Short digital film about a man's quest to talk to the girl of his dreams, produced for the 2009 Arts Connect 48-hour Quick Flick challenge.
To develop a 5-minute short incorporating four randomly assigned items. Our items were: a bag, a life coach, a park, and the phrase "Someone ditched it."
Being a team of experts in our respective areas (special effects, videography, and directing), we wanted to create a film that would push all of our abilities.
Videographer & Editor — As a videographer, I was responsible for lighting, framing, and shooting the scenes. As an editor, I helped put together the finished product.
1) Brainstorm ideas
2) Plan and organize shot list
3) Contact actors
4) Shoot!
5) Edit footage
A surreal day-in-the-life look into the relationship between a man and his best friend/personal life coach.
*Won 1st place at the 2009 Quick Flick challenge.
Hour 1 (Fri 7pm): Retrieving the Items — On Friday evening, Brad, Kirsten, Eddy, and I drove down to the Arts Connect headquarters to collect our inspiration package. Here, Eddy and I pose with one of our items, the blue cooler bag. (Photo: Brad Slavin)
Hours 2-10 (Fri 8pm - Sat 4am): Brainstorming — The full team, consisting of myself, Brad, Kirsten, Eddy, Adrian, Majid, and two of our main actors Eduardo and John, then met at the campus and brainstormed story ideas until the early morning. Early on in the session, the idea of having a head in the bag was introduced, which I initially thought was ridiculous, but after fleshing the idea out, I was sold… albeit still a bit hesitant. It’s a head in a bag! (Photo: Brad Slavin)
Hours 15-17.5 (Sat 9am-11:30am): First scene — We started the day early and headed straight to our first location: the park. We were a bit concerned, as it was supposed to rain, so we tried to shoot the scene as quickly as possible. Any doubt that I had about our film completely cleared after seeing the actors perform. We wrapped up about an hour and a half later, and headed back to the campus to get the rest of our shots.
Hours 18-23 (Sat 12-5pm): Other shots — The next five or so hours went by pretty rapidly, with dialogue and actions being created on-the-spot. I was thoroughly impressed with both John and Alannah (our female lead), and their ability to come up with realistic reactions and dialogue, especially with the whole head-in-a-bag thing.
Hours 24-25 (Sat 6-7pm): Eddy's House — We traveled to Eddy’s house to shoot the last remaining scenes, eat, unwind, and edit. Before we got down to business, we hooked up our camcorders to the TV and watched all the footage we had shot to this point to see which takes to use and which to toss. (Photo: Brad Slavin)
Hours 26-28 (Sat 8pm-10pm): — After the viewing, we went right back to work. Eddy and Kirsten did an amazing job lighting the kitchen scene, making it look like 7am when it was really around 8pm and pitch black outside. We also shot closeups of Eduardo’s face in the bag, as well as recorded voice overs. (Photo: Brad Slavin)
Hours 29-47 (Sat 11pm-Sun 6pm): Editing — We captured all our footage and started the editing process. I was delightfully surprised with how smoothly this process went— someone would start editing, take a break, someone else would step in and pick up where the other left off, take a break, and so on. This went on all night and well into the morning. The rest of the day was pretty quiet, with hardcore editing and compositing going down. We finished up around 5pm, watched the finished version on the television, and high-fived one another. (Photo: Brad Slavin)
Update (Mar. 27, 2009): 1st Place — We ended up winning 1st place at the 48-hour Quick Flick Challenge ceremonies! During the night, we watched all the entries, had some food, talked to the other teams, and then were awarded a nice trophy and a cash prize (which we decided to use for steaks!). (Photo: Brad Slavin)
Update (Apr. 16, 2009): Interview — Our team was interviewed by local television program "Tri-Cities News Magazine". It's short, but we got to plug our team page! (Courtesy: Tri-Cities and Shaw 4)
