Simon Yin's Incredibly Insightful Thoughts on 48 Hour Film Festival

The 48 Hour Film Festival is one of the best "festivals" of its kind.  It's a worldwide festival and I participated in both the ATLANTA and LA versions.  It's an intense 48 hours, but for me, the reward is in the screenings.  Not only do you get to see your work on the big screen, but you can see others' works as well.  It's also quite a bonding experience for your team and the other teams as well.

For those of you who don't know how it works, it goes a little something like this:

1.  Friday night, you get the specifics of what you MUST use in your film.

       A.  Character Name

       B.  Prop

       C.  Line of Dialogue

On Friday night, you also pick out of a hat, what genre of film you will be shooting.  For us in LA, musical was always the one that we dreaded the most!

1.  From Friday night to about Saturday morning, you write the script.  By about 6am, you and your writers are convinced that the script is probably the worst pile of feces ever.

2.  Saturday morning you start production.  Ideally, you also start digitizing tapes or downloading footage at the same time and start post as soon as possible!

3.  Sunday is a full post production day (with maybe some pick up shots).  (SIMON SAYS:  remember to leave time for that damn render process!!!)

4.  Sunday night, submit your masterpiece!

And that's it.  By the end of the weekend, you are tired, you may have swine flu, or you just might decide to quit the film business all together...but then you sleep it off, and then you feel great, like you've really accomplished something.  It really is an amazing experience, and to do it in 1st ever Hong Kong 48 Hour Film Festival...well, that's just icing on the cake!

SO if you haven't signed up yet, make sure to do it....and do it fast!