Pirate’s Daughter Premieres at The Loft
Twenty-two teams started the competition, nineteen made it back alive and, this past Thursday, the films were shown to a nearly packed house at Tucson’s The Loft Cinema.
The filmmakers in this iteration of the 48 Hour Film Shootout, for the most part, turned in some amazing work.
- Greenless Pictures‘ Phillip Lybrand teamed with Production Abduction to produce a premise I would like to see developed into a weekly series – sort of Cylons meet Blade – with the opening title “There are five gifted races in this world. None of which live forever.” – Good Stuff, if a little question-asking at the end.
- Team Bottle Nosed Dolphins took advantage of snow on Mt. Lemmon in May to shoot their Sci-Fi/Drama “Hike”. Loved the gorilla suit and understand that blood on the snow is a shot that MUST be done given the opportunity.
- Wise Like A Wizard Productions’ “Real Ghosts: Conversations with the Dead” skillfully filled the mockumentary niche left empty by “The Rubins” who were missing from the competition this time.
We learned a ton from our own entry, which can now be seen here.
- John Bormanis, who did the music for Pirate’s Daughter is an amazing talent. John is a member of Mystery Tour, a local band that does “Beatles – Unplugged” – Go see his show, or better yet, hire him to write the music for your next production.
- No matter how late you are in production, you still need to shoot cut-aways.
- I had a chance to help a couple of teams who were rendering at The Loft just prior to the deadline. If you didn’t listen to Ray at the pre-production meeting, let me say it here: Leave Plenty of Time for Render. We were outputting to tape an hour before the deadline when my HV20 stopped and said “Clean Heads” It turns out that a cleaning tape is hard to find at 5:30p on a Sunday. Luckily, we were able to clear the clog with a little fast-forward and rewind.
- A matte box is SWEET gear to have on a sunny Tucson late-afternoon – unless you forget to check your corners before shooting and it is in the shot. FCP->Motion->Scale is a good thing.
As with our first try at a 48 Hour challenge, we had a great time and are looking forward to October.
Thanks for the kind words. I agree that “Sugar Cookie” is a bit foggy at the end, and I think I may do a 2nd cut to clear some things up. I was surprised to see that it ended up being the most non-head-scratching of all of the ‘horror’ films. I was worried that it might be the most confusing film of the night, but boy did those other horror flicks prove me wrong. A bit disappointed that they got rid of the ‘technical’ awards, and definitely disagree with the winner for ‘best horror film’ – the surround rows let out a collective groan as “Bled Out” ended.
Kudos to you guys for actually pulling off the music end of your flick.