48 HOURS FURIOUS FILMMAKING TOGETHER ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE WORLD
Erin Locke & Taragh Bissett
We are two sisters living opposite sides of the world and we made a film in 48 hours. Erin lives near Tauranga, New Zealand and I, Taragh, live in London, UK.
Creative Projects
The project for 2018, “Sweet Gums” a four minute movie starring Erin’s daughter Lucie to enter the 48hours filmmaking competition. Filmmaking was a new experience for both of us. Here's what happened..
What the splatstick?
On Friday night at 7pm competition rules were announced. Each team across NZ was given a randomly-selected genre and three elements to be incorporated in their film. Splatstick, our assigned genre is gore/horror comedy. I admit we were disappointed. We had no experience of watching this niche genre so ideas between us were thin. Erin got to sleep while I spend Friday devouring chunks of youtube splatstick.
Drawing the story out
We met on Skype after both having slept and still no good story ideas. Then I found some advice online about storytelling - go with what you know. I remembered how Erin’s kids were always wandering into the pantry looking for lollies. We talked and quickly found a beginning, middle and end.
I immediately started sketching out a storyboard. I know Erin’s house well so it was easy to illustrate the shots even though I was thousands of miles away.
Erin meanwhile collected props. She also mixed up some fake blood which is something she does in her actual daytime job, but that’s another story.
We talked through the shots over Skype with me holding up my drawings and sending over scans. I talked to Lucie her daughter so she would understand the first scene. I think this scene works really nicely especially as we added some clues in the opening seconds about the storyline.
I asked Erin if she still had the toddler trolley I had bought for Lucie years ago when she was just learning to walk. It could be our makeshift camera dolly. Yes, she had it.
Shooting her daughter
Erin started shooting at about 3pm on Saturday afternoon. She used a digital still camera, the kind that does movies too. We agreed that she should shoot the last scene first, so we had full daylight. A lot of it was shot out of order to make the best of the light and dark and of course use our time well.
Erin and Lucie spent about 6 to 7 hours shooting. This included having to wait for adverts on TV due to a husband resisting requests to turn the volume down on an “important” TV broadcast. Erin needed to appear in some scenes as well being the camera person, so we used a lot of static shots on a tripod. There was one shot for which we needed an assistant; Lucie’s 9-year-old brother Jamie agreed to pull our “dolly”.
All shot, Erin headed for bed.
Cutting it up and cutting it fine
I began hunting down soundtracks and sound effects. I decided I wanted this to be more of a dark comedy with a modern feel. The music choice would help us achieve that.
On Sunday morning Erin got straight to work, well almost. First she had to learn to use iMovie – she had borrowed a friends computer. I hit on the idea to use some software so I could log in remotely and show her how to do some things and watch and help direct the edit. Erin picked iMovie up very quickly. A few hours later and the edit was almost done. Erin read out lots of numbers from the timeline so I could edit the audio tracks to sync. Now we were running short of time.
We abandoned some planned refinements and sound effects in order to get the titles and credits done in time.
There were 50 minutes left, just enough time to export the movie, and drive it into town. "Sweet Gums" was delivered fifteen minutes before the deadline.
We were buzzing. We both agreed we felt a huge sense of achievement. We had created a film together in just 48 hours.
More info at https://www.48hours.co.nz/
You can review our film in the comments or at https://reviews.48hours.co.nz/read/2018/bay-of-plenty/01/locke-lively