How to make a movie in two days
Part II

by Chris Agos, September 2013

The shoot day didn't exactly start out swimmingly. 6:00 AM comes early on any Saturday morning, but it felt especially early after being up so late doing pre-production. Our first location was in one of Chicago's western 'burbs and one of our actors didn't have a car, so I left early to pick him up. On the way I stopped to get some ice and bottled water for the empty cooler I had brought along. I gunned the engine on the way out of the parking lot and took a corner too quickly. The cooler, resting in what I thought was a solid position in the back of my SUV, promptly rolled over and spilled its guts. We pulled over, picked up as much of the mess as we could and headed west.


Face Time

The first location; it's nice to have rich friends.


As everyone began trickling into the location, it became obvious that we were all moving a little slow that morning. This was not good for a group that had to shoot in four locations before dark. While we all yawned and waited for everyone to arrive, our production manager made a startling announcement: our DP was out sick. He was unable to shoot the film. That woke us up. We all stood around, a little shell shocked, with these "What the hell are we going to do now?" looks on our faces. Remsy Atassi, originally slated to be our camera operator, stepped in. He tapped someone to be his assistant and set up the first shot by 7:45 AM. We wrapped our first location by 10:30.


The rest of the day went very smoothly. Half of us traveled to the next location, an alley behind a building on the west side of the city, the other half to the one after that, a boat docked along Lake Michigan. The whole production team met up at the last location, a condo on the city's north side. We wrapped at 7:30 that night, much earlier than expected. It felt awesome. We knew we'd need as much time as possible for post, and we took a half hour to celebrate, toasting and marveling at our efficiency. Later that night, Mitch and editor Michael Lippert at Cutters Chicago were able to get picture lock around 1:30 AM. Mitch went home and crashed.


Face Time

Mitch Apley (in plaid at left) surveying a shot with actor David Cady, Jr. (at right with gun)


By 7:00 Sunday morning, post was in full swing, with the audio team from ARU Chicago working on ADR and sound design, and the VFX crew at ReThink Studios starting color correction and laying groundwork for the effects. By 10:00 our composer, Travis Chandler, started laying out his first couple of tracks. Around noon Kathy Kraft, our business manager, began the task of collecting and organizing all the paperwork that had to be turned in with the film: releases from talent, music, crew and locations.


At this point we were still amazed that everything had gone so smoothly. We felt confident we were going to make our 7:30 PM deadline, probably with time to spare. But as the afternoon wore on, everyone started watching the clock a little more frequently.


The sheer number of visual effects shots was becoming an issue. Early Sunday morning there was a discussion about what the team wanted to do. On the whiteboard someone made a list of must-haves, and next to it a list of nice-to-haves. But instead of prioritizing, the team just decided to get as much of it in as possible. That proved to be dangerous. The tedious work of tracking (manually telling the computer where an object is in the picture frame by frame) and rotoscoping (making liquids and other surfaces appear to glow) ate up hours like a hungry film crew mows through a good crafty table. Finishing touches were still being layered in at 6:45.


Face Time

Audio guys eat nothing but health food.


The 48 Hour Film Project doesn't believe in delivering completed films digitally. They require filmmakers to personally drop off hard copies at their location, which this year was a store one block away from tourist-choked Michigan Avenue. Our production office was about ten minutes away from the drop off point, and at 7:00, things started to get ugly. We took one last look at the film, and the audio sync was off for reasons no one knew. Mitch got on the phone with the guys at ARU, who thought we were using an older version of the audio. They shot us an update, we dropped it in and it worked, but they warned us that there were a few last minute things they were trying to tweak. By this time it was 7:10, and the time for tweaking had passed. We needed to get the heck out of there.


As if on cue, it started raining. No, pouring. Whatever traffic was between us and the drop off location was now exponentially worse because no one knows how to drive in the rain.


As our writer, Josh Shehab, headed outside to pull his car up to the curb, someone slammed a thumb drive into a computer to download the complete film. We waited for the drive to show up on the desktop. And waited. And waited. The damn machine wouldn't recognize the drive. At 7:14, with only sixteen minutes remaining, I texted my wife: "We're not going to make it." Someone grabbed another drive and tried a different computer. This one took. File transfer took about a minute, the drive was handed to Mitch and we sprinted outside to Josh and his waiting car.


On the way to the drop off, no one was marveling at our efficiency any more. Mitch began practicing his speech to the rest of the team: "Well, we sure had a lot of fun this weekend, didn't we?" At each light, Josh gunned it, his bald tires bumping and grinding under the wet pavement.


Seven harrowing minutes, one blown red light and a near-accident (missed the guy by THAT much) later, we pulled up to the store and leapt out onto the sidewalk. It was 7:26. We made it with four minutes to spare.


Such are the lives of 48 hour filmmakers. We live on the edge, running on instinct since there's no time to second guess. In the end, all that stressing on Sunday afternoon paid off. The film won for best visual effects. Unfortunately, that's where the accolades ended. We did not win the Chicago competition this year. But we made a kick ass little movie that was a hell of a lot of fun to make and watch. If you ask Mitch if he'll do it again next year, he'll tell you that he doesn't know. Then he'll tell you that he says that every year.


Here's the finished film.


The Transferants




PREVIOUS: PART I

Chris Agos
Chris Agos acts.
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