48 Hours in the Making

 One weekend per year, a film-making challenge is held in the Midlands - where local filmmakers team up to produce a film in relation to the genre provided to them and within two days precisely.

Being how dedicated I am to film-making, I had developed my experience within the field and so far this year, I've worked on three films (one short), all of which I worked on as a boom operator. Despite this, and due to the two years before then, it felt longer. Because since early-July, I had not worked on another film...

Until this weekend gone by. Because I was one of those who participated in the challenge. I worked with a few other fellow filmmakers from Leicester on a short film which for this year had to be an "urban fairy-tale".

I had a go at writing a script for the short and I was thinking to myself what could count as an urban fairy-tale. Could it be like E.T. The Extra Terrestrial which is a sci-fi family feature with a sort-of fairy-tale feel to it? Or one of the more modern fairy-tales like the Harry Potter stories? Or something that's inspired by a fairy-tale, but set in the modern era and/or with a modern twist to it?

I thought the latter. But in the end, we went with another fellow writer's project. It didn't mean that I didn't get involved, because I did. I was the sound recordist. Yes, once again, my role involved audio production, and it's a truly enjoyable role.

It goes to show how much I love the film-making process. Of course, there are always going to be difficulties and this experience was no exception. Not only was it the limited amount of time we had, but on the last day of shooting, we experienced heavy rain. Many of the shots took place outdoors and it was a problem especially for the camera operator. Lucky that I had an umbrella stored in the trunk of my car.

The festival takes place next week in Leicester and I look forward to seeing the last edit and having it screened towards an audience.

All thanks to Ivan who wrote the film, Cameron who directed it, Richard and Anthony (camera department) and the rest of the cast/crew.