To be quite honest, it started badly... I knew that I would be subjecting myself to 24 hours of sleepless filmmaking, yet I could not bring myself to rest on the Thursday (granted, the copious amounts of work we get given for every weekend here at NYUAD may have had something to do with that). Thus, I entered the 24 hour film race, already 12 hours awake.
Jamie and I arrived early, both to seem eager and because our anticipation disallowed us from doing anything else. Once all the other,inferior teams had arrived, Dan presented the flip cameras and held up his iPhone, which was displaying a large readout of the the time (8:00pm). I took this to mean the race had begun, and made quite a show of exiting hastily. Jamie, every the rational one, procured the topic sheet which I had completely forgotten about and followed me. Slowly.
Things went smoothly for the first hour. As had been prearranged, Jamie wrote the script (which fitted very well with our vague concept of a plan) while I prepared the lighting. Once I'd approved the script, we rung up the three actors who we'd reserved earlier. They all came pretty quickly, and after a brief panic about what clothes would be worn, we started the actor training. Drawing from things I'd learned in Fundamentals of Acting, and things Jamie had learned by being an artsy person all his life, we were able to get the actors ready to shoot quite quickly. When all was said and done, we started filming roughly an hour before we'd anticipated we would, which we were very happy about.
Unfortunately, that was when we started to hit snags. The first notable one was that the flip camera we'd been allocated for the shoot had such a stupidly small frame that we could not get an establishing shot for the film. We compromised on two semi-establishing shots, and then encountered our second major issue, which was the realisation that the first scene (which realistically could only take up 1/3rd of our 3 and a half minute film) was taking longer that 4 minutes... After a bit of field script-surgery, we had that problem rectified.
The first two scenes (both indoor scenes) were filmed by 1am, again an hour ahead of schedule. Jamie and I bid the actors goodnight (with apologies about the ridiculous hour they had to be up again) and set about cutting the footage. We hit one issue early on, a standard formatting/compression problem, but since I'd seen the like during my film production course we had it sorted in no time. After we had established a visual style and a rhythm for the cuts, Jamie hung around more for moral support than anything else, since it was my job to do the actual editing. I let Jamie off the hook at around 4:30am, so he went to bed to prepare for the morning shoot.
At about 5:30, once everyone had assembled, we set off for the corniche. We stopped in Al Safa for breakfast (which comprised of 'Chips Ahoy' cookies and mango juice) and then took a cab. Jamie had chosen the location, though in the end we went for a playground right next to the initial place. Just as the sun was rising we began filming. Several interesting things happened during the filming. One was that we realised that we had to time the shoot to coincide with the traffic lights, so that the cars were not drowning out our audio (which was all filmed synced). The other, slightly more disturbing one was that right after our final shoot our lead actress pointed out a strange man sitting on a bench just watching us. Since we were done we hastily left the playground, and began walking back to Sama (there were no taxis along the road we ere on)
We stopped for coffee along the way back, which was certainly a nice break from the rush of the race (though at this stage Jamie and I realised that we had loads of time). Once back in Sama I returned to the editing suite, and Jamie had a bit of a rest. When he came by to see how I was doing, he was slightly startled to find that I had put our entire film through a slightly green filter, aas an experiment to see if I could make it a little bit more cinematic. It turns out the filter did not make the video look cinematic, rather just like you were watching it through seaweed. Jamie suggested that I revert the colour back to the original.
A couple of hours after that incident I had finished the first draft. We brought a couple of third-parties in and screened it to them, to get some feedback. We did some final changes, and then changed some of the final changes. Finally we looked through everything once more and changed some stuff again, and then called it a day. 3 hours before the deadline. We triple checked every detail (though at this stage we were drowning in tiredness, so chances are we still missed many things) and then exported the file the way Dan had asked. We took a little nap before submission table opened, and then headed down to room 442 where Dan was waiting for all the submissions.
In 442 stories were being shared, congratulations were being made and a general feel of joviality was being experienced. This, combined with the fact that everyone was at least 24 hours sleep-deprived, created a sort of surreal, dream like state in which everyone looked like a pillow. Taking my hallucinations as a sign that I needed sleep, I left and went to bed.
The day was intense and fun, and whatever the outcome Jamie and I had a great time. I also look forward to seeing all the other submissions. All the films will be screened on Monday at 8pm in the common ground. I think someone said there'd be a red carpet....
Jamie and I arrived early, both to seem eager and because our anticipation disallowed us from doing anything else. Once all the other,
Things went smoothly for the first hour. As had been prearranged, Jamie wrote the script (which fitted very well with our vague concept of a plan) while I prepared the lighting. Once I'd approved the script, we rung up the three actors who we'd reserved earlier. They all came pretty quickly, and after a brief panic about what clothes would be worn, we started the actor training. Drawing from things I'd learned in Fundamentals of Acting, and things Jamie had learned by being an artsy person all his life, we were able to get the actors ready to shoot quite quickly. When all was said and done, we started filming roughly an hour before we'd anticipated we would, which we were very happy about.
Unfortunately, that was when we started to hit snags. The first notable one was that the flip camera we'd been allocated for the shoot had such a stupidly small frame that we could not get an establishing shot for the film. We compromised on two semi-establishing shots, and then encountered our second major issue, which was the realisation that the first scene (which realistically could only take up 1/3rd of our 3 and a half minute film) was taking longer that 4 minutes... After a bit of field script-surgery, we had that problem rectified.
The first two scenes (both indoor scenes) were filmed by 1am, again an hour ahead of schedule. Jamie and I bid the actors goodnight (with apologies about the ridiculous hour they had to be up again) and set about cutting the footage. We hit one issue early on, a standard formatting/compression problem, but since I'd seen the like during my film production course we had it sorted in no time. After we had established a visual style and a rhythm for the cuts, Jamie hung around more for moral support than anything else, since it was my job to do the actual editing. I let Jamie off the hook at around 4:30am, so he went to bed to prepare for the morning shoot.
At about 5:30, once everyone had assembled, we set off for the corniche. We stopped in Al Safa for breakfast (which comprised of 'Chips Ahoy' cookies and mango juice) and then took a cab. Jamie had chosen the location, though in the end we went for a playground right next to the initial place. Just as the sun was rising we began filming. Several interesting things happened during the filming. One was that we realised that we had to time the shoot to coincide with the traffic lights, so that the cars were not drowning out our audio (which was all filmed synced). The other, slightly more disturbing one was that right after our final shoot our lead actress pointed out a strange man sitting on a bench just watching us. Since we were done we hastily left the playground, and began walking back to Sama (there were no taxis along the road we ere on)
We stopped for coffee along the way back, which was certainly a nice break from the rush of the race (though at this stage Jamie and I realised that we had loads of time). Once back in Sama I returned to the editing suite, and Jamie had a bit of a rest. When he came by to see how I was doing, he was slightly startled to find that I had put our entire film through a slightly green filter, aas an experiment to see if I could make it a little bit more cinematic. It turns out the filter did not make the video look cinematic, rather just like you were watching it through seaweed. Jamie suggested that I revert the colour back to the original.
A couple of hours after that incident I had finished the first draft. We brought a couple of third-parties in and screened it to them, to get some feedback. We did some final changes, and then changed some of the final changes. Finally we looked through everything once more and changed some stuff again, and then called it a day. 3 hours before the deadline. We triple checked every detail (though at this stage we were drowning in tiredness, so chances are we still missed many things) and then exported the file the way Dan had asked. We took a little nap before submission table opened, and then headed down to room 442 where Dan was waiting for all the submissions.
In 442 stories were being shared, congratulations were being made and a general feel of joviality was being experienced. This, combined with the fact that everyone was at least 24 hours sleep-deprived, created a sort of surreal, dream like state in which everyone looked like a pillow. Taking my hallucinations as a sign that I needed sleep, I left and went to bed.
The day was intense and fun, and whatever the outcome Jamie and I had a great time. I also look forward to seeing all the other submissions. All the films will be screened on Monday at 8pm in the common ground. I think someone said there'd be a red carpet....
