Guerilla Filmmaking Pt II (Breasts On Parade)
Posted on | August 3, 2005 at 6:47 pm | Comments Off
Here’s my report on the 48 Hour Film Project showing. As well as a quickie on an indie movie I saw recently.
Last night, I attended the “Group A” showing of the Denver version of the 48 Hour Film Project (mentioned in yesterday’s entry). The event itself was crowded and somewhat chaotic, and I assume most of the attendees were the filmmaking teams themselves and friends/family of the filmmakers. Lots of young, beautiful, hip people in attendance, so I naturally felt out of place. The gist of the project is that the teams had 48 hours to make a 4-7 minute film, starting the preceding Friday evening and turning in the film by 7:31 Sunday evening for a first showing two days later. There were requirements for the film. Each team had to pick a genre for their movie out of a hat, so there wasn’t a lot of writing/planning they could do beforehand. Each movie had to include the line of dialog “My way or the highway”, a sanitation engineer character named “P. Owens”, a screwdriver prop (which most teams chose to interpret as the drink rather than the tool), and a Denver landmark (since this was the first year of the Denver project). It was extremely interesting seeing what the teams were able to accomplish with these limitations; there was definitely a lot of creativity and technical wizardry on display.
I did think that the film my bandmate Greg was in (43 Horseman Picture’s Hell or High Water, which was in the cop/detective genre) was the best produced of the lot. It also hung together pretty well, which was something I couldn’t say for all the films. It was the only film to use visual effects – one scene was filmed with the characters in a VW convertible in front of a green screen. The screen was filled in with moving backgrounds of Denver streets, so it looked like they were driving through Denver. Very “Kill Bill” (that scene was also in black & white). Greg acquitted himself well in his role, though he had no dialog. I was impressed – the sound and the cinematography were actually pretty good. It looked like they put some money into it, but supposedly only spent like $100. It looked professional.
I thought the most innovative film was Lockerpartners’ Shelf Life, which was also the only one with a female director/crew. It was in the “Coming of Age” genre and featured a world where all the women had shelves or drawers protruding from their chests. You gotta admire the prop work alone that went into that (15 different shelf units, we found out in the Q&A afterwards!), especially considering the time constraints. There was no dialog, but it did have a bit of a story. I think it was trying to say something about the objectification of women, but I’m a dense male. One of the most unusual, but enjoyable, little flicks I’ve ever seen.
The entry in the comedy genre was a little film called R.P.S. (for “Rock Paper Scissors”) and was about a guy who was addicted to that game and became a national champion, only to acquire a devastating right hand injury before the big match. Since he tried but couldn’t get the hang of using his left hand, he went with the right hand even though it was bandaged in a way so that he could only do “rock”. Nevertheless, he was still able to win. The funniest part was the match commentator declaring “His opponent has still not caught on to Tom’s apparent all rock strategy” – I really dug the absurdity level of that. The film lampooned your typical underdog sports flick pretty well, and even included a training montage, if I remember correctly.
Anyway, all the films had something interesting in them or about them. One had some scenes set in the Mayan Theater, which I thought was pretty cool. The three above were the ones I voted for in the “audience favorite” poll. It will be interesting to see which one wins the Judges’ award. Also, I kind of wish I had stayed for the Group B films, but I was really tired, having not really slept the night before, so I went home before that. Both Groups are being shown again tonight, in reverse order.
Speaking of independent films, last weekend I saw Me And You And Everyone We Know. I don’t know much what to say about it, other than that I totally agree with Sue’s review (scroll down to the “that old black magic” entry). I really enjoyed it and was not bored. Pretty quirky, yet still had some earthiness to it. I rank it as Entertaining on my review scale. Miranda July’s character is a bit creepy, and I admire her restraint in not featuring herself more, since she is the director and all. And this is going to reveal my all too offensive Male PoV, but I found it distracting that she really doesn’t appear to have any breasts. I mean, she’s obviously a woman and all, with a very pretty face, but man… flat as a board. She needed some shelves strapped on there or something.
There was a problem with the sound in the theater where every once in awhile there would a foghorn-like sound that would almost drown out the dialog for a few minutes. They fixed it once, but then it came back later. To the theater’s credit, they at least gave us all tickets to use for free admission on another film.
Latre.