The Fabricator - The Electric Pink Company

The V48 hour film competition is a national competition held once a year. In essence you have to write, shoot and edit a short film in 48 hours. The prizes are very alluring and the competition attracts over 500 teams nationwide. I think the most amazing aspect of the weekend is that after the weekend there are going to be around 500 new Kiwi short films that didn’t exist before.

The competition is hard - there are many teams who are seasoned 48 hour film-makers and there are many clever script writers, talented actors and high production values. There are also people who enter the competition for the fun of it with their mum’s handy cam and their mates from school. Upper Hutt College had entered 17 teams this year. This is the spirit of the 48 hour film competition.

Our team name was the ‘Electric Pink Company’ which is a name that we inherited from last year. Our biggest goals for this year were to make sure our film made sense and also to have loads of fun. We hand-picked our team of awesome talents from people who we knew could work together, who could make quick decisions and could make the 7pm Sunday deadline.

Friday 6pm: It was Friday night; I was waiting in a crowded room at the National Dance and Drama Center, Toi Whakaari in Newtown. As I waited, I looked around at all the teams and wondered how the next 48 hours would pan out for them. It was all up to a ping pong ball in a brown paper bag.

Our team name was announced after a string of other awesome team names like Squint Eastwood, the Avatards and Abusement Park. I went to the front and picked a ping pong ball out of the brown paper. Number eight -- we had our genre which was ‘Biopic’.

‘Biopic’ is a term derived from the combination of the words ‘biography’ and ‘pictures’. These films depict the life of an important historical personage (or group) from the past or present era.

7pm: I called HQ and informed the team about the genre and the elements to include in this year’s 48 hour film.

The Elements:

1. Person -- Sydney Manson (A Fabricator)
2. The Object -- A broken toy
3. Line of Dialogue -- “If you look at it that way.”
4. The 4th element -- A ‘dolly zoom’ camera shot

By the time I got back to HQ, the main ideas had been fleshed out and Duncan Sarkies our writer had shut himself in the writer’s room to work his magic on the script.

9pm: We had dinner (yes, the whole weekend was a food fest! We even managed to feed another team with the amount of food we brought with us).

Later that night, Duncan emerged from the room with a script. “We’re going to build a machine and there are going to be cats, lots of cats!” he said. I am sure there is a reason why they say never work with animals or children.

Saturday: after 3 hours sleep

In the early hours of Saturday morning, our Art Department had the huge task of building a machine out of hunks of metal, tinfoil, LED’s and motorcycle parts. The first scene was with our main character, Sydney Manson, drawing the plans for the machine. The plans were the first thing the art department had to complete.

They drew the plans for the machine before we could start shooting the first scene. Our camera man kept himself busy shooting cutaways of cats on the street, whilst our two actors Adam Koveskali and Samantha Jukes got their hair and make-up done by Fiona Sole.

The shoot on Saturday went pretty well and late into the night, without any major hiccups, except our main actor was hit in the back of the head with a heavy piece of metal from the machine. There was a strange calm in the air all day… no-one seemed panicked or stressed. Was this the calm before the storm?

Sunday: after 4 hours sleep

The challenge of the 48 hour film is making the film with very little sleep whilst still trying to problem solve, keep your head together, make powerful decisions and make sure your team doesn’t fall apart.

We were lucky this year, as we had three computers and three editors on-site. Fiona Sole our make-up girl arrived early to transform young Sydney Manson into 70 year old Sydney Manson with her amazing make-up skills. I got a call from Sophie, our sound lady.  I was late picking her up. I pulled up to her house in Lyall Bay and she was sitting on the pavement in a bear suit surrounded by sound gear. There was still loads to do! Everyone worked like busy bees in their individual hives. Brent, our voice-over actor arrived. I shoved a script and a coffee into his hand, then I kept moving gear.

4pm Still no-one was stressed out. Was something wrong? Was something going to go wrong? The sound and music went on the edit. I wouldn’t let anyone into the editing room who didn’t need to be there.

It was now 6pm on Sunday. I took the first tape down to the finishing line.

This was a strategy employed by most of the teams; you take a first tape down to the finishing line with a runner around 6pm, one hour before the deadline and then wait to see if your team turns up with a second tape just before 7pm…  the anticipation is thick as you watch teams bowl up to the building with A5 envelopes in their hands and sweat on their brow… one guy rode in on his bicycle with the envelope in his mouth. I was  still anxious as I waited for the second tape.

6.56pm (4 minutes until deadline) Ruth, our Director ran through the crowd and handed me the final tape. We did a quick tape swap and I signed it in…..  Yes, we had made the deadline!! Another year, another 48 hours and another film.

Thanks to all our lovely sponsors- The Learning Connexion, the Parade Cafe and Boyles Kawasaki.