Film Challenge Retrospective: Level Up

Hey all, Eric here again!

As part of Film Challenge Month at Two Jackets, we’re telling war stories from 48s gone by! You may have seen my retrospective about After Hours, my first directorial effort in a film challenge, earlier this week (and if you haven’t, you should check it out). This is part two of our retrospective series, and it’s all about Two Jackets Productions’ first official entry into our favorite annual filmmaking competition, the 48 Hour Film Project. It’s called Level Up and it was made as part of the 2009 48HFP in Fargo, ND.

I was the team's director, and I learned a LOT about what not to do in a timed competition that weekend. We had a great team assembled, with Andrew producing, oft-collaborators Joey Kramer and Max Heesch joining up as general crew and writer/editor respectively, and our good friends Ashley Somphet (3rd West Ballard) and Parker Shook serving as our leads. This was, unfortunately, while Marcus was living in Toronto, so he was not involved. It's an adventure of a film that had us running around all over Fargo and taught us a lot about how to produce a 48. This is the first time we've posted Level Up publicly, so please give it a watch!

What an adventure! These were the required elements for this competition:

Character: Nicole Nelson, Pizza Restaurant Employee

Line of Dialogue: “You gotta give me something to work with.”

Prop: a laptop computer

Genre: Fantasy

Level Up really showcases how interested we are with injecting sci-fi and fantasy elements into normal, everyday sorts of stories. It’s something that has appealed to us from early on and continues to show its face in everything we do (see: You Only Die Once!, Keeping Up with the Cloneses, Hide My Thunder). Watching it now, I find Level Up very funny, but for a lot of strange reasons. Complex gags, like the fantasy-world-transplant character living in her best friend's basement unbeknownst to him, tickle me right in the funny-parts. However, I can't believe we bothered to shoot an extensive sequence about it considering it has no real consequence in the story.

Lack of focus was this film’s undoing. The brainstorming session was harried by too many cooks in the kitchen, which caused us to produce a script that called for entirely too many locations for a film intended to be shot in just a few hours. The brainstorming took so long, in fact, that Max, our writer and editor, was typing away on the script until the wee hours of the morning. This lack of sleep on Friday night meant that he wasn’t ready to start editing until late Saturday afternoon (a guy’s gotta sleep sometime). And since we were running around all over town shooting until very late Saturday night, the rest of the crew was unavailable to assist with post-production until late Sunday morning. It’s a prime example of how a slow start can have profound consequences on the rest of the weekend. Even with Max splicing away until very early Sunday morning, and Joey providing a few hours of relief editing throughout, we just couldn’t make up that lost time from Friday night. It all came down to the wire.

And we missed it. At just a few minutes before the turn-in time, our deliverable DVD finally finished burning (this was before the glory days of turning in video files via flash drive), and we recklessly sped to the drop-off location. We arrived fifteen minutes late. We were crushed.

The Fargo 48HFP people did screen our movie, which was great, but under the "Late Entries" category, meaning we had been disqualified. This didn't just feel bad because we weren't eligible for awards, but because we had a team of a dozen people working with us all weekend, and we didn't even do them the honor of finishing the project on time. It sucked for the whole team, and I felt completely to blame. It really goes to show how important it is to keep things simple, and above all, to have a finished product done on time, even if it's not as polished as you'd like it to be. Know your workflow before you begin, and know how long Final Cut is going to take to export a DVD (of course, most 48HFP competitions won’t even accept DVD submissions anymore, thank the gods).

Level Up was a filmmaking adventure that showed us that it's possible to overreach in the fevered pitch of brainstorming. We ran all across the city shooting complex sequences, and due to an underdeveloped editing strategy, ended up missing our deadline.

Film Challenge Retrospective: After Hours

Hey there, true-believers! Eric here.

As part of Two Jackets' Film Challenge Month, we will be sharing our stories about timed filmmaking competitions gone-by.  Andrew, Marcus, and I have been participating in film challenges since we were in film school. Back in those days, the Film Department at Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM) participated in the National Film Challenge (now the Four Points Film Project) and pitted teams made up of students from freshmen to seniors against one another in a 48 hour-style elimination-round competition. The films that were made in this setting were judged by the faculty and local experts, and the winning project was entered into the worldwide competition.

The film I'd like to talk about is one I've never shared before. In my senior year at MSUM (2009), I was chosen as a team leader and director for "Team Lethal Projection," and we made a little film called After Hours. It didn't involve Andrew or Marcus (Andrew was directing his own project, and Marcus was living in Toronto) but it did feature our good friend Sarah Palm (3rd West Ballard, Hide My Thunder) in the lead role. Here it is!

Look at that glorious standard definition! The required elements for this film were:

Character: Jordan Gordon, Systems Analyst

Line of Dialogue: "This could get very complicated"

Prop: a Bicycle

Genre: Buddy Film

Working on these projects in college was really the crucible that forged our love for film competitions. Back in those days, absolutely everything was done collaboratively and democratically. Every member of the team remains intensely  involved through the entire weekend - from the idea phase to final delivery. In my role as director, I served more as a team leader than as a creative voice. I did what I could to make sure all members of the team were engaged throughout - getting an opportunity to use their own creative voices in whichever role they were assigned to. It gave us a chance to work closely with a lot of different people very early in our development as filmmakers. It ends up being a great exercise in building trust and developing friendships that have served us well in the years since.

I remember the brainstorming session for After Hours very clearly. We got access to the Graphic Communication department’s computer lab for the night and spent several hours writing ideas on the whiteboard, with all ten members of the team contributing ideas and feedback until we had the basis for a concept we all liked. The brainstorming process was really about crafting a story based on resources we had access to. Having a team member with access to an empty office building gave us a great location for our heist film. We also cast our friend Mike Stromenger who, in addition to being a talented performer, worked as the equipment manager at MSUM, meaning we had easy access to the school's small studio space, doorway dolly, and lighting resources. The thing I really took away from this process is how important it is for the director and writer of a project to guide this discussion. If you're brainstorming in a group, it's very easy to get sidetracked, following ideas that aren't productive and unattainable. At a certain point, somebody just has to say, "that idea for a wizard battle on the top of the library is great, but not for this project." After the writers began writing, we started making phone calls, assigning actors, and making team t-shirts!

LOOK AT THOSE GREAT SHIRTS.

We didn't get a lot of sleep (although I overslept on Saturday, which, by the way, is not a great method for inspiring confidence in your group) but every member of the team remained engaged throughout the filmmaking weekend and were given a chance to flex their creative muscles. We didn't win the competition, but I consider After Hours a huge success. Plus, we have t-shirts dammit.

Here at Two Jackets, we’ve learned a lot about film challenges and team management over the years. We’ve changed our methods since college, favoring a brainstorming process that just involves a few people to develop the story, but we’re always working to keep our team members involved creatively, so that they feel they aren’t just working on someone else’s film. It’s a difficult task, and we haven’t always succeeded in these regards, but our time spent in that formative crucible taught us a lot.

What is a Film Challenge?

It’s Film Challenge Month at Two Jackets!

Andrew and Eric (far left) at the registration event for the 2015 Minneapolis 48HFP.

“That’s great!” you say. “But… what does that mean? What’s a film challenge and why does it deserve its own month? And why should we listen to you chumps?” All valid questions! But you could be a little nicer about it. We’ll start with some definitions:

A film challenge is a fast-paced competition wherein a team of volunteer collaborators creates a short film from concept to final cut in a limited amount of time. Compared to a normal short film production that can take weeks, months, or even years to complete, contestants are given only hours to make their masterpieces. Sleep is rare, and delirium is common. With 48 hours to make a film, every second really does count!

To ensure films are created entirely within the time limit, certain required elements are imposed on the team at kickoff. These elements usually include a character’s name and profession, a specific prop, and a specific line of dialogue. For instance, the required elements could be...

Character: Gertrude Snickerpuss, Private Investigator

Prop: a candle

Line of Dialogue: “My name isn’t stupid, your name is stupid.”

As if that wasn't hard enough, a genre is also given to the teams. When we go into a competition we don't know if we'll be making a horror film or a western. It's all up in the air! All of the required elements and the genre must be incorporated into the final film, or the team faces disqualification.

We at Two Jackets have participated in three types of film challenges, all run by 48 Hour Film Project, Inc: the titular 48 Hour Film Project, the 48 Hour Film Horror Project, and the Four Points Film Project (formerly the National Film Challenge). The 48HFP is held in 130 cities all over the world throughout the year, and - as you probably guessed - gives teams 48 hours to work. We made Keeping Up with the Cloneses for last year’s event in Minneapolis. The 48 Hour Film Horror Project runs exactly the same way, but is limited to horror subgenres. We made All Dressed in White for this little sister of the 48HFP. The Four Points Film Project is a world-wide competition held online each year that give teams 72 hours to complete their film. We made I Stole a Lot of Money! last October for this competition. 

Them’s the basics! If you’d like to know more, keep checking in here at TwoJackets.com all month long for stories of film-challenges-gone-by. Also, go make a movie!

Film Challenge Month!

Hey everybody! It’s Marcus here to tell you about our first-ever theme month on the site—that’s right, it’s Film Challenge Month at TwoJackets.com!

On the set of "All Dressed in White".  Marcus' shirt is from the Columbus 48.  Andrew's has some kind of man-fish on it.

In the past we’ve written about our involvement in the 48 Hour Film Project and the Four Points Film Project-- both activities that require filmmakers to make a film from concept to final edit in a limited amount of time, and with a beyond-limited amount of sleep.  As Andrew, Eric, and I gear up for another entry into the Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project this June, we wanted to share some of our stories from past timed film challenges.  Tales of intrigue, and adventure, and, did I mention not much sleep?  Because… uh… you don’t sleep much on a 48 hour shoot.

Each week in May, we will be featuring retrospectives on our competition pieces, including posting never-before-seen (on TwoJackets.com) entries from our formative college days!  Between the three of us, Andrew, Eric, and I have participated in over 25 timed competitions, and we have a lot of stories to tell.  Like this one time, when I didn’t sleep all weekend and was hallucinating at the after-party.  True story.  I think.  I was hallucinating, after all.

At the end of May, we will be detailing our schedule and planning process for the next Minneapolis 48 Hour Film Project.  This is where you will get to see the best laid plans of mice and men.  The weekend generally seems manageable beforehand, but there’s always something that comes up.  Laugh with (or at) us as you see us try to schedule sleep into the weekend, then come back the second week of June to see how the competition actually went!

So, stay tuned to TwoJackets.com for more on Film Challenge Month, and hear about what these competitions entail, why we love doing them, and what we’re planning for the next one!

Also, it’s May.  Eric said I shouldn’t promote a certain superhero movie because it already has enough buzz, and we’re not getting paid for the endorsement, but I’d recommend seeing whatever movies directed by the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and starring Sam Jackson that you can find.  Nuff said!

Marcus