Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

72 hours: The Quest for the Golden Reel

The planning, the effort and the mayhem that go into competing in the Filmmaker Showdown

Seventy-two hours is a long time. If you’re giving birth. Quitting smoking. Waiting for the bombing campaign to end. In 72 hours, three generations of dragonfly live and die, a glacier makes its patient retreat, you shed 200 head hairs, our little blue planet twirls on its axis three times. And 36 teams of film-makers consummate, gestate and create a 4.5 minute short film.

Or not.

9:30 Friday 11 April 2003 Second Cup [TIME plus 73.5 hours] : 11 th hour negotiations

The executive team assembles, collars high against the hangers-on and the wannabes. The financial backing is secured – three digital mini-dv cameras, a PC with Primia 6.25 and Adobe After Effects, and enough money to sustain three film-makers in sufficient coffee, beer, dope and gas-station food for the next 72 hours.

You nurse bowls of caffeine, visions of greatness, a cunning plan. Forge a couple of signatures on an entry form. You’ve been here before. You’re a veteran of the 72 hours Film-maker Showdown. A former finalist. This time, you’re shooting to win.

10:00 Briefing Tent [TIME plus 73 hours] : Mission Command

Twenty-eight representatives of the 36 teams entered show up for the briefing. Your mission is to shoot, edit and produce a film within the next 72 hours. Your film must be 4.5 minutes long, including credits. You must stay within a 100km radius of Whistler. You endure the necessary paperwork, waiver signing, the business end of things. The clock starts at precisely 11 a.m. The teams disperse, scatter. Last year’s winners are off and running, like a team of adventure racers. You watch them go. Think about the tortoise.

12:30 Merlin’s [TIME plus 70.5 hours] : Storyboard Session and Casting Call

Units alcohol consumed: nil.

Minutes footage shot: nil.

Budget for talent: nil.

Prospect of winning an Oscar, Genie, Cannes Audience Selection Award: nil.

Prospect of being a finalist in the 72 hour Filmmaker Showdown (provided you complete a short): 1:6

You round-table ideas with your executive team. As usual, the brainstorming keeps circling back to porn, a cheap way to keep an audience entertained. Your aspirations are more noble. You want to meet commonly accepted Broadcast Guidelines, not just titillate. The porn story-line is shot down. You mock up a storyboard – someone has some paper, so you don’t have to use the napkin you’d started making notes on.

You walk the lot, scout shooting locations. Do your casting call, which involves seducing some mates with tales of glory and hard-drinking, randomly kidnap people off the street to be extras.

16:30 Home [TIME plus 66.5 hours] : The Last Supper

This is your last meal that won’t be garage station food. Kiss your wife and kids goodbye. You will not belong to them for the next 66 hours. You are a slave to the creative process, a whore to the deadline. You hope they understand. Hope they have enough vision to see you at the Oscar podium, tearfully thanking god, a pantheon of executives and them, your beloved family, who always believed in you… but you feels pangs of doubt as to their vision, as they mutter curses at you while you take your 73 rd call on the cellphone.

17:00 Merlin’s [TIME plus 66 hours] : Shooting commences

Footage shot: Nil.

Stylistic approach re-addressed: your producer has failed to secure filming permits. Actually, you don’t even know if there is such a thing. Move to guerrilla filming mode. Free-wheeling film-making. Stuff cameras under jackets. Trust in alcohol as the ultimate social lubricant/gesture of good-will. It works with Guitar Doug and the Hairfarmers. You film gleefully knowing now you have the hit song, the anchor to the soundtrack. Have secured the requisite big name. And all it cost was a round of shots.

You wonder if there’s a spot in your movie for the Kokanee girls. It’s a cliché, but it’s the most effective one around. You brandish the camera at them, "Hey girls, wanna be in my movie?"

Beer count, before basic arithmetic gives out: 17 pitchers. (Including 6 free Kokanees, 2 Kokanees stolen from bin, round of shots.)

22:00 Savage Beagle [TIME plus 61 hours] : Blur of filming.

This much you remember on your own: You sweet-talked the bouncers to let you into the Party without special tickets, moved onto Shakespeare’s Pies, bandit-filmed in Buffalo Bill’s (hide camera, walk fast with head down.) You’re tailed by four RCMP for appearing suspicious but manage to lose them. An entourage is building.

23:30 until late [TIME plus 59.5 hours] : Damage Control

Your star is drunk. And still wearing a ski school uniform. He changes. You kick on to the Crabshack. Return home at an undefined late hour. Still have the camera in your possession – good. Add another 10 beers to the tally. Footage shot: an hour.

8:55 Saturday 12 April 2003 Wizard Grill [TIME plus 50.08 hours] : Refuel

You postponed the team meeting until the sun was high enough that it wasn’t boring into your light-sensitive eyes. (Note to PA: get some of those Hollywood-style wraparound dark glasses). Touch base with media entourage, assure them the evening’s shooting was successful, although you can’t remember anything after 10 p.m., and you haven’t had the courage to review the footage.

Entourage has evaporated. Some 50 people have called in sick to their day jobs.

9:00 Wizard Grill [TIME plus 50 hours]

Still waiting for crew to show.

9:10 Wizard Grill

Still waiting. Rewriting credits. Considering including recognition of unofficial corporate sponsorship. (Would have starved without staff discount on mountain food.)

Now two hours behind schedule.

11:00 Gondola [TIME plus 48 hours] : Budget review

Time frame is 30 per cent over. In a fog, in the gondola, you try and review the budget to ascertain whether you’re close to 30 per cent complete.

Footage shot: 75 per cent, provided the footage is useable.

People to avoid: 50 per cent of supervisors and managers from day job, 100 per cent of wife and kids.

Cellphone calls made: 3,600 per cent increase in usual traffic.

Entourage fluctuation: increasing between 10 and 200 per cent.

Sore head count: 100 per cent.

You change the message on your cell, and turn it off.

"You’ve dialled the offices of Frozen Planet Filmworks. Ground Zero for production of the greatest film to be made in 72 hours. The producers/directors/cast and crew are currently unavailable to take your call. You may find them in the terrain park. Clearing their heads. Please leave a message after the beep."

16:00 The star’s residence [TIME plus 43 hours] : Final Shot

Your celebrity star has a tantrum. He hasn’t had much to work with. No script. Rumours of a storyboard. A largely drunk camera crew who refuse to do second takes. No pay. And now, he has to provide his own set. At least his favourite beer is in the fridge. Considering it’s his fridge.

You calm him down. Make an emergency reassessment of your stylistic influences. This guy is a pretty face, granted. (There was that cover in GQ magazine that influenced your casting decision so heavily.) But he can’t act. Well, there is a direct correlation between talent and the budget you have to pay your talent. How much did you budget for cast again? Nothing. Right. What did you have to offer the talent? Fleeting fame, beer. Ganja and snow (the Whistler equivalent of hookers and blow?). Decide to go for a more raw, realTV look in the hopes that the acting talent will be redundant.

The filming is wrapped up. You run through the formula checklist in your head.

• Edgy drug references

• Cameo appearance of cult hero or local rock star

• Gratuitous tits ’n’ ass

• Iconoclastic locals

• Hit theme song

• Chase scene/explosion

• Sudden unexplained love interest with randomly inserted sex scene

• Sweeping panoramic views.

Despite a meagre budget and a ticking clock, you have managed to supply cast and crew with enough booze to keep them committed to the project and the hangover cure of their choice. You personally have experimented with vegemite on toast and hair of the dog. Have kept the stock of goodwill surrounding your project high by giving away the lift passes and media pass you were entitled to. Nevertheless, you feel a flush of satisfaction that you can run through the industry checklist for creating a classic movie and know you have the makings of a hit: gondola hot-box, Guitar Doug, the Kokanee girls, the Beagle, Waltzing Matilda (see Guitar Doug), on-mountain high-speed chase featuring local ski kids, bedroom scene. You’re a little disappointed with the talent and the extras – they roundly refused to show more skin when pressed. Still, what can you expect working with amateurs?

16:10 WSSF [TIME plus 42.9 hours] : Incognito

You work the crowd at the Big Air comp. No one knows who you are. You rest assured that your genius will be revealed within hours.

7:30 Sunday 13 April 2003 The editing suite [TIME plus 27.5 hours] : The Craft

You hold your head in your hands and make a quick appraisal of your situation: in roughly 48 hours, you have accumulated 2 hours of footage, 15 hours of sleep including nap-time, 2 hours of hockey-viewing (a formally scheduled intermission in the hope that victory would rub off), and 6 hours working on the project. The rest of the time has been drinking. You’re getting a good sense for the hard-living, serious networking Hollywood life, and feel confident that you’re cut out for it. Make note to PA: contact Alexander Keith’s Indian Pale Ale (or even United Canadian Breweries) about corporate sponsorship. There’s certainly enough product placement in the footage shot thus far. Fresh-brewed coffee is on hand. To ensure your to-date appraisal is comprehensive, you wander the living room and count the empties: 32. Decide to bypass the coffee in favour of beer.

11:00 The editing suite [TIME plus 24 hours]: Procrastination

You place a few calls to your media entourage. Good press is just as constructive as an actual product. You crack open your third beer of the morning. Feel a flush of solidarity with an endless list of creative geniuses.

The groupies have vanished. Your cast has returned to real jobs, to make up the cash shortfall the last 48 hours has caused. Your co-producer has slept in, will stumble in around noon. Your second co-producer, you have discovered, managed to stumble into every shot thus far. You make an executive decision to downgrade him to Public Relations Officer from full director/producer credit. He’ll never work in this town again.

You scan through the footage. Question your decision to shoot everything in only one take. Wonder what kind of smoke and mirrors the editor might have up his sleeve and how much money it’s going to take for him to work his magic. Take a slug of beer. Remember that you are the editor. And there is no money. Task seems gargantuan. Estimate that of 120 minutes of footage, maybe 2.5 minutes is salvageable. Are going to have to stretch it out with lots of slow motion shots and credits. And hope your narrator didn’t get laryngitis at the hockey game last night.

20:00 The editing suite [TIME plus 13 hours] : The Quest for 4:20

You trade the editing chair on and off with your co-producer. Feel self-righteous and pure that you haven’t consumed any dirty caffeine today. Working like a well-oiled machine with an emphasis on well-oiled. Averaging a beer an hour. The footage is gold. Just a few minor problems to contend with:

1. The narrator has only half-completed his job. Subsequently taken off for the last hockey game of the season. Estimated time of return : 1:00 Monday 14 April 2003.

2. Beers are running dry and have in stock two bottles of Fireball (cinnamon-flavoured corn whiskey).

3. May need legal advice on several matters including the licensing of music used for soundtrack, and possible defamation issues concerning reputation of company and employer of 85 per cent of cast and crew. Don’t know any lawyers.

4. Actually have 4 mins 45 secs of film. Need to reduce it to 4 mins 30. Last year, editing out those final 15 seconds took 10 hours. Ultimate goal which meets both official rules and desired subliminal messaging: clock in at 4:20.

5. Despite the fact that the entourage is only getting stronger, no one is available to deliver the film to the comp officials at 11 a.m. tomorrow. Philosophical question: can you trust a Whistler taxi-driver with your life’s work?

11:00 Monday 14 April 2003 TIME

The count is down. It’s showtime.



Comments