48Hour Film Project 2024 - We Won Best Sound Design!

We almost decided to give up on the first night of the 2024 Denver 48Hour Film Festival. We had no crew, no idea that was developing, and no excitement to drive us through the hardships necessary to complete a film. Our first time entering the 48 Hour Film Festival was in 2017. We had a crew, locations, excitement, and anticipation.

PHOTOS FROM 2017 48HOUR FILM PROJECT

We didn't sleep. We barely ate. We had so many script revisions. It was a blast.

Unfortunately, we delivered our film late--we were the only ones that were late, oops--so our film was shown first and was not eligable for any awards. But we were asked what camera we used to film, which was a simple Nikon D7100 recording on a Atomos Ninja 2. It was encouraging people thought we filmed on a more expensive camera! If you wish to see the film, Solo, CLICK HERE.

Fast Forward Four Years

The second time we entered the 48 Hour Film Festival was in 2021. Our crew shrunk a little bit but there was still excitement and anticipation in the air. Since the competition was during COVID-19, we were never able to see our film during the screening. What was surprising to find out was that we were nominated out of all the contestants and won best use of prop (which was a Bob Ross calendar), but we never received our award! Though, when trying to find the email that said we won that award, we couldn't find it. Maybe we didn't win anything at all. If you'd like to watch that film, Senseless, CLICK HERE.

FAST FORWARD THREE YEARS

It was a struggle to care about this year's competition. Throughout the whole year we'd see ads for registering a team, the early bird pricing, and each time we'd were afraid what the life conditions would be like when it was time to film. Would it be a waste of money? Would we make anything we'd be proud of?

The night of the contest, we were pondering some ideas. Each team was given the same prop, line of dialogue, and character that needed to be in the film: A Painting, the line, "You sure about that?", and the character Karen or Ken Spankowski, an HOA president. The genres we pulled out of a hat were Horror and Climate Film. We decided to go with Horror. By the end of the night, we had some vague idea and decided to figure out the rest the next day.

Slowly an idea came together. We filmed most of what we needed with our crew of three on the second day. It rained all evening, giving the film a perfect horror tone. We weren't sure if we got enough to make an adequite film. The next morning we filmed the first scene where Ken Spankowski speaks on the phone and edited the rest of the day. There were a couple shots we needed to get to fill out the scenes in the forest. With only five minutes remaining for the deadline at 7:30PM, we submitted our film.

It was a fun surprise seeing that our film was nominated for the second viewing. For a film that was loosely put together and with little excitement in the beginning, we did pretty good. We're proud of the goofy film we put together and we look back at it with fondness. Great memories were name and perhaps it won't take three or four years to join the next 48 Hour Film Festival.

Enjoy the final edit of our 2024 48Hour Film Project entry, Death Song, here:

When the film finished, we received a startling loud applause in The Bug Theater. It was encouraging to experience their support given that we almost had given up on the first day.

And for any of you camera nerds out there, the film was shot on a Canon C70, 12-bit Raw LT, and edited and colored in DaVinci Resolve.