I think the concept was brilliant. The regular competition was way more vague in its elements this year and Ultra was crazy specific. Which is great as the newbies got an easier start and the Vets got thrown for a six. I feel like in recent years the biggest names in the comp have been going further and further with their preplanning. This really helped to give the old guys a fresh new unknown challenge and make it feel like those exciting first couple years in the comp where you were wide eyed and nervous as hell. I hope Ultra stays but that they keep coming up with fantastic clever ideas like the sequel idea but not sequel again. Perhaps prequel in a few years though?

in reply to Andrew Todd:

I'm not saying you can't, but in terms of what we thought might work best as well as keeping it in the same universe. Even though we switch from live action to animation, we kept the same characters and world that the originals live in.

Hi All, Glad to hear ULTRA went down well and yes it makes the competition fresh again. Our plan is to switch up ULTRA next year - it will be different.

If all the ULTRA teams can make sure the film they made a sequel to is in the screening room then we can link to it.

When it was revealed at the launch it felt like a huge amount to do in the 48HRs. However, as others have mentioned, with the 2017 elements being relatively straight forward it was only a matter of making sure we kept in mind the other year's elements, which we found pretty straight-forward. I kept a running list of both years, ticking everything off!

Friday, we drew up a list of our films and discussed the pros & cons of each in relation to a where to next for the story & characters. And so we settled on a sequel to our 2014 film, "The Shirt". It was a lot of fun for me to revisit the character of Kurt who I voice. We kept it in the same animation style of the first film but with a little more polish & live motion backgrounds instead of illustrations. The film takes place immediately after the events of "The Shirt".

On the downside I was really excited about getting the Alien genre (Aliens & Witches terrify me) and immediately had an idea for it which I would have loved to have done during the weekend. ULTRA48 completely killed that though.

Great initiative though and I'd do it again as I really liked the mystery factor of ULTRA48. Well done to all concerned!

Loved it. Initially thought it would be relatively straight forward, but it so wasn't and we were seriously challenged. Not least because we had set ourselves goals within the team, and we had new people trying new roles. So much fun!! I felt the danger this year!

Ultra challenge was fine.

Building the airplane in the garage was ok.

The real challenge was having enough time to get all the skydiving death scenes in- I pushed myself and the team a bit far and didn't have time to get them all in. Will make an extended cut for the fans.

I really enjoyed Ultra. There was so much debate over which film we wanted to sequelize. It was certainly a challenge and refreshing addition to this year's comp. Would Ultra again.

I'm really stoked that Ultra seems to have gone so well.
I'd like to see it become a regular feature of the comp. Obviously, you can't have sequel every year. But it should be doable with other challenges in its place.

in reply to Koopzilla:

I'll admit: I'm mildly sad we don't get to see I GOT ROBOTS 2 (WE GOT ROBOTS? I GOT MORE ROBOTS? ROBOTS GOT ME?). That's an all-timer. Would be hard to top that ending though.

I'm looking forward to the year musical gets excluded from the genres and Ultra is "REMAKE a previous 48Hours short you've made, as a musical"... wait, no, I'm not looking forward to that at all...

We have started posting links to the films that ULTRA teams made a sequel to. If you want to have a look at them before the heats - https://www.48hours.co.nz/2017/register/?ss=ultra48

ULTRA teams send us a link to your previous films preferably in the screening room. ness@48hours.co.nz

Deciding which film to sequelize was difficult and it caused a rift in the team for a while. I really wanted to make something new. Having to include all the old elements felt like a huge step backwards in terms of the other changes made to this year's competition, I was under the impression that the whole point in the changes was to make 48 hour films less formulaic so asking the experienced teams to rehash stuff was a little baffling to me, plus I know Ant likes original voices and thinks Hollywood's obsession with sequels and remakes is a bit shit, so yeah the whole concept of the Ultra 48 surprised me and made me go "wtf are they thinking!?".

Having said all that, I had an absolute blast. I got to revisit a character that I wanted to do justice(I think I did), we had kept all the old costumes and props from that year and we made something we are all proud of.

in reply to Andrew Todd:

Haha! As was I man. Robots was the front runner for most of the deliberations. Maybe... one day. I'm intrigued to see what kind of curve balls ULTRA throws at us in the future.

We didn't do ULTRA, as no one else on the team felt they were ready for it except me, but later on I realized that ironically we would have had an idea WAY sooner if we had to do a sequel, as it's almost a justifiable reason to repeat a previous formula that worked, instead of coming up with something from scratch.

I thought the decision to make Ultra a sequel was a very interesting one, and I'm surprised to see everyone here loved it, I was expecting a lot more anger haha. I would like to do Ultra next year, but I worry the output of films will just end up too self referential if it's something like "make a sequel" each year. Just my two cents, I'm sure the ultras will be great. Can't wait to see them!

Not an Ultra Player BUT.

I love love loved the changes to the comp this year.

And i still love the concept of Ultra. But good god I’m glad we didn’t do ultra.

I guess i shouldn’t really pass judgement till ive seen what the ultra teams made. But my fear is that all to many of the ultra film will be based in comedy and in particular, inside jokes.

I can’t wait to see the teams that made serious dramatic sequels.

I was really hoping that ultra would firmly push the long time teams away from easy comedy ideas. But perhaps it succeeded in taking the easy part away!

*awaiting moderation*

Sequel was neat, although the trick will becoming up with stuff that's as-good-but-not-the-same for Ultra in future years.

I'm wondering how many teams reacast roles from previous films? We mentally ruled out a lot of our previous entries due to personnel.