60 Down

Where to begin? Nine o'clock ante meridiem, Friday, I guess. That's when I woke up, and stayed that way for sixty hours. It was for a good cause. And as grueling as it was at times, the 48 Hour Film Project was also some of the most fun I've had with clothes on.


I stayed at Cory's apartment, fingers poised over his laptop, while he went to Red Bull headquarters to find out what our genre, character, prop, and line of dialogue would be.


Most of us involved were Second City people. So our plan was that, whatever genre we received, we would make it comedic. If we got horror, it would be a horror/comedy. If we got romance, it would be a romcom. I get a text at seven sharp from Cory. "THRILLER/SUSPENSE?"


One of the stipulations is that you may combine genres provided that your film remains true to the genre you are given. A true thriller/suspense film can't be comedic. It can have humor to a degree, but spoofing the genre would destroy the intent of the genre.


So I sat down to write out a suspenseful thriller featuring a sales clerk named Denise or Duncan Kerrey, a mug, and the line "I am sure you are mistaken." I knocked it out in three hours or so. I'm not terribly proud of the script, but given the time constraints it's satisfactory.


The entire team met up at Cory's, at midnight, and did a read-through. Script changes were asked to be made. "It's dramatic," they said, "but it's not suspenseful." So I took their suggestions and a couple hours later we had a new version. Clint worked out a shooting schedule for us and then I sent him home. His job wasn't easy. Some of our locations were time-sensitive, and some of our actors were that way as well. Joanna was acting in a play the next day, and Sarah needed her rest because she'd been sick the previous week and school was starting for her next week. Being only sixteen, her mother came along for the adventure. If she were my daughter, I'd have done the same. Otherwise it's "have fun hanging out with a bunch of twenty-something guys I've barely met; see you in forty-eight hours."


We began shooting around 3 A.M. Our cinematographer, Eric, works for Fletcher Cameras, and he brought along some of the best goddamned equipment I have ever had the priveledge of working with. Our sound designer, Sam, certainly didn't short-change us either.


No one can say that the movie is technically flawed. Frame for frame, the lighting is good, the sound is good, the composition and the editing are good. Any legitimate criticisms will be for the story and/or the way in which it's told. Which is on me. Which I like. Because those are the things that you're supposed to be thinking about and critiquing when you go to see a film.


Around 9 A.M. Saturday we'd wrapped with a third of the actors. We'd lost two locations we'd been counting on, due to the commotion over the weekend's air show. The Blue Angels would continue to plague our production over the next seven hours. At the same time, Sam and Eric were requesting more script changes. "No," I told them. We'd already shot half the movie. I didn't dislike their ideas but we couldn't switch horses midstream. We had to keep moving. And anyway, I told them, the script was already too long. It was going to run over the seven-minute time limit. "We've only filled up one card so far. This'll be a five minute film," they attested. Weary as we were, the discussion could have easily transcended into argument, but Cory, actor and executive producer, peeled himself out of his hour-long nap and said, "Okay, what can we be doing right now?"


Around 9 P.M. I was going over footage with the editor, Justin. By midnight he was sewing the film together. "We've got plenty of B-roll if you need it," I said, "but I think the film is going to run over." He said, "I'm looking forward to the B-roll. I'll be surprised if this reaches six minutes." The video and audio editing process was the hardest part for me, just because there wasn't much for me to do. At best, all I could do was check in every few hours and say "Terrific, keep it up," or "Let's try this instead." I mostly kept out of their hair, and tore my own out.


By 7 A.M. Sunday, Justin had a rough cut. It was an eight minute film. I didn't say "I told you so." I said, "Okay. What can we cut? Let's start with the scenes that are the longest."


Naturally we didn't get to do everything we wanted with the film. Eventually I had to insist, "It's time to print. Unless you see an error that's egregious, we have to let it go. I didn't have time to be a perfectionist when I was shooting it; we don't have time for perfectionism now.


When it came time to render the film, Justin estimated it would take twelve minutes. Plenty of time. Twenty minutes in, I asked why the computer said the rendering would take another hour. We were doing it in multi-pass, for the best quality. Unless we did single-pass, we ran the very real risk of not having a film at all. Justin couldn't bring himself to sacrifice the quality. "Someone else click Cancel. I can't do it."

The deadline was 7:30 and we handed in the film at 7:00. And then we celebrated. I only had a few drinks, and I was the first to head home. I spent a little time hanging out with my roommates, who had Netflixed Watchmen. "I accept this challenge," I said slurredly, "Who watches the Watchmen??? FUCKING US."

I didn't make it through the opening credits. Apparently--and I have no memory of this but was informed the next morning--I became extremely confused. I entered a sort of fugue state, operating under the belief that we were still filming. I kept asking them where everybody was and what scene we were on. They told me repeatedly to go to bed and I shot back that they needed to GET OUT, JUST GET OUT (of our home) so that I could get this imaginary movie done.

I woke up on the couch somehow and it took me a few days to pay off my sleep debt. My mind recovered first, and then, eventually, my body.

I called the movie 8 Across. The screening is this evening at the Landmark Cinema. I don't care if it wins no awards and everybody hates it. That's not why I did it. What matters to me is that we accomplished what we set out to do. A lot of people don't realize just how long it takes to make a movie properly. Under ordinary circumstances, I'd call this a lovely short film. Given that it was made in two days, it's an incredible short film. That's what I think.