A Willing Participant
The 48 Hour Film Project is a competition to create a film based on a given genre, character, prop and line that is revealed at 7pm on Friday night and must be written, shot, edited and submitted by Sunday night. Here’s how it went when I participated this past June.
Joining the Team
First off, props to Lisa Giles, who runs the competition in Richmond, and also founded the Richmond Film Network. She is so skilled at building community and thinking through those important details to make it a successful experience.
A couple weeks before the 48 weekend, Lisa organized a mixer for people who wanted to participate in the competition but who needed teammates. She had everyone announce to the group who they were, what they could offer and what they were looking for. That’s where I met Tu Nguyen, who was forming the Steam Team. I knew he was the right person to work with because he emphasized that he was looking to do something collaborative and fun (music to my ears!). I shared my website with him and he invited me to join the team as a writer.
Tu did a few of things that were really smart. First, he invited everyone on the team to his house soon after the mixer. He fed us delicious food while we talked about the kinds of films we like or want to make and just joked around. It was a great way to get to know each other and build a rapport. It also helped me start thinking about character dynamics and locations and what limitations and opportunities we had for the stories we could tell.
Second, he set up a one-on-one call with me a few days before the competition. We discussed more in depth the kinds of stories we could tell with the cast and locations we had available to us. That conversation really helped get us more aligned on what we could do together.
The third smart thing he did was invite everyone over again to test out the equipment the day before the competition. This was so that we could make sure the equipment worked and everything could be charged and functioning by the time we needed to film.
Tu’s proactive preparation, while bringing us together in-person with food and warmth, was a real defining factor for the success of the exercise.
The Writing Process
At the launch of the competition, each team got to pick two cards for their assigned genre. We were given Film de Femme (a film featuring developed female characters) or Misunderstanding. We were allowed to choose one or both genres as we wrote.
The film had to include a character who was an inventor named either Simon Rose or Sierra Rose. It had to have a yo-yo as a prop somewhere and the line “We don’t have as much time as you think.”
I carpooled with one of our actors, Cam Lezar, from the launch to Tu’s house. While we drove, I tried to brainstorm what to write and I used Cam as a sounding board. I wanted to combine the two genres, but it was challenging because we had only cast one actress. My initial thought was to play with the Gift of the Magi trope, but between twin sisters. There would be an additional misunderstanding where Cam was one of the sister’s husbands.
When we got to Tu’s house, we ate dinner and I asked some of the team members there to talk about their sibling relationships. Jordan Payne, who was there to help out however she could, shared some interesting stories about her and her brother. It helped me develop the pitch further and I shared it with the team. The team said it was a decent idea, but I wasn’t really feeling the energy for it so we decided to brainstorm some more.
Paul Willson, who joined the team as our composer, pointed out that we could just pick one genre instead of doing both. Since the group had already started sharing personal anecdotes, they continued chatting. Through that, the idea of someone being on a date but not realizing it was came up. Then we were off to the races.
The group worked like a writer’s room. People were sharing ideas and thoughts as I compiled and organized them. Paul is a therapist by trade, so he was able to be our subject matter expert and share some of the double entendres. Cam and I blocked out the scene together and improved some of the dialogue which helped formulate the story structure. The main challenge was to keep our characters grounded in their reality instead of just delving off into every funny joke we could think of.
By then, I had a good sense of what the script should look like. I told everyone to leave me alone briefly while I wrote. They went for a walk and I created the first draft. When they came back, we read through it together and went through each part of the script to punch it up. By the third draft, we were good to go. It went fast!
This is why I am such a firm believer in the collaborative process. With so many eyes and ears on it, we were able to keep the dialogue tight and real. We were able to build up moments to make them as funny as possible.
Here is a link to the script if you are interested in reading it. Please note it contains mature themes.
Filming and Editing
When I got to Tu’s house in the morning, he had spent the night storyboarding the shots and was working through them with our cinematographer, Josh Porterfield. Mike Devine was aptly named to handle the sound.
Unfortunately, our actress had a personal emergency but we were so lucky to get Nicole Morris-Anastasi to step in. We had wanted to cast her previously but an unsent email led to a miscommunication and she had not known we wanted her on our team - but she was perfect for the role!
I was not able to stay for filming that day, since I was acting for another film in the competition. This was because I had chosen to still participate in the 48 auditions, even after joining the team to get more acting experience. I also wanted to give Tu an opportunity to see my acting and decide whether or not he thought I was a good fit, instead of assuming I would act in our film just because I am the writer. That turned out to be a good call because I didn’t think I was a good fit for the Steam Team acting cast, based on the other actors we were choosing. So, I was very grateful that Harvey Kelly from Miseries Company343 recruited me for his dark comedy, Bad Grief.
Since the film had some mature content, Tu invited the actors over to approve the cut before we finalized. There were also some sound issues, so reshoots were needed. I went as well to see how it turned out. I was very surprised at how different it was from the vision I had in my mind. But, that friction was very productive. There were a couple of choices I pushed back on, but there were some that I realized were worth keeping. That’s the discomfort and beauty of collaboration. It’s building something more than what lives in your head.
The Screening
It takes a whole week before you get to see your film screened. I was still riding the emotional rollercoaster of the creative process in not one, but two productions. When we finally got to see the films and see what everyone else made, it was so cool. People had all sorts of thoughts and interpretations of the prompts - and of course had to differentiate because of the genres. It was gratifying to hear the audience laugh at all the jokes and seem to enjoy the film. And now you can watch it too. Please note it contains mature themes:
The Nominations
A Willing Participant was nominated for 6 awards!
Best use of character
Best use of prop
Best use of genre
Best poster
Best trailer
Audience Choice
We didn’t win any but it was nice to be recognized!
What is has inspired
Seeing that we could make a film like that over a weekend means we could do it again. I already have the script for the short that came up during the brainstorming and I this process was so energizing I want to do more!
The mixer and other Richmond Film Network events has made it easy and accessible to take on these projects, so I formed Gopher the Gold Productions LLC to house all of them.
Some upcoming projects include:
Producing and filming the time loop script (working title: This Again) - this was a short I thought of while preparing for the 48.
Participating in the Horror 48 in October
Creating a tiktok mockumentary series on Olympic weightlifting
Launching Write 7 in 7. A competition for screenwriters to write 7 pages in 7 days based on a prompt. All entries get written feedback from a skilled writer. The top three entrants get a cash prize. The top script gets their script produced as a table read on the Write 7 in 7 podcast.
Producing and acting in the Write 7 in 7 Podcast!
What did you think of the film and/or the script? I’d love to hear from you!
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