I just wrapped up a weekend of doing the 48 Hour Film Project for the first time. In fact, this was my first real scripted narrative film, ever.
Having played around a little with other editing packages, I think that I can say that it would have been much more difficult to accomplish the feat with something other than Vegas Pro.
For those who don't know, the 48 Hour Film Project is a festival/competition in which filmmakers "compete" in each city to make a 4-7 minute complete film in 48 hours (I don't really think of it as much as a competition, but there is a "winner" from each city). On Friday, teams meet and are each assigned at random a different genre. All teams then are assigned a prop, a character (e.g., Daniel or Danielle Martin, doctor), and a line of dialogue, all of which must be included in the film, but not necessarily a key component. All creative activity must take place from that point on, and a complete and rendered film must be submitted by 7:30 PM Sunday.
My team was very organized. My wife, the producer, and I enlisted a friend who has written novels to be our writer. We asked other friends to join us, only two of which had the weekend open. We talked to my daughter's piano teacher about doing the music/score for the film, as she plays a lot of instruments, including the harp. She ends up being a star in the film. The rest of the cast and crew were local folks that we previously had never met, most from the local stage company and one film student at the local university who was my AC. All of us are volunteers. We had an organizational meeting on the Sunday before to discuss logistics and to find out what talents the cast and crew had, so that we could have them in mind as we wrote the script.
The good organization paid off, as we wrote the script Friday night and had a call time of 8 AM Saturday to start shooting: 12 scenes and 4 locations all done in 11 hours. From there, I edited in Vegas Pro 11 (no crashes!). I had a reasonable first cut done by midnight and then colored it by around 3 AM. A few hours of sleep, then more tweaks to the edit, dubbed in some audio from alternate takes to further clean it up, add titles, credits, etc. And delivered the film 30 minutes early. Plus, we actually live 90 minutes from the city in which we competed, so it was really a 46ish hour project for us (I won't deduct the first hour, since we brainstormed the entire story/concept in the car ride home Friday night).
Anyway, for me, as an amateur, it was a great experience. I learned a lot in a short amount of time. I won't say it was fun, since we didn't have time to really enjoy it as it happened. But, it wasn't unpleasant or stressful, either. It is fun to have done it. Of course, there are things I would do a little differently in the film. But, in 48 hours, perfection is definitely the enemy of the good, and we all recognized that. We're very happy with what we were able to make.
Our great cast and crew made it a pleasure and their talents really show in the final product.
I can't post the film online for another couple of days, after the premiere screenings (can't wait to see my film on the big screen in the theater!). But, here's a link to a trailer that doesn't do the film justice.
https://vimeo.com/47484291
Having played around a little with other editing packages, I think that I can say that it would have been much more difficult to accomplish the feat with something other than Vegas Pro.
For those who don't know, the 48 Hour Film Project is a festival/competition in which filmmakers "compete" in each city to make a 4-7 minute complete film in 48 hours (I don't really think of it as much as a competition, but there is a "winner" from each city). On Friday, teams meet and are each assigned at random a different genre. All teams then are assigned a prop, a character (e.g., Daniel or Danielle Martin, doctor), and a line of dialogue, all of which must be included in the film, but not necessarily a key component. All creative activity must take place from that point on, and a complete and rendered film must be submitted by 7:30 PM Sunday.
My team was very organized. My wife, the producer, and I enlisted a friend who has written novels to be our writer. We asked other friends to join us, only two of which had the weekend open. We talked to my daughter's piano teacher about doing the music/score for the film, as she plays a lot of instruments, including the harp. She ends up being a star in the film. The rest of the cast and crew were local folks that we previously had never met, most from the local stage company and one film student at the local university who was my AC. All of us are volunteers. We had an organizational meeting on the Sunday before to discuss logistics and to find out what talents the cast and crew had, so that we could have them in mind as we wrote the script.
The good organization paid off, as we wrote the script Friday night and had a call time of 8 AM Saturday to start shooting: 12 scenes and 4 locations all done in 11 hours. From there, I edited in Vegas Pro 11 (no crashes!). I had a reasonable first cut done by midnight and then colored it by around 3 AM. A few hours of sleep, then more tweaks to the edit, dubbed in some audio from alternate takes to further clean it up, add titles, credits, etc. And delivered the film 30 minutes early. Plus, we actually live 90 minutes from the city in which we competed, so it was really a 46ish hour project for us (I won't deduct the first hour, since we brainstormed the entire story/concept in the car ride home Friday night).
Anyway, for me, as an amateur, it was a great experience. I learned a lot in a short amount of time. I won't say it was fun, since we didn't have time to really enjoy it as it happened. But, it wasn't unpleasant or stressful, either. It is fun to have done it. Of course, there are things I would do a little differently in the film. But, in 48 hours, perfection is definitely the enemy of the good, and we all recognized that. We're very happy with what we were able to make.
Our great cast and crew made it a pleasure and their talents really show in the final product.
I can't post the film online for another couple of days, after the premiere screenings (can't wait to see my film on the big screen in the theater!). But, here's a link to a trailer that doesn't do the film justice.
https://vimeo.com/47484291
