48 Hour Film Challenge Survival Guide

If you’re a filmmaker or an aspiring filmmaker there’s a good chance you will have heard of an event called a 48 Hour Film Challenge. You may have even participated in one. If not, you might wonder what one is.

Put simply, a 48 hour film challenge is an event where you accept the challenge of writing, shooting and editing a short film in 48 hours.

In fact, there are challenges of varying numbers of hours, depending on the event. But 48 hours is the most common. One of the most famous is the 48 Hour Film Project which started in Washington in 2001.

Writing, shooting and editing a whole film in 48 hours? Why would you do that to yourself?

Well, I think the most common reason is it can be fun. Another very good reason is because the short shooting time and deadline focuses the mind.

Filmmakers are prone to procrastination, like any other creative breed. And getting a bunch of people to agree to make a film on a certain day can be frustrating. So a 48 Hour (or other length) challenge sets everyone a time and a place. Then it’s just a matter of “who’s in?”

I’ve only participated in one 48 hour filmmaking challenge. We failed to finish on time. This was mostly down to not having a prep-prepared strategy.

Most of the first 10 hours was spent with the actors trying to come with a story. And every story seemed to be along the lines of “an actor goes to an audition and then…”

I’m in! How do I get involved?

Look out for a 48 hour film challenge in a city near you. The one I know about in London (UK) is the Sci-Fi London 48 Hour challenge.

Once signed up, you will usually be given a place for the participating teams to assemble. Teams are then assigned a genre, a character, a prop, and a line of dialogue, and have the set number of hours to create a short film containing those elements.

The reason for assigning those elements is to prevent teams turning up with a pre-written screenplay or simply making a short film before the competition starts. Of course, rumours quickly spread that some teams are arriving with a basic story pre-planned and it’s quickly adapted to include the given elements.

Pre-planning

How much you stretch the rules is up to you. But there are certainly a number of legal things you can do to be as prepared as possible before the competition begins.

organise crew and cast

prepare your equipment and have it as ready as possible to get shooting

find locations

arrange food, transport and other practical stuff

have some music ready to use

Essentially, the more you have pre-prepared before opening the envelope containing the given elements the better. Really this is just basic good filmmaking practice anyway. So a 48 hour film challenge is a good test of your production skills.

Just get filming

This is a time challenge. Time is your enemy. However much time you have to meet this short film challenge, it isn’t enough.

As soon as the organisers say “GO” make sure you do indeed go directly to making your film. Don’t hang around discussing stuff with your team (or other competing teams). Don’t take this as an opportunity to go and get stocked on food or pick up a member of the cast from the station.

This is a time challenge. Which means the team which uses the limited time most effectively is going to have a big advantage.

Give yourself a time limit for each stage

Don’t leave anything open ended. Even if you don’t know the exact story you will be filming before kick off, you can still create a basic schedule.

Divide your production into stages and give each stage a set amount of time. Here are the basic stages of the challenge.

script

shooting

re-shoots

edit

finish

Try to make sure you don’t overrun any stage of your schedule. In a 48 hour filmmaking challenge, if you are still writing the script after 24 hours you’re in trouble.

Script

If you’re going to improvise around a basic storyline, then decide that before the kick off. If you’re going to write a screenplay, then decide that before kick off AND WHO is going to write it.

Avoid story creation by committee (I speak from painful experience), as much as possible. Have you ever tried to come up with a book title, or a band or company name, with a bunch of people?

It’s basically, one person makes a suggestion, everyone else says “nah”. Someone else comes up with a suggestion. Everyone says “nah” (the person who had their suggestion rejected being the quickest and loudest to reject your idea).

Repeat into infinity.

Nightmare. 48 hours? After 48000 years, your dust-covered skeletons will still be sitting in a circle going “how about if it’s about an actor who goes to an audition BUT THEN… ”

“Nah.”

Location and cast = story

If you pre-prepared your location and your cast, then your story will come from these elements mixed with the assigned elements. Limitations are good. Narrowing things down saves time.

And we know time is the important thing, right?

Shooting

This is the test of how well your team get along with each other. This is true of any film set. And most film shoots are a time challenge anyway.

It’s that time challenge which really puts people under pressure. And when people are under pressure, those little personality conflicts come to the surface.

How many film shoots do we hear about being destroyed by arguments? Too many, my friend.

Whoever is directing/producing this short will have their leadership skills tested here. Maintaining a harmonious team is a great way to avoid wasting time on pointless cast and crew fallouts.

If you’ve all just got to know each other for this challenge, there’s a much greater chance of fallouts occuring. But if you’ve picked a team of folks you know work well together, that could make your shoot much more efficient.

Keep your shooting period as brief as possible. Leave your editor as much time as you can for them to weave their magic.

Endless takes to correct tiny details are going to destroy your chances. So leave your inner Kubrick at home. Just get this thing shot to have a shot at the title…

Editing

This is where the real movie magic happens. Your shots are now assembled into something resembling the story you imaged a few hours before. Good job you didn’t get 483 takes of the main actors tying his shoelaces for your editor to wade through…

The editing of your film can make or break it. So if you were thinking about your editor when filming, your film is going to have a better chance of turning out well. The more time the editor has to work on the creative stuff the better.

One tip for editors: make sure your audio is leveled out. Sudden overloaded audio doesn’t go down well when the movies are up on the big screen.

Have an editor who has at least some experience with the software they’re using. If you just got the “go” signal and you turn to see your editor downloading Adobe Premiere for the first time, I would be worried.

Your editor can spend as much time as they need BEFORE the event learning the software. So don’t find yourself with an editor learning on the job in the middle of a 48 hour film challenge.

Professional editors are 100 times faster than those just starting out, mostly because they know their software. They know the shortcuts and the technical issues involved with importing and exporting and so on.

Technical issues when it comes to editing can cost you so much wasted time. So if you haven’t worked together before, get your camera operator, camera, editor and editing kit together before the competition and have a tech rehearsal. Shoot some random stuff and see if the editor can handle the footage. Overcome any workflow issues before filming begins.

Don’t wait until the last day to start editing

If possible, have your editor start editing as soon as there is footage available. Shoot and edit as you go. While you’re shooting scene 2, your editor can be cutting scene 1.

Keep it simple

Many 48 hour film challenge teams fail because they try to do too much. If you over complicate things or are too ambitious, you won’t have the time to tell your story well.

In fact, one of the hardest things to learn is to keep things simple. Not just in 48 hour challenges, but in all forms of filmmaking. Well, creativity in general.

Something you learn from experience is that a simple idea done well is far more likely to be successful. But many of us starting out add more and more ideas to our projects from a misguided sense we’re improving things.

Deliver your film on time

It maybe sounds obvious, but many teams think they might be able to squeeze and an extra few hours or minutes from the organisers. I guess it does happen (in my case we were just nowhere near finished). But I wouldn’t take that risk.

So don’t aim to finish your film exactly as the clock ticks past the deadline. Aim to finish at least an hour or two before.

Yes, you will do well to set yourself some contingency time. Computers crash, files go missing or corrupt and so on. Basically, when making a film things go wrong. So having time to fix things needs to be in your schedule.

These competitions often require release forms to be printed out and signed. Think about what needs to be delivered before hand. As with everything else in this article, it’s all about using your time most effectively.

Things is, these challenges are exhausting. When we’re tired we make mistakes and we forget things. So do the most you can to be prepared before the challenge starts. If there are forms, designate someone whose job it is to deal with that.

Then deliver on time. No excuses.

Remember to have fun

These challenges are pretty tough. But try to enjoy the journey as much as you can. Whatever happens, however successful your final film, you will have learned a ton of stuff about filmmaking. And also about yourself and the team you worked with.

If it all goes disastrously wrong like mine did, don’t beat yourself up. The experience is still has a huge value to you and your filmmaking journey. Don’t they say we actually learn more from our failures than our successes?

In addition, these events are one of the best places to meet other filmmakers. So use that networking opportunity to create new friendships and collaborations. Finding people you love working with is a fantastic investment for the future.

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