Yesterday, team No Zombies Productions finished a one-day scene practice. The date of the practice changed due to No Zombies HQ moving from Littleton to Denver. With it now being only weeks away from the actual 48 Hour Film Project, we opted for limiting it to one day, one scene, instead of the typical Friday to Sunday full race practice. It was billed as a “chance to shake off the rust.”

We’re rusty!

We used the random generator, and got these specifics:

  • Name: Denis or Delma Harrelson
  • Profession: Door to Door Salesperson
  • Prop: a pail
  • Line of dialogue: “Haha, what an odd question to ask.”
  • Genre(s): Mockumentary OR Horror

For some reason, these got everyone talking about serial killers and human centipedes. In case you haven’t seen it yet, here is the scene we created:

You probably noticed this was more than a single scene, as we did in the past with Not Again. We had footage from the front yard, the back yard, and several interviews under the trees. Not Again was one room. They were about the same length (2:06 for Not Again, 2:30 for Sales Day Camp.)

Participants this time included regulars Jess, Brett, Gary, Heather, and Erika. Chase returned for his second event (third if you count the other thing that we’re not done with yet).

You can tell by the “No Zombies Productions” clip that we don’t have a 4K version of that yet. We’ve usually had a mix of HD and 4K footage and edited down to HD. It was late when we added that, so it stayed as is.

Brainstorming went well, with lots of ideas. In a list of 26, we found eight worth talking more about, then narrowed them down to two. We picked the more challenging one and in doing so, expanded from strictly a single scene. We probably could have done a full 48 Hour Film (4-7 minutes) or more with this same concept.

The time from specifics to shooting was around three and a half hours, longer than we like. We had some script issues in that the first draft was four pages, and we wanted one page. We pared it back to two pages and went with it. We had equipment failures with one lavalier mic dying, and the main monitor for the camera not working. But we kept pushing through the problems over the next four hours and got our footage.

We were hoping to be done before Game of Thrones came on at 7:00. Alas, with the edit starting at 5:30, it was just a hope. Instead, we ordered sushi, took a break for Game of Thrones, and returned to the edit afterward. We wanted to get it done and posted by the end of the day. It was posted just after midnight, so not far off.

To sum it up, we spent four hours gathering, brainstorming, and writing, four hours shooting, and five hours on the edit, rendering, and upload. Pretty good for knocking the rust off!