48 Hours to Make a Movie

This weekend, Washington DC Hosted a contest in which seventy-two teams had exactly two days to make a movie from one of twelve genres. The selection of which genre it was going to be was random.

I was on a team, Sockface Films, captained by Jack Swiker. I did work on a student film of his last year, which was a lot of fun. He asked me if I was interested in being in another of his movies and I said yes.

Our team ended up picking the mystery genre, which turned out to be a lot of fun. At 8 o’clock on Friday night, the race began and the writers started plotting out the 7-minute story to be shot the following day. I played a character named Robert, a gritty cop that sounded a great deal like Michael Madsen. I passed some time between shots, quoting “Are you going to bark all day, little doggie… or are you going to bite?” Heh.

Shooting was really quite interesting. I’ve only ever acted on film once before, and the chance to do multiple takes was very cool. The filming wrapped up around 11:30 Saturday night, and that was the end of my contribution. The editors took over from there… The movie, Pinot Noir (get it?) will be playing Wednesday night in Silver Spring. I wish I could make it myself, but I’ve got a previous engagement that evening with the improv troupe, the Comedy Pigs.

I can’t wait to see the finished product. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a copy to keep for myself… I’ll let you know how it comes out!