24-Hour Film Frenzy

Report by Jeremy Major

UPDATE: On May 9, 2009 at the Gala Event for the Hamilton 24-Hour Film Festival, Team Shooting Eye won 1st Prize by Jury and Best Cinematography for the film, "Service". Read co-director Jeremy Major's report on the making of the film and then view the film online.

MAY 2009  |  Imagine having only 24 hours to make a film. From idea to completion in one day.

This was the assignment at the Hamilton 24-Hour Film Festival, a competitive event on May 1, 2009 that kicked off a week long schedule of workshops and screenings aimed at Southern Ontario filmmakers. And, well... The Shooting Eye was there.

Our team of seven writers, directors, producers and actors took the challenge. They were myself (Jeremy Major), Aaron Lam, Murray Major, Kelly Carney, Matthew David Lupal, Nicolette Paradela, Brad Young (thanks to Crystal Paquette, Liz Naganobu and Paul Boyd for their contributions too). In assembling the team, I wanted us to include people that had worked together previously and who could also all contribute to the creative process. Let's face it, we knew we wouldn't have time for conflicts, so we had to make sure everyone could work together with ease. And 99% of the time we did. That said, there were other challenges that we'd have to face.

At 9pm on the Friday, we received our assignment. We would be expected to include three elements in the finished piece. 1) a Canadian flag, 2) a scene in a car, and 3) the line of dialogue "Show me the money."

Yuck, what a horrible line. That was everyone's reaction when we heard it. The clock started and in 24 hours we would deliver a finished 5-minute film.

Back-timing the event, we knew we'd have to start post-production by noon on Saturday. We chose to shoot Saturday morning (just to be able to get a couple hours sleep). And so, Friday night was our opportunity to plan. The ideas started flowing. Big, ambitious ideas. Tough, challenging ideas. Then, reality hit as the evening hours flew by. We'd have to really simplify and really look closely at our assigned elements to find the right idea. And then a good idea struck. Aaron put us on track with something that would be timely and touching. Kelly added to it with a personal experience. And one by one our team members built on the previous ideas until we felt we were ready to shoot.

12:30am I fell into bed retracing our brainstorming steps. 5:15am my alarm went off and I was on my way back to meet the team. I was still keen on our plan, but still unsure exactly how it would look and what it was going to take to pull it off. As a group we reviewed our one page of notes, looking for clarity. We tried an ad lib rehearsal on location and quickly realized it wasn't working. The actors weren't clear on their roles, none of us were clear on the dialogue, it was overstated, the story was now suspect - suddenly it all seemed fragmented and ready to fail. And, crap, it was 9am.

No question, this was our defining moment. We're professionals, right? We solve problems like this everyday. So why was this not working?

It was clear we'd have to either sit down and actually write a script or... start over. The reality was that there wasn't time to start again, and that a half hour on the script would tell us if this whole concept was going to work. Hopefully that was all it would take.

Aaron sat at the laptop and all of us spouted out the script, one line at a time. Suddenly it clicked. Subtlety was our friend as we wrote as few words as possible to express various viewpoints around the theme. And an ending rose up that delighted us all. We had a script! We were all happy with it! We could now shoot!

35mm lenses on board the HD camera, nice weather day, and everyone rejuvenated by McMuffins and a script in hand. We were on our way.

2.5 hours later at 12:10pm, we were done filming. Post went off without a hitch. We even had time for an original music score.

8:15pm I delivered the final film. And now we share it with you. it's called "Service" and we'd love to hear your comments on it.

Visit the Hamilton 24-Hour Film Festival website.

Behind-the-scenes photography by Crystal Paquette.