The 48 Hour Film Project 2006.
The year is 2006. And it was an incredibly shitty year beyond all imagining. Earlier in the year was the end of a long term relationship. I had given up on my job at Borders for another retail managerial position only to realize how insane my general manager was. Tyler, a friend of mine and fellow film maker, had got me the job there and he and I both got so fed up we turned in our two weeks on the same day. FREEEEEDOM! Both of us had secured, what we thought was, a pretty gig for an identity theft office. This was going to be perfect. I could help people, fight some crime and I was have a significant bump in pay from my two previous jobs.
The office was a small affair, only four or five desks, the work was pretty normal and I was helping to handle calls with people who were mostly just concerned when they lost their wallet or cards. Things were looking up from the misery of the retail world. As the weeks went on the 48 Hour Film Project was coming upong both Tyler and I. The other staff had been warming up to us both and, we had been talking to our manager and fellow coworkers about the trials and tribulations of making a film in such a short amount of time. And then it hit me. Hey! This would be a fantastic place to shoot if we needed an office location.
So in the midst of our office chatter I had asked if the office was accesible during the weekends and she simply shook her head and said "No we're in a secure building there's no access on the weekends."
No harm no foul I thought to myself as I walked back to my desk. I was pretty excited. It was the Friday that began the entire weekend, at 7 PM we would randomly draw our genre, we'd get our character, prop and line of dialogue and then we'd get to do our pitches get shots lined up and and bang out a script and see if we couldn't get a couple of shots. I had arrived early at Cinema Quesos meeting spot, eager to begin a grueling weekend of film making. And as I am sitting outside chatting with some fellow Queso-ans I get a phone call. From my temp agent.
She explains to me that I am no longer working for the identity theft office, that my manager had lost it and thought that I was going to try to access the building over the weekend. That I had crossed a line. Me! I grew pale. I've never in my life been fired. I was 33 for heavens sakes and have never been in this position. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I was pale and I wandered back to the pitch meeting useless and empty. My world was crumbling around me.
And that's when we get the call from our team members who went to draw the random genre that our film had to be based on. Comedy! What...the...hell. That's all we do. That doesn't help us craft whatever genre we were going to have INTO a comedy as well. So we're all chatting, no ones really doing any pitching and we're all out of ideas. But then truckstopdruid recalled a less than one page script I had written. And thought that we could craft multiple little stories around. And that's what we did. It was a long long weekend, and I was playing the principle character so I was in all of the shots so there was little down time like the year previously. We won best Special FX, Best Director and Best Actor (or as truckstopdruid likes to call it "most actor")at the awards ceremony. And dr_love_phd brought me onstage in a t-shirt with my resume on the back and explained to everyone how I got canned because of the contest.
So I present to you now Cinema Queso's third 48 Hour Film Project: BRAIN JAIL.
The office was a small affair, only four or five desks, the work was pretty normal and I was helping to handle calls with people who were mostly just concerned when they lost their wallet or cards. Things were looking up from the misery of the retail world. As the weeks went on the 48 Hour Film Project was coming upong both Tyler and I. The other staff had been warming up to us both and, we had been talking to our manager and fellow coworkers about the trials and tribulations of making a film in such a short amount of time. And then it hit me. Hey! This would be a fantastic place to shoot if we needed an office location.
So in the midst of our office chatter I had asked if the office was accesible during the weekends and she simply shook her head and said "No we're in a secure building there's no access on the weekends."
No harm no foul I thought to myself as I walked back to my desk. I was pretty excited. It was the Friday that began the entire weekend, at 7 PM we would randomly draw our genre, we'd get our character, prop and line of dialogue and then we'd get to do our pitches get shots lined up and and bang out a script and see if we couldn't get a couple of shots. I had arrived early at Cinema Quesos meeting spot, eager to begin a grueling weekend of film making. And as I am sitting outside chatting with some fellow Queso-ans I get a phone call. From my temp agent.
She explains to me that I am no longer working for the identity theft office, that my manager had lost it and thought that I was going to try to access the building over the weekend. That I had crossed a line. Me! I grew pale. I've never in my life been fired. I was 33 for heavens sakes and have never been in this position. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I was pale and I wandered back to the pitch meeting useless and empty. My world was crumbling around me.
And that's when we get the call from our team members who went to draw the random genre that our film had to be based on. Comedy! What...the...hell. That's all we do. That doesn't help us craft whatever genre we were going to have INTO a comedy as well. So we're all chatting, no ones really doing any pitching and we're all out of ideas. But then truckstopdruid recalled a less than one page script I had written. And thought that we could craft multiple little stories around. And that's what we did. It was a long long weekend, and I was playing the principle character so I was in all of the shots so there was little down time like the year previously. We won best Special FX, Best Director and Best Actor (or as truckstopdruid likes to call it "most actor")at the awards ceremony. And dr_love_phd brought me onstage in a t-shirt with my resume on the back and explained to everyone how I got canned because of the contest.
So I present to you now Cinema Queso's third 48 Hour Film Project: BRAIN JAIL.
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