48 Hour Film Project

Move over John Williams ...

Thanks to Evil Genius for that one.

I recently helped out a friend of mine, a local commercial television producer, with a movie he was filming this weekend as part of the 48 Film Film Project. Basically, the concept was this; a group of Producers are going around from city to city holding an international contest for local film makers to try and completely produce a short film in a span of 48 hours. The catch being that the film makers aren't given the genre of film to produce until 48 hours before the entire film needs to be submitted. Also, to make it more difficult, the film makers are given a single prop, a line of dialogue and a Pittsburgh location that they must incorporate into their final film. So basically, these film makers have to write the story (around the aforementioned criteria), find actors, then shoot, edit and produce the whole short film in those 2 days having basically no prior knowledge of what they are about to make.

The Film Project Competition happened this weekend. I got the call last Wednesday to help out with the soundtrack. My friend already committed himself to make the film about a meter maid no matter what genre he got assigned this weekend. He asked me if I had written any songs that were 'action oriented', like 'chase scenes' or 'bad mofo character intros'. I sent him over a few songs I've written ... and he loved all of them. I had to tweak a few songs because of the use of samples in some of them ... can't be infringing on any copyright laws (or so said the multi page waiver I had to sign for use of my material in this film project).

Anyway ... I got word that he submitted his finished film with only about a half hour to spare and two of my songs ended up being used. I don't know where, how and in what context the songs appear but I've been invited to the first screening of the film this Wednesday at Star Cinema in Bridgeville, PA. I'm excited to see and hear the finished project ... It should be pretty cool to hear my music up on the big screen. Too bad I was told I still have to pay $7 to attend the screening.