Friends, Filmmakers, Awardwinners

For years now, the 48 Hour Film Project in both San Francisco and San Jose has been graced by the work of these talented young filmmakers. The same could be said for just about every other competition or exhibition in the area that held still long enough.

This week, you’ll get to see their award-winning film with an audience in San Francisco. Take a peek at this past amusement from them, and we’ll give you the time and date at the end of the show.

This film brought them an Audience Choice award.

Their 48 Go Green entry was screened at NAB 2011 in Las Vegas. You can see it with an audience of other artists, performers, and filmmakers by attending:

RAW:incite! – A 48HFP collaborative mixer
111 Minna Gallery
Doors open: 7:30pm
$10 Cover
Register now at: http://www.rawartists.org/sanfrancisco/incite

Ovation Pictures pounds the streets

We hear that multi-hit competitors from the San Francisco 48 Hour Film Project have screenings twice this Memorial Day weekend. They are featured at San Francisco’s RAW: Inspire reception as well as Official Selection at the Bodega Bay International Short Film Festival.

Their appearance at the RAW:artists event was inspired by their vigorous participation in last year’s ArtShots competition in Silicon Valley. Here’s their winning entry, for those of you who missed it.

You can come visit with them in person this Friday at the Raw:artists reception, or at the Bodega Bay International Short Film Festival.

Help a Slacker Out

…the folks at the Austin Film Society are scheming up a special event that is sure to delight fans of Richard Linklater’s milepost film, Slacker. The idea is to present a remake that incorporates work from filmmakers all over the world. This could be the chance you’ve been waiting for to create an homage to the noteworthy film.

Here’s their call to action.

Use your talents to help us remake Slacker!

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Richard Linklater’s seminal indie feature, Slacker, The Austin Film Society and The Alamo Drafthouse are producing a scene-by-scene remake of the film by a collective of top filmmakers.

The new version of the film’s final scene will be a compilation of work by filmmakers and fans from all over the world.  Shoot and submit your version of the final scene to show how influential and inspiring the original film has been to filmmakers from a wide variety of backgrounds.  

The original final scene showed a group of energetic camera-wielding revelers running up Mt. Bonnell in Austin and throwing a Super-8 camera from the top of the hill.  The final images of the film were impressionistic blurred frames taken by the falling camera.  Ideally, the new videos will consist of similar shots of people running up mountains, buildings, piers, lighthouses, sand dunes, cliffs, etc., and throwing (or pretending to throw) cameras off the top.  The greater the variety of filmmakers and locations, the better—whatever makes you and your area unique!

We encourage you to prepare by watching the original scene for free on Hulu.com.

List of necessary shots:
-driving to the site (convertible optional!)
-feet running up
-full-body shots running up
-arriving at the top
-jumping around/playing at the top
-visible vistas
-preparing to throw the camera
-throwing (or pretending to throw) the camera
-the resulting footage from the thrown camera (not required)

Any originating format from Super8 to RED 4k to iPhone and everything in between will be accepted, as long as you send the completed scene as a DVD or high-quality MPEG-4 file (H.264).  Only rough edits are necessary since we will be combining your footage with filmmakers from all over the world.

Submitted films must be uploaded or postmarked by MAY 30th, 2011.

Upload to file-sharing sites such as YouSendIt.com (share withsuper8.slacker@gmail.com)

Or mail DVD’s or MPEG-4 files to:

Slacker Final Scene
c/o Austin Film Society
1901 East 51st Street
Austin, TX 78723

More info: http://www.persistenceofvision.org/2011/05/remake-your-favorite-scene-from-slacker/
Questions: super8.slacker@gmail.com

The final film will have its world premiere on August 31, 2011 with Richard Linklater in attendance for Q&A.  The film will also be streamed online, free for all viewers.


Time to Incite

San Francisco arts community organization RAW has generously welcomed some of the best from the 48 Hour Film Project community to exhibit their work alongside other hot Bay Area artists.

Incite - RAW Reception May 2011

For the month of May, we’ll be seeing work from Square Marden (formerly Barkada Inc. talent) as an appropos launch to the competition season. Their 48 Go Green competition entry won recognition within its (very large) competition group, and went on to be screened at NAB in Las Vegas.

This is the latest in a long run of competition films from the talented young media team and we expect them to be out to enjoy the recognition and acknowledgement they’ve earned.

The reception and screening with RAW will be held on Friday, May 27th at 7:30pm.

Oh, and if you can’t wait that long, then join the 48HFP community on Wed, May 18th at Cafe Royale for a mixer and a live taping event with The Beautiful Losers.

Short Film Workshop

We usually focus here on presenting you with our choices for delightful media that you can find online.  But we also want to occasionally acknowledge talent of extraordinary effort by the people who bring you the stories you love.

In this case, we want to acknowledge a media community that makes a big difference to independent media producers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It’s called Scary Cow and they do a lot to support filmmakers.

In particular, we’re proud to share the news about their next workshop, open to the public.

It’s called The Best Short Film Workshop Ever, and regardless of whether the event lives all the way up to that grand promise, we are completely certain that participants that night will be very happy they attended.

Read about it for yourself and see if it’s for you.

48 Hour Film Project San Francisco

For the ninth big year in San Francisco, the 48 Hour Film Project season is underway and we expect this summer to be bigger than ever before. We invite you to keep abreast of the buzz as independent filmmakers in the Bay Area gear up to participate in the world’s oldest and largest time based filmmaking competition.

Here are some things we want you to know about right away.

  • Registration Now Open
  • Mixer Events – Save the Date (May 18)
  • Screening Dates and Theater
  • Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Registration Now Open – Several teams have already put their hats in the ring, and many others have let us know that they intend to make it official in the next few days. There’s still time to get the Early Bird registration rate, and of course there are a limited number of slots available, so don’t waste any time. Here are the registration deadlines:

Early Bird Registration ($!40) – thru May 16
Regular Registration ($160) – thru May 31
Late Registration ($175) – after May 31

One bit of “insider advice” we can share with you, courtesy of the veteran 48 Hour Film competitors on our event team, is that as soon as you declare yourself officially, new team members seem to pop up everywhere. The difference between “we’re thinking about doing this” and “we WILL be doing this” is enormous.

So get to our city web page and choose Register for San Francisco now.

Mixer Events: Save the Date (May 18) – Our first mixer with RAW: San Francisco was a big success. Not only did a crowded gathering of San Francisco artists and performers get to see some of your films from the 2010 competition, but the teams that attended got to meet promising potential allies for the coming season. One “trick” used by many successful filmmaking teams worldwide is to take advantage of the texture that local artists and musicians can bring to your competition film. We were impressed with the caliber of the music and art that was on display at the RAW event. Just a few of our snapshots can be seen here, and we expect more to emerge in the days to come.

Meanwhile, the next event on the calendar is scheduled for May 18 and in addition to our traditional Meet & Greet format, we’ll wrap up the evening with a performance by local rising stars, The Beautiful Losers. Circle the date on your calendar now and plan to be there to bulk up your team.

Screening Dates and Theater – We’re proud to announce that we’ll be screening in the historic Lumiere Theater again this season. The folks from Landmark Cinemas who operate the Lumiere have been great to us in the past and this year, they tell us that your films will be shown with brand new equipment that is certain to bring your stories vividly to the big screen.

Screening dates will run from June 16 through June 23rd.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter – Can you name three advantages to following us on Facebook or Twitter? Here are just three from among many:

  • Keep up with the buzz from the competition season, not only from us, but also from one another as you post about your progress.
  • Be among the first to learn about promotions and giveaways that could bag you free passes or prizes from our sponsors.
  • Get more attention for your team and its work by posting your own updates in front of a savvy Bay Area audience.
  • When you post updates to our Facebook page, your messaging is seen not only by your friends and followers, but those of a widespread community formed by the teams that are competing and those who have in the past.

Be sure to use the #48hfp hashtag when you post to Twitter, there is a worldwide audience for updates that carry this well established tag.

One of your best tools for attracting top talent for your team, and sponsors for your own efforts, is that of leveraging the attention that your participation in this competition can bring. So post often (and intelligently), and keep an eye out for what your colleagues have to say in the conversation.

We look forward to seeing your names on the competition roster, and to meeting you at the mixers and the screenings.

—
48 Hour Film Project Team: San Francisco
Vincent Lowe – City Producer / Kristen Ronberg – Operations Director
sanfrancisco@48hourfilm.com
Website: http://48hourfilm.com/sanfrancisco
Twitter: http://twitter.com/sf48hfp

Life and The Streets

One thing we love about 48 Hour Film Project films is that they often capture the look and tone of the cities where they are created.

We found that this entry from the Tampa/St. Petersburg competition took us back to the seamier side of Ybor City. (Not that we’ve actually been there ourselves, just that we’ve seen it in the movies. For real!)

We also think that they did a great job of showing off what can be done with a Canon Rebel and available light.

Beneath the Surface

We mostly focus on short film here, but occasionally we are compelled to share work from a different genre. The independent filmmakers who created this music video demonstrate that they are quite serious about their craft.

The look and feel of San Francisco are on full display here in this tasty music video. Hopefully it will invite you to look at your own world with a new eye today.

What lies beneath the cover of the person sitting near you?

Whatever happened to…

Seems like Orlando has some hot filmmaking talent. The City Winner from 2010 is headed for the Short Film Corner at Cannes. Last year’s top winner in the International Shootout came from nearby St. Petersburg.

This film was voted Audience Choice favorite for its screening group, and we can see why.

Tell the truth. You really wanted to know what had happened to these folks.

They Upload

We love to see the work of repeat 48HFP top performers. Jason Salazar has been behind several award-winning efforts in both San Jose and San Francisco. This web series is from his latest work.

WARNING: This video is not “workplace-safe.” So unless your boss is on vacation and your most annoying co-workers are home sick, perhaps it would be best to view this at home or with headphones.

By the way, those annoying co-workers — they’ll be featured in a future episode.