Ceremony

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Nominations for “Best Directing”, “Best Comedy”, and “Most Original”

Line of Dialog: “Suppression is a form of resistance which always equals persistence.”

Genre: Coming of Age

This was our second entry for the 48GFC, following our win in the “Most Original” category a year prior with “For the Trees”. This time we tried to assemble a roughcast and crew of people that we thought were able to handle anything that was thrown at us, even doing a rough casting audition a week prior to the weekend shoot. Everything was prepped and ready to go for the Friday when we got our genre, and line of dialog and could begin the process.

As we did the previous year, Vincent Truman and I set up skype to record our reactions, discussions, and plan of action once we received our rules. We got “Coming of Age” film with the line of dialog we had to use being “Suppression is a form of resistance which always equals persistence.” Needless to say both of which took us back and made us think about clicking the second chance “Danger Bucket” to get a new genre. Vincent and I spent about 2.5 hours or so discussing our ideas and seeing what we could come up with for the short film, going through various ideas of first dates and hillbillies. We ended up deciding on the idea of it being a ceremony idea with a twist, we could shoot the entire thing in one location, use as many extras and cast as we could get, and get as much party footage as we could for buffer in case we needed it.

After figuring out the basics, Vincent started writing and I started making emails and phone calls to lock down crew, props, and various other things that we might need. After getting the script I did storyboards (which can be found on the pix link below) and headed over to Vincent’s to spend the night and start first thing in the morning as we decided that his house would make for a perfect location for the film. Around 2-3am-ish I finished the boards, sent out the cast/crew lists, location scouted the house, and got everything we could prepped for the morning. Then attempted to sleep, abit.

As the morning came and everyone started showing up we began blocking, script changes, rehearsals and such. The day broke into sections based on cast, weather, and amount of time needed. We shot the whole ending scene ceremony first as we needed the weather to be consistent and it was the longest scene in the film. Following that, we did all the guest’s shots in a group and then the individual scenes and gags that I improved on set with each person to give them a chance to be onscreen other then just background characters. We proceeded to shoot interior party scenes afterward to get done everything that needed people that weren’t the main cast so we could release them after lunch. Everything went according to schedule for the most part and after lunch, we started the main cast scenes in chunks with the outside scenes first and then the inside scenes as the sun went down and we cheated with some arri lights to make up the difference. Overall we actually made our crazy schedule and shot, for the most part, everything we needed.

After shooting Saturday some of the cast and crew went out for drinks to relax, ending the night with me going home to crash (a plan that for the second year in the row has proven not the best idea and the next 48 hr contest I do will consist of me working through the night). I got up as early as I could, imported the footage (much easier with CS5.5 instead of FCP without needing to do prores) and started rough cuts of the film. As we did the year prior, I sent scenes to Vincent to score as I finished roughing them out and piecing the film together. This process took the better part of the day till I got down to a final rough edit and finding out that i was 1.5 mins over the set allowed time, this caused me to have to go back into the film and cut almost all of the extras scenes sadly (those can be found in the BTS/Bloopers video at the bottom thought). Getting the film down to time I then started audio mixing, grading, titles, and tweaking edits. We ended up getting the film submitted with only 1.5 mins left on the clock (last year we got it uploaded with 3 mins left) which again will be a learning curve next time as I need to work throughout the night to makeup the time I think.

Overall I am happy with how the film turned out and once submitted I found we got nominated for 4 awards and scheduled to possibly appear at the awards ceremony in 5 categories.
IMDB LINK

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Jason was an organized, creative and innovative thinker whose imagination was running the entire time while on set! His professionalism and leadership allowed his actors/crew to feel at ease and confident while moving forward through production. In addition, Jason’s communication pre, during and post production was excellent and largely responsible for keeping all crew members updated and involved throughout the process. Definitely someone I hope to cross paths with again!

Sean Kuntz – Actor

Jason is DRIVEN! It’s not often you get to work with a truly creative brain that also gets the mechanics and business end too. I’ve hired Jason as a photographer–he was punctual, full of ideas, put his subjects at ease and was adventurous in scouting for shoot settings. I’ve also worked as an actor on two movies he was involved with. As cinematographer on Heaven is Hell, he interacted with cast & crew alike with a friendly, helpful attitude, alternating between straightforward and crazy-artistic shots, scenes and scenery. I’ve also just worked with him on a 48 hour guerilla film fest contest. Give this guy an idea or genre and he hits the ground running. I think it speaks to his congeniality & work ethic that he & his partner were able to write a script, round up a phenomenal cast & crew of 25+ to spend 12 hours to shoot an 8 minute film, gratis and then edit and finish the whole thing in a 48 hour period. It was amazing that he can be that creative & artistic, genuinely nice & friendly and maintain his good spirits on little to no sleep. Short term or long term, I’d work with Jason again in a heartbeat

Sherry Winchester Schultz – Actor

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Tags: 48 hour film, 48GFC, After Effects, arri lights, Award, Bloopers, Camera Operator, Chicago Film Production, Cinematographer, Colorist, Contest, Director, Director of Photography, Editor, Film Studio, Gaffer, Graphic Artist, Heidi Schultz, Improv, JACENKNET, Jack Schultz, Jason Kraynek, Laura Roeper, Magic Bullet, Manfrotto, Mark ViaFranco, Matt Tassell, Post Production, Press, Producer, Production Company, Rodney Glassburn, Sarah Luna, Sean Kunz, Sherry Winchester Schultz, Short Film, Tamara Berkover, Vincent Truman, Writer