Buffet of Death

So, we didn’t win any official awards last night (apparently Twitter didn’t get my text from the event, so sorry if you were waiting for that) at the wrap party for the 48 Hour Film Project, but we did receive a some praise for what we did from the organisers. And I don’t think they were just being nice. Anyway, the team is in no way disappointed, because we had a fantastic time even though we were all terribly broken by the end of it!

The film had to include the following elements: a restauranteur named Robert or Roberta Darling, a CD prop, and the line ”Is that the best you’ve got?”. We randomly drew horror for our genre, but we quickly decided to make it a comedy, and got to work. Amazingly, there were no arguments or lost tempers (at least that I noticed) during the work, and the script made us laugh even if no one else would find it funny. We finished writing about 3am on the Saturday, at which point the director and script supervisor began prepping the shooting script. We were all on set at 8.30am to begin filming and finalise the shooting script. It was the first time I’d been on a shoot, so it was very educational to see just how long each shot takes to set up and get right. The whole thing went relatively smoothly, though our picnic scene was “attacked” twice by dogs. We finished filming at about 1.30am on the Sunday, and then we submitted our final movie with around 10 minutes to spare.

On Tuesday night, the film was screened at the Cameo, and was in fact the first time most of us had seen the final product! We went all out on the marketing front, with t-shirts, free food, chef hats, fake menus and even a dedicated web site. The website probably gives you a sense of what’s going on, but the basic premise was that in the near-future food shortages will be so bad that one restaurant takes advantage of a suicide to serve real meat again. Soon, though, demand outstrips supply… Tagline: ”Because life is a picnic”.

We’re currently checking out what we can do with the finished movie, specifically if we can upload it to YouTube or similar. If we can, then I’ll let everyone know where to see it of course. I imagine it will appear on 48.tv eventually as well, which hosts all the films entered in the project from around the world.

The whole team is keen to work together again, perhaps in less time constrained circumstances (and also perhaps not!), so watch this space!