HP48 Hours Forum

We still on for April/May?

Well are we?

48Hours 2019

Ness, please make sure you think about what's convenient for TheRealClose when picking a date as well.

Ultra 2019 (and why you should do it)

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.

Christchurch - fantastic year

I think the over-representation on the forum is just to make up for our under-representation in the national competition

Christchurch - fantastic year

in reply to Clayton Hiku:

To add once again to the Ultra conversation, I think the clarification did a lot more harm than good.
I may have said this on the forum before, but if you have to clarify something even 5 minutes into the weekend, that's too late.

Last year it happened with "Character: A Female", then around 9am Saturday morning "Your actor MUST be a female" (for the record, I am in the camp of "come on just get a female actor") then like 3pm Saturday "Okay, you won't get a DQ if your actor isn't female". This is essentially changing the rules midway through the weekend & that's ridiculous.

This year it was "your main character(s) must be Children or Animals", then we got "ALL main characters" a few hours into the weekend. This sparked numerous discussions of which films would count and which wouldn't. Then after the weekend it seemed to be "whichever way you interpreted it is fine".

Personally with issues like this, if it's not something the comp anticipated, I feel like they kind of just have to cut their losses and leave it how it is. Sure, at the launch, (or ready to go on the website) tell us the actor HAS to be a female, that's fine. But to make it look like teams are risking disqualification is idiotic. Same with this year, if you didn't anticipate that people might not be clear on what was defined as a "main character" or whether or not all of them have to be, the answer has to be "whatever your interpretation is, it's correct".

Anyways, that's my biggest feedback for this year, especially regarding Ultra. I would love moving forward for these obvious questions to be thought of behind the scenes so that we're not wasting time asking them during the weekend and then worrying about a DQ when we get the answer.

Hell the fact that we're still arguing about whether or not films should've qualified just goes to show how poorly it was handled.

Christchurch - fantastic year

in reply to Clayton Hiku:

And if every Ultra team made "look who's talking" style voiceover movies with animals and babies I imagine that the complaint will be teams not being inventive enough with the challenge. (Richard please note: Absolutely LOVED Look who's Martin Scorsese talking! haha)

Phew! I was VERY close to feeling victimised there haha

With regards to Ultra, definitely think there should be at least some recognition at regional level, with last year the award just being given out at the grand final with no nominations it was kind of a bummer only recognising one team's effort (especially since, let's be honest, there wasn't really any chance of this winner not coming from Auckland or Wellington).

I'd like to see Ultra treated in the same way that we treat the other elements in some ways, especially now that there's a best use of genre award. By which I mean that the award(s) for Ultra shouldn't necessarily go to the best film which happens to be ultra, but the best interpretation or subversion or something more along those lines

Christchurch City Finalists & Award Nominees

in reply to Mista Teas:

Haha, can never be too careful

Christchurch City Finalists & Award Nominees

in reply to Bloydd:

Also I didn't mean for that to come across negative in any way, I legitimately just think that this stuff is really interesting.

Christchurch City Finalists & Award Nominees

in reply to Mista Teas:

Are you suggesting, Richard, that there's a sameness about the CHCH final? :)

I would never say such a thing! However... the facts are these:

NINE of the 15 finalists appeared in the finals last year:
Blood & Bone, CRAB CRAB CRAB, Dragon V Mouse, Dystography, Little Old Lady Productions, No Budget Ninjas, rip focus, Submission Impossible & Toot Toot.

Of the remaining 6, two are previous finalists who skipped the finals last year:
Domino & TBALC

The remaining 4 are (as far as I know) new teams:
Poutine Wolf - Contains Andrew Todd who has technically been at like every final, but has been an actual finalist before
South Jersey Ghost Research - Conatins TBALC alumni
Summer co - Previous finalists from Sneaky/Crazy Horses & I believe Les Cousins

The only one I have no intel on is 1:1 Creative, are they completely new to the comp or made up (at least partially) from previous finalists too? Perhaps someone can chime in?

Christchurch City Finalists & Award Nominees

Feel free to correct me, but am I right in saying that every finalist is either a first time team or previous finalist? Couple of names I didn't recognise that may or may not be brand new

How did you find your Genre's and the elements for 2018

On the "Genre +" suggestions, I think this is a great idea, worked well for Musical, added a new twist to something that's been in the comp almost every year.
I'd like to see this come back with a few of the less specific genres, the ones that kind of give you a framework, then combine it with something a bit more specific or tricky.

Could have for example:
Rom-Com +
Action +
Mystery +
etc etc

Christchurch City Finalists & Award Nominees

Also 6 Ultra films by my count! From 9 that made the shortlist, from 13 that signed up.
So almost 50% of Ultra teams made the finals!
I think this year was more of an outside the box challenge which teams rose to, as opposed to last year’s just being fucking stupid.

Christchurch City Finalists & Award Nominees

Genre stats!

3 finalists: Wish Movie (4 if you include The Musical + Wish!)
2 finalists: High School Movie, Fish-Out-of-Water Movie, Technological Thriller, Film that Spans More than 10 Years
1 finalist: Star-Crossed Lovers, Anti-Rom-Com, Last Day on Earth, Musical + 1
No finalists: Monster Movie, Splatstick, Time Travel, Heist, Back from the Dead.

Without having really seen any of the films, I'm surprised that Wish seems to be the most successful genre, wouldn't have picked that at the start of the weekend. Guess it's one that's open to a lot of different interpretations which would've worked in it's favour.
Disappointed we didn't see any Splatstick movies in the finals, but of course sometimes the genres just don't quite align with the teams that would've excelled with them.

Also I'm happy to see a couple of Films that Span More than 10 Years, which was the winner of the poll on Facebook & submitted by yours truly ;) (although I admit seeing it written out it is a mouthful & probably crowded some people's title cards haha)

Curious to know.... ULTRA award nominations? and is the Wildcard (P.Jackson) still a thing?

I'd say it's actually more likely only grand finalists.
Maybe a couple of Auckland or Wellington Ultra city finalists could squeeze across the line into the nominations. If they do nominations this year!
Last year the nominations were "coming soon" until the night of the grand final when the first award was just "oh and this team won the Ultra award".

Changes to Awards

in reply to Andrew Todd:

I personally would've gone to ten (or seven!) nominations for performances.

One nomination for every possible star rating on the reviews site.

what about an award for Best Actor, and an award for Best Ensemble? Sometimes a film doesn't have a single obvious stand-out (or perhaps the stand-outs simply don't individually get enough screentime to feel eligible), but the work of the cast as a whole could be recognised in this way.

I do like the idea of a Best Ensemble award, but I fear that my support for this could be interpreted as being against the idea of any other acting awards.