Over the past five years, the 48 Hour Film Project—a beat-the-clock endeavor that pits teams of filmmakers around the world against each other for prizes and perhaps pivotal pitch meetings—has become a Nashville institution, getting bigger and hairier each year. On July 20 at Sunset Grill, teams were given a single prop, character and line of dialogue that had to be included in every film. Then team reps picked genres out of a hat under the watchful eye of 48HFP producer Andy van Roon. From possibilities such as “buddy movie,” “superhero” and “Western,” Wade’s team OFF TV Prods had drawn “horror.” They went to Centennial looking for fear.
A colony of wailing bats was found outside the door to the medical center, but the interior lacked long, evil hallways and flickering fluorescent lights. That meant Wade would have to create atmosphere in post-production. “You never know how a movie will look until it’s edited,” said Wade, who planned his shoot to give himself as much time in the editing room as possible. He did not plan on sleeping. “The last few days I’ve been going to bed 12 hours later than I usually would,” he explained, “so right now it feels like it’s 1 in the afternoon.”
That was 1 a.m. Saturday. Eleven hours later—midnight for the director—they finished filming at a scrapyard downtown, leaving 31 hours to edit. Wade’s film placed third in 2004, and he said that the new one, “Abandon,” looks better than his previous entry. “I think the difference was that we had a bigger crew,” said Wade, who has a public-access show on Nashville’s Channel 19. “Instead of having just me and one person, we actually had 18.”
By contrast, at the same time Wade and company were finishing, a team called ilovebetty, run by Pete Wilson and filled out by a gaggle of stand-up comics, had not shot any footage they planned on using. It had taken a long time to write “0500,” a drama about a soldier’s last party before going off to war. “We had about 18 people writing it, which got cut down to three,” said main writer Joe Southards. “With everybody contributing, it would have taken about a week.” This put them slightly behind schedule, but they were not panicking. “Everybody’s kept a real positive attitude,” said actress Jamie Potter, “despite being awake for so long.”
Unlike Wade, who shot rapidly and with little coverage, Wilson had his actors run rehearsals of each scene, then shot multiple angles and takes. This rigorous organization, though time-consuming, made editing go quickly. But trouble with their elaborate soundboard meant that ilovebetty had to use audio from the camera’s microphone for many of their interior scenes, since synching the sound would have made finishing on time impossible.
As it turns out, Wilson and ilovebetty handed “0500” in past the deadline. But so many teams were tardy this year that lateness disqualified their team only from the “Best Overall” competition, not the awards for individual genres. “There were certainly a lot of things we could have done to make it look better than a two-day production, if we’d had more than two days,” Wilson said. “Overall, we’re pleased, the experience itself was a good one, and we got it in.” After 48 hours’ sleepless work on a project, getting it in seems to be the thing to hope for.And now the filmmakers can bask in the glory of their premiere. Starting Aug. 4 for three days, the Belcourt will screen all the entries in this year’s 48HFP—some 47 different views of the city—in four programming groups. “Abandon” and “0500” will both be shown in Group A. Then comes the awards night Aug. 7, and the chance for one Nashville team to compete against others from Los Angeles to Glasgow. And then, maybe, they can all get some sleep.
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