The 48 Hour film Project is an international film festival, aimed at filmmakers from all over the world as a challenge to write, shoot and edit a 5-7 minute short film within 48 hours. Each team is randomly assigned two genre’s, character names, a line of dialogue and props that must be incorporated into the film, to ensure that no scripts are prepared in advance. After submitting their film, contestants stand the chance to win a range of prizes and the opportunity to have their film screened at international film festivals, where they’ll compete against the top entries internationally.
Our friends at Soaring Heights Imagery reached out to us to handle all the audio for the project. On set, it was then our responsibility to record dialogue, ambiences and all environmental sound, in addition to post-production where we would be writing a soundtrack, compiling foley, additional dialogue recording (ADR) and sound design. We decided it best to get more hands involved, Tom Dodson and Alexander Verbaan joined the sound team and production began.
The team was given ‘mystery’ and ‘film de femme’ as our genre’s, which informed a lot of the approach we had with the soundtrack. Director Christian Grobbelaar mentioned Trent Reznor and Attiicus Ross as a reference which in some way reinforced what we already had in mind. Eerie soundscapes, minimalist percussion and tension filled sound design became the sound world we were dealing with. A straightforward brief, but not in 2 days.
Deliverables were handed out on Friday night, and submission was Sunday evening. We began on Friday with musical themes and motifs, purely so we could be active while the script was being written on the first evening. The next morning Alex was on set as the sound recordist, while the rest of the team continued to work on music. We received the final cut of the film on Sunday morning, from then it was a serious challenge to deliver a completed audio product to the editor and director for final delivery.
Our entry did well locally, the team won best cinematography, and ranked top 3 for best original musical score and best costume design. The festival ended up being massive learning experience and a great exercise in pre-production and time management. We’re already signed up for next year!
Soaring Heights Productions presents Rag Dolls, a film created in 48 hours for the 48 Hour film Festival.
When a girl finds herself trapped in a trafficking ring, she only has herself and her wits to rely on to escape the danger, but The Accountant has other plans, and would like to get rid of her sooner rather than later.
Genre received: Film De Femme\Mystery
Line of dialog received: Let's hide it in here.
Prop received: Shoelace
Character received: Mel Louw (Accountant) –
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