48 Hours

On Wednesday night we went to the Embassy Cinema, at the invitation of a couple of friends, to watch the Wellington finals of the “V” 48 Hour Film competition. This is a competition run in 8 cities throughout New Zealand, where the competitors are invited to make a 7-minute film in 48 hours. The competition is open to professionals and amateurs alike (although they must all be volunteers – professionals cannot be paid), and attracts professionally-made short films as well as film-school/student entrants, and amateur film-makers. The 48 hours were between 7pm on Friday 20^th May and 7pm Sunday 22^nd May, and all films had to be started, filmed, completed and edited/post-produced in that time period.

The competition is run on a city basis initially, with a grand final between the city winners held in Auckland.

The 12 films we were to watch were the Wellington finalists, so (we assume) much of the lower-quality films had already been deselected by this point. Before the showing, however, we were treated to a film which hadn’t made the cut for the main competition, but was being submitted into a new(-ish) category of “Incredibly Strange”, where the weirdest submissions from each city battle it out for the title of “weirdest shit to come out of someone’s brain and onto a film screen”.

The rules also stipulate that 4 required elements are included in the film. These are a character, a line of dialogue, a prop, and a camera shot. As we watched each film it became clearer what each of these were, and we could then anticipate and spot the usage of these elements in each film - a character called Bobby Young who was a school bully, "what have you got?", a piece of bent wire, and finish on a freeze frame.  Also, each entrant is given a randomly-generated genre in which to make their film. This is a bit of a challenge, and it was notable that some genres were more heavily represented in the finals that others – only one musical made it through, but horror seemed to be well-represented.

After the films had been shown, the awards were given out. Most of these were for film-making rather than acting, although there were “Best Actor” and “Best Actress” categories. There were also “Best Use Of” awards for the required elements. One film kept picking up awards – best script, best cinematograpy etc – and it was no surprise when "Sketch" by Couch Kumaras was awarded “Best Film”. The film hasn’t been uploaded to the website yet – I think they’re waiting for the finals in Auckland before they make the films available to the public. If you’re a Timelord you can see it here by travelling forwards in time. Ordinary mortals will have to wait until it’s published and I can redirect the link.

We’ll be keeping an eye out to see how the Wellington entry fares at the finals next week.