So the film festival was a success! We successfully created a great short film titled “Aphrodite’s Arrow”. Let’s go through the past 48 hours with Team Wiseguy Industries!
Kickoff
So the kickoff was at on Waverly place. My behind the scenes team got there early and waited around for the drawing where we would receive our genre. My actors were waiting by the phone to hear what we’d be doing. This was everybody’s first time participating in the 48 hour film festival and we were all excited to see what we would create under the pressure. The genre we would randomly pick would be the entire basis of this 4-7 minute movie that we were to write,shoot,edit, and score in 48 hours. They called us by groups and when it was our turn I went up representing the team and drew ROMANCE. Romance? I was hoping for dark comedy or sci-fi and I get romance? Well the good thing about that is romance can also be a dark comedy or sci-fi! So immediately my mind and my co writer’s mind(Dave Carlson) starts racing. We had to stick around because we were still waiting on the prop, line of dialogue, and character that they assign everyone to put in their movie.
The prop ended up being a trophy, the character was Cat or Cam dean, and the line of dialogue was “when do you expect her?” At that point my team and I split ways to get everything in order and do our parts! The race was on!
WRITING
Dave and I immediately went to this tea cafe down the street to set up the laptop and start spit-balling ideas. We came up with several really great ideas and it was pretty hard to narrow them down. Honestly we’ll probably end up shooting at least two of the ideas we came up with. In the end it came down to what would be the best film to shoot for the situation that would still give us the best movie. I believe we made the right choice. Soon the tea cafe closed and we set out looking for another place to write with an outlet because my computer shuts off if its not plugged in. About thirty minutes later we were in a diner cranking out a script. We worked out dialogue and character motivations/archs and finally at exactly 12 o’clock got the script finished, we sent it out to all the actors and set up a call time for 7 the next morning.
THE SHOOT
Time to get into my director’s chair! But like the guy said at the kickoff, “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” I got an email from an actress that said she was sick and couldn’t do it, one of my actors got lost on the way to the shoot, we ended up having to make a few changes to get the first scene shot but honestly I believe it was for the best. However in waiting the first scene ended up taking WAY longer than expected, which would be the case for the rest of the day. One of the actresses had to go to another performance during the day so we left the first location and began setting up in the second. Apparently in my house the a/c decides when it wants to work, and I guess when there’s a house full of bustling film makers with 10000 degree lights, well that just isn’t a good time for it (now its working wonderfully by the way.) So we’re all in there sweating like, oh I don’t know, some animal that sweats a lot and we have to keep wiping the sweat off the actors for the scenes. Then someone doesn’t show up, great, because the other actress has ANOTHER performance so when people don’t show up it REALLY messes with our deadline. However even this we got through but instead of being done at 7 like we were supposed to be, we weren’t done until about 12:00. Right, so now its time to run this out to our editors, composer, and audio guys.
POST
It took me about an hour to get it out there. Everybody in the house had a setup. Music was being composed in one room, video was being edited in another, audio was being modified in a third. We turned in for the night around 2 in the morning and got up again at 7. This was it, the last day, we basically had it in the bag, the music was almost done, the audio was looking good and the video was in the correct order, just a few touches here and there. Well of course we didn’t actually have everything ready until about 6:30. We left the house with the intent on exporting it on the train. When we got on the train however, the Mac had other plans. We couldn’t find the files. So it wouldn’t export. Luckily I brought my dock with me and when we got to the bar we used an outlet to hook it up. We found the files and re-attached them and hit export. Hm interesting the export time says 10 minutes…and so does the official clock well isn’t that a coincidence.
It was now LITERALLY down to the wire. As it exported I paced back and forth, Damon did a chant over the computer.
I kept checking the official time but it was hand and hand. As soon as it said less than a minute on the computer, they began counting down from ten.
FINALLY it was done, we ejected the flash drive and ran it over to the table….at five seconds! After a HUGE sigh of relief we congratulated each other and I sent out the text to the team congratulating them as well on a job well done. We had a few mishaps, mostly people not showing up or calling out last second but all in all it was one of the best experiences of my life. I feel the entire team has grown so much just over these 48 hours. Hopefully we’ll get back together soon to make something great! I’m so thankful for all of the people who joined up with the Wiseguy industries team on this, you’re the best team I could’ve asked for thanks for helping make this dream a reality!
Brian Bell(that’s me!)-Team leader, Director,Writer,Producer
Dave Carlson-Assistant Director,Writer
Douglas Guerra-Director of Photography
Mike Sayre-Composer
Damon Griffin-Editor
Roy Scandela-Actor
Shuiken Chan-Actress
Bill Sullivan-Actor
Samira Gibson-Actor
Jahim Henry-Actor
Fransisco Gregory-Actor
Natalie Harris-Actress
Courtney Harris-Actress
Thanks in advanced for all of you talented, driven people!
If you are in the NYC area check out the screenings! Team Wiseguy Industries will not, I repeat WILL NOT disappoint!
We are in group E which screens June 9th at 6:00 pm
Cantor Film Center, 36 East Eighth Street, New York, NY 10003
Come by and see the movie Aphrodite’s Arrow!
Thanks everyone again!
Sincerely,
Brian Bell-Wiseguy Industries
Wiseguy Industries Media 