Hollywood Director Gareth Edwards & His 48 Hour Film Challenge

In 2008, some filmmaker friends of mine took part in the 48 Hour Film Challenge hosted by the Sci-Fi London Film Festival. After the competition was over, I casually enquired how it went. Turned out they didn’t win, but they did at least complete their film.

Their film was a good mockumentary style short spoofing Star Wars. Out of curiosity, I asked who had won the 2008 competition. “Something about cloning. Was OK. No story though.”

The sense was the winning film didn’t really warrant it’s award. Anyway, I was still curious. So I popped over to the SciFi London website to take a peek. There I found the winning film, which was called Factory Farmed.

Watching it, I was blown away by it. I don’t claim this in retrospect, I genuinely thought, “Wow, that’s the best 48 Hour Challenge short film I’ve ever seen!”

Not that I’d been watching hundreds or anything. But I’d seen a dozen or so. This film was so obviously in a different league to all the others.

That’s not to disrespect those films. Many of those films were very good. When I’d had a go at one of these challenges, we hadn’t even managed to compete our film. So, personally, I’m impressed by anyone who just manages to get their project over the line.

Sony EX3 plus 35mm Adapter

But this film really stood out. So I decided to find out about the director, who turned out to be a guy named Gareth Edwards. I learned that he was a professional VFX guy and that he’d shot Factory Farmed using a Sony EX3 with a DoF adapter.

Edwards said later, his motivation to enter the competition was to try out a new piece of filmmaking kit he had discovered: adaptors for digital cameras which made the output look like that of a cinematic 35mm camera.

“That was the missing link really. Low-fi digital guerilla filmmaking always looked like you shot it on video no matter what you did. Then suddenly these lens adaptors meant it looked as beautiful as a 35mm film and I bought one and I desperately wanted an excuse to try it and that’s when I saw the advert for the 48 hour film challenge”. Gareth Edwards

Factory Farmed

Above is Gareth Edwards with his Sony EX3 mounting a lens to his depth of field adapter. The Sony EX3 is a “prosumer” HD camcorder. At the time, it was considered neither fully pro nor fully consumer – landing somewhere between the two.

Two years after winning 48 Hour Film Challenge, Gareth Edwards shot his debut feature Monsters. The film was about a couple making their way through a walled-off area of South America containing visitors from another planet. He shot the film using the same Sony EX3 and had a budget of £15,000.

You may also be aware, Gareth Edwards went on to direct some big budget Hollywood blockbusters: Godzilla and Star Wars: Rogue One. So, that’s a pretty rapid rise from winning a 48 Hour competition to Hollywood in 6 years. And I like to pat myself on the back for spotting Edwards’ talent back then – you gotta take those mini victories when they come!

“you could make a feature film for very little money and it still look cinematic.” Gareth Edwards

But coming back to Earth a minute, can we look back at the original short and see how Edwards crafted a short that stood above the rest? Because this is what FREE Film School (™) is all about. Rather than have a tutor stand before us and waffle on about the 180 degree rule, we explore what’s going on in the real world and get inspired.

Thing is, if we watched Factory Farmed alongside the other competitors from 2008, I’m sure the majority of them would pass the film school checklist. But to me there is something special about Factory Farmed and I believe it is something we can learn from.

Watch the short here:

How Important is the Story?

As my friend said, the film doesn’t have a very clear a story. Now, it’s common knowledge amongst filmmakers that the “story is king”. However, I actually disagree with this and Gareth Edwards’ short shows why.

We can also learn a lot about micro budget (or guerilla) filmmaking from this short. The use of available locations and props is done so well. Nothing really glares as being “tacky”; we don’t have to make excuses for the film’s lack of budget.

The film is very eerie and unsettling. Edwards never tries to tell us the plot, perhaps because there isn’t one. However, I feel like something is happening, whether there is an obvious plot or not, and I’m drawn into the mood of the piece.

Notably: music and sound are used in combination with a series of haunting images.

Later, the film begins to cut between a guy with a long-barrelled gun and a figure in a white bodysuit carrying a child. We don’t understand the connection, but perhaps we hope for an explanation.

Edwards uses focus pulling a lot, partly to evoke this haunting style and to direct us to the meaning in the image. He also uses bits of background and location to communicate a feeling. Examples:

The white suited family with a some kind of modern, glass-walled building in the background. We don’t see what this building is, and it’s out of focus, but it just says “future”.

The “hunting man” with a top of a pylon tower behind him. Again, nothing to do with the story, but it says “technology” and “machinery”. I know it’s easy to read unintended meaning into images, but doesn’t this give us a clue that this character is related to technology and machinery?

Let’s talk about this a bit more

In a lesser movie, we would have characters explaining the concept of cloning and the plot situation they find themselves in. Instead, Edwards simply has a pylon tower in the background and people dressed in white bodysuits. Add this to the haunting music and sound, and we the audience feel the story rather than understand it.

The film continues with the “hunter man” looking for something, our only clues the expressions on his face. And because we haven’t had the plot explained to us, our minds get to work. Our minds start to create a plot in the absence of one provided for us.

About halfway through the film, Edwards connects the 2 worlds. He pulls focus on a teddy bear lying in the sand on the beach, as the hunter man continues hunting in the background. Then he cuts to the white-suited child carrying the same (?) teddy bear.

Act 2

Edwards’ film now switches direction. Nothing dramatic happens, but the switch was signalled by the teddy bear connection. Hunter man is observing something through binoculars when he quickly drops them away from his face to reveal: another expression. He obviously spotted something important.

From the hunter’s POV we see something indistinct. Is it a figure or just a lump of stuff? We’ll have to get closer find out. Again – a less film would have already revealed what this lump is. But by keeping us in the mind of the hunter, we feel as curious as he is in the story.

In fact, his next expression is joy. It’s muted joy, but still we can see he is happy. Now we want to know why. We want answers to the questions in our minds: who is this hunter and what is he looking for?

Tension builds

We get a shaky camera shot as the hunter runs towards the mystery object. But then he slows and we sense his fear. Some more focus pull shots evoke a the tension, using rough but polished cinematography. The skill is also in the editing.

Edwards builds the tension further as he takes his time to allow the hunter to approach the figure. And we only catch tiny glimpses ourselves, so we the audience feel even more tense. A lesser film would not have taken so much time to reveal this figure. But Edwards is brave and skillful enough to drag this out until we can’t bear it any more.

Even at the point where the hunter reveals to himself the identity of the figure, and the music changes to reflect this, Edwards still doesn’t allow us to see. But finally a focus pull reveals the figure to be a clone of our hunter.

The clone speaks with a distorted, mechanical voice. Like everything in this film, nothing is given away. But we get a feeling about what’s going on. Then finally we get some clear dialogue as the hunter reassures the clone, “It’s all going to be ok” (possibly a requirement of the 48 Hour Challenge – to include a specific line).

“If you always put things off until it’s perfect you’ll never ever do anything.” Gareth Edwards

The End

The film comes to an end, without really giving us a story exactly. Rather, this film is a glimpse into a world. But that world feels real. It feels real because filmmaking is dream-making, and Edwards cleverly does nothing to interrupt our dream.

Even as the film ends, the hunter is simply squatted down on the beach sipping from a bottle. What could be more normal (real) than that? There are no crazy, CGI generated creatures ripping people apart. Although, perhaps that would have made the film more immediate, and more popular.

You’ll also notice the CGI Edwards does use is subtle. Scruffy, stained signs or faint notices on the side of train windows. Again, this all works to weave a living world, not too different from our own.

Edwards cuts from the drink bottle, to the white suited world, where another clone drinks from a bottle. Again, he cuts from the beach-abandoned bear to the one held by the white-suited adult. Does this suggest a past and present for clones? The bear ends up abandoned, which indicates that things have not gone well for the clones.

We can only guess at what’s going on. Maybe Edwards never had a real plot but created the feeling of one from the shots he managed to get in 48 hours. It doesn’t matter to me.

For me, this is like an excerpt. It’s a glimpse into another world which is far more powerful than if Edwards had rammed home some plot about clone wars and bounty hunters. The film suggests that even in a world of clones, life goes on. Whatever life actually means to a clone.

Just make your film

Edwards said the 48 hour film challenge was an excuse to make a film: “you always make excuses to put things off and I thought I’m just gonna go for it. And if I’m going to have the sort of career I want I should be able to do this or else I’m kidding myself. If you always put things off until it’s perfect you’ll never ever do anything.”

That’s true cinematic

Before it came to be defined as lens flares, oversaturated LUTs and blurry backgrounds, cinema used to be defined by not being like TV shows. Factory Farmed would never make a TV show, because shows need plot twists and -most of all – dialogue.

Cinematic used to be defined by being able to tell a story using images alone. Which is exactly what Factory Farmed does, whether you see a story there or not. For me, this is the definition of cinematic. But you can’t achieve this by downloading a LUT or ordering an anamorphic lens from the internet.

So how do we achieve this?

So that leads us to this week’s FREE Film School exercise. Each week, I’ve been encouraging you to develop your story ideas into a film project which you can shoot yourself, without funding. This week you can try to visualise your story as something truly cinematic.

Can you envisage your film as a series of atmospheric, emotive images? In practical terms, you can use a storyboard or simply write down your story as a series of shots – but NO DIALOGUE.

By doing this you will start to SEE your story as a piece of cinema, rather than as a series of things happening.

Look at the first beats of your story.

Try to hear the music that evokes the feelings of the characters

Try to list the sounds that evoke those feelings too

Imagine the images which communicate the characters; their feelings and actions

Now, rather than plot beats, describe your character/s living his, her or their life. And it just so happens this life contains the story you want to tell.

Do you understand the difference of this approach?

When we tell a fairytale, we just say what happens: the princess kissed the frog.

This is a story.

Great cinema does not tell us the princess kissed the frog. Cinema evokes the feeling of living the life of this particular princess. And at some point during this princesses life she is driven by her feelings to kiss the frog.

Can you image the story of the princess kissing the frog who then turns into a prince, but told to you in the way Factory Farmed was shot?

Try this as an exercise

A princess finds a frog and kisses it to turn it into a prince.

How do we make this cinematic?

What music do you hear?

What sounds evoke the feeling of the princess?

The mood of the story?

Can you imagine the images?

How will you suggest the story visually rather than telling the audience?

Example: Dusk. A princess walks through a field of tall grass. Fireflies flitter around behind her (suggesting the fairytale magic of the story)…

And so on.

Perhaps the princess observes a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, suggesting physical transformation and preparing us for the frog-to-prince transformation later.

So this is how to make your story cinematic. Give it a try and see what you come up with.

Good luck!

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