Eric Buist

Compass College of Cinematic Arts puts on a 24 Hour Film Festival each year. My team and I have participated in the past 4 and have always had a great experience. Our films have come out with good reviews and made the Top Ten each year. This year was the first time that none of us were going to be in Michigan (where the festival is held), but we thought we would give it a try anyway. Having only 24 hours to create a short film is a challenge in and of itself, but this time we were participating from 4 different states and 1 province. 

Here is the video: http://vimeo.com/23394959

Our film placed 3rd out of at least 18 other teams.

Pre-Production

To get this video done, we needed to plan out every little detail ahead of time, so that we were as prepared as possible. During the 24 hour period we were given required elements: a prop, a line, a theme, and a location. This forced us to write the script and plan the story during the 24 hours.

The main planning we did was how to transfer files to our editor (in LA). We went through a variety of compression tests to make sure that we were sending him the best quality files at the smallest file size, so that he could create an offline edit and have that to upload in case our online edit did not get done in time. We settled on ProRes (proxy) files. They dropped the file size by 1/3 and gave us an acceptable image.

We also explored different options for transferring the files. We timed transfers through ftp, dropbox, and wetransfer.com. Our upload speed with wetransfer ended up being the fastest (1 hr for uploading per gb). We determined that this would be the best way to send files. Dropbox was determined to be the best way to send smaller files, since it would update almost instantly. This was very important, but more on that later.

Scripting/Planning

As soon as the required elements were announced we started our brainstorming session. We used video/text chat through Skype. This allowed us to be able to meet as if we were all in the same room. Once we had our brilliant idea, we needed to script it. Using Google Docs we could update and revise the script collaboratively. We had 3 rough drafts before our final draft was completed and ready to shoot (at 3am PST).

Production

None of the crew were in the same state, or even within 400 miles of each other, this was an early cause for concern, but we chose our story with this in mind. A simple story, with cut-aways and only one actor. All of the shots with the actor had to be shot by one person, while the cut-aways could be shot be another person in another state. Luckily I had my wife to lend a hand and operate camera while I acted.

We had two locations to cover, the beach (1 hour away) and a barn (our required location). At the beach we also needed to take a picture of her, so I could photoshop her as a mermaid. This picture had to be printed, since we needed it at the barn. We shot the beach and headed to a coffee shop to get the image uploaded to a 1 hr printer which was on the way to the barn. We also stopped at our apartment to get the beach footage uploading before we shot at the barn. Once we got the barn shoot done (and after my wife ran about 2 miles to get forgotten items from our car). We headed home to finish uploading to our editor.

Post Production

Since the footage took an hour to upload per gb, we needed a way to get the shots to our editor so he could start the edit. We sent over screen grabs, to allow for proper placement and a pre-edit. Once all of the footage was in his hands he could create the entire offline edit. While this was happening I was downloading the full res files from the shooters to preform the online edit.

Our editor was working off a project file that was being saved in our shared Dropbox. As soon as he saved, I would have the most up-to-date version of our project on my computer. This way I could re-link the media and have an online project instantly. Our offline edit was completed with 30 mins to spare, which gave the online 30 mins to export. 10 minutes before the deadline our offline edit was exporting, but the progress bar suggested I would need 15 minutes to get it out. We did not have that kind of time, so we decided to upload our offline edit (using the proxy files) as our finished version.

There you have it, a glimpse into how we created a short film in 24 hours from 5 different places. If you have any questions or want more detail on a certain aspect let me know!