4 Seemingly Innocent 48Hours Filmmaking Thoughts That Will End You

The 48Hours furious filmmaking competition is this coming weekend and I, like many participants, am shitting myself to an early grave with anxious anticipation and frightening forethought. Godspeed to my fellow soldiers looking to create a film in under two days, for I commend your bravery like I question your mental health. I’m also here to help your brain by dispelling toxic thoughts I’ve had in past years – thoughts that have led to unnecessary showers of stress acid and bad short films.

Heed my warnings and you’ll do just fine. (And by ‘just fine’, I mean ‘not as badly’.)


“Everyone can write the story!”

In a perfect world, everyone on the entire film crew can have equal and significant input into the story for 48Hours. Unfortunately, just like the idea of a perfect world, getting a great story from 14 writers in one night is an experience no human being will realistically experience in their lifetime.

You can understand the democracy of it – story is king and you want everyone to be on the throne. But with that promise comes the reality that there simply isn’t enough room to smoosh all those butts on said throne. This is when everyone competes with one another in order to crown their conceptual story baby as king. To run this analogy into the ground, this turns into a ruthless game where eye sockets are gouged out and weddings are ruined.

Unless you have a small team, getting everyone in for one script only leads to a clogging of egos – just like having 14 directors, or 14 editors, or 14 cinematographers.


“Who needs sleep?”

Needless to say, sturdy time management is vital for this competition, and with such a limited amount of time to work with, you can see why many would be tempted to sacrifice sleep for precious more writing/filming/editing hours.

Here’s my advice: Don’t.

There’s a reason Formula One teams have pit-stops, and there’s a reason human beings need to sleep. Sure, you can ‘refuel’ yourself with all the V in the world, but without rest, you run the risk of blowing out your mind tyres and skidding into the paper-thin edges of your sanity.

If you still manage to complete something in your guarana-induced fugue state,  then hats off to you – you’re the reason the Incredible Strange award exists.


“Don’t worry, we probably won’t get musical.”

This is akin to saying “We probably won’t need parachutes,” when you enter an airplane. Technically, yes, you’re correct in thinking that there is a very small chance that you will need a parachute. However, you’re still gonna want a God-damn parachute.

The boogyman genre of 48Hours is musical. It will almost certainly be back this year, so make sure you have a contingency plan.

Can’t sing? Rap.

Can’t bust a rhyme? Dance.

Can’t dance? Dance badly.

Don’t have limbs? Beat-box.

There are many ways to mould uncomfortable genres to make them somewhat fitting for your team.


“We totally have time for a beer.”

You totally do-fucking-not have time for a beer.

We learned this painful/what-were-we-even-thinking lesson a few years ago when everything was running surprisingly smooth on the Saturday evening. We wrote a functional story, got all the footage we needed and recorded every piece of audio. And it was only 8pm!

We felt rich, and what do rich people do when they’re at the height of their powers? They get boozed and make bad decisions. So we went to a bar, grabbed a few beers and got a really good night’s sleep.

Congregating to the editor’s cave on Sunday morning with our giant ego-dicks swinging in tandem, we got to work cutting everything together.

Then one thing went wrong.

Then another thing went wrong.

Then nine other things went wrong.

Suddenly, we had a mountain of wrongness that needed our immediate attention – colour correction inconsistencies, corrupt audio files, missing graphical elements – with only two hours left until the deadline. These were issues that could have easily been dealt with had we not spent all our safety-net time on fresh pints of arrogance. It’s like we took an hourglass with most of the sand still at the top, flipped it around, took a hot steaming piss on it and yelled “What have we done!?”

We done fucked up, that’s what we had done.

Amazingly, we still handed in the film on time. Was it any good? Umm… the intro’s okay.