Play by play on my latest 48 Hour Project weekend experiance..and the video
Posted on August 30, 2011 with 0 commentsFinally got a copy of the last 48 Hour Film Project I did the beginning of this month. The crew met up several days before the contest for a meet and greet. We all agreed that this would be a lot of fun and we all agreed that we hoped we'd get any genre but western....guess what happened.
As you all know of me I made the most of it. What else could I do?! I packed up all my gear and headed to Burbank where I would be holed up for the weekend. It was just me and the editor for several hours as everyone was out shooting in the hills of Malibu. Slowly they started to drop off video for Sel to start working on and I started looking over his shoulder to gain inspiration from picture.
Every time I start one of these things I have this looming feeling of....I got nothin'. But as the night and then the morning continues it all pulls itself together. As usual, I was over complicating my tracks and kept having to mute things as my director kept saying more acoustic, more acoustic ( I really wonder if he understood the meaning of the word. There was only so "acoustic" I could go using all synth generated sounds straight from my computer?! But I digress.)
This was the first time that I actually pulled an all nighter on one of these. In the past I've driven home for at least a couple of hours to either sleep a little or work on the music in solitude. This time I literally was passing out on my keyboard. Our "home base" was our director's house and he had set up the office as a crash zone for us hard workers so the 3 of us that were mainly working through the night in post production took turns making due with the pull out couch for 30 minutes at a time. Anymore then that and we would never have gotten back up again.
There was a never ending supply of food as the directors wife and the producers girlfriend took very very good care of us. Always refilling our water glasses and making the late night pizza runs. We even got mash potato balls and other pastry's from Porto's Restaurant for sunday morning brunch. (If you haven't eaten there and you live by Burbank....GO. It's amazing!)
Our deadline was fast approaching and the guys were hard at work trying to get the video totally pieced together. All work stations were non stop composing, compositing, editing, visual effecting all to try and make our sunday 7:30pm drop off deadline. By 5:30 we were hovered around Sel's station. We weren't even near the end of the film and the rough mix was already at 10 1/2 minutes...the max allowed was 7 1/2...we were starting to worry.
So we all joined in with editing saying cut this, shorten this, what about this. I learned that day that to render a video mix (that means essentially compress it or burn it to disc for those that have never heard the word) takes a long time. For every 15 seconds of film it takes around 3 or 4 minutes to render. So not only did we need time to finish the edits, we needed time to render the whole thing. We went back and forth believing we could make it.
All of a sudden we all agreed that we could do it! We got ourselves in gear and started the car as Sel sent the project to his laptop. Eric had an outlet in his car and so the guys were rendering the project as we drove into Hollywood. We got to our drop off location and several of us were outside the car ready to grab the disc and run as soon as it was ready. We watched as other teams walked past us, project in hand. The clock was ticking...
The drop dead deadline was 7:30... the render finished at 7:32. We missed our deadline. Noah decided that although we were no longer eligible for awards we could still screen the film for everyone to see. So that's how our project ended. I wasn't in town for the screening but apparently the 48HFP audience enjoyed it which was always the point in my head anyways.
So without further adieu I present to you Jeanna's very first western. "The Drifter".
Enjoy:)