Filmmakers...start your engines.
Tonight in Boston, approximately 90 teams of varying skill levels and experience will receive a random cinematic genre, line of dialogue, character and prop to be utilized as part of the 2008 Beantown edition of The 48 Hour Film Project.
As the name suggests, teams will then have just two short days to write, produce and edit a 4-7 minute epic incorporating the aforementioned elements. Films completed within the tight timeframe are subsequently screened and judged by a triumvirate of local critics and filmmakers. The winning teams receive a “Best of Boston” award, national distribution on a 48 Hour Film Project DVD, and the chance to compete in a second round against other “Best of City” winners from around the U.S.
Launched in Washington, D.C. by Mark Ruppert in 2001, the 48 Hour Film Project has since reproduced itself, spore-like, in dozens of other municipalities around the world, from Paris and London to the annual make-believe hippie “town” of Black Rock City, Nevada.
Combining elements of Project Greenlight, The Amazing Race and some weird Japanese game show with an emphasis on sleep deprivation and digital editing software, the 48 HFP experience is by turns exhilarating, exhausting, educational and entertaining, not to mention eclectic, edifying, erratic and, uh, oh, let’s say epistemological.
The organization has recently launched a website to showcase the massive output of its participating filmmakers (and Screengrab, with complete, journalistic objectivity, particularly recommends the delightful Lost parody, “Shoe” and the charming superhero spoof, “Farm Force,” as well as the most excellent 2007 Best of Boston winners, “Piggy” and “The Guts and the Glory.”)
For information about forming or joining a team in a 48 Hour Film Project host city near you, clear some time on your schedule, stock up on vitamins and mini-DV tapes and click on over to the organization’s website, https://www.48hourfilm.com/.