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The 48 Hour Film Project Takes Over L.A. this Weekend
The 48 Hour Film Project is this weekend.
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by Jonathan Peters
The 48 Hour Film Project marks its ninth year in Los Angeles with a kickoff event at Cinespace in Downtown Hollywood tomorrow. The project offers filmmakers the chance to create a quick movie over one hectic weekend and show it to an audience of their peers the next week at Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex in Santa Monica. According to Jimmy Stewart, producer of the festival in LA, “Most ideas never make it out of your head, never mind actually getting developed, shot and projected onto a big screen. Having this kind of structure and deadline can be very exciting and motivating.”
The weekend is a “total sleepless scramble” in Stewart’s words. Beyond a line of dialogue, prop, character, and genre, the filmmakers are given little more than a deadline. To distill the filmmaking process from months to hours takes a special kind of resolve. Burbank resident Sean Hilferty, a participant in the fest since 2003, writes that “I’ll work on it right up to the deadline. We literally got our film in with seconds to spare last year.” For many, the making of is the most rewarding part; according to Hilferty, while he has made “better films” in past years, his most recent one “was damn cute, it’s fun to watch, and it brings back the best memories for me.”
All films that make it through the scramble screen at the 4-Plex on August 24, 25 and 26. The ones that win awards are scheduled for a screening on Sept. 11 at Cinespace. While registration for this year’s event is closed, those wishing to help out the weekend of can sign up at the website’s talent database. Prospective teams that missed the deadline can also join the waiting list.
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