Lisa Bond has made it to the silver screen in one fell swoop. And she’s not the only one. Not by a long shot.
She’s part of a wave of people caught in the “act” “” a crazy competition called The 48-Hour Film Project, whose popularity rivals that of the cinema itself. It all has to do with creativity, teamwork and vats of coffee as teams have one weekend to morph a movie idea into a four- to seven-minute film. And no cheating. The topics are assigned just prior to commencement of the work.
Bond, whose Ocean Beach-based Story in Motion Productions includes a 13-person crew, said her team is tight.
“We’ve built a rapport and found out what our styles are, what our moods are,” she said. “I hope to work with them again, and I’m going to be friends with them beyond this.”
She and thousands of others.
On July 14, the 40 San Diego groups will meet at Video Gear Rentals, 11760 Sorrento Valley Road, for the kickoff. The finished products are set to be shown at the Landmark La Jolla Village cinema complex, 8879 Villa La Jolla Drive, Tuesday and Wednesday, July 18 and 19.
The agenda is the latest in a project that originated with Washington, D.C. filmmaker Mark Ruppert, inspired by a newspaper story about two women who’d started the nationwide Instant Theatre competition. In that event, participants are given 24 hours to write, direct and stage a play from scratch.
“That immediately got my mind going,” Ruppert said. “It sounded so cool and I thought it would be something neat to do with video.”
In May 2001, Ruppert, his friend Liz Langston and some other filmmakers assembled the project’s original ten teams. Those first 48 hours, Ruppert said, not only yielded qualitative results, but also sparked a torrent of interest. In five years, that handful of teams has ballooned to a phenomenal 1,100 groups from 29 U.S. cities, Paris and Brisbane. San Francisco alone has 132 teams.
Ironically, Ruppert said, the time constraint is the very thing that sparked the growth.
“The [two-day production window] is surprisingly freeing,” he explained. “Now, you don’t have the time to wait for the perfect script or the right actor. You’ve gotta just get out there, make a decision and move on. The people who succeed best at this are great at making a team work and using the team’s collective creativity.”
The producers for each city act as judges, Ruppert said, and they see their fair share of hobbyists and neophytes. Most participants, he added, are professionals “” and some even enjoy marketability potential. Some 48-hour films from Philadelphia and Atlanta, he said, have won some festival awards over other entries with no time limitation. As of yet, he noted, nobody’s gone on to enjoy any Hollywood-level visibility.
This is San Diego’s third year of representation. “Scared Slim,” last year’s local winner, was produced by The Extreme Film Crew and focused on a novel prison diet plan. For the past two years, all city winners have been screened at San Jose’s Cinequest film festival, at which the overall top film is announced. The latest Cinequest is scheduled to begin Feb. 28, 2007.
“I’ve learned a lot about myself and my team,” Bond said. “And now, I’m actually going to take a couple film classes. I want to know what it is [filmmakers] are doing, the editing, the equipment, the processes that they take.”
To boot, her prerequisite course starts and ends this weekend.
More information on The 48-Hour Film Project is available at www.48hourfilm.com.