It was a frantic and sleepless two days of scripting, filming, editing and drinking a ton of V for St Paul’s Collegiate School’s film crew who won the regional 'best schools team' award in this year’s 48-hour film challenge.
The nationwide competition took place from Friday 16 to Sunday 18 September. It involved teams from across the country scripting, filming and editing a short story within the two days and (as if it wasn’t hard enough) the teams were only told their genre and a series of other requirements once the clock started ticking.
“You don’t know anything about it to start with, apart from the fact that you need to create a film,” explained the film’s co-director Oliver Massey.
“On the night you are given the genre and a character, prop, line of dialog and camera affect that you have to use.”
Each region’s team is given a different genre but the same character, line of dialog and prop to use. St Paul’s team were given the genre dystopian.
“The film has almost no dialog. It’s an oppressive regime and the main character is a part of it but he becomes too conscious and thoughtful. He starts thinking about the consequences,” co-director Campbell Massey said.
Campbell and Oliver drew influence from one of Stanley Kubrick’s films which only uses candle light.
“It was our first time directing a film so we prepared before the challenge by watching a lot of film and reading about different director’s styles. What heavily influenced our film was Stanley Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon which he shot in complete candle light,” Oliver said.
The directors also decided to take on a new approach to filming this year.
“In past years the filming has been done during the day because it allows lots of opportunity for reshoots but we decided because we had lighting equipment that we would film it at night in the old gym,” Campbell said.
“This way we could completely control the lighting and sound. We thought if we didn’t have to worry about external sounds, which we have a lot of because we are a school, then it was going to be much easier.”
The filming took place from 5pm until 4am the following day. The editing then took 14 hours to complete.
The team averaged four hours of sleep over the two days.
48-hour film crew
- Campbell Massey – Director
- Oliver Massey – Director
- Joshua Andrew – Actor
- Anakin Frogget-Turner – Actor and behind the scenes footage
- Invader Singh – Actor and editing
- Callum Skelton – Lighting and photography
- Luke Halliwell – Story boarding and go-for
- Logan Jarvis – Main actor
- Lachie Wright – Actor and assistant camera man
- Sam Goodey – Returning student
- James Ashendon – Returning student.
