"The Lowering" - our 48 Hour Film

[Stephen van Vuuren]

As some may recall, we joined up with the DV Challenge #2 as practice for our cities 48 Hour Film Festival. We actually enjoyed the DV challenge more because, well, sleep, it's a good thing.

But here's our 48 Hour Film:

http://www.stephenv2.com/the_lowering/

hope you enjoy (it's a big download though, 50 MB).

[Daniel Kohl]

Really nice Stephen,

It made me sweat.

Very nice editing. It's hard to imagine getting something like that done in 48 hrs.

Did you win?

[Dylan Couper]

Very polished for a 48 hour job! Excellent cinematography too. How did you place?

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Daniel Kohl

Really nice Stephen,

It made me sweat.

Very nice editing. It's hard to imagine getting something like that done in 48 hrs.

Did you win?

Thanks for the great comments - I was really happy with the editing in this film, especially since it was done basically in 10 hours. I was hoping someone would notice it.

I'm glad it made you sweat - that was primarily our goal.

We supposedly were in the running for best of Greensboro, but we ended up winning nothing. Two very funny mockumentaries swept the judges and audience awards but that's why I'm putting this out there. I want to figure out what kind of festivals might be a good fit.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Dylan Couper

Very polished for a 48 hour job! Excellent cinematography too. How did you place?

Thanks - I really do enjoy shooting with the DVX100a - the best feature is the wonderful focusing system. It really makes a easy to shoot fast during the 48 Hour and the built in gamma curves means you can get a nice image when you know you don't have time for post fixing.

[Fresnel Phan]

Very cool. It's tough to make a horror that can actually make you jump. And also, "low budget" and "horror" tend to equal corny. Really nice job. Although I admit, I kind of got lost on the story. I'll watch it again after this post.

Not to hijack your thread, but I just wanted to tell you I also did a 48. I did it in Austin (we're from Houston) and the whole team ended up carpooling to there and spending the weekend in hotels.

I totally know how you feel. We made it into the 10 best for Austin and then watched as the awards were swept by this massive production. That team had 52 members and reeked of money and a pre-planned script. The movie itself was just eye candy for the budget. They won just about every award. I had my heart set on winning at least something. :( Oh well.

If you're interested, our movie is here: http://rapidshare.de/files/3760360/r...ustin.wmv.html (25 megs)

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Thanks for the kind words. We were also a really small team (8 total including myself). And yes, we had a couple of 40 person teams here in Greensboro. I just don't want to pay to feed that many people.

I tried to watch your film, but I kept getting a server too busy message.

[Sean McHenry]

Looked great but I am not sure I followed the story line too well. I am unable to figure out who the menacing character represented. For 48 hours, that was great.

I had a week and folks still don't know what the white car in my short is all about. I still have to shoot that last missing shot...

Anyway, production value was very good and everything.

On Fresnel Phan's comments, that sucks. Not much of a festival if big money and weak plots can capture top honors I suppose.

Still, I would welcome a 48 hour challenge here in Columbus, Ohio or nearby. Anyone know of anything in this area? I'm willing to team up with folks just to be an active part in one.

Sean McHenry

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Sean McHenry

Looked great but I am not sure I followed the story line too well. I am unable to figure out who the menacing character represented. For 48 hours, that was great.

Sean:

We are batting around 50/50. About half of everybody gets it who the character is and what is happening and the other half does not. Of course, that was deliberate as the main character in the film does not get who the menacing character is either, at least until the end.

[Cory Cone]

What is this "menacing character" supposed to be? Death?

That's the only logical answer I can come up with. But I liked it, well done for 48 hours, for sure!

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Cory Cone

What is this "menacing character" supposed to be? Death?

That's the only logical answer I can come up with. But I liked it, well done for 48 hours, for sure!

Thanks - 48 Hours is fun, until you suddenly realize. I have to finish this thing in 45 minutes :)

[Stephen L. Noe]

Hi,

I'm more interested in your screenplay. Did your team conjure up the story together?

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

Hi,

I'm more interested in your screenplay. Did your team conjure up the story together?

It's an interesting story - we got our genre (horror), character (S. Stephens Locksmith), prop (softball) and dialogue (it hurts when I do this) at 7pm Friday. We were going to try to improv and started in that direction. We worked out some characters and found a truly horrific location (abandoned huge house currently used as storage for a slum lord).

However, when I got to the location at 11pm, I was not feeling great about combining improv and horror plus I felt I story only had one strong act, not a good middle and no end. To make matters worse, the location was very risky. It was the heat wave 80 degrees and near record humidity outside still at midnight - and almost 100 degrees inside some of the rooms of the location. It was also dangerous for cast and crew due it's condition.

So I cancelled the whole idea and we all went back to my house (there were 8 of us, 6 crew, 2 cast). Truly a low moment. So at 12:30 we sat around and brainstormed ideas and ended up with fear of death. Some of us had known someone who died of a brain anuerysm and we wondered if people had warning symptons. It turns out many do and we used the symptons to create 5 scenes. 3 of us brainstormed details in the scenes and I wrote a bare-boned 3 page script which we finished at 6:00. We met again at 9:00 am Sat. after a little slip and started shooting.

To be able to finish in time, we realized we need to shoot during the day, so we went for the challenge of creating a creepy film shot during the day without blood/gore. Which actually helped us. Even though only us and one other team drew horror, well over half the 27 teams featured large amounts of blood in their films.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Wow, I just saw it
Congratulations!
You played with cinematography, sound, framing and editing to create a real tension, without any gore.
That's always more rewarding to see, at least in my eyes, how you can scare people and give them such a feeling of unease by just playing with your cinematic tools.

Really great! One of the very few really scary movies.
Also the house which is so very bright is a nice contrast with the dark things this woman is going through, works very well.
Congratulations again!

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Thanks very much - I'm glad you liked it.

At first, we were worried about the bright colors, I thought I would have to desaturate in post. But then I played with white and black balance and figured I could play with colors, especially turning white and beige walls bright blue. We really like it, so we actually played it up and I'm glad you like the contrast. Since our characters were in all white and all black, we felt the colors were a great contrast.