Another year, another 48Hours. The furious filmmaking competition has harvested another crop of fantastic shorts for the Grand Final at The Civic (nominees to be announced in the next few days as of writing). If you want to go to a cinematic screening of shorts where NONE of the films will disappoint you, I implore you get tickets to this event when they’re available.
But I’m not here to discuss winners; I wanted to discuss the annual losers of the Rialto Channel 48Hours with Alex Casey – namely us and our films. However, when I initially came up with the title ’48 Hours, 9 Years, 2 Losers’, I was foolishly ignorant of Alex’s team’s multiple award wins, so really, the only loser in this conversation below is me. [EDIT: So, erm, turns out my team won Best Use of the Character this year, which kinda falsifies that last sentence. But hey, I’ll take it.] However, everyone who completes this competition is a winner, and as long as you’re proud of your creation, it makes it all worth while.
That’s not to say we haven’t created some disgraceful abominations that have not made the experience worthwhile, plaguing the competition like a cancerous haemorrhoid. But let’s call those growing pains, for they are essential to this nine-year insight of our growth – a time-lapse photo album of us progressing as furious filmmakers from teens to 20-something. This is our very own Boyhood.
LIAM: With eight years of experience under my belt, I’m somewhat proud and disgusted to say that I’m a bit of a granddaddy to this 48Hours competition. Tell me: how many times have you partaken?
ALEX: A grand total of four times. My buddies and I seem to do one year on, one year off, as if we need a year to forget the pain and the anguish. It’s sort of like childbirth.
For me, it’s like binge drinking: the next morning you say “never again,” until the hangover wears off. Then it reverts back to being a great idea.
You wake up feeling sick, dry, and burping scary green clouds of energy drink. But it goes away.
And I must say: having not partaken this year, I got quite jealous going to heats and things. You always pull up your old films and have a small rose-tinted moment of the 48Hours of yonderyear.
Well… some are rose-tinted. Other, at least some of ours, are viewed with a tinge of shame and regret. Again, like binge drinking.
A lot of it is like a black out. I genuinely cannot remember making any of our movies. The only evidence we have is from a small shitty camera that we use to film behind-the-scenes every year. Which often ends up being a lot better than the film itself.
Some years you make babies, other years, you make vomit. Like all fun black-outs.
But I digress – let’s talk about our films. We’ll go chronologically and start with my team’s entry all the way back in 2006: Battle of the Children’s Playthings.
Or as I like to call it “An Instant Classic.”
Aw shucks. So whaddya think? Please, do be harsh.
I can never be harsh about 48Hours films. Whenever I see a film that was completed in 48 hours without anyone dying due to ill health or murder from a team-mate, it’s a bloody miracle.
The only ones that ever get on my goat are the films that use multi-million dollar cameras and lighting rigs and shit but forget to write an actual story. And your film definitely doesn’t run the risk of that. I love the lo-fi nylon look.
Why thank you very much. At the tender age of 16, we were gifted with the ‘Puppet’ genre.
It has a great concept that I think may have been stolen by a recent underground foreign film you may have seen called The Légô Movie. I think it’s a great genre to get for your first time. Calls upon the ingenuity and creativity that the competition stands for.
To this day, it’s the only film of ours that made it to the 48Hours DVD compilation. This was back in the day where Auckland heats were played at The Civic. That’s right; our no-budget puppet film got played at the bloody Civic.
Heats at the Civic!? Bloody hell.
That must have been an experience.
Totally, especially hearing the crowd crack-up at the “torture chamber” gag in that pristine, luxury theatre.
That torture CD drive was the highlight for me. 10/10 gag.
The guy sitting next to me, who directed the multi-million dollar short before ours Porn: The Musical, was busting a gut. He was slightly drunk too, but I take pride in it.
Still counts if he’s drunk! (Jesus, please don’t take that quote out of context…)
I was very impressed by the diverse puppets you had at your disposal.
We literally (and I literally mean literally) emptied our toy chests and grabbed whatever we could. Pretty sure we infringed on many different copyright laws…
Has Jonah Lomu’s lawyers been in touch with you?
No, because we never used a character called ‘Jonah Lomu’. Would you be referring to our other character ‘Lomah Jonu’?
That would be the one. Forgive me; I forgot that Jonah Lomu does not have scary white minstrel lips. But his kidney might as well have been blu-tak AMIRIIIIITE?
…too soon.
Sorry, bad joke. Forgive me, Lomah.
Was 2008 your first year?
It was indeed. And it was our absolute peak.
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeit, and you got musical/dance? I’m impressed that you’re lot simply didn’t curl up and die like half of the teams who get that genre. Westmere Story is admirable. Awe-inspiring at points (e.g. finger-snapping driveby).
Thank you very much. It truly is, and I’m not exaggerating, the best thing I have ever been involved in.
We came in there and cleaned up with Rose getting Best Actress and winning Best All-Girl Team*. We were like Lorde. (Let’s omit the fact there are about 4-5 all girl teams nationwide.)
*sorry, Best “Chick” Team
Was that the official name back then? Not Best Penis-less Team?
I think that was the name the following year. But nevertheless, it was a shining moment for all of us and we even got in the paper.
Phwoar… we didn’t even get mentioned at our school assembly…
I do resent having to tick “Best Chick” team though. As if the competition wasn’t already intimidating enough for women, let’s trivialise your gender!
But y’all totally deserved the accolades – that film exudes confidence, and Rose was caning it even before she was cool.
I think that “confidence” is also the naivety and excitement of doing it first year. You see it in yours too, just going all in before you get jaded and ill and old and start having heart murmurs from years of hard V-drinking.
I hope it gets on the reel when Rose wins her Oscar. I will do whatever it takes.
Will she be back for Westmere Story 2: Electric Boogaloo?
Her agent hasn’t gotten back to me yet. Might have to get Mose Ratafeo instead.
Co-starring once again with that scene-stealing tri-pod?
Bloody hell that tripod. My heart swells for that tripod. I miss seeing tripods in shots. That would be my one criticism of the current 48Hours is that, due to technology becoming so much cheaper and more accessible, everything is so damn slick now and you never see shitty tripods in shots.
It’s a lost art.
Did you notice all the clothes were inside out?
One basketball singlet tipped me off where the name was reversed. Was that an homage to Kris Kross?
It was an homage to us being total nerds who live and die by the rules. We thought Kris Kross would call us and sue us. We thought the Celtics would sue us. We thought the Daddy Mac would sue us. We thought everyone was going to sue us.
At least you didn’t use Buzz Lightyear. We thought Disney would send down a lawyer to silently shank us one-by-one.
Yeah, you guys were mayhem copyright-wise.
Speaking of potentially terrible horror movie feature ideas, here’s our 2011 short Repressed.
The first thing straight off the back: Jesus Christ, you upped your production values 300 fold. Amazing.
This is why I’m a bad critic, I find even titles impressive.
You have an eye for detail – that makes a good critic. And thank you – it’s amazing to see those five years of improvement in the two shorts.
Screw ‘Musical/Dance’; I actually think ‘Horror’ and ‘Drama’ are probably the hardest genres to pull off.
They’re a massive challenge if you attempt them sincerely without falling back on the comedic route.
Exactly. I feel like genuine fear is one of the hardest feelings to extract from an audience and I think ‘Repressed’ gives it a bloody good crack.
I got very creeped out in parts. Was mucho impressed by the fake TV shows.
Not that our concept was wholly original. Having to explain our story to the Saturday crew basically went like this: “Have you seen Black Swan? Yeah, it’s Black Swan, but with a bully.”
Love a horror with a strong “anti-bullying” conscience, and you made a pretty slick-looking one with some very creepy coat-hanger work while we made a crappy ‘Goosebumps’ rip-off.
Oh man, that Goosebumps intro rip was A-class, right down to the G-stick.
I put my heart and soul into that G-stick. Even sticking eyes onto my poor dog.
I bloody loved the Sam Raimi-esque cinematography.
My neck has never been the same since all those Dutch Tilts.
I counted 25 of them.
We decided almost immediately that if we were going to do a ‘Horror Urban Legend’, it was going to have to be very stupid and intentionally bad. We copped out in that respect, but I think the ‘Goosebumps’ format saved it.
I think you were wise to go with a lighter-heart approach, and you girls showed a great understanding of horror tropes to where you could humorously twist them to great effect (e.g. tea-leaves that spell ‘DIE’).
I love Nicky Brick’s constant indifference to her situation too, waking up to a face-covering claw mark and think “huh, that’s strange’.
Haha, well thank you very much. We had two graduates fresh out of make up school so there was a lot of fake blood floating around. That was probably our most technically sound area.
That Bloody Mary looked legit. Not that I’ve seen a Bloody Mary.
Well there’s one way to see her, Liam.
I tried contacting her, but she never replies…
What has been your worst year?
It’s a tie: 2008 was a disorganised disaster where we gave up on our crime film CSINCISVU and our 2010 one that was poorly and shamefully written by me. And no, you will never see it.
Goddamn please make ‘CSINCISVU’ happen. As for the other, I will find it.
It’s called Meet Dave and we were so ashamed of how it turned out that we changed the ending entirely in the last few hours to make our lovable sweet character Dave into a mass murderer, just for jokes.
Sounds cool.
Except half the sentences from the end titles were accidentally cropped out, so no-one laughed or even knew what happened. We essentially failed twice that year.
Our team’s last attempt in 2013 was probably the worst. In terms of not really having that ‘eureka’ moment and just having to go along with something a bit sub-par. And it turned out to be a very similar concept to a New Zealand film. Someone on our team had alerted us to this early on, but I naively thought it would be fine and nobody would accuse of stealing an idea.
My god. We got absolutely slayed after the heat. All the anonymous ponytail Jims on the forums went ape-shit at us.
For real? What was the film?
‘Show of Hands’ starring Melanie Lynskey.
We got the ‘Immobilised’ genre so had a bunch of oddball characters stuck to a car trying to win it.
Oh…
Look, I’m sorry! I hadn’t seen the bloody movie! I still refuse to watch it.
Seems weird that everyone went H.A.M. about allegedly stealing that idea yet we can slide by with Westmere Story no qualms.
You only used the idea of sticking-to-a-car-to-win-it right? That’ been done many times before. By their logic, Show of Hands “stole” the idea from the documentary Hands on a Hardbody.
If that film wasn’t an NZ film, people wouldn’t have cared.
That’s a shame, because next year I’m going to do mine about a lovely little bloke with a magical golden ring who drives a mini the length of New Zealand.
Just don’t put a Boy in it.
I went to a heat this year and I could not believe some of the films. These two teams I saw did a crossover film! It was an amazingly clever move.
Competition this year is supremely tough. Have you seen our entry?
I have not. I would like to watch.
Well, here it is, nominated for nothing but our personal favourite film award. It’s also my directorial debut:
Particularly Unusual Bedtime Stories from Amer on Vimeo.
Holy shit that rocked!
Thank you.
Who did the animation?
My brother Chris. He did all of it from 8pm Sat to 4am Sun.
God bless your brother. Hats off to anyone who does animation to be honest. Hats off to anyone who does this bloody competition.
It requires Herculean strength of will, a never-say-die attitude and very, very, very tolerable friends. And V. God bless the double dozen of free V.
Our hearts murmur forever in honour of that free V.
I think we can end it there with that dignity-destroying, total sell-out piece of product placement.
Two final notes for you, fine reader:
1) I implore you to spend some time digging through the 48Hours Screening Room for gems that didn’t make it into their city finals: Ballsed Up, Wanderers and Another Day, Another Dance are just a few that are damn fine films.
2) Feel free to share your own 2014 entry in the comments below, or any aforementioned gems you’ve discovered.
