Traps for serious young film players

By STEVE HART

It all seemed so simple when eight of us entered the 48 Hour Film Challenge.

All we had to do was write a script, have actors learn their lines, find locations, film and edit our footage into a four to eight-minute movie within 48 hours. What could possibly go wrong?

The event was held simultaneously in Wellington and Auckland over the weekend of June 11-13. A line of dialogue, the name of a character and a prop dictated by the event organisers were mandatory inclusions in every movie.

This year's line was "Can I have the last one?", the prop was ice and the character was called Jessie McLeod. And to keep everyone on their toes, teams were given a genre. At 7pm on Friday, June 11, our team got to choose between science fiction or war.

Scriptwriter Peter Griffin - the Herald's IT editor - had an idea for a wartime drama and got it down on paper in time for actors Stephanie Bertram and Nick Bell-Booth to learn their lines on Friday night.

Team members scouted locations that fitted the genre. By 8am on Saturday I was at the first location with second camera operator Dean Preston, the cast and director Griffin. With period costumes and makeup artist Anna Leslie we re-enacted a World War I battlefield scene.

Linda Harrison lay on mud playing the part of injured soldier Dickie. While discussions continued about how much "blood" to apply, others started covering her in mud and rocks.

Bell-Booth had the bright idea of lighting fireworks he'd brought with him. "It looks like a bomb has just gone off," he said as thick blue smoke drifted across the ground - and a police car slowed to have a look. From a distance they would have seen people in uniform holding what looked like guns, with blood-spattered faces. They didn't stop.

After two hours of filming our two minutes of battlefield scenes, we headed indoors to a room that passed for a war document archive.

As he explored files, John (Bell-Booth) discovered his great grandfather Jessie McLeod (Blue Pilkington) was shot for collaborating with the Germans.

He feigned interest in Marsella (Bertram) to distract her so he could destroy the documents.

After about 10 takes we had the first exchange between John and Marsella on tape. At 6.15pm - after eight hours of shooting - disaster struck. Boom mic operator Richard Collins could hear only crackle through his headphones.

The new mic had packed up and it was too late to get a replacement. So we opted for lots of close up shots and used the camera's inbuilt microphone.

At 10pm our bag of ice was liquid. A local pub helped out with a replacement bag and two hours later - just as that was starting to melt - we captured the scene of a single ice cube being dropped into a glass with the words "Can I have the last one?" over the top.

It wasn't until 12.30am on Sunday that we started packing up.

With four hours of tape, editing began early on Sunday morning. Griffin and I watched the footage and pulled out the best ones as we went along. Stress was at breaking point when - disaster: a computer crash one minute before we were to copy our movie to tape.

After 48 hours' work we were one of the nine per cent who missed the deadline. Bell-Booth had 15 minutes to complete a 30-minute journey across Auckland. He arrived five minutes after the deadline. There were 80 teams in Auckland and 71 met deadline.

No words can describe the disappointment we felt, but it was a fantastic experience and I can't wait for next year's challenge.

* Our film, Lest We Forget, can be viewed online (requires high speed internet access).

* Winners list

* 48 Hour Film Challenge screenings, Classic Comedy Club:
Wellington finalists, Sunday;
Auckland Best of the Rest, July 5;
Auckland Encore, July 6, all at 8pm