Reflections on the Raindance 16 Second Valentine’s Day Film Competition and the 48 hr Film Challenge

After doing the Raindance 48 hr Film Challenge in last November, I was relieved to know that there was not going to be such a strict production time limit in the next challenge we were attending. The rules for the 16 Second Film Challenge were simple: Make a short, which should be only 16 seconds long, and since V-Day was coming, the theme was “The Date”, but it did not have to tell about great romance or your typical date setting.  We got to play with the theme and Madeleine had some great stories to tell in that 16 seconds. Best of all, we had fun with playing with the ideas! You can find the rules for the competition from the Raindance website.

48 hr Film Challenge

Before getting into making the 16 second film, I would like to tell shortly about the 48 hr film challenge. Those rules were clear, but strict. You had to make a finished short film within a 48 hr time frame. On Friday at 9PM we got to know the theme for the challenge: “keep calm and carry on”. After that, the clock started ticking! We had to make everything: write the script, plan the shooting, film it and do the post-production and finally upload the finished film, no later than 9PM on Sunday evening. That was a rough ride, but we managed to pull it all together and actually won the competition..! The film, Henri, can be watched on Vimeo.

Keeping up with the schedule was the hardest part. We did some preliminary work prior to the theme announcement by chatting about the scenarios, which could be interesting to shoot. We had a rough idea on the style and the nature of the story we would like to tell. We got our fingers crossed and were waiting for the theme. Finally it was announced, and it wasn’t something we had hoped for, but we managed to tweak our ideas and Madeleine wrote an excellent script on Saturday morning for us. 

Our lead actor, Henri, was not able to come to the set until 2PM on Saturday, and as we were shooting in Helsinki, we had only 2 hours left before sunset or complete darkness.. So I had to plan the shot list very carefully in order to shoot the day scenes within that 2 hours. The crew was non-existent: just me and the fabulous actors Henri and Maria. Madeleine lives in the UK and was not able to fly to Finland for the shooting. It was minus 5 degrees outside and Maria’s character was wearing just a summer dress. The scenes had to be shot run-and-gun guerrilla style. But we managed to get everything we wanted within that two hours. I think we were very lucky, but also well prepared.

The final scene was shot at 11PM, but my work continued. I made the rough cut for the film over the night. I think I was ready at 6AM, or something like that..  Next morning I overslept (natch…) and the deadline was getting closer! I still had to do the colour correction, edit the sound and add some music. Madeleine recorded the voiceover for the film.  After everything was done, we were relieved, but it was too early to pop the champagne.. My beloved editing software decided that the film cannot be exported and constantly crashed. I had to tweak, update my MAC, tweak a little more, update the software, tweak and update.  Finally, I think maybe half an hour before the deadline I managed to export the film and start uploading. I still get shivers thinking about that day.. But we did it! At the end, the experience was fantastic… And very educational!

16 Second Film Competition

The challenges in our 16 Second Film, The Date, were a bit different. We got plenty of time to plan the story. Madeleine wrote actually three versions of the script, which I shared with couple of my friends and asked for which they liked the most. I’m happy with the one we decided to shoot ☺ 

We did the shooting on 7^th of February, in two hours. We got plenty of footage and everything went quite well, but when I got to the editing part I noticed how short time 16 seconds really was.. At first, I edited every shot the way I normally do, just to realise that the film was wayyy tooo long - approx. 1 minute. I was gobsmacked..

I started to cut the film and shorten the shots. Somehow I was able to shrink it into 16 seconds, but the first edit was crap! Had to sleep it through and chat with the actors and Madeleine about it. We changed the edit and peeled everything nonsense of. Each frame has to tell the story, I said to myself. Added some music (thanks again my brother, Veikki!) and the result was actually way much better than I'd hoped for.

So what we’ve learned from these challenges?

1. Keep calm and carry on

One of the most important rules is to keep calm, no matter what. There will be setbacks, always, but carry on.

2. Plan and plan some more

To avoid setbacks, plan your shooting carefully. These projects have taught me the importance of the shot list and scheduling. There will always be some improvising when shooting in tight schedule, but you have to have some kind of schedule and a manuscript for the day in order to successfully pull it through.

3. Use the locations you know or are near to you

Our 48 hr Competition film, “Henri”, was shot at my home, Henri’s home, in a familiar pub and in our backyards. The locations have to be easily accessed and close to each other. You don’t want to spend your valuable time in travelling!

4. Guerrilla style shooting - keep it simple!

In a tight schedule with a small crew, it is wiser to use as much natural light as possible for lightning up the scene. Carrying around and setting up all the lightning equipment and fancy gear will probably take the time out from working with your actors. When your gear is simple enough, you got more time to think about blocking the scene and even rehearse the scenes with your actors. So keep it simple! It is possible to create very fine footage just with your DSLR kit with some image stabilization. You don’t probably even need to have a tripod, just something to stabilize your handheld filming: a shoulder kit or something like that. 

5. Leave enough room for the post

Computers are crap.. it just tend to be like that. If you have a very tight schedule, as we had in the 48 hr Film Competition, I would allocate half of the given time for the post-production, minimum. And try to export the film before it’s fully done to see if your software is working properly. It is also good to keep in mind that after colour correction and all the additions to the footage, the exporting times may very well be even 10 times longer than with the clean footage.

Last, but not least - have fun! Everything goes smoother when you are having fun time with the crew. 

“Why so serious?”

-Vertti

After first meeting each other via Google hangouts as cohorts on the Film MA at Raindance; Verti and I first worked together on Henri in November 2014. Despite having only been doing the masters for 3 weeks and my living in the UK, and Vertti living in Finland - we managed to put together a 7 minute film that was deemed the best of the 13 shorts submitted in the 2014 Raindance MA 48 Hour Film Challenge. The judges were Philip Ilson, founder of the London Short Film Festival, Film Festival Doctor Rebecca Louisa Smith; and Raindance's own Elliot Grove - as the competition standard was extremely high we were super excited and chuffed to've come first!

 

I don't think there was any actual point where we decided on setting up our own micro-budget film production company - but I think we both just really enjoyed the process of creating a film together and were happy and felt excited about wanting to do it again. My background coming into the post-graduate programme was to write my own feature film; and Vertti's was to direct - we both had academic undergraduate degrees; and our sensibilities when it came to film - being very influenced by micro-budget, artistic filmmakers like Lynn Shelton, Jim Jarmuch, the Duplass brothers and Sophia Coppola were defiantely in sync, so I feel we're very fortunate to've met and to have this opportunity to work together.

 

We discussed creating a blog/website early on to document our journey as filmmakers - however we somehow got bogged down overthinking templates and our logo so it was only very recently Vertti just decided to put something together and now we're running with it. The template cost €5 and Vertti's girlfriend Pauliina designed our logo (which is awesome). The logic was it would be better to have a site and start creating an online presence, than spend any more time and money debating the perfect looking blog (but one that was lacking in content). I think it's a good outlook - on pretty much everything - to have going forward.

In the 10 days since we 'launched' the blog we have been busy setting up our social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Vimeo (come follow us!).

 

We also managed to fit in a Skype meeting which covered The Hiker - the short horror film we're filming in 2 weeks, The Date - a Raindance 16-Second Valentine's Day Film Competition we're entering this month, and Francis - a short prequel to the feature film I'm writing as part of my MA.
 

I also spent some time over the past two weekends location scouting for The Hiker. Vertti is in the UK attending a Hands on Directing for Film course so we decided to use his time in England to extend his stay and shoot this short over two days. Because we're limited on time and resources we are filming locally, so I sourced the two biggest forest locations within a 30 minute radius and visited/photographed them over the past two weekends. Firstly I went to Kings Wood - an ancient woodland site; and then I took a trip to Lyminge Forest - one of the largest areas of woodland in Kent. Both were stunning and creepy in equal measure, but having visited them both, Vertti and I decided that Kings Wood would ultimately be better for filming our short in as it's less dense than Lyminge and therefore he'll have more natural light to film in - which is essential given the time constraints of filming.

As micro-budget filmmakers I have written The Hiker and will also be acting in it to save costs alongside my dear friend Natalie and my father Paul. Honestly, the prospect of doing this terrifies me but I know it will be an incredibly beneficial process as I aim to hand over responsibility to Vertti to guide the making of the film and I hope it will also inform my writing and I will learn how my text is translated off the page. It is also hyper cost-effective. Our crew will be formed of my husband Tim and close friend Alex, with my family on hand in case it rains; and we are hoping to have two undergraduates from Staffordshire University (who Raindance is partnered with) join us to provide camera/sound equipment in exchange for work experience and covering expenses. My wonderful and insanely talented photographer friend Claudia of Claudia Rose Carter Photography will also be on hand to document the process and hopefully provide some still film photography that we will then be able to use for promotion and poster design.

 

Last week there was also time to source a lot of props/wardrobe for The Hiker - which included choosing costumes for the protagonist Layla (where debated whether her jacket should be red or yellow - we went with yellow; and if her jumper should be red or white...is it just me or do all horror victims wear white?). I also managed to get hold of a variety of camping/hiking props so hopefully we nearly have everything we need to film in 14 days. This Friday I will be meeting up with  Natalie to finalise/photograph our character's wardrobe together so it will be very exciting to see 'Layla' and 'Charlotte' come alive.

In addition, last Friday night I wrote 3 different narratives for the #16SecondDate competition - which Vertti selected and filmed on Saturday afternoon in Helsinki - with Henri cast members Henri and Maria. He spent Sunday editing the short - and the result is brilliant (and utterly psychotic)! We very much looking forward to submitting The Date later this week and see how we fare amongst the other submissions! Ultimately, however it just feels good to get some more practical filmmaking experience.

And finally we were extremely pleased that Henri was chosen to be featured by bloggers Screenqueens as part of their Women in Horror Month showcase.

That's pretty much where we are for now!

Madeleine