48 HR Film Project and fish fry

Its about 11Am on Monday morning just South of Normal in Los Angeles, California. I am tired, sore and cranky... but I feel good.

Indie City Entertainment tackled the Los Angeles 48 Hour Film Project this weekend and I would have to say... hmmm... what would I HAVE to say...

We finished? We submitted a complete short film with a beginning, middle and an end. We made it to the drop off point with our finished product and handed it in with minutes to spare. So, provided all of our paperwork is in order, we are officially entered as a competitor.

The screenings for GROUP B (Thats our group; part of groups A-F; 80 teams participating) will be held on Wednesday, June 18 and Thursday, June 19 at the:

Fairfax Cinemas
7907 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA. 90048

Group B Wednesday, June 18 8:00 pm:
4 Doors from a Strip Club Joseph Tran
Balls Out Pen15 Albert Aguilera
Black Lightning Spence Fuller
Cine Alma Pictures John Gonzales
Indie City Entertainment James Huffman
Life On Its Side Productions Susan Lee
Magic Lantern Trevor English
New Spirit Cinema Paul Ratner
Purple Potatoes Svetlana Dekic
Roach Coach Rogelio Velazquez
The Sleezy Threezy Eric Larkin
You'll Eat It and Like It Anne Edkins
LASREVER Peter M Smith


Friday night, the 48HRFP kick-off meeting was held at the Lounge at The Landmark Theater in West Los Angeles, 10850 West Pico at Westwood Blvd. Each time was asked to attend with no more than 3 representatives, so I asked my roommate Eric to go over there with me. We sat around for about 30-45 minutes and eventually they called my name and I went up to thye front of the room and pulled my team's "genre," our "Character" our 'Prop" and "Line of Dialogue." Basically the way it works is every team randomly pulls a "genre" and that sets tone, or theme for each teams film. Every "genre" is fairly represented by at least one team in each of the 6 groups. Then every team in every group gets the same character, prop and line of dialogue to incorporate. Once they announce the common 3 ingredients, all the teams stampede out of there and run off to write their story and start shooting.

The 2008 Los Angeles 48 Hr Film Project official list of ingredients:

Character: Ronald or Rhonda Donellson, game host
Prop: 3 or more potatos
Line of dialogue: "Leave it to me, I'm a professional."

Indie City's official genre: Detective/Cop

And we were off. We went back to our apartment on Hoover street and met up with the rest of the team. We didnt have everyone over, just 8 of us. We bounced around ideas until about 11PM. At 11, I kicked everyone out and started writing...and writing....and writing... I finished a first draft... a working draft at 3:30AM.

I wrote a story about a private detective/former police officer who finds himself in the middle of a foot chase and a rendevous with a woman in a red dress. A flashback takes us to the detective's home office/garage two days earlier. Our protagonist is sitting in the dark, contemplating retirement (Which is code for suicide). Rhonda Donnelson, a femme fatale equipped with a desperate dilemma, a red dress, a great pair of legs, enters, thwarts the detectives effort to "cancel his membership," and the story takes off from there.

Once the script was finished, I went to sleep. At 7AM I was up and at it. Eric and I made a few casting decisions...

James Huffman (ME) to play Detective Clifton James
Anne Judson Yager to play Rhonda Donnelson (Game host)
Heidi Fielek and Chris Tessitore to play a team of assassins
Ashley Cozine to play Cliftons ex-girlfriend

Any other supporting roles would have to be developed and cast on the fly....

and, again, we were off.

We met up with the team in Burbank, had a brief pre-production meeting, and headed over to our first location to shoot all the chase scenes.

That's why I'm so sore today. I got to set, dressed in a suit and tie, and started running aorund like crazy in these chase scenes...with shoes NOT designed for running and without doing any sort of warm ups.... stupid.

We shot all day...finally wrapped at midnight. Went back to Burbank to shoot one last scene early SUNDAY morning, and spent the rest of the day at our editors apartment whipping it all together.

I made it out to The Landmark and turned in our film with minutes to spare. Forget the fact that my CAR broke down on the freeway earleier that day on the way to the editors place from our last location. I was forced to deal with calling a two truck and finding a mechanic to take the car and agree to pay the tow and work on the car. Not to mention we all were in post production HELL, operating on minimal sleep. Not to mention I had to borrow a car to get over to the drop off point and I got LOST trying to find I-10 from the editors apartment on the way.

But we got it done....and I'm tired, sore and cranky.


THE PLAYING FIELD
written by James Huffman
Concept contributors: Ben Stevens , James Huffman, Eric Jones, Ashley Cozine, Chris Tessitore, Anne Judson Yager, Heidi Fielek, Tom Funk.
Directed by Eric Jones
Starring James Huffman
with
Anne Judson Yager
Heidi Fielek
Chris Tessitore
Ashley Cozine
Editing by Paul Kim
Production Staff: Heather McGonigal, Heather McHugh, Stephen Schaffold, Tom Funk, Ben Stevens, Paul Duraso

Because of time constraints and lack of sleep, the film we ended up submitting is not, by any means, perfect ,and there are certainly technical glitches that were overlooked in the last 2 hours of post production. So we will probably try and polish up the film before we post our work for everyone else in the world to see... but we do plan on making the project available on Youtube and Myspace or wherever else.

Stay tuned...

CATCH: Episode 1 on Youtube

Hi...

Apparently people were experiencing difficulty viewing the first episode of Catch on Myspace...

Episode One is now on Youtube:

"CATCH is a dark comedy, written and directed by James Huffman, that features Anne Judson Yager (BRING IT ON AGAIN, MINORITY REPORT) and Trevor Jones (NOTHING YOU'VE SEEN) as MAGGIE and JERRY, two star-crossed serial killers looking for love in all the wrong places. Are they destined to find each other? And will that magical moment be Serendipitous? Or more like Alien VS Predator 3?"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKaEPd-l2_M